“Contrary to Nature”
God’s sovereignty may be looked at in several ways. You may think of it as connected with election and predestination, linking our thoughts with the ages past, before this earth was made, and with the ages yet to come, when this earth shall have ceased to be.
You may look at it in relation to our responsibility as Christians in this life, as seen in 1 Peter 1:2, where we are elected “UNTO obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus,” and in which we can make our calling and election sure (2 Peter 1:10), just as God in His sovereign choice and wisdom has elected that man shall maintain his natural life by eating, and men make that election and calling sure by partaking of three or four meals in the day.
You may also look at sovereignty in relation to God’s governmental dealings in this world with a view to man’s spiritual blessing. Our present subject falls under this head.
What, then, is meant by the Olive Tree in Romans 11? It is evidently a system, designed of God, upon earth, in which man can find Divine blessing. This was seen in its beginnings in Abraham. Just as a tree must spring from a small beginning, say an oak from an acorn, and in course of time grow and its roots take firm hold of the soil, and the trunk develop in height, girth, shooting out branches and they in their turn smaller branches, and then twigs and leaves, before you can talk of a tree, so God began with an individual.
Up to Abraham’s time God had dealt with individuals in blessing and left them as individuals, such as Adam, Seth, Enoch, Noah, and the like. But in Abraham God made a new beginning. Abraham was called out, and ever since his day “calling” has been the principle of God’s dealings with men.
As we have seen in a previous paper, God in sovereignty chose Isaac and not Ishmael, and Jacob and not Esau.
The root of the Olive Tree lay in God’s gracious working with Abraham,* and by the time we get to Jacob’s descendants, we find the tree beginning to grow. There were twelve patriarchs, who had some knowledge of God, and by-and-by the branches and twigs and leaves are seen as a mighty nation was redeemed out of Egypt, the males twenty years old and upward numbering 603,550 men.
Where, then, was the advantage that Israel had? “Much every way,” says the Apostle Paul, “chiefly, because that to them were committed the oracles of God” (Rom. 3:2).
{*This is seen in full perspective in Galatians 3:8; “And the Scripture foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith preached before the Gospel to Abraham, saying, in thee shall all nations be blessed.”}
Some responded and believed, but those who did not respond could not make the faith of God of none effect through their unbelief. They were connected with the Olive Tree, whether they responded or not.
But the day came when the nation led by their responsible rulers rejected Christ. It was Christ who alone could give character and blessing to the Olive Tree. There could be no blessing apart from Him. The dealings with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the Children of Israel were all on the ground that Christ was coming; and when He came they rejected Him.
Then God’s sovereign way in government passed from Israel, and the way was opened up for the Gentiles to come into blessing. No longer was there any blessing in Judaism. In former days, it was true, as the Lord said, “Salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22), but now if a Jew wants salvation He must turn his back on Judaism, and find salvation in Christ; but the moment he is blessed he is added to the church. This was true of the remnant of Israel, of whom Paul speaks in this chapter.
Gentiles had come into the sphere of blessing through faith; they had been grafted into the true Olive Tree on this principle. Abraham was the root of it, for he was the father of all that believed. The Jews had lost the place of favour through unbelief, and only by faith can Gentiles continue to hold it.
This place of favour is very real; for instance, who can deny the marvellous privilege of children being brought up in a Christian home? Look at the difference between a child in a Christian home and a child brought up in heathen darkness with fetishes and idols and witch doctors and plurality of wives and the like, in the heart of Africa.
But Romans 11 gives us one of the daring imageries of Scripture when we are told that the natural branches (Judaism) have been broken off because of unbelief, and Paul, exulting that he has been called to be the apostle of the Gentiles, rejoices that the wild olive tree (the Gentiles) has been grafted into the Olive Tree, But in nature the graft is good and the root is wild. The sapling is a crab apple, as we say—wild and sour, and the fruit small; the gardener grafts in, say, a Cox’s orange pippin, or a russet strain, and lo! a cultivated apple, large and sweet, is produced; but here the graft is wild and the root cultivated—“contrary to nature,” as the apostle is careful to point out. Hence the branches do not bear the root, but the root bears the branches, and the only thing that will cause the branches to abide and prosper is belief.
And so today, the casting off of the Jews religiously, though blessing is offered the Jew freely, but not on the old ground of Judaism, is the reconciling of the world; but the day will come when the natural branches shall be grafted in again. The promises to Abraham are all to be fulfilled in CHRIST. The Jews, purified by the great tribulation, will behold their Messiah, whom they have pierced, and mourn for Him as a man mourns for his only son, as the result of receiving the spirit of grace and supplication, and they will then keep the feast of atonement truly for the first time since the day of Calvary (see Zech. 12). When the day for the receiving of Israel again arrives, it will mean nothing short of “life from the dead.” Then will be fulfilled the vision of the valley of dry bones (see Ezekiel 37) and this glorious millennial reign of Christ—the golden age at last for a weary, weeping world—shall come.
Meanwhile the Olive Tree is connected now with Christ and Christianity, and not with Judaism as in olden times, nor in Christ and Israel as in a coming day. No wonder as the apostle with vigorous and graphic pen reviews God’s sovereignty in government, he bursts forth: ““O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! For who has known the mind of the Lord? or who has been His counsellor? or who has first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed to Him again? For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen” (Rom. 11:33-36).
Our exercise should be that being by God’s sovereign grace branches in the Olive Tree of privilege and opportunity, we should draw from the root in faith and exercise, and thus in truth be receiving the full benefit of such a position. We have no claim to it—sovereignty has put us there, wild olive tree of the Gentiles as we were, but if we do not respond in faith the day must come when God’s government must cut us off, as it once did to Israel because of their unbelief.
Does not the rush of incoming apostasy tell of that time, when the true church, caught up to glory at the second coming of Christ, will leave the present profession of Christianity empty and devoid of the presence of the Spirit, to completely turn its back upon God and welcome the one coming in his own name (John 5:4), the anti-christ? The signs today are ominous indeed.