God Has Not Rejected Israel, Pt. 2

February 17th, 2025
by Dr. Lance Waldie

Romans 11:1-2a I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He? May it never be! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew.

God’s rejection of Israel was neither total nor final. What God promised Israel, He will bring to pass in due time. In the meanwhile, God has used Israel’s rejection of Jesus as the Christ to spread the gospel to the world, bringing about the salvation of the Gentiles. But Israel He has not completely “rejected” (Gr. apōtheō)—“to push aside; repudiate.” In the NT this verb is always used in the reflexive, middle voice indicating a pushing aside from oneself. So, Paul is not asking whether God has refused to receive His people Israel. But he is pointing out that Israel has rejected God. God would receive them, but Israel as a nation has willfully rejected Him.

The answer Paul gives to the question of whether God has rejected His people is, “May it never be!” This is the strongest negative in the Greek language and Paul’s way of saying how preposterous such an idea is. Samuel the prophet, over a thousand years prior, said, “The Lord will not abandon His people on account of His great name because the Lord has been pleased to make you a people for Himself” (1 Sam. 12:22). In the words of David, in Psalm 89, God said, “If they violate My statutes, and do not keep My commandments, then I will visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. But I will not break off My loving-kindness… nor deal falsely in My faithfulness. My covenant I will not violate, nor will I alter the utterance of My lips. Once I have sworn by My holiness; I will not lie to David. His descendants shall endure forever, and his throne as the sun before Me. It shall be established forever like the moon, and the witness in the sky is faithful” (89:31-37). Likewise, Psalm 94:14 says, “The Lord will not abandon His people, nor will He forsake His inheritance.”

Though Israel has always rejected God, He “looked upon their distress when He heard their cry; and He remembered His covenant for their sake and relented according to the greatness of His lovingkindness” (Ps. 106:44-45). Later, when Israel returned from 70 years of Babylonian exile, the Levites spoke to the Lord on behalf of Israel, who repented as a nation. They wrote:

But they became disobedient and rebelled against You, and cast Your law behind their backs and killed Your prophets who had admonished them so that they might return to You, and they committed great blasphemies. Therefore, You delivered them into the hand of their oppressors who oppressed them, but when they cried to You in the time of their distress, You heard from heaven, and according to Your great compassion You gave them deliverers who delivered them from the hand of their oppressors (Neh. 9:26-27; cf. 28-30).
Through Jeremiah, the Lord assured Israel: “Fear not, O Jacob My servant… and do not be dismayed, O Israel; for behold, I will save you from afar, and your offspring from the land of their captivity. And Jacob shall return, and shall be quiet and at ease, and no one shall make him afraid. For I am with you… to save you; for I will destroy completely all the nations where I have scattered you, only I will not destroy you completely” (Jer. 30:10-11; cf. 31:10).

Food for Thought

God’s promise to Israel was, and is, an eternal covenant. Since God cannot lie, Israel can never be permanently cast aside by Him. For Christians, God’s plan for the Jews is pertinent, and we would do well to compare His unconditional promises to them with our own eternal security in Christ. After all, if God abrogated His covenant with Israel, wouldn’t He do the same to us?