22 In this we see both God's kindness and His discipline. To the fallen, His discipline is shown, but He shows you kindness, so long as you abide in His kindness. If you don't abide, you too will be cut off. 23 By the same token, if they cease from their unbelief, they will be reinstated into His kindness, for God is able to graft them back into Himself. 24 After all, if He was able to graft you who were wild into His cultivated olive tree, will it not be much easier for Him to restore its own branches?
11:23 - Here is the promise stated, that is implied from the preceding several verses. The branch that was cut off retained the righteousness of its root in sufficient degree to allow its return to that root. We are never so cut off as to disallow the possibility of return.
Thematic Relevance:
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All who are now part of God's Israel are there by His workmanship. We are all grafted in, both Jew and Gentile. |
Doctrinal Relevance:
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Those who cease from faith will be removed from grace. But hope is held out to them, for a return to faith allows a return to grace. |
Moral Relevance:
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We should be ceaseless in praying for the return of those who have fallen away. They have been broken off, but as we saw in the last sections, they were broken off in a fashion that would allow grafting back in, and here the conditions for that grafting are spelled out. |
Questions Raised:
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We come to a theological quagmire, here. He is faithful to complete what He has once begun, yet we who were begun may be cut off. We are incapable of resisting the will of God, and yet we may reject the faith given to us. How do these apparent dichotomies work? Is our salvation sure, or only as sure as we are? |
Thank You, Lord. Whenever we turn to You, our hearts are indeed enabled to see truth. In looking back over the notes here, I see that You have already largely answered my questions. I found myself confused by the thought that we could reject Your sovereign will, that our will was somehow greater than Your own, but I see now that this is not true. Verse 23 begins to answer the question in part. We may be cut off in our faithlessness, but never so as to be unable to return. This is an article both of the grace that pervades Your nature and Your decisiveness. How could You do otherwise than to accept the faithful into Your great love? How could You, who are love incarnate, not be willing to allow Your children to walk into those mistakes they insist on making? How could the love that does what is necessary fail to allow the necessary lessons to come? For even in Your decisiveness, in Your cutting off, it remains Your kindness that leads us to repentance (Ro 2:4), so that You can restore us. 1Co 15:2, I believe needs to be seen backwards, as it were. That we hold fast to You, to Christ Your Word, is the evidence of our salvation, not the cause. So also with Heb 3:14. If our faith is unshaken and unshakable, that is but a visible sign that we are indeed partakers in Christ. 2Co 3:16 is Your promise to us as we foolishly walk away from You. When we're ready, we can still turn to You, and You will remain faithful to us to enable our hearts to recognize our foolishness and repent. What blessed assurance! The God who chose me will allow me my freedom, but He will always, always, always provide for my return to His house! He will allow me to stray, but He will seek me out to return me to safety! He will allow me to learn and grow, even when I choose to do so by painful means, but He will always be there waiting for me to come home, so he can bind up my wounds, and love me back to health.
