Romans 11:12, commentary and pictures

Israel's fall and diminishing became the riches of the world and the riches of the Gentiles by bringing salvation and spiritual riches to the Gentiles, and Israel's fullness will bring far greater riches and still greater blessing. Through that fall salvation came to the Gentiles to provoke Israel to jealousy and emulation. It was God's purpose that His grace should be revealed among the Gentiles as well as among the Israelites, and ministry to the Gentiles seeks by that means to provoke to emulation those who are Israel after the flesh and to save some of them.

Israel stumbled and fell, but God did not cast them away. They have not stumbled beyond recovery, their failure as a nation did not make recovery impossible, and it is not impossible for them to rise again. If they do not remain in unbelief, those who turn will be grafted again into their own olive tree, the true stock which is Christ, and reunited with God's people. If their casting away is the reconciling of the world, their receiving will be as life from the dead. Gentiles who stand by faith as grafted wild branches must not despise the Jews nor boast against them, but fear and continue in God's goodness.

The promised fullness will come through the conversion of many Jews who turn from unbelief, receive the light of truth, and are grafted in again. Among the Jews the Lord has mighty men who will proclaim the truth and God's unchanging law with power. The verse therefore calls for a great work for the Jews that must not be ignored, giving them every opportunity to come to the light. That work is to be carried out with special wisdom, the wisdom of God, and in all wisdom and righteousness to clear the King's highway, and patient labor for them will be successful because their fullness brings still greater blessing. Fulfilling the verse includes providing a home of refuge where Jews who accept Christ and are thereby cut off from their own people can live and learn how to work for their own people, and supporting that work with offerings.

The verse belongs to the unfolding of the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, whose judgments are unsearchable and whose ways are past finding out. The rejection of the Jews and the calling of the Gentiles is one of the deep things of God, a deep mystery and doctrine that finite beings comprehend little and few try to ascertain. Its meaning requires deep thought, with understanding growing as God's Word opens, for the Bible is a progressive book not yet fully understood in either the Old or New Testament. The verse leads to presenting the body a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God, being transformed by the renewing of the mind to prove the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, and thinking soberly according to the measure of faith, with each member of the church doing his own fitted work blending into a complete whole.