The Election of Grace – Romans 11:1-6

 Let’s say that I promised to give you $1,000.00 right after church today. But when I come up to you, pulling out my wallet, you hold up your hand, telling me that you don’t want it. You might say that you are doing all right; the Lord has blessed so that you don’t need my money. Or you might say that you know that my finances aren’t perfect, and that I should use that money myself. You might point out that my wife needs a new coat, or perhaps that $1000.00 should go into savings, since I have opted out of Social Security, and I don’t have medical insurance. Actually the reason that you refuse me might be that you are just too proud to admit that you could use it. But for whatever reason, you decline my sincere offer to be a blessing to you.

Under those circumstances do you have any reason to be angry with me, if I turn around and give that money to someone else? You’ve just said that I should put that money into savings so that when the doctors start holding out their hands, I’ll have something to put in. But I ignore your suggestion and give that $1,000.00 to someone who needs it even less than you do. Do you have any right to be angry with me for trying to be a blessing to someone even if it isn’t you? Of course not.

Throughout this section of the Book of Romans, Paul’s primary thought has been, “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” And that “whosoever” should be taken in its widest sense – man, woman, child, Jew, Gentile, and even the most abominable heathen-sinner imaginable. “For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.” When the Holy Spirit convicts a sinner, bringing him to his knees in humble repentance before God, and filling his heart with love and faith in the Saviour who died for him, he “shall be saved,” and he “shall not be ashamed” or disappointed in placing his trust in Christ.

Sadly, and this was Paul’s current point, Israel believed that they had the sole rights to the blessings of God. They were the only people who should have the Lord’s $1,000.00, even if they didn’t need it. They were angry at the thought that non-Jews from North America could be saved from sin, unless, of course, they were willing to become Jewish proselytes. And even then, I suppose that some thought of those proselytes as inferiors to themselves. They were furious with Paul for preaching to Greeks and Romans without demanding that they be circumcised and keep the ceremonial laws of Israel. And they even mis-concluded that he was saying that God had rejected their nation; an idea which was preposterous to them. “No, no,” Paul said, “I am not teaching that God has ‘cast away his people which he foreknew.’ What I am trying to show you is that God saves INDIVIDUALS according to His grace and mercy.” Eternal salvation is not a matter of race or nationality. It is a blessing of individual application and totally dependant God’s sovereign grace.

This morning we come back to a subject of which I hope that you never tire to hear. Once a person moves from hating and mis-defining the last three words of verse 5, he should become thrilled to hear them over and over again, even if he heard them only last week or last month. The title to this message is: “The election of Grace.” Those are the Apostle’s words, and they are mine only because I borrowed them from Paul. They are scripture; they are inspired by the Holy Spirit; they must not be ignored.

Think once again, about the NATURE of GRACE.In my “On-line Bible” program I went to the dictionaries that the program offers and looked up “grace.” There were five dictionaries and encyclopedia offered; some with detailed definitions and some with simple definitions. One, called “The Dictionary of Theology,” offered one of the more simple explanations. “Grace is unmerited favor. It is God’s free action for the benefit of His people. It is different than Justice and mercy. Justice is getting what we deserve. Mercy is not getting what we deserve. Grace is getting what we do not deserve. In grace we get eternal life, something that, quite obviously, we do not deserve. But because of God’s love and kindness manifested in Jesus on the Cross, we receive the great blessing of redemption. Grace rules out all human merit. It is the product of God that is given by God, because of who He is not because of who we are.” Notice that the author of that article said, Grace is – “God’s FREE action for the benefit of His people. It is given by God, because of who HE is, NOT because of who WE are.” That means that the people whom He blesses do not DO anything to cause God to be gracious.

One of the other dictionaries said, “Divine grace is the FREE and UNDESERVED love and favor of God towards man as a sinner, especially as exhibited in the plan of redemption through Jesus Christ. It is only by the free grace of God that we embrace the offers of mercy, and appropriate to ourselves the blessings graciously purchased by redeeming blood. The “GRACE OF GOD,” spontaneous, unmerited, self-directed, and almighty, is the source of the whole scheme of redemption.” Then that article referred to the verse following this morning’s scripture – verse 6 – “And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work.”

These articles were thinking about the grace involved in salvation from sin, but the definition applies to every case where God deals kindly with sinners. It applies to God’s call and salvation of Abraham. And it applies to God’s sovereign choice of Israel over all the other nations and tribes of people.

And that leads us to re-emphasize Paul’s other word – “the ELECTION of grace.” Because grace is totally unmerited by man, and completely spontaneous on the part of God, you might say that it always involves a free “election” by the Lord. The Lord makes a sovereign choice to dispense His blessings, because no sinner has ever deserved them. There is absolutely no harm done to the person whom God doesn’t choose, but there is great blessing to the one whom he does choose.

And, once again, what about ISRAEL’S RELATIONSHIP to GRACE. “I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew.” As I suggested, it seems that some people were charging Paul with denying God’s covenant with Israel. They were implying that Paul had replaced Israel with the Greeks and the Romans. But nothing could have been farther from the truth.

Let me digress for a moment, by pointing out that this is a Protestant point of doctrine as much as it is Jewish. It is one of the foundational doctrines of much of Protestantism that when we read the name “Israel” we have every right to substitute the word “Christian” or something like it. They misconstrue scriptures like Romans 9:6-7 – “For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel: Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children.” They misunderstand what Paul was saying in Romans 2 – “For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit.” When they hear Paul tell the Gentiles in Romans 4:16 – “Abraham; who is the father of us all,” they believe that they have the right to apply all God’s promises given to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to themselves. But this is incorrect and not what the Apostle was teaching.

There were a great many divine promises made to Israel – as a nation, which apply only to that nation. The Lord made a covenant with Abraham which was reiterated through one of his sons and a grandson. And the majority of the promises connected to that covenant belong to them as a nation of people. They were itemized and explained through Moses and somewhat through David. And many of those promises were linked to the Ceremonial Law. And actually, no Christian should want any part of those promises, because they were clearly conditional. They said, “If you will obey the Lord, and serve Him fully and faithfully, then you shalt be blessed. You will live in the land that God has promised, and you will prosper in the things of the world. But if you transgress and sin against these commandments and covenant, then you will be judged, expelled from the land, and punished.” That covenant was eternal in the sense that the nation of Israel would always be God’s chosen nation, and they would eventually enjoy the promises of God and the promised land in absolute peace, but not necessarily as individuals, and not necessarily in every generation before the coming of Christ.

However, there were aspects of God’s promises to Abraham which were unconditional and individual. And when the individual sinful Israelite believed God – as Abraham believed God; when he had the same humble faith as Abraham, then there were special blessings, which today we identify with “salvation.” Generally speaking the covenants made with Israel will always belong to the nation of Israel, and they will enjoy the fulness of those promises when the Messiah returns to establish His earthly kingdom. But when a Jew or a Gentile, under the power, illumination and leadership of the Lord, trusts Jehovah the way that Abraham trusted the Lord, then special eternal aspects of God’s promise to Abraham will be applied to him. They apply to the Gentile as much as they do a Jew, when he possesses the same faith as Abraham.

But getting back to Israel’s relationship to grace – God has not cast away his people which he foreknew. Once again, this powerful word “foreknew” means much more than “the people that God knew before.” It speaks about an intimate relationship between the Lord and these people, similar to, but much more holy, than when Adam knew his wife. God has not completely cast away his people which he foreknew, and proof of that was that Paul was a member of Abraham’s race, and God had saved and blessed him. Evidence of God’s abiding love on Israel, was that some children of Jacob were being saved by grace. It has essentially the same application as the statement: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have everlasting life.” God’s love for Israel, or the world, never meant that every individual would be saved. And yet His love for the group was genuine.

Furthermore, God has not cast away his people, because perhaps as soon as seven years from now, every living child of Jacob will see the Messiah, repent of their sins and put their trust in Him. At the time of the Lord’s Second Coming, every Israelite eye shall see their Saviour, coming in the clouds of glory. They will, by the grace of God, throw themselves upon the mercy of God’s court, confessing their former unbelief and putting their trust in Christ. There will be an entire nation miraculously saved in a moment. At that point Israel will begin to enjoy every aspect of God’s covenant to their fullest extent. But in the mean time, there have been thousands of individual Benjamites, Ephraimites, Levites, Reubinites and others whom the Lord has saved by grace.

But remember that the key to that relationship and blessing, has been and will always be God’s grace. As we have said several times in recent months, Abraham, Jacob and the nation of Israel were chosen to be God’s people without any logical reason flowing out of them personally. God made a choice, an election, to select one idolater out of Ur and to rename him “Abraham.” There was nothing that Abraham did to warrant that choice or blessing, not even repentance and faith. And God chose Isaac over Ishmael and Jacob over Esau, and in those sovereign decisions the Lord chose one nation; He did not chose any other nation. That is the nature of divine grace.

This evening I plan to come back to what the Lord said to Elijah, as mentioned in this scripture. But let’s quickly return to Paul’s argument – hath the Lord cast away his people? Elijah was under the misconception that he was the only servant of God left in Israel in his day. But the Lord told him that was not the case, because “I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal.” I don’t believe that it is my imagination … I think that I can understand the Lord precisely here … The reason that there remained 7,000 worshipers of Jehovah was due to the Lord’s sovereign grace. He would not permit those 7,000 to give in to the temptation to follow the foolish collapse of religion under the reign of Ahab and Jezebel. It was by grace alone that those people were saved and preserved. Verse 5 – “Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace.”

Where the grace of God is absent, there is the full effect of sin. There is idolatry; there is rejection of the King, the Messiah; there is rampant murder, including the murder of the unborn; there is homosexuality. There are fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, and abusers of themselves with mankind, There are thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, extortioners, and none of these people shall inherit the kingdom of God. “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” That justification and sanctification have been bestowed upon some by the unmerited kindness of God – that is, by sovereign grace. And that leads me to my last quick point for this morning.

This election of grace has not to be confined to certain elect Israelites, like Paul, Barnabas and Nicodemus.Here we return to the theme of this section once again. “For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Salvation and deliverance from sin have always been a result of God’s free grace. It was true of Abraham and Jacob, and it was true of David and Daniel. It was true of people under the blanket of Israel, and it is true of those who are not under that blanket. Where that grace is found, there will also be found repentance of sin and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

That Israel is no longer at the focal point of the Lord’s saving grace, has proven to be a blessing to the entire world. It means that you can be saved, even as they. In Peter’s arguments with the Jerusalem church about this very same matter he concluded in Acts 15:11 – “But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they.”

Have you been touched by this saving grace? Have you repented of your sins, and is your faith for salvation squarely on the Lord Jesus? The nation of Israel is on the Lord’s back burner, while the grace of God is being presented to the rest of the world. But have you responded to the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ?