Election is not, primarily, about who is on the outs! Election is God’s determination that His gracious promise will not fail.
I find it rather unfortunate that the Three-Year committee gutted most of Romans 11 and cherrypicked just a couple of verses at the start, in the middle, and at the end of the chapter. Speaking of “cherry-picking,” the entire grafting illustration, describing wild and cultivated trees, is skipped over (Romans 11:16-24), not to mention the Old Testament history illustrations from Elijah to David (Romans 11:2b-10). You can certainly preach Christ through the limited verses chosen for the reading, emphasizing especially Romans 11:30-32, and Christ as the incarnation of God’s faithfulness and mercy, but I think you should read all of Romans 11, and do it with your congregation on Sunday too, for a couple of reasons. 1. It is good to hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the Word of God in Christ. More is more in this case! 2. If you do, you get to treat three trees in Romans 11; a wild olive, a cultivated olive, and the tree of the cross!
Whether you do or do not read the entire chapter with your people before you treat it in a sermon, you will be faced with the theme of election. Romans 11 can seem to invite or erupt into a theological cage match if the preacher lets it. Resist the temptation. Paul does not ask here, “How does election work?” And you should not either. He asks (11:1), “Has God rejected His people?” That is the key for you as a biblical preacher this week. Respond to that question. Paul is not inviting speculation into the hidden counsel of God. He is comforting frightened consciences with the revealed faithfulness of God. Everything else is subordinate to that for Paul and must be for you too. As you read the assigned pericope for this week’s epistle, chopped up as it is, see that the center of gravity is not fundamentally about “predestination” or “election” as a lesson to be taught or a doctrine to be puzzled over. Rather, it is about “the faithfulness of God” as a promise to be delivered.
The folks in your pews may well hear “election” the way many do. We hear selection, imagining making the cut for a hiring manager or a team coach, or like my university’s admissions committee accepting some applicants and rejecting others. Election becomes a conversation about exclusion. But hear how Paul is doing something different. Asking whether God has rejected His people introduces the topic, not to explain God’s rejection, but rhetorically to outright deny it. Election in this kind of language becomes God’s sworn oath to do what He says He will do. It is His refusal to abandon His promise.
As a preacher and teacher, this is a fundamental distinction. Election is not, primarily, about who is on the outs! Election is God’s determination that His gracious promise will not fail. It is how God looks at justification, the perspective from His side of the action. From our vantage point, we say: “Christ died for me and my sins are forgiven. I am justified by grace through faith.” From God’s seat, Paul is saying the Lord affirms: “I have loved you from the beginning, from the foundation of the world. I will never walk back My call to you and My gifts. I will never give up on you.” These are the same gospel. They are simply different ways of describing the identical merciful attitude and action of God which He reveals and manifests in Christ His Son. It will be good for your hearers to hear the promise over and over again: You are here receiving God’s gifts in Christ because God had mercy once in Christ, and you are still here because God keeps having mercy!
You are here receiving God’s gifts in Christ because God had mercy once in Christ, and you are still here because God keeps having mercy!
What a question Paul starts with, and maybe you (and your hearer!) have asked the same one in so many words: Has God finally given up? Israel certainly looked like a failure. The promises seemed to be unraveling. Messiah had come, yet so many of God’s own covenant people had rejected Him. If Israel can apparently fall away from the promises, what confidence does anyone else have? Paul’s mē genoito is immediate and emphatic: “By no means!” And your sermon needs to emphasize this too, the way Paul does. He deals with history, salvation history, and you get to do the same as a biblical preacher this week.
Paul’s history lesson goes, “I myself am an Israelite. I am standing here. I am evidence.” The existence of one believing Jew already disproves the accusation that God has abandoned Israel. Then, Paul reaches further back to Elijah (Romans 11:2b). Elijah thought he was the only faithful believer left. God corrected him, not with a philosophical explanation but with seven thousand living examples Elijah had never seen.
Reflect on this, preacher: God’s faithfulness always exceeds our eyesight. No doubt, you know this feeling well, as you experience congregations that shrink, children who wander, and churches that close. Human reason evaluates God’s promises by visible statistics and quantification. But this text demands we do not trust our eyes, but what God has said in our ears. The theologian of glory will measure growth and numbers and find confidence and rest in visual proofs of success. The theologian of the cross will call the thing what it is. God’s promise is sure (let all men be liars). Where the Gospel of Christ is preached, sinners are killed and saints are raised to life. Our confidence is in the Word of God which calls us His children by faith in Christ’s death for us.
The trees and grafted branches illustration sandwiched in the middle of the cherrypicked Romans 11 verses is too rich to let it go by without comment. This is one more bid for you to include it in the public reading of your worship service, especially if you preach the epistle this week. You can frame an entire sermon around trees if you are feeling particularly drawn to the image. In 11:17-24, the root of the olive tree is holy, and the branches live only because they remain connected to the root. No life originates in the branches. Their life comes from abiding in the root (see also to John 15!). This matches how scripture talks about trees as places where God gives life, starting with Eden (Genesis 2:9). The righteous man of Psalm 1 is like a tree planted by irrigating streams. The tree of life grows on either side of the river of the water of life, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations (Revelation 22:2). But there is another tree, the tree of curse (Galatians 3:13), Christ’s cross. The olive tree of Romans 11 survives only because another tree bore the curse it deserves. The branches grafted into that tree live because Christ died attached to wood, not because we are grafted into a culture or an institution, an ethnic identity or a religion. We are grafted into Christ Himself, whose obedient life fulfills God’s promises and whose cursed death secures God’s promises to you. The sap which flows through that tree is nothing less than the life won by the crucified and risen Christ.
Grafting involves wounding. Both trees are cut. The old branch loses its previous life. It is dead wood. The cultivated tree receives an incision. It has to bleed. Then, they are bound together until one life flows through both. Notice how beautifully this illustrates our life in Christ. It is baptismal talk (His death, our death; His life, our life). We are not dead branches somehow hung on a living, cultivated tree. We do not decorate Jesus. We die into him. We are severed from our old root. The Old Adam is slain, and Christ’s life becomes ours, His obedience, His righteousness, and His resurrection! The branch contributes nothing. The only thing it can boast about is its need, the need to be attached. The life all belongs to Christ.
Wherever the sermon takes you this week, I encourage you to not stop at Romans 11:32, but spill over into the doxology at the very end of the chapter, even if just in devotion. Paul does not tie up all his loose ends in such a way as to suggest his reader can now pat herself on the back, successfully having solved a theological puzzle. And if you preach a sermon on election, proudly thinking you have mastered God’s hidden counsel, then you have also missed Paul’s point. Your sermon should not leave people saying, “Wow, I finally understand election and predestination.” Rather, your sermon should leave people saying, “What a faithful God!” That faithfulness has a face. The God who would not abandon Israel is the God who would not abandon humanity. In the fullness of time, the Lord Himself entered Israel’s history in the flesh (Galatians 4:4). The faithful Israelite remained faithful where every branch had failed. The obedient Son fulfilled every promise in His active obedience. Then, He carried every broken promise, every faithless branch, every curse onto the tree of the cross in His passive obedience. And having borne the curse on the tree, He rose as the living root, from whom every believing branch now receives life. The Church stands only because Christ still stands, risen and living, still nourishing His people with the inexhaustible riches of His mercy. That is Paul’s comfort. God has not rejected His people because God has not rejected His Christ, and everyone found in Christ discovers that every promise of God is still, “Yes,” and remains, “Amen.”
God bless your preaching this week!
Additional Resources:
Craft of Preaching-Check out 1517’s resources on Romans 11:1-2a, 13-15, 28-32.
Concordia Theology-Various helps from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO to assist you preaching Romans 11:1-2a, 13-15, 28-32.
Lectionary Kick-Start-Check out this fantastic podcast from Craft of Preaching authors Peter Nafzger and David Schmitt as they dig into the texts for this Sunday!
The Pastor’s Workshop-Check out all the great preaching resources from our friends at the Pastor’s Workshop!
