The Story of the Olive Tree: 11:11-24

Welcome to Series 3 and Episode 6. Many of you will have been following through Series 3 in this study in the book of Romans. You will know that Paul is focusing on a very important question in the mind of his listeners, the Early Church, and in his own mind: the question of where the Jews fit into God’s purposes.

Recap and Background

He has taken a long time between Romans 9 and 11 to explain very fully what God is doing. Something mysterious and surprising happened at the time of Jesus, when most of the Jewish people quite unexpectedly failed to follow Jesus as the Messiah. We are now coming towards the conclusion and climax of what Paul is going to say. He has explained very clearly in the previous episodes, that God has not finished working with the Jews. He has not rejected them as a people. He has always been at work in the Jewish nation and there has always been, what he calls, a remnant of Jewish people who believe in God, and in the Christian era believe in Jesus as the Messiah. That remnant is very significant in Paul’s mind. Those people symbolise the fact that God is still connected to the Jewish people, and most importantly, has a plan for them in the future.

Stumbling

“Again I ask: did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all! Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. But if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their full inclusion bring!”

Romans 11:11-12, NIV

Paul introduces the idea of stumbling. As you walk along, it is easy to stumble, to fall over something. Even as you are running, you can stumble and fall. Sometimes people stumble and hurt themselves and they can’t get up again but sometimes they can get up again. As you watch people stumbling you wonder if they are going to be able to get up again or have they stumbled beyond recovery? ‘Can the Jews get up again?’ is the question in Paul’s mind.

This reminds me of an incident I remember very clearly following the fortunes of a famous British, female long distance runner by the name of Paula Radcliffe, who was an international runner and champion, some years before the time of this recording. She used to compete in the marathon in several Olympic Games and World Championships and, on one occasion she was in Athens in Greece and I remember watching the video of her running, with everyone in our country hoping for a victory. But she was falling behind the others, and then suddenly she slowed down, almost like stumbling along the road, and then sat down, a long way before the finish. It had never happened before. The question immediately came to mind, ‘Has she stumbled beyond recovery? Is she going to get up again?’ The answer sadly was. ‘No’. She had an injury and some other physical problems and as she sat on the side of the road, started crying and two of her friends came to her very quickly and put their arms around her, encouraged her and supported her. She had stumbled beyond recovery. There was no way of getting back into the race. Once you have stopped, in a long distance race like that for more than a few seconds, you are so far behind everybody else that you are never going to get back into the race. This lady runner wasn’t able to get back into the race.

That is the sort of feeling that Paul has in mind when thinking about the Jewish people. Is it just too late for them? Have the Jews stumbled so badly that it is impossible for them to get back? “No,” says Paul, “Not at all.” That was an amazing thing to say because they really did stumble. They turned against the Messiah. The religious leaders in Israel formally turned against Jesus. They condemned him and proclaimed him to be a false messiah. They warned the people not to follow him, not to believe in him, but to stick with them. They had him crucified; they turned against him, and the people, by and large, followed them. It was a terrible stumbling moment - a terrible tragedy, a terrible missed opportunity, a terrible hardening of hearts. It went on and got worse because they then started persecuting the Church. In the early days, when the Church was mostly in Israel, the Jews in the country and their religious leaders, tried to stop the Church, to crush it, and to prevent it continuing. They tried to kill and imprison the leaders. The story is told in the book of Acts. It is a graphic painful story - the stumbling of the Jewish nation.

Yet Paul says here that they haven’t stumbled beyond recovery. It is possible to recover. Did that runner, Paula Radcliffe, ever recover? A year later she entered a world championship event, the marathon, and won it, and won the gold medal. She recovered. It looked as though she was finished, but a year later she was back. It looks as though the Jewish people are outside the will of God. Maybe God has finished with them. But Paul says, ‘Don’t write them off. Don’t write off what God’s plan for them is.”

There are two different types of stumbling. There is stumbling and stopping, and stumbling and recovering.

I was once on a walk in a very high mountain area with a group of people who I didn’t know very well, and as we were climbing one of the walkers stumbled badly. He fell and the walking conditions were difficult; it was stony and very cold. He cried out and he held onto his ankle. We had about 10 or 12 people in the group and two guides. The question immediately in our minds was, ‘Has he stumbled beyond recovery, or is he going to be able to get to the summit? What’s happened with his ankle?’ Some people stumble beyond recovery, and if he had really hurt himself then one of the guides would have taken him down the mountain and the rest of the group would have gone on to the top. But, as it happened, with some help, a bandage and some encouragement, he made it to the top. He didn’t stumble beyond recovery.

A Change of Focus

Paul points out God’s focus. God’s initiative for salvation shifted from the Jewish people at the moment when they made their terrible mistake of rejecting the Messiah. The opportunity came for God to focus on the Gentile nations. This was the moment of opportunity for the other nations to hear the gospel. The Jews who believed became the servants of other nations. Paul became the servant of the other nations because he, as a Jewish believer, was called by God to go to the Gentiles. That is why he was going to Rome. That is why he travelled around the Eastern Mediterranean planting churches in Gentile communities. Paul points out that, just as the Jewish people have turned away, so Gentiles have come in, in large numbers. This has been the story of two thousand years of Church history, as the Church has developed and moved into more and more nations until now, in the 21st century, the Church is represented in almost every nation of the earth, although some of those nations are ‘closed’ nations, where the Church is not officially present but there are underground church communities. The Church has moved into all the nations. Paul makes the remarkable prediction that one day the Jewish people will become envious. They will want to have what the Gentile Christians have. He then predicts, at the end of verse 12, something extraordinary: ”How much greater riches will their full inclusion bring!” So, for the very first time in these three chapters, Paul introduces an idea, which he is about to develop: in the future there will be a major turning to Christ amongst the Jewish people. He describes it here with a little phrase ‘full inclusion’. That is a hint of something that he is going to develop. So, maybe they didn’t stumble beyond recovery; maybe there is another opportunity, a time for the Jewish people to find their place in the people of God.

The Olive Tree

“I’m talking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I take pride in my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them. For if their rejection brought reconciliation to the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? If the part of the dough offered as first- fruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; if the root is holy, so are the branches. If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in amongst the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: you do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, ‘Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.’ Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but tremble. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either. Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off. For if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. After all, you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these than natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!”

Romans 11:13-24, NIV

Here Paul develops a vivid image of what God is doing by talking about olive trees. In the Mediterranean and in Israel, olive trees were grown and cultivated everywhere, as they are in many other parts of the world today, in warm climates. Olive trees would have been familiar to those living in Rome, because Italy was a great cultivator of olive trees in those days. The olive tree is a very robust tree and could be seen, in those days, everywhere in Israel as it can today. The tree grows very slowly, lives for hundreds of years, and in fact some olive trees can live for thousands of years; they are known to live up to 2000 years. It becomes very big in its trunk and has many branches and will grow to five, six, seven, or eight metres high over a long period of time. Paul uses this tree as an image of what God is doing. He describes the olive tree as the people of Israel. The whole people of Israel are pictured as a tree and the individual people are pictured as branches on the tree.

In this image, the root of the tree is very important. Underground, the root of the tree, that Paul has in mind, are the covenants and the promises of God to the Jewish people, that go back to the time of Abraham, and are the foundation of their national identity. He mentions the root of the tree: God’s calling to Abraham, God’s calling to Moses, the Law of Moses, the kingship of David, all the covenants that God made with the Jewish people, which we have mentioned on many previous occasions, in this study. The tree grows from the roots. The tree grows from the promises and the covenants of God, and the Jewish people grow up and flourish. Then Paul pictures the time when the gospel comes and the effect of the gospel is as if some of the branches of the tree are broken off. The branches that are broken off are the unbelieving Jews who say, no to Christ, no, to the Messiah, no, to the gospel. In Paul’s image, he imagines it as God breaking them off. So, the individual Jews are then separated from the true people of God at that time. Their unbelief has made them separate, withering away.

At the same time, Paul imagines what it is like for Gentiles to join the people of God. He describes a Gentile believer as the branch of a wild olive tree. In the ancient world, there were cultivated olive trees in olive groves, or in small holdings, or behind your house, where you planted four or five olive trees and you cultivated and developed them. But there were also wild olive trees that planted themselves on the hillside, far away from habitation - in rough places, in desert areas, at the side of a road. Wild trees that grew spontaneously. They seeded themselves. They were not particularly fruitful, not cultivated by anybody, just growing up spontaneously. Paul imagines one of those trees, in a wild place, having a wild olive branch broken off, representing the Gentile person who believes in Christ and then they are brought to the tree. They are going to become part of the people of God, and they are going to be grafted in. The way to graft in a branch in an olive tree, generally speaking, is to cut off a strong existing branch with a little bit of bark, cut it back, trim the wild olive branch to the right length, and bind it to the tree where the bark has been removed, with cloth or some rope, Look after it carefully and water the tree, and then the wild olive branch can flourish, and eventually produce olives itself. That is the vivid image that Paul has in mind. It is one of the most important images Paul uses for the Church in the New Testament but interestingly people hardly ever talk about it. They talk about the body of Christ, the temple of God, and other very important images. But this is an important one too because this is the way that Paul explains the relationship between the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers, and the Jewish unbelievers.

So, if you are a non-Jew, as you became a Christian, what happened spiritually, in Paul’s thinking, is that you joined the people of God, whose roots and foundation and history is Jewish. The roots are the covenants that God made. Jesus himself was a Jew, and the new covenant was brought about initially in a Jewish context. The Gentile believers and the Jewish believers have joined together in one family, whilst the Jews who have not believed have been removed. They should be here but they have been cut off, broken off, because they refuse to accept the Messiah, Jesus, who is the head of this family, this people of God.

The Re-grafted Branches

Paul goes on to say there is going to come a time in the future when the Jewish branches, that have been scattered all over the place because they have been cut off, are going to also be re-grafted. This is a very vivid image. In this way, he is describing the fact that the majority of Jews who have been broken off and separated from the covenant purposes of God because they have been unbelieving, are going to come in. This is referring to the same thing he referred to in verse 12 - the ‘full inclusion’ of the Jewish people. They are going to be brought in again in the future. There is going to be some saving activity amongst the Jewish people that you wouldn’t really expect because at the time that Paul is writing, and subsequently, you look at the tree and most of the branches in the tree are wild branches. There are very few Jewish branches there.

But Paul said, there will come a time when the Jewish elements of the Church will be brought to life. Jews will come in. They will start believing in the Messiah in large numbers. What an extraordinary statement that Paul is making. This is a prophecy about the future. Paul didn’t expect this to happen in his lifetime; the very opposite was happening in his lifetime - Gentiles were coming in large numbers, into the Church and very few believers were Jewish. There was much hostility from the Jewish people. But Paul makes a prophetic prediction, very clearly, in this passage about what is going to happen in the future. He warns the Gentile believers not to take a proud attitude towards the Jewish background of their faith but to humbly accept that they have been joined into God’s purposes, which started originally with the Jewish people. This is very remarkable, and very surprising, that Paul should say something like this. He, as an apostle, had received much direct revelation from Jesus Christ. The early apostles, who were appointed by Jesus Christ, had authority to teach and to shape the doctrine of the Church. It was a unique authority, and it comes down to us through their writings and the writings of their direct associates. We have this on the authority of the apostle Paul, as a revelation from Jesus Christ: there is a further development in time that is going to take place amongst the Jewish people. We will find out more about that in the last episode of this series, where Paul specifies the process in more detail.

Reflections

As we reflect on this, Paul says here, ‘Consider the kindness of God’. God has been very kind to us, to reveal Christ to us, because we Gentiles, most of us, were in the sense of the olive tree, far away. We were growing on some wild olive tree somewhere but we have been brought into the cultivated and fruitful olive tree of God’s purposes. We have been grafted in. A miracle has happened. This is another way of describing the miracle of Christian faith, the miracle of ‘being born again’; we are grafted into God’s long-term purposes, starting with the Jewish people. Let us not write off the Jews. Let us not consider the Old Testament unimportant. Let us remember that we, as non-Jews, most of us, have been adopted into a family, which started out with Jewish people as its family members. It is wonderful to be thankful for adoption.

Quite recently I met a lady I hadn’t seen for 40 years. When I last saw her she was the adopted daughter of a family that had about four other children, and she was a teenager. She had been adopted in. She had lost her parents and was in a very difficult situation. When I spoke to her 40 years later, she said, she was so thankful for her adopted family who allowed her to join into their family life. One adopted child, many natural children. We should have a similar feeling here when we look at this metaphor of the olive tree and the privilege. God has drawn us into his purposes that go back thousands of years, and involved initially another racial group, Jewish people, exclusively at that time. Now God has opened up his purposes and we have been grafted in.

A final point to make on this episode is, Paul warns here about ethnic pride. In this case the pride of being a Gentile rather than a Jew. But he also warns the Jews not to be proud of their ethnic heritage. All the way through Church history, we have to be very careful that, although we love the race and the nation from which we come from, we never put it above our loyalty to God’s purposes, and most of all, God’s people from many different nations, who are gathered together.

Thanks for listening to this episode, and we come to a conclusion with an even more exciting revelation about the future, and what God is going to do in the end times, that Paul gives in the final verses of Romans 11.