Paul’s answer could not be stronger: Has God rejected Israel? “By no means!” (Rom. 11:1).

But Paul’s concern extends beyond the Jewish people because what is at stake is the character of God Himself. If God can abandon Israel, what confidence can Christians have that He will remain faithful to His promises to us? Romans 11 is therefore not only about Israel. It is also about whether God can be trusted.

Romans 9–11 is Paul’s extended defense of God’s covenant faithfulness. Israel’s widespread unbelief within Israel created a serious theological question for the early Church. If Israel was truly God’s chosen people, what were Christians supposed to make of the fact that so many Jewish people had not embraced Jesus as the Messiah? Did that mean God’s word had failed? Had He somehow gone back on His promises? Could God really cast aside the very people He had once called His own?

Paul refuses even to entertain that possibility. “I ask, then, has God rejected his people?” Once again, his answer is this: “By no means!” Notice that Paul does not start by laying out a complicated prophetic timeline as American Christians are used to seeing. He starts with the character and faithfulness of God. After all, every promise of the gospel rests on the faithfulness of God.

Paul points to himself as living proof that God had not rejected Israel by reminding them that he himself is an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, and a member of the tribe of Benjamin. Paul’s story showed that God was still keeping His promises to Israel. His own conversion was proof that God was still at work among the Jewish people.

Paul then turns to the story of Elijah in 1 Kings 19. Elijah had become convinced that all of Israel had turned away from God and that he was the only faithful person left. God corrected him by saying, “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” That detail matters because the seven thousand had not kept themselves faithful. God preserved them.

Paul draws the same lesson for his own generation. From the outside, it may have looked as though all of Israel had turned away, but that was not the whole story as God had preserved a remnant who was “chosen by grace.” Israel’s widespread unbelief did not mean that God had turned His back on His people. It simply meant........

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