Until the Fullness of the Gentiles (Romans 11:25-26)

The question we have in these verses is whether there is a future for ethnic Israel? Is God going to work again in history with the people who are Jewish, according to the flesh?

So far in Romans 11, Paul has addressed his concern for his kinsmen, Israel. In the course of redemptive history the fall of ethnic Jews has led to our being incorporated into the family of God as wild olive branches grafted into the root. If the failure and fall of the Jewish people led to the blessedness of the nations, how much more their restoration. This is of great importance in the following verses.

Paul introduces Israel's blindness, he talks about a mystery, which, we noted earlier, in Paul's vocabulary is something once hidden but now made manifest by God. He knows how destructive ignorance is to godliness. God has given us the Bible so that we might become mature in our understanding of the things in it and not seek comfort in ignorance.

"Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery," (v.25a). Paul desires that his readers rest upon the revelation of God rather than their personal opinions, explaining, "a partial hardening [other translations have it as blindness] has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in." (v.25b). The word until is a timeframe reference. Meaning "up to a certain point in time", such a point in time has a terminal dimension to it. The hardening [blindness] that Paul mentions that has happened to ethnic Israel (the Jews), is not permanent. At the beginning of chapter eleven we saw that the state of apostasy into which the Jews had fallen was neither full nor final.

Paul reminded his audience of his own Jewish ancestry as a way to show that not all the ethnic Jews had fallen away from the covenant. He points out that the fall of Israel is not only not full but also not final. It is not the end of the story. The hardening [blindness] that has come upon them has a historical limit to it, which is "until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in." The Greek word translated "fullness" in meaning plentitude, the plentitude of the Gentiles. The word refers to something that reaches its saturation point.

Presumably, there is a point in history where God's extension of his saving call to Gentiles will reach its saturation point, after which God's relationship to ethnic Israel will change.

There is a parallel expression to the one Paul uses. Just about every New Testament scholar notices it and sees significance between Paul's language and that of his co-missionary Luke in his Gospel. Luke 21 contains one of the most important prophetic discourses given by Jesus during his earthly ministry. It was close to the end of Jesus' life after He had come to Jerusalem for the Passover celebration. He made the prediction that the temple would be destroyed and not one stone would be left upon another, and He talked about the destruction of Jerusalem.

Jesus' prophecy was given about forty years before the actual events took place in A.D. 70. This event has the utmost significance in understanding the Christian faith. This prophecy is recorded in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). It is the Olivet Discourse. We find the language of signs and times, and of the end of the age. In Matthew's recording of the Olivet Discourse, Jesus says a great deal about the destruction of the temple and the signs of the times and the end of the age.

Almost every time we see such language about the end of the age, we must ask which age is under consideration. What age was Jesus referring to? The Age of Enlightenment, the Ice Age, the Iron Age, or the Bronze Age? The assumption most bring to that phrase, "the end of the age", is that it must be referring to the end of time as we know it, the consummation of the kingdom of God. Perhaps it does, but it seems to not be so.

Jesus said, "They will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led away captive into all nations. And Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the times of Gentiles are fulfilled" (Luke 21:24). Jesus goes on to predict the destruction of the temple, and He gives the signs of the times: wars, rumors of wars, and signs in the sky (vv. 25-27). Our Lord predicted Jerusalem would be trampled underfoot by Gentiles, which is exactly what happened in A.D. 70. The Greek word that means "until" or "up to a certain point but not beyond", which renders, "Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled."

What does Luke mean by the "times of the Gentiles", and what does Paul mean by "the fullness of the Gentiles"? Those two ideas are close. The detail of Jerusalem being destroyed, under captivity and trodden underfoot is only in Luke's version, not Matthew or Mark's. Jews and Gentiles are always in contrast in the Bible. We find in redemptive history times of the Jews and times of the Gentiles.

The thrust of Paul's argument is this: there is a time in redemptive history when the focus of God's redeeming grace is on the Jews and a time when it is on the Gentiles.

In A.D. 70, the temple was destroyed and sacrifices ceased, and for all intents and purposes the Jewish nation was scattered throughout the world. The Jew's identity with Jerusalem was broken except for their wistful hope and oath that some time they may be restored to it. After A.D. 70, Christianity was no longer seen as a subdivision of Judaism after God's judgement came with a vengeance on Israel. Her temple removed block by block, and her holy city was devastated and given over to the control of the Gentiles, but not forever, according to Luke 21 and Romans 11. There is a future for ethnic Israel and the city of Jerusalem.

The Olivet Discourse is the clearest proof anywhere in recorded literature of Jesus being a prophet sent from God. The irony, however, that this prophecy, which so compellingly proves the truth claims of Jesus; is the very text that the higher critics use more than any other New Testament text to argue against the inspiration of the Bible and the infallibility of the prophetic utterances of Jesus.

The main reason why is because of the timeframe that Jesus used. After He told His disciples that not one stone would be left upon another and the temple would be destroyed, the question His disciples asked was: "When will these things be? And what sign will there be when these things are about to take place?" (Luke 21:7). Think of the context of this text in Luke 21 (and the other parallel passages in Matthew and Mark), Jesus is speaking to His disciples and they ask Him a question and He responds with: "Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all things take place" (v. 32). This includes His coming, presumably, in judgement on Israel. They are asking about the Jewish age. People presume He was talking about His final return at the end of time.

This cannot be so as "all these things" of which Jesus spoke specifically, refer to the temple and to Jerusalem and to some kind of Jesus' coming, which in the New Testament broadly speaks of as a visitation of God's wrath, which, of course, came with vengeance in A.D. 70.

To the Jew, a generation referred to a particular age group of approximately forty years. Elsewhere Jesus said, "Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom." (Matthew 16:28). Take a moment and think, if you were one of the disciples listening to Jesus say, "This generation is not going to pass away until all of these things take place," would you understand Him to mean that two thousand years would go by before His prediction would come to pass?

As every liberal critic understands, Jesus was predicting that those events would occur within the next forty years, before some of the disciples died. The plain meaning of the text is that Jesus put forth a timeframe for the fulfillment of the prophecies. Jesus' instructions in Luke 21: 20-21 were the exact opposite of what typically took place in the ancient world when an army approached a walled city. When the Roman soldiers marched through Israel, the people left their homes and flocked to the city with the greatest walls. Josephus tells us that at the time of Jerusalem's destruction 1.1 million Jews were slaughtered because they went to the city. Jesus told His disciples to go to the hills instead. Christians were spared the destruction that did take place within forty years.

The Olivet Discourse does not predict Christ's Second Coming. These events already took place, why? Because it is what the text says.

There are two types of terminology in the Olivet Discourse. There is simple, didactic language and apocalyptic language, which uses catastrophic images to describe God's visitation of wrath and destruction (often described as "The Day of the Lord" in the Old Testament). By using the basic hermeneutic of interpreting Scripture by Scripture when considering the language of destruction in the prophets of the Old Testament, we see that such language was used to describe actual destruction of cities such as Tyre and Sidon.

When we encounter highly imaginative language, it is appropriate to allow for an imaginative interpretation. When we encounter simple, declarative, indicative statements, we must treat them as such. When Jesus gave the timeframes in the Olivet Discourse He did not use imaginative language; He used straightforward, direct, indicative passages. He said some of them were going to live to see it. Was He wrong? At stake here is the trustworthiness of Jesus and the Bible.

The disciples asked Him a straightforward question, and He gave them a straightforward answer. We see the same thing in the book of Revelation. The language of the timeframe references in the first nineteen chapters indicates things that are about to happen, not something that is going to take place three or four thousand years later.

Something of dramatic significance happened in A.D. 70; the end of the Jewish age as they knew it. It was the end of the temple and Jerusalem but not the end of God's economy of redemption for His people. It is evident that Paul is saying here and throughout Romans 11 that God is not finished with the Jews. We may be approaching the next step in redemptive history, that being God's work with ethnic Israel. God does not have two separate agendas, one for Jews and one for Gentiles: He has one agenda that incorporates both the Jew and the Gentile in His kingdom.

"And in this way all Israel will be saved," (v.26a). If Paul is referring to spiritual Israel, he is departing from the way he uses the term Israel, here and in the proceeding three chapters. Since chapter 8 Paul has been talking about ethnic Israel. Does he mean each and every Jew? The word all in Scripture does not function the way we characteristically use it to indicate each and every.

Paul is saying that the full complement God's elect from Israel will be saved and that this will come in a new redemptive-historical visitation by the Holy Spirit when the times of the Gentiles is fulfilled. Paul tells us he does not want us to grope in the darkness; he wants to take away the mystery. He is telling us about the future of the kingdom of God. God's work was not finished in A.D. 70, but when Jesus said, "this generation will not pass away," He meant exactly what He said.