Godbey's Commentary - Acts - Romans - Enter His Rest

ROMANS
CHAPTER XI.
GOD’S COVENANT WITH THE JEWS INFALLIABLE.
1. “Therefore I can say, Whither did God cast away his people? It could not be so; for truly I am
an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham of the tribe of Benjamin.” Here Paul utterly annihilates the
popular dogma that Jesus has cast away the Jews. It is utterly untrue; his covenant still abides with
the faithful remnant of which Paul himself was a member.
2. “God did not cast away his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the Scripture
says of Elijah when he communed with God against Israel?
3. “Lord, they have slain thy prophets, they have digged down thine altars, I am left alone and
they seek my life.
4. “But what saith the divine response to him? I have left unto myself seven thousand men who
have not bowed the knee to Baal.
5. “Thus indeed therefore there is at this time a remnant according to the election of grace.
6. “And if by grace it is not at all of works, then grace is no more grace.” The divine economy
had conferred on the Jews the glorious honor of representing Christ on the earth during His
excarnate, i.e., invisible reign, receiving Him in His incarnate personality, and introducing Him to
the whole world as the: one-anticipated Savior of the lost millions. While this honor was forfeited
by the formalistic and ritualized carnal masses of both clergy and laity, it was received and enjoyed
by the faithful few, e.g., Joseph and Mary, Zacharias and Elizabeth, Simeon, Anna, and others; the
inspired Twelve, Paul and the Pentecostal nucleus of Jewish Christianity, who proved true to the
covenant of Abraham and Moses, received their own Christ, proclaimed Him to the world, thus
effecting the successful transition out of the Mosaic into the Gospel dispensation of God’s redeeming
grace. Paul argues the case by the illustration of Elijah’s ministry, when the apostasy in Israel was
so tremendous that the prophet, giving up in utter desperation, falling down under a juniper tree,
importuned God to let him die, as his ministry was a failure, thinking they had all gone off after Baal,
i.e., into dead formalistic religion, except himself. Meanwhile God notifies him of his egregious
mistake, as there are yet seven thousand true to him in different parts of the country, though
unknown to the prophet. Let us not make the mistake of the prophet Elijah and conclude that
ourselves are the only real saints, like the old Scotchman who said, “To tell you the truth, there are
none right but myself and Sandy; and sometimes I seriously doubt whether Sandy will do.” While
we bewail the current apostasy in the great Protestant churches of the present day, resultant from the
rejection of the Holy Ghost under the preaching of entire sanctification, yet we must remember that
there are myriads of true hearts in the Protestant denominations and some even in Romanism. The
election of the progenitorship, normally expiring with the incarnation we here recognize the
consolatory survival of the election of grace” out of Judaism to which Paul and his contemporary
Jewish saints belonged, and destined to survive through the Gentile dispensation and hail the Lord