THE HOPE OF ISRAEL - The Preterist Archive

148 The Hope of Israel: What Is It?
Incidentally it may be well to point out that the
chief item or feature of God's salvation is "the righteousness
of God" "which is, by faith of Jesus Christ,
upon all them that believe; for there is no difference"
(Rom. 3:22); and this is the chief feature of the
Kingdom of God, as defined in Chap. 14:17; for the
Kingdom of God is salvation, and that Kingdom is
what Israel as a people had ever been seeking for
(though they utterly misunderstood the nature of it)
and which the elect remnant in Paul's day had already
"obtained."
THE FIGURE OP THE OLIVE TREE
At verse 14 of Chapter 11 Paul again refers to
those of his own flesh and again gives voice to his intense
desire that he "might save some of them."
And
he goes on to say: "For if the casting away of them
be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving
of them be but life from the dead?" (v. 15). The
words "receiving of them," following the words "the
casting away of them," indicate that Paul was not
without hope that numbers of Jews might yet "be
saved" ; and then, in the verses that follow (w. 17-24)
he illustrates by the figure of the olive tree what God's
salvation does for Jews and Gentiles alike, and how
the true Israel is composed.
We do not attempt an exposition of those verses, it
being necessary only to point out that the Israel of
God's eternal purpose is here represented by an olive
tree, whereof the branches are holy because the root
is holy (see Psalm 52 :
8) ;
that the salvation of Gentiles
is represented as having the effect of grafting them
(who by nature were the branches of a wild olive tree)