Romans 11:2

God did not cast off his people whom he foreknew. Or know ye not what the scripture saith of Elijah? how he pleaded with God against Israel.

His people which he foreknew ... See under preceding verse. Although Sanday also seems to have missed the distinction between "nation" and "people," his comment is nevertheless helpful. He said,

This must not be pressed too far, as implying an absolute indefectibility of divine favor.[4]

God's promise of blessing to Israel was always founded upon the premise of their remaining faithful to God. The people God foreknew were those who would be faithful, the elect, the spiritual seed. Hodge expressed it thus:

God has indeed rejected his external people, as such, but he has not cast away his people whom he foreknew.[5]

Lard was very near the meaning of these first three verses in this comment:

That God has rejected Israel as a nation is indisputable; and equally certain it is that he has not rejected them all. What is true then, and all that is true is, that he has not wholly rejected his people.[6]

In Lard's analysis, however, there is a failure to make the sharp distinction that is needed, due to the confusion of "nation" with "people." It is not true, exactly, as Lard stated it that God has not "WHOLLY rejected his people," but it is as Paul said, "God has not rejected his people," meaning that he has not rejected ANY OF THEM. The introduction of the historical case of Elijah here was Paul's way of showing, not that in those times God had not rejected all of his people, but that EVEN IN THOSE TIMES God's people were distinguished from the nation.

The case of Elijah (1 Kings 19:10) was here brought forward by Paul to demonstrate that God's "people" during the period of the monarchy were not the state, or nation, in any sense, but were the faithful spiritual seed, whom God had not cast off, and never will cast off.

The apostasy of Israel was so complete under Ahab, during the days of Elijah, that Elijah was convinced that God had no people at all except himself. Ahab, the head of the Jewish state, had murdered the prophets of God, overthrown the worship of God, and led the nation into total rebellion, as a nation, against God, thus fulfilling the prophecy of Samuel that Israel, through their demand of a king, had indeed rejected God from reigning over them (1 Samuel 8:7). The existence, along with Elijah, of 7,000 faithful persons as the true Israel during those terrible days when Jezebel sat on the throne in Jerusalem was revealed to Elijah by the Lord for his encouragement; but the existence of the true Israel even at that time was totally separate and apart from the nation, as such, for the nation was God's unqualified enemy. Still, the true Israel was throughout that period concealed in and mingled with the other Israel.

[4] W. Sanday, Ellicott's Commentary on the Holy Bible (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1959), p. 247.

[5] Charles Hodge, op. cit., p. 354.

[6] Moses E. Lard, op. cit., p. 346.