Romans 11:4

But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have left for myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to Baal.

Seven thousand men ... does not include the women and children which made up their families, after the Jewish method of reckoning (see Matthew 14:21). The true Israel numbered at least 20,000 or more, and possibly much more, if "seven" should be understood as a sacred number. They err greatly who think Paul was here concerned merely with showing that God had not rejected "all of his people"; for God in fact had rejected none of his true people. Paul was showing that throughout Israel's history, "they are not all Israel who are of Israel" (Romans 9:6), that being the key to making any sense at all out of what is stated here in Romans.

Significantly, the separation between the two Israels, the true and the fleshly, was not the result of some whimsical "eternal decree" of God, choosing some and rejecting others; but it was based solidly in fundamental and profound differences between the true and the false. Paul stated the basis here as the fact that the true Israel "had not bowed the knee to Baal." God's election is always based upon qualities in people themselves, but in no sense of such qualities actually meriting or earning God's favor. Of those who will obey God's gospel, or refrain from bowing the knee to Baal, as in those days, it is God's "eternal decree" that SUCH PERSONS are his "people whom he foreknew." Lard explained it thus:

Obedience is man's own free act, to which he is never moved by any prior election of God. Choosing, on the other hand, is God's free act, prompted by favor and conditioned upon obedience. This obedience, it is true, God seeks to elicit by the proper motives; but to this he is led solely by the love of man, and never by previous choice. True scriptural election, therefore, is a simple, intelligible thing, when suffered to remain unperplexed by the subtleties of men.[7]