Romans 11:28-29 - Exposition

As touching the gospel indeed (with regard to acceptance of the gospel now) they are enemies for your sakes (for their having become God's enemies by rejecting and opposing it has been the occasion of your having been now called in): but as touching the election (God's original choice of Israel to be his people. ἐκλογὴ here cannot well have a concrete sense, as in Romans 11:7 ), they are beloved for the fathers' sakes. For the gifts ( χαρίσματα , meaning "free gifts," or "gifts of grace;" the word used to denote the special gifts of the Holy Ghost showered after Pentecost in the apostolic Church; but expressing generally, as here, whatever God, of his own good will, grants freely) and the calling of God are without repentance ( i.e. unrepented of by him and irrevocable; cf. Numbers 23:1-30 . 19, 20; also 1 Samuel 15:29 ). This denial of anthropopathy in God is asserted as a general truth, to be applied to his calling of "the fathers," i.e. the patriarchs, and their seed after them, to be his people. It is true that, as is shown in Romans 4:1-25 ., there is a spiritual seed of Abraham, not necessarily of the house of Israel, to whom the promises in their ultimate scope were to be fulfilled; but the apostle regards it as impossible that the promises made primarily to the chosen people themselves should be revoked or fail of eventual fulfilment to them.