Salvation to the Jews
249
was said unto them, Ye are not My people; there shall they be called
the children of the living God.” See
Hosea 1:10
.
Notwithstanding Israel’s failure as a nation, there remained among
them a goodly remnant of such as should be saved. At the time of the
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Saviour’s advent there were faithful men and women who had received
with gladness the message of John the Baptist, and had thus been led
to study anew the prophecies concerning the Messiah. When the early
Christian church was founded, it was composed of these faithful Jews
who recognized Jesus of Nazareth as the one for whose advent they
had been longing. It is to this remnant that Paul refers when he writes,
“If the first fruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy,
so are the branches.”
Paul likens the remnant in Israel to a noble olive tree, some of
whose branches have been broken off. He compares the Gentiles to
branches from a wild olive tree, grafted into the parent stock. “If
some of the branches be broken off,” he writes to the Gentile believers,
“and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert grafted in among them, and
with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree; boast not
against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but
the root thee. Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that
I might be grafted in. Well; because of unbelief they were broken
off, and thou standest by faith. Be not high-minded, but fear: for if
God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He also spare not
thee. Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them
which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in His
goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.”
Through unbelief and the rejection of Heaven’s purpose for her,
Israel as a nation had lost her connection with God. But the branches
that had been separated from the parent stock God was able to reunite
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with the true stock of Israel—the remnant who had remained true to
the God of their fathers. “They also,” the apostle declares of these
broken branches, “if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be grafted
in: for God is able to graft them in again.” “If thou,” he writes to the
Gentiles, “wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and
wert grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more
shall these, which be the natural branches, be grafted into their own
olive tree? For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this