“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?”
Romans 11:15, KJV
“For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?”
Romans 11:15, ESV
Table of Contents
- Romans 11:15 Meaning – For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world
- Romans 11:15 Meaning – what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?
Romans 11:15 Meaning – For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world
Many consider this to be an obscure passage, and some interpreters give it a very improper construction; yet it ought, in my opinion, to be regarded as affording another argument, derived from the comparing of the less with the greater, in the following manner: — ” If the rejection of the Jews could be attended with so powerful an effect, as to occasion the reconciling of the gentiles, how much more efficacious will the receiving of the Jews be? May it not justly be considered a resurrection from the dead? For Paul invariably insists on this truth, that the gentiles have no cause for envy, as if their own condition would be rendered worse by the Jews being received into favour; for since the Father of mercy has, in a wonderful manner, brought light out of darkness, and life from death, we have much greater cause to expect, according to Paul’s reasoning, that the resurrection of a people already dead will quicken the gentiles.
Reconciliation does not differ, as some object, from resurrection, and we understand resurrection to mean, in the present instance, that grace, by which we are transferred from the kingdom of death to the kingdom of life: for though the subject-matter treated of by these different words, be the same, yet they do not convey the very same sense and force in their original meaning, and this affords sufficient cogency and strength to the argument.
Calvin, John – Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans tr. Francis Sibson (1834)
In the 15th verse, the apostle reverts to the idea introduced at the 12th. The rejection of the great body of the Jews on account of their unbelief, was the means of bringing Gentiles, who were aliens, strangers, enemies from the holy commonwealth, into reconciliation with God through the faith of the Gospel.
If so untoward an event produced such happy consequences, how much happier consequences might reasonably be anticipated from an event of an opposite character?
Brown, John – Analytical exposition of the epistle of Paul the apostle to the Romans (1857)
Romans 11:15 Meaning – what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?
Argument 5. If the casting off the Jews, is through the goodness of God turned to an occasion of reconciling the Gentiles, from the conversion of the Jews, is not such a change for the better to be expected amongst the Gentiles, as if it was a kind of resurrection from the dead? Therefore the Jews are not to be despised, as altogether cast off, but their conversion is to be desired and hoped for.
For when God shall again resume his ancient people, what wonder if he shall pour out upon all the Churches a greater plenty of his Spirit? What wonder if he take away those destructive heresies and schisms, wherewith the Christian Churches amongst the Gentiles, were almost oppressed even to death, and unite them more firmly among themselves, and with the Church of the Jews? That this hereafter shall be the happy condition of the Churches, about the time of the Jews’ conversion, the Apostle would not have us despair, who propounds to us, as it were, a resurrection from the dead, to be hoped for by us, in the change of the Churches’ condition.
Dickson, David – An Exposition of All St. Paul’s Epistles (1659)
“What shall tlie receiving of them” — that is, the restoration of the great body of the Israelites to the privileges of the Church in a far higher state than when they had formerly been members of it — “be but life from the dead?”
Some have supposed that the words “life from the dead,” refer to the happy change which shall take place on the Israelites. No doubt, Ezekiel’s prediction shall be verified in that event.
But the construction of the passage constrains us to apply these words to the Gentiles. The restoration of the Jews shall be to the Church, composed chiefly, almost entirely, of Gentiles, as “life from the dead.” It shall produce the happiest effects: it is easy to see how it must do so.
It is not unlikely that the words are also intended to intimate, what they naturally enough suggest, that the Church, at the period of the conversion of the Jews, shall be in a comparatively dead state, and that this wonderful event, in itself and its effects, is to be the means of a great revival.
Brown, John – Analytical exposition of the epistle of Paul the apostle to the Romans (1857)
