Root, Remnant, Humility, and Reverence
We come into letter to the Romans, chapter 11 , and we cannot approach it like a collection of verses to analyze, because Paul is not writing fragments of thought here, he is carrying on a continuous revelation that began earlier and is now reaching a kind of turning point, and if we do not slow ourselves down enough to feel the weight of what he is addressing, we will miss that he is not merely explaining Israel, he is correcting a condition that was already forming in the hearts of Gentile believers, something subtle at first, something that did not announce itself loudly, but something that would, if left unchecked, grow into arrogance, and arrogance, when it attaches itself to theology, becomes one of the most dangerous distortions of truth a person can carry, a distortion that can manifest as contempt, dismissal, or anti-Semitism toward God’s chosen people . So Paul begins where that distortion must be cut off at the root, and he does it with a question that sounds simple on th...
