“I would not, brethren, that ye should be
ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise
in your own conceits, that blindness in part
is happened to Israel, until the fullness of
the Gentiles be come in.'
It had been revealed that God would be merciful to the Gentiles, but that God was setting aside the Jews for the very purpose of gathering a people out of the Gentiles was a "mystery" on which the Old Testament scriptures were wholly silent. Until this was fully accomplished, the blessing of Israel must be postponed.
The Epistle to the Romans is not an epistle which takes up the subject of the Church, and therefore neither the name nor the character of the Church is to be found in this passage. But the people that God is gathering out of the Gentiles are believers. It is for the completion of these, or the Church, that Israel is set aside as God's immediate earthly object.
The Old Testament, which unfolds God's plans concerning the world, shows the converse of this. There the Gentiles fill up the interval in God's dealings with His earthly people Israel, and are used to provoke them to jealousy. But the New Testament reveals God's heavenly purposes. Here, therefore, the gathering of the Church, instead of occupying a mere gap in God's earthly designs, is the grand object of all His counsels.
In the Old Testament, Gentile blessing is named, but as waiting upon God's thoughts about Israel. In the New Testament, Israel's blessing is named, but as waiting upon God's thoughts about the Church.
The Old Testament shows a people who were the objects of God's counsels "from the foundation of the world," but the New Testament shows a people who were the objects of God's counsels "before the foundation of the world" (Matt. 25:3434Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: (Matthew 25:34); Eph. 1:44According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: (Ephesians 1:4)). In God's earthly plans, everything yields to the former; in His heavenly plans, everything yields to the latter. But as the heavenly people had the first and highest place in God's thoughts, the earthly people must stand aside until His purposes concerning these are fully accomplished.
T. B. Baines