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Romans 11:25
For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.
Paul has been speaking of what God has done, of how He changed the focus of His effectual call from primarily Jews to primarily gentiles. Now the apostle switches gears and begins to speak of what God plans to do in times to come. Paul spoke vaguely about this matter in some of the passages we studied last week, but now he brings it squarely into focus. Why? Because he believes that knowing this “mystery” will help prevent his gentile readers from boasting against the Jews, the very thing he has been warning them about. With these verses, Paul begins his seventh and final argument in Romans 9–11 to show that God’s redemptive purposes have not failed.
What does the apostle mean by “mystery”? Dr. James M. Boice notes that we typically use the word in reference to “something that is puzzling or unknown.” But in Paul’s time, it carried a very different meaning. “In the ancient world,” Boice writes in his Romans commentary, “a mystery was something unknown to most people but specifically revealed to some. . . [Paul] uses ‘mystery’ to refer to something that at one time was not known and could not be arrived at by any amount of human reasoning, but that has now been revealed to us by God through such inspired teachers as himself and the other apostles.” In other words, what Paul teaches here is something God is revealing through one of His apostles, those designated to receive the divine revelation that is the New Testament.
The first part of this teaching is not new. Paul tells us that Israel has been blinded. He made this clear to us in 11:7–8. There is also a qualifier here that Paul has discussed earlier: “in part.” The blindness of Israel is not total, for some Jews are being saved (11:1). The new, unexpected, and otherwise completely unknowable aspect of this teaching, the real “mystery,” has to do with the time element Paul introduces here. He makes it known to the Romans that the blindness of Israel will not last forever but only “until the fullness of the gentiles has come in,” which, according to Boice, “must mean their full number, that is, all the elect to be saved from among the many gentile nations.” The message here is that God not only can reverse the focus of His effectual call from gentiles to Jews, He will do so. And then? We will learn more about that in the verses we will study tomorrow.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
God has revealed many mysteries in the Scriptures. But there are yet many things He chooses not to make known and which human reasoning cannot deduce. We should be grateful to Him for both types of truth, for He speaks and remains silent for our good. Pray for a greater love for His revealed Word and greater trust in the mysteries.
For Further Study
- Mark 4:11
- 1 Corinthians 2:7
- 1 Corinthians 15:51
- Ephesians 1:8–10
- Ephesians 5:32
- Colossians 1:26