God’s Olive Tree

Continuing on with the root-branch imagery he introduced in verse 16, the Apostle now begins to build a metaphor centered on the image of an olive tree. This metaphor is difficult to interpret, and has led to all sorts of misunderstandings and conclusions that contradict other Scriptural passages. We will try to break it down piece by piece and to understand it in the light of the whole counsel of God’s Word.

We saw yesterday that the “root” of verse 16 is Abraham, and the fact that he was “holy,” or “set apart” by God, means that his descendants (the Jews) are also set apart. Now Paul’s image of the root grows into an olive tree from which branches have been “broken off” to make way for the ingrafting of branches from a “wild olive tree.” The broken-off branches are clearly Jews, descendants of Abraham, while the wild branches are clearly gentiles. But what does Paul mean by “broken off”? The easy conclusion is that he is saying that God withdrew His grace from some Jews, causing them to lose salvation. But this interpretation is precisely what Paul is arguing against in chapters 9–11, the idea that God has proved Himself untrustworthy by casting out individuals who were saved. And more important, Scripture leaves no doubt that true faith cannot be lost. Dr. James M. Boice explains that when Paul speaks of “branches,” he “is not talking about either individuals or nations specifically, but only about the masses of Jews and many gentiles.” This interpretation fits with the context of chapter 11. No saved Jew has been condemned to make room for a gentile. But God has ceased to call many Jews, instead extending His call mainly to gentiles, “grafting in” those who believe on Christ.

There is a sense in which this is an unnatural thing, as unnatural as grafting wild olive branches into a cultivated tree. The Jews were natural branches in that they were “set-apart ones,” part of the people to whom God gave great gifts and blessings (Rom. 9:4–5). But these things constituted only the outward call to faith. In His providence, God has now chosen to allow most Jews to remain in their sin and to call many gentiles to faith in Christ. And so the gentiles came out of their spiritual darkness and became partakers “of the root and fatness of the olive tree.” As Paul put it earlier in Romans, they became spiritual children of Abraham, the father of the faithful (Rom. 4:13–18).