“I ask, then, have they stumbled so as to fall? Absolutely not! On the contrary, by their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel jealous. Now if their transgression brings riches for the world, and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their fullness bring!” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever missed out on something? I went to a week long youth camp with my church every year from seventh grade to after my freshman year of college except one. I had conflicting plans that one summer, but all I heard about for months afterward was how awesome that camp had been. I’ll admit: I was a bit jealous of the group that went. Israel (the geopolitical people) missed out on the kingdom of God when they rejected Jesus as Messiah. Starting here and for the next several verses, Paul explores this idea and what it means for everyone else, especially those who were not part of Israel. Let’s take a look at this with him.

Paul has now established that Israel has rejected the Gospel. He’s analyzed it from almost every angle. Yesterday, we started talking about the results of Israel’s rejection. Notably, their rejection became its own judgment, its own punishment. They walked away from God, refusing to acknowledge Him. They made clear their preference for their own righteousness instead of God’s. The problem with this, of course, is that their righteousness couldn’t make them right with God.

Rather than forcing them to receive what they wanted to reject, God let them walk away. What was true became nonsense to them because in rejecting the source of all rationality, they lost the ability to reason properly.

Understanding all of this just leads Paul to ask another question. “Have they stumbled so as to fall?” What he means by this isn’t totally clear at first glance. It becomes clearer as you keep reading. What Paul is getting at here is to rhetorically ponder the purpose of Israel’s rejection.

Believers today often throw around the idea that everything happens for a reason. Usually that observation comes when something hard has happened that the victim doesn’t understand. Here it takes the form of an expression of hopefulness in the face of dark circumstances. Other times it is expressed once the presumed reason has been made clear. In this instance it takes the form of a word of praise.

I don’t think that Paul was operating on that kind of a pop-theology principle in asking this question, but he was nonetheless inviting his readers who were a blend of folks from a Jewish background and a Gentile background to consider if there was any purpose to Israel’s rejection. For the Gentile-background readers, this was a chance to ponder how these people who were the original possessors of the truth could have turned their backs on it. Paul will come back to make something of that soon. Stay tuned for that.

For his Jewish-background readers, on the other hand, this was a chance to wonder if their brethren were simply lost forever. Was this it? They had rejected God and were just lost? Are they a hopeless case now? “Have they stumbled so as to fall?” Could God redeem this rejection in some way? Paul’s answer? Absolutely He could! In fact, He has, and He will.

“On the contrary, by their transgression…” Pause there a moment. Transgression? What was their transgression? What even is a transgression? A transgression is simply an action that is against the law. It is to do something in violation of a rule. It is conduct that is broadly considered out of bounds. Okay, but what was Israel’s transgression? Unbelief. Unbelief is a sin. It’s not a sin that gets talked about very often because it’s not very comfortable to talk about, but it is a sin nonetheless. Even if a person’s only sin their entire life was to not believe in God (that’s entirely hypothetical of course since by our nature we are sinful, and disconnecting ourselves from the source of righteousness is going to leave us open to all manner of unrighteousness), that would be enough to warrant separation from Him. Their very refusal to accept Him for who He is is an offense against His holiness.

Unbelief is a gateway sin in that it opens the door to all other sins. If we could close the door on unbelief, all other sin would dry up and go away. When we truly believe that God is who He says He is, we’re not going to sin anymore. Now, this doesn’t mean that every time we sin as followers of Jesus that we need to launch into an existential crisis of faith. Instead, it means we should take our failures, which are already covered by the forgiveness available to those who are in Him, use them to identify places where our belief is either lagging or inconsistent, and ask for the Spirit’s help to deepen and enrich our belief to bring it up to where it could and should be so that we are walking the path of righteousness with greater and greater consistency.

“On the contrary, by their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel jealous.” What now? We watched a romantic comedy the other night. Early on when the girl and guy were still just beginning to fall for each other, she saw him at a party apparently with someone else. In response, she positioned herself where she was sure he could see her and started dancing very seductively with another guy. She was trying to provoke his interest in her to increase by inflaming a bit of jealousy. She wanted him to see what he could have with her in hopes that he would start wanting that.

That’s not so far off from what Paul is describing here. When Israel rejected the Gospel, the message was extended instead to the Gentiles. Now, it was always going to be extended to the Gentiles. As Paul has already indicated in this section of the letter, that was always God’s intent. There are numerous places throughout the Old Testament that find God announcing His intentions to bring the Gentiles into His kingdom one day. The fulfillment of that prophecy had begun to take shape in Paul’s day. But at least part of the reason for God’s extension of His kingdom to those who had always been on its outside was to provoke the ones who used to be on the inside but had left to realize what they were now missing.

The whole scene is an enacted version of Jesus’ parable about the wedding feast that we will come back to again as we work through the next several verses over the next week or two. Jesus told a parable about a rich man who was throwing a grand wedding feast. He invited all of his so-called friends and peers to the celebration, but they all blew him off. In response, he sent his servants to go out into the streets, find anyone they could no matter who they were, and invite them to the feast instead. The servants were to go search the gutters and the alleys, the highways and the byways, for anyone who might respond to the invitation and extend one to them. Well, God’s friends had now rejected His offer to join the marriage feast of the Lamb, so He was inviting everyone else instead.

Isn’t this kind of a petty response from God? I mean, getting put in the category of a young girl trying desperately to win the attention of a man she desires seems a little beneath God. Perhaps, but again, opening wide the doors of His kingdom was always His plan. That was going to happen regardless. Ideally, it was going to happen by having all the Jews who willingly received the fulfillment of their faith invite the Gentiles to join them in God’s kingdom by sharing of what they were themselves enjoying, but that didn’t happen for reasons Paul has already discussed. So instead, God took the remnant who remained (something Paul has also already mentioned in this section) and sent them to do the inviting instead. And if in doing this God could provoke some of the ones who had rejected Him to see the error of their ways and return once again to genuine faithfulness, all the better.

I’ll add this: like the girl who is trying desperately to win the attention of the man she desires because of her great love for him, our God is in desperate pursuit to win our attention so that He can have a relationship with us because of His great love for us. God is passionate about you. He’s willing to go pretty far in His efforts to woo you into a relationship with Him. He won’t force. He won’t cajole. But if using a bit of holy jealousy gets the job done, He’s not above that. Jealousy is wanting to have what should be yours all to yourself. While that can get out of balance and drift in the direction of insecurity and envy, jealousy by itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A husband should be jealous for his wife’s affections, and a wife should feel the same for her husband’s attention. In the same way, God is jealous for our affections. (Properly understood, we are jealous for something but envious of someone.)

And, if all of this pays off, everybody wins. “Now if their transgression brings riches for the world, and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their fullness bring!” If Israel’s rejection of the Gospel has opened the doors to salvation to the Gentiles, a good thing for the world, their return to God’s kingdom will be even better for everyone. God’s kingdom is the kind of party where the more who are there the merrier it will be. And as we will see as we keep working through the text here, Paul holds out a lot of hope in this eventual return. We’ll get to that down the road.

For now, know this: God is passionate about having a relationship with you. He’s willing to pull out all the stops to have that. And when He wins your attention, He’s going to throw a party. It doesn’t matter why you start moving in His direction or how you get to His kingdom (all roads there lead through Jesus anyway). All that matters is that you arrive. Have you arrived? He’s waiting eagerly for that day. In fact, He’s out doing everything He can to hasten its arrival. How long will you resist?