“As you once disobeyed God but now have received mercy through their disobedience, so they too have now disobeyed, resulting in mercy to you, so that they also may now  receive mercy. For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may have mercy on all.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I want to go back with you one more time to Jesus parable of the wedding feast we talked about a few posts ago in Matthew 22. I think that is the primary inspiration for what Paul has been talking about here at the end of this section of the letter. In that parable, the rejection by one people meant opportunity for another to receive what they had missed. But just because the one people missed it, didn’t mean their chance was gone forever. It just meant they were in the same place everyone else had been. At the end of the day, everyone gets in by the same door: grace. Let’s talk about it.

I wonder what would have happened if Israel had never rejected God and His Gospel in Christ. That’s nothing but idle and unhelpful speculation, of course, but the way Paul talks through the second half of Romans 11 here, it’s at least an interesting question.

Paul emphasizes over and over that the Gentiles’ reception into the kingdom of God was a result of Israel’s rejection of it. When Israel turned up their noses and walked away, God instead opened the doors to the rest of the world. It’s just like Jesus’ parable that we’ve been referencing over and over again. When the king’s invitations were refused by His friends and neighbors, He instead extended them to the least, last, and lost. Now, they still had to play by the king’s rules like his friends would have if they had stayed, but they were a part of the feast all the same.

Israel’s rejection spelled opportunity for the Gentiles. This is what Paul is getting at here in vv. 30-31. “As you once disobeyed God but now have received mercy through their disobedience…” The pagan world lived in perpetual disobedience because they didn’t know the law. It was all they could produce. Of course, as creatures created in God’s image like the Israelites, they occasionally hit the mark of righteousness in surprising ways. But the consistent theme was disobedience.

But again, when Israel turned to disobedience, the Gentiles received the mercy of a second chance. The way of salvation was opened to them. They were always going to be invited in eventually, but the timing was moved up in response to Israel’s rejection. This doesn’t mean God was somehow caught off guard, or that His plans were messed up. It simply means their point of entry came sooner than it might have if Israel had remained faithful.

But now that the tables had turned, they were turned all the way around. Now Israel was living in disobedience as the Gentiles once were even as the Gentiles were turning in large numbers to obedience. Yet like proved to be the case for the Gentiles, Israel would one day again receive mercy. “…so they too have now disobeyed, resulting in mercy to you, so that they also may now receive mercy.”

God is gracious and good and kind. When He extends mercy to one and judgment to another, He can replace judgment with mercy when the erring one returns and walks a path of repentance. The Gentiles were once the recipients of judgment, but now they had received mercy. Israel had now swapped places with them. But far from indicating Israel’s story was at an end, this only meant that they would be able to one day receive mercy as well when they turned to respond to God’s Gospel with repentance as the Gentiles had.

At the end then, Paul makes one last observation that is worthy of some reflection. Speaking of this contrast between disobedience and mercy, Paul says, “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he might have mercy on all.”

Now, at first glance, this could easily be framed in a way that looks pretty bad for God. He punishes everyone by imprisoning them in a jail of disobedience simply so He can have mercy on them? What a monster! Why not just skip the imprisonment and jump straight to mercy? If His plan is to bless, why go through the curse? Why not go right on to the blessing?

Yet this isn’t at all what Paul means here. This statement is one grand declaration of God’s grace. When we sinned, God had a choice. He could have brought the just judgment of our rebellion immediately and ended our lives, our very existence there, or He could have showed us a small grace and let us keep living while He sorted out the solution to our self-imposed problem.

He went with the latter because of His great love for us. But once He took the path of creating us a way back to Him, there still remained the problem of our sinful state. We demonstrated quickly that if left entirely to our own devices we would run completely off the rails and destroy ourselves. That wouldn’t do. The other option was to limit our ability to work and perpetuate evil. This wouldn’t be a great situation for us, but it beat full and final judgment, so it would have to do until the time for mercy arrived. So, God imprisoned us in disobedience.

But the goal of this was not just to lock us away forever. The goal was to open the doors to mercy through Christ. We were imprisoned, yes, but for the purpose of showing us mercy. We were set in a kind of cosmic timeout until the time of blessing arrived. Once it did, once mercy was available, our imprisonment was able to come to an end.

This didn’t mean it was automatically going to come to an end. We still had to accept His way out. We still had to turn from our disobedience and receive Christ as Lord. But once we did, mercy and grace and everlasting life could be ours. That is some very good news. It is news worth praising God for. Tomorrow as we close this chapter and this section of our letter, we’ll join in Paul’s hymn of praise. Until then.