Grafted-In, Pt 1: Why is it necessary?

Romans 9:1-5                        1I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit— 2I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.  3For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, 4the people of Israel.  Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship, and the promises.  5Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised!  Amen.

Grafting is a common agricultural practice used to combine desirable traits from different plant hosts within the same genus and often within the same species.  A cutting from the top of one host is attached to the root system and stem of another host.  This is done by wounding or notching the root system and placing the cutting from the other host into the site of the wound and sealing the ‘joint’ with tape and wax to seal against disease.  As the two disparate segments heal and begin to grow together, traits from both original hosts begin to manifest in the one new plant.  The result is a new plant with characteristics of both hosts and often is identifiable as a brand-new species.

The spiritual application of this principle reflects a similar desire, which is to unite the various peoples of God into one family.  The Jews saw themselves as the sole members of the household of God and everyone else, referred to as Gentiles, were non-members and to be avoided in every way possible.  They held themselves apart and distinct and had no significant interaction with any of the nations of non-Jews.

Israel had so much

By the time of Christ, Israel had had several thousand years of interaction with God.  They had been adopted as children of God (Exodus 4:22), they had seen manifestations of God (especially at Mount Sinai), they had received the 10 Commandments (also at Sinai), had received communication from God through various Prophets, and had been given promises and Covenants directly from God.  They had prominence above other nations, they were set apart as God’s holy people, and they were feared by other nations.

Foundational misunderstandings

But there was a problem.  By the time of the writing of this letter, one would have thought the Jews would have recognized the alignment of Paul’s teaching about Jesus as Messiah (Christ) with the prophecies in the Tanakh regarding the coming Messiah.  God had promised the Messiah would come to Israel (Isaiah 9:6-7), to glorify Israel (Matthew 19:28), and to bless her (Genesis 12:3).  You would have thought they would have flocked to the Church as an expression of God’s love for them.

But that wasn’t happening.  The various churches planted by Paul were largely Gentile and minimally Jewish.  Almost none of the Jews accepted Jesus as Messiah, while many Gentiles did, so we must ask, “What was going on?”  As it happens, a few misunderstandings had crept into Jewish belief systems.  One of them was that the Messiah would be a conquering King who would destroy the suppressing nations with armies of angels.  The Jews longed to be free of foreign oppression and wanted their lands returned to Abraham’s descendants.  Rome represented a colonizing power which suppressed Jewish values in favor of Greek and Roman systems of idol worship and human self-expression.  The Jews thought they had rid themselves of such atrocities through the Maccabean wars of resistance just two centuries before, and so they hated Rome.

 Jesus did not present himself that way; he came as the Suffering Servant, the Lamb of God, who willingly sacrificed himself as the full expression of the sacrificial system which the Jews had practiced for more than a millennium.  He taught that love of God and love of neighbor, not conquest, was the way to overcome one’s enemy.

Another misunderstanding was that the Jews thought their very Jewishness was all that was needed to achieve salvation.  Their national identity was based on the Abrahamic Covenant which God made with their father Abraham.

2“I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.  3I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:2-3)

To the Jews, their entire cultural, national, and religious identity was tied inseparably with their worship of God, who was fixed and exclusive, and they listened to no one except their prophets.  Since they had the things mentioned in these verses, the covenants, the promises, the prophets, their adoption as children of God, and the temple, they needed nothing else.

Again, Jesus taught against this view.  He taught that Temple worship was unnecessary, that a time would come when worship would be in spirit only (John 4:21-26).  He taught that He was the only way to eternity with his Father (John 14:6) and that everyone could have a relationship with the Father (John 1:12).

Something was missing

By this unique national view, Israel had cut itself off from the rest of the world.  This mostly was a good thing as the nations were idolatrous in the extreme, and while the Jews may have had commercial contact with the Gentiles, there was no personal contact.  But Israel had also cut itself off from God because they refused to accept Jesus as their Messiah.  The Greek word for cursed or cut off is anathema which has been transliterated into English and means something that a person vehemently dislikes.  The Catholic Church uses it to describe someone who is removed from fellowship, i.e. excommunicated.

There was no personal relationship with God; all their worship, rituals, and sacrifices were in the corporate sense as a nation.  The individual had no personal relationship with God, but the greatest blessing promised to Israel was that the Messiah, the Christ, would arise from her loins.  Certainly Jesus was God, but as to his human ancestry he was from the people of Israel.  But because of her focus on tradition, and upon her national identity Israel missed it.

Grafting in had two prominent purposes.  One was to offer relationship with God through Christ and the cleansing of sin to the Gentiles and the other to show Israel that her refusal to look beyond tradition and her refusal to consider a new approach was costing her dearly.  Both Israel resisted and actively fought against.

What about me?

Believer, God chose the nation of Israel as his covenant people as the way to bring his love, his blessings, and his promises to all of mankind.  It was with the Jews that he started.  We will see in the rest of these messages that God has expanded his covenant to everyone who is willing to accept Jesus as their personal Savior.  This expansion is called Grafting-in.  Because of Grafting-in every promise ever made to Israel, every covenant ever entered into, every blessing, and every challenge and reward has been given to you.  This is a great and wonderful thing:  The Creator of the universe has adopted you as his son, or daughter.  Rejoice, again I say rejoice, at the gift you have been given.