Oh the Depth of the Riches Both of the Wisdom and the Knowledge of God!
25For I don’t desire you to be ignorant, brothers, of this mystery, so that you won’t be wise in your own conceits, that a partial hardening has happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, 26and so all Israel will be saved. Even as it is written, “There will come out of Zion the Deliverer, and he will turn away ungodliness from Jacob. 27This is my covenant with them, when I will take away their sins.” 28Concerning the Good News, they are enemies for your sake. But concerning the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sake. 29For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. 30For as you in time past were disobedient to God, but now have obtained mercy by their disobedience, 31even so these also have now been disobedient, that by the mercy shown to you they may also obtain mercy. 32For God has shut up all to disobedience, that he might have mercy on all. 33Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out! 34“For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” 35“Or who has first given to him, and it will be repaid to him again?” 36For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things. To him be the glory for ever! Amen.
The apostle Paul said that God has held back Israel’s salvation for a time, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. Israel was chosen first, but because of their disobedience, Paul explained, Israel must remain hardened until the appointed number of Gentiles has been saved. The Gentiles will be saved over a set period, and after that Israel will be saved; Paul calls this a mystery, that is, a secret.
The salvation of Jews and Gentiles is God’s plan, yet Paul is saying that people can never comprehend this wisdom and this plan of God. We cannot understand the heart of a God who means to make Israel jealous at the sight of the Gentiles being saved, and so bring them back. But Jesus said that what is impossible for people is possible for God, and in light of that, God will accomplish his own plan.
How astonishing is the almighty power of God, who sets every season and leads human history according to his plan! How wise would a person have to be to understand God? Of all the wisdom and power God has hidden in his creatures, how much could humankind ever find and put to use? When scientists uncover just one of those countless secrets, we praise them as great inventors. That alone shows that it is impossible to understand the God who created the heavens and the earth.
A shepherd loves the flock and works hard, sweating in the open pasture, so that the sheep can eat their fill of rich grass. When night falls, the shepherd does not shrink from the trouble of driving them into the fold to protect them from the wild beasts that prey on sheep. Having once lost sheep to a savage wolf, the shepherd herds them inside a high fence even when they do not want to go. Yet some sheep do not understand the shepherd’s heart for their safety; feeling as though their freedom is being taken from them, they jump the fence and run off. Because even a disobedient sheep must be saved, the shepherd who is bound to protect the flock has no choice but to raise the fence higher each time. Some sheep do obey the shepherd’s call, but not so much because they have understood it as because they know they will be let out into the wide pasture in the morning. They cannot grasp that it is dangerous outside the fence, but they have trusted their master. So the obedient sheep and the sheep that thinks only of itself behave differently. Of course, to a sheep the fence may feel confining and may look like a restraint on its freedom, but if it follows the shepherd, it will wait until it is let out. There is no way to explain all of this to a sheep, but when the shepherd forcibly shuts it in, it is out of love, to keep it alive. This is what we call suffering.
To save the sheep that keeps leaping the fence and running far away, or the one that refuses to go into the fold, the shepherd must raise the fence or keep it tied with a rope. When a shepherd ties a disobedient sheep with a rope that cannot break, for fear that a wild beast will harm it, that too is love. From where the tied sheep stands, the sight of the others roaming free may make it angry, and it may feel that it alone is unloved. But if it knew the shepherd’s heart, it would see how much trouble it is causing the shepherd right now. This is the grace of God, who bears with us to the very end in order to protect us in our disobedience.
Romans 11:25
25For I don’t desire you to be ignorant, brothers, of this mystery, so that you won’t be wise in your own conceits, that a partial hardening has happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in,
Paul calls it a mystery that the Jews, who failed to understand God’s love, remain hardened until the full number of the Gentiles has first been saved. Because of a hardness of heart that would not grasp the truth, the Jews refused to come into the fold of the gospel. God labors to bring them inside it in order to save their lives. Yet the Jews, claiming they had no need of this fence because they already believed in God, broke down the fence of truth and walked out beyond salvation. Once outside the truth, they drifted further and further from God and could receive no protection from evil spirits.
Just as a shepherd knows that sheep which go outside the fence will lose their lives, God knows how dangerous it is for those who are outside the gospel. Until the shepherd finds the runaways and brings them back, they cannot have the shepherd’s protection. The time when God has gathered all the obedient sheep into the fold and goes out to look for the lost ones — that is what “until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in” means. But the Gentiles grew proud, as if they had been saved by their own merit, and for this the apostle Paul rebukes them.
Romans 11:26
26and so all Israel will be saved. Even as it is written, “There will come out of Zion the Deliverer, and he will turn away ungodliness from Jacob.
Paul says that all Israel will be saved, but these words are best taken to mean the Jews who have received Christ. Salvation is completed through each person’s own relationship of faith with God. This is because belonging to a particular church, or being a citizen of a Christian nation, does not mean that everyone in it is saved.
When Israel’s seventy years of captivity came to an end, the whole people of Israel was certainly set free, but it was the remnant who held to faith that were saved. Likewise, the gospel was indeed preached to the Gentiles first, but not every Gentile received it. In the end, those who respond in faith become the true Israel. So Paul stresses that Jesus Christ alone can be the mediator who brings the ungodly into fellowship with God.
Romans 11:27
27This is my covenant with them, when I will take away their sins.”
God made a promise to forgive sins. Because, as he promised, he will remember our sins no more, we can be forgiven forever as long as we do not go outside the fence. If God’s people engrave his law on the tablets of their hearts and live by faith, their relationship with God will be restored. But if they do not obey, God, because he is holy, will firmly cast them off, and they will become hearts that Satan delights in — filthy, foul-smelling children of darkness. So Jeremiah relayed what God said: this covenant would not be like the one he made with their fathers on the day he took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, because they broke his covenant, although he was a husband to them. Yet God could not abandon the people who had sinned; instead he gave them a new covenant: the covenant he would make with the house of Israel after those days would be this — he would put his law within them and write it on their hearts, and he would be their God, and they would be his people.
Jeremiah 31:34-35
34They will no longer each teach his neighbor, and every man teach his brother, saying, ‘Know Yahweh;’ for they will all know me, from their least to their greatest,” says Yahweh: “for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” 35Yahweh, who gives the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, who stirs up the sea, so that its waves roar; Yahweh of Armies is his name, says:
I want you to know how good God is, how overflowing with love, that he keeps embracing with endless love those who will not turn back. Seeing God give a new covenant even though he knew people would sin again, Jeremiah must have realized how narrow the human heart is. What would Yahweh have to say before people could grasp even a little of God’s absolute love and mercy? Whether he showed goodness or severity, they looked only at their own righteousness; with such people there was nothing he could say, and he would have felt that helplessness keenly. So Yahweh, knowing the stubbornness of humankind, seems to have had nothing left to say but the word by which he created the heavens and the earth. However often the shepherd explains that the fold is there to save its life, a sheep that understands only a few words will not understand the shepherd. The shepherd longs to share a deep bond with the sheep, but with a sheep that cannot understand speech, all the shepherd can do is blow a whistle and hand out hay. Even so, for an obedient sheep the shepherd can do far more. If the sheep follows where the shepherd leads, the shepherd can feed it on lush grass without its having to struggle, and guard it from wild beasts. The shepherd has many plans, so the sheep that simply obeys can enjoy blessing.
Paul told the Gentiles that God had set Israel aside and forgiven and saved them, the Gentiles, but that this happened in the course of keeping the promise he made to Israel’s fathers, so they must never be proud. Like a shepherd who sets out at the right time to find a lost sheep, God will surely work for the salvation of the Jews; the Gentiles have nothing to boast about.
Romans 11:29
29For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.
The promise God made to Abraham will surely be fulfilled, because God has never regretted choosing Israel as his children, nor has he ever regretted calling them. Because God keeps his promises, he will not take back the gift he has given the Gentiles, and if Israel returns, he will rejoice greatly and make their lives rich. The words “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” mean that he has a character no circumstance can change, and that he does not alter his plans. Even when we fall short and fail to meet God’s expectations, he does not regret calling us — and that truth makes us hope.
The grace of God is like a waterfall pouring down. Have you ever seen a news report that Niagara Falls had run dry? Even the water God created does not run dry; and God’s grace, like a waterfall, is a blessing that fills and overflows. If there is fear in your heart that you can no longer be forgiven, that is Satan’s scheme to lock us in sin so that we cannot see the grace of God. If we believe God’s promise and repent, that grace will go on. Hebrews tells us that God, wanting to show the heirs of the promise beyond all doubt that his purpose does not change, guaranteed it with an oath; that word confirms that the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.
Though you are loved by a God who has never regretted adopting you as his child, are you perhaps tormenting yourself with anxiety and worry? That only proves, by your own hand, how small your spiritual capacity is. Christ protects his sheep by becoming their fence against vicious beasts. In the same way, you must pray for yourself, your family, your church, and your nation — but how strong is the fence you have built? If Satan is trying to bring down you, your family, your church, and your nation, and is watching for every chance to seize the precious lives inside the fence, are you ready to stand and fight him? Or are you perhaps thinking that the sheep will defend themselves?
Your own salvation, your family, your church, and your nation are yours to guard. Then the Holy Spirit will help you so that you are not defeated. Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood but against the principalities, the powers, the world’s rulers of this darkness, and the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. That is a battle we can win only when we are armed with the Holy Spirit. To save us from death, God hung his Son on the cross, raising the fence high for us.
He also made us lift our voices in praise to God, so that we would not lend an ear to Satan’s temptations. Christ laid down his own life to guard us like this; yet if we are too lazy to pray, too proud to be humble, and so blind to how cruel the wild beast is that we join in tearing down the fence, we cannot receive God’s protection.
Is the fence around your heart and your home secure enough to keep Satan out? Is the church, which serves as this nation’s fence, firmly built on the word? If the fence called the church collapses, true freedom will be taken away; if the fence called parents collapses, children will end up as Satan’s slaves. God overcame darkness with light, drives back Satan’s schemes with the word, and keeps watch over us, foolish and senseless as we are. When you do not know how to live, if you even imitate Jesus Christ, Satan will not dare to come at you.
Romans 11:31-32
31even so these also have now been disobedient, that by the mercy shown to you they may also obtain mercy. 32For God has shut up all to disobedience, that he might have mercy on all.
By their disobedience to the gospel, the Jews revealed for themselves that they too were people in need of God’s mercy — sinners who, without his mercy, could not know what true freedom is. Salvation is received by God’s mercy, when we believe in Christ. Even those who belong to Israel, the people shown mercy, can be saved only if they have faith in Christ.
When it says that God has shut up all to disobedience, it means that he left those who became sinners through Adam’s sin to live by a nature bent on its own desires. Unless God’s mercy comes upon a human nature that lives without knowing its own sin, no one can repent, and no one can ever receive the gospel. Those who know that love are the ones who receive the gospel. How could anyone know such deep love of God? Paul tried to make God known to Jews and Gentiles, but since they did not understand, he came to think there was no further way to show them God’s holy character and his great plan. He longed to show them how holy God is and how deep his love runs, but because even he could not fully understand God or convey him, he eased his heart by offering praise to God.
Romans 11:33-36
33Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out! 34“For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” 35“Or who has first given to him, and it will be repaid to him again?” 36For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things. To him be the glory for ever! Amen.
Even if we love God and have understood his will, our understanding can never reach far enough to know him fully. If we knew all there is to know of him, he would no longer be God. So all we can do is praise the almighty God. Paul cried out “Oh the depth” because with his own wisdom and knowledge he could neither understand nor take in the whole of God’s wisdom and knowledge. Paul probably praised the greatness of the God who created the heavens and the earth because he could not put into words, for Jews or Gentiles, what kind of God he is.
Do you know why God led you into these circumstances, why he made you meet this person, and why he put you in this place? Is the role you are playing in your life right now in line with God’s will? Is it not astonishing that God — the Creator of all things, the Alpha and the Omega, the Lord of world history — takes an interest in your life, insignificant as it is? Why does he step into lives that are less than dust and bear with them, showing his face of goodness and of severity? Why did God go out of his way to tell Job and his three friends that he is the Almighty who reigns in sovereignty? It is because he could not make us understand his glory and his plan by words alone, so he had no choice but to reveal himself through visible things, at a level we could grasp. God stepped into human life to teach how great a grace his mercy is, and he wanted us to know that to God alone belongs the glory forever. Whenever we seemed to understand even a little, whenever we seemed to turn back even slightly, he told us he loved us and gave us riches and long life.
It is a wonderful blessing that the almighty God — rich in wisdom and knowledge, whom no one can approach — has become our Father. As Paul confessed, we cannot understand God completely, yet we must confess that we long to remain in God, the beginning and the end of all things. God alone holds power and wisdom; he rules heaven and earth; he is master of angels and of Satan, and Lord of our lives. May you give him praise and glory. The almighty God is watching you right now. The God who forgives every sin loves you.
I hope you will offer your life to God in faith. If the road you are on now differs from God’s will, may you turn back quickly. Then our good God will tell Satan that you are his child, and will protect you so that the evil one and evil spirits cannot touch you. My earnest hope is that you will always be God’s treasured people, mindful of his heart and offering him your love.