<p>11:1 <em>I say then, has God cast off His people? God forbid For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin</em>- As we will see on :2, God has cast off Israel but has not cast off His people in that a minority of them, like Paul, have accepted the Lord Jesus. Thereby His people, His Israel, have been redefined. The casting away of natural Israel led to the reconciling of the Gentile world (:15). So clearly they were cast away. &quot;You are not My people&quot; (Hos. 1:9,10) is clear enough; they can only again become God's people if they are reconciled in the last days (Hos. 1:10). God broke His covenant relationship with His former people just as a stick is broken in two (Zech. 11:10,11). God and Israel are, in another analogy, in a state of divorce, and He has remarried. Paul sees his own conversion as the evidence that God still has a people, and he urges other Jews to emulate his example (:14). The same word for 'cast off' is used of how Israel cast off Moses (Acts 7:27,39) just as they did Messiah; and Paul uses the word in saying how the Jews had 'cast off' God's word in Christ (Acts 13:46). So the situation arose because Israel themselves had cast off God.</p><p>It's possible to read this another way, whereby Israel are not 'cast off' because the faithfulness of a minority of them is counted to the rest. Therefore in some sense, God has cast off His people (2 Kings 21:14 RV; Zech. 10:6); and yet, because a minority of them will always accept Christ, it is not true that God has cast off His people in a total sense, in that 'Israel' has been redefined; now Jews as well as Gentiles must be baptized into Christ if they wish to be the seed of Abraham. It was only because of this faithful remnant even in Old Testament times that Israel had not become like Sodom (Rom. 9:29)- even though Old Testament passages such as Ezekiel 16 clearly liken Jerusalem to Sodom. Yet they are not as Sodom ultimately, for the sake of the remnant who will believe. Perfectly in this context, Paul draws out the lesson from Elijah&rsquo;s mistake (Rom. 11:2); Elijah had thought that God had totally cast Israel off, but he didn&rsquo;t appreciate that there was a remnant of faithful within Israel. And the existence of that remnant may likewise have been concealed from the Christian church, Paul is perhaps implying. Only <em>part </em>of Israel are blind to Messiah; a majority, but not all of them (Rom. 11:5,7,25). I don&rsquo;t think that Paul is merely speaking of the situation in the first century, where clearly some Jews did believe. I say this because Jer. 31:37 states that Israel will never be &ldquo;cast off&rdquo;; yet, according to Romans 11, Israel are only not cast off because some of them do believe in Christ. The fact Israel are not now totally &ldquo;cast off&rdquo; therefore indicates that there always will be a remnant of faithful Jews- faithful to God&rsquo;s Son and trusting in grace rather than law (Rom. 11:6). Therefore we should be hopeful that at least a remnant will respond to our preaching to them. The Jews who do not believe were &ldquo;cast off&rdquo; at the very time the world was reconciled to God, i.e. when they crucified Jesus (Rom. 11:15 cp. 5:10,11). It was through their &ldquo;trespass&rdquo; in crucifying Him that salvation came (Rom. 11:11 RVmg.). And the resurrection and second coming which actualizes that salvation will only come once they repent (Rom. 11:15). So, Israel as a whole are not &ldquo;cast off&rdquo; because of the remnant of Jews who will always believe in the grace of Christ; but those individuals who crucified the Lord and uphold that position have cast themselves off from God. The practical upshot of all this is that we should preach to Israel, with faith that some will repent</p>