Romans 11:30

The Gentiles first had their time of disobedience. The expression in time past carries the reader back to the contents of chap. 1, to those times of idolatry when the Gentiles voluntarily extinguished the light of natural revelation, to abandon themselves more freely to their evil propensities. This epoch of disobedience is what the apostle calls at Athens (Acts 17:30) by a less severe name: “the times of ignorance.” Perhaps we should read with the T. R. καί, also, after for. This little word might easily be omitted; it reminds the Gentiles from the first that they also, like the Jews, had their time of rebellion.

That time of disobedience has now taken end; the Gentiles have found grace. But at what price? By means of the disobedience of the Jews. We have seen this indeed: God needed to make the temporary sacrifice of His elect people in order to disentangle the gospel from the legal forms in which they wished to keep it imprisoned. Hence it was that Israel required to be given up to unbelief in regard to their Messiah; hence their rejection, which opened the world to the gospel. Now then, wonderful to tell, an analogous, though in a certain sense opposite, dispensation will take effect in the case of the Jews.