Romans 11:32

“ For God hath included all in disobedience, that He might have mercy upon all. ”

Here we have, as it were, the full period put to all that precedes the last word in explanation of the whole plan of God, the principal phases of which have just been sketched (for). The term συγκλείειν, to shut up together, applies to a plurality of individuals, enclosed in such a way that they have only one exit, through which they are all forced to pass. The prep. σύν, with, which enters into the composition of the verb, describes the enclosure as subsisting on all sides at once. Some commentators have thought that there must be given to this verb a simply declarative sense, as in Galatians 3:22, where it is said: “The Scripture hath concluded all under sin,” in this sense, that it declares all men to be subject to sin and condemnation. But in our passage the action is not ascribed to an impersonal subject like Scripture; the subject is God Himself; it is His dispensations in the course of history which are explained. The verb can therefore only refer to a real act, in virtue of which the two portions of mankind just spoken of have each had their period of disobedience. And the act whereby God has brought about this result, as we know from all that precedes, is the judgment denoted in the case of the Gentiles by the term παρέδωκεν, He gave them up, thrice repeated, Romans 1:24; Romans 1:26; Romans 1:28, and in the case of the Jews by the word ἐπωρώθησαν, they were hardened, Romans 11:7. Only it must be remarked that this divine action had been provoked in both cases by man's sin; on the part of the Gentiles through their ingratitude toward the revelation of God in nature, and on the part of the Jews by their ignorant obstinacy in maintaining beyond the fixed time their legal particularism. The Danish theologian Nielsen says with good reason, in his short and spiritual exposition of the Epistle to the Romans: “The sinful nature already existed in all; but that the conviction of it might be savingly awakened in individuals, this latent sin required to be manifested historically on a great scale in the lot of nations.” To be complete, however, it must be added that this latent sin was already manifested actively and freely on the part both of Gentiles and Jews before taking the form of a passive dispensation and of a judgment from God. Thus the act of συγκλείειν, shutting up together, is already justified from the viewpoint of cause; but how much more magnificently still from the viewpoint of end! This end is to make those Jews and Gentiles the objects of universal mercy. The word τοὺς πάντας, all, is applied by Olshausen solely to the totality of the elect in these two parts of mankind; and by Meyer, to all the individuals comprehended in these two masses, but solely, according to this author, in respect of their destination, in the divine mind. For that this destination may be realized, there is needed the free act of faith. But it should not be forgotten that this saying does not refer to the time of the last judgment and the eternal future, which would necessarily suppose the resurrection of the dead, of which there is no question here. According to the whole context, the apostle has in view an epoch in the history of the kingdom of God on this earth, an epoch, consequently, which comprehends only the individuals who shall then be in life. Hence it is that he puts the article τούς, the, before πάντας, all; for the subject in question is a determined and already known totality, that which comprehends the two portions of mankind which Paul has been contrasting with one another throughout the whole chapter.

The domain of disobedience, within which God has successively shut them all up, leaves both in the end only one issue, that of humbly accepting salvation from the hand of mercy. As Nielsen again says: “Divine impartiality, after having been temporarily veiled by two opposite particularisms, sbines forth in the final universalism which embraces in a common salvation all those whom these great judgments have successively humbled and abased.” There is therefore no inference to be drawn from this passage in favor of a final universal salvation (De Wette, Farrar, and so many others), or even of a determinist system, in virtue of which human liberty would be nothing more in the eyes of the apostle than a form of divine action. St. Paul teaches only one thing here: that at the close of the history of mankind on this earth there will be an economy of grace in which salvation will be extended to the totality of the nations living here below, and that this magnificent result will be the effect of the humiliating dispensations through which the two halves of mankind shall have successively passed. The apostle had begun this vast exposition of salvation with the fact of universal condemnation; he closes it with that of universal mercy. What could remain to him thereafter but to strike the hymn of adoration and praise? This is what he does in Romans 11:33-36.