Romans 11:5

This verse applies the case of the seven thousand to present circumstances. The remnant, of whom the apostle speaks, evidently denotes the small portion of the Jewish people who in Jesus have recognized the Messiah. The term λεῖμμα, remnant, is related to the preceding verb κατέλιπον, I have reserved to myself, kept. There is no reference whatever to the members of the Jewish people who shall survive the destruction of Jerusalem, and shall be preserved to go into exile. These form, on the contrary, the rejected portion to whom the words, Romans 11:7-10, apply.

The three particles which connect this verse with the preceding context: so, then, also, refer, the first to the internal resemblance of the two facts, for the same principle is realized in both; the second, to the moral necessity with which the one follows from the other in consequence of this analogy. The third simply indicates the addition of a new example to the former.

The words: according to the election of grace, might apply to the individuals more or less numerous who are embraced in this remnant, now become the nucleus of the church. The word election would in that case be explained, as in the case of the elect in general, Romans 8:29-30, by the fact of the foreknowledge which God had of their faith. But the matter in question throughout the whole of this chapter is the lot of the Jewish people in general; it is therefore to them in their entirety that the idea of the divine election refers; comp. Romans 11:2; Romans 11:28. One thing indeed follows from the election of grace applied to the whole of Israel; not the salvation of such or such individuals, but the indestructible existence of a believing remnant at all periods of their history, even in the most disastrous crises of unbelief, as at the time of the ministry of Elias, or of the coming of Jesus Christ. The idea contained in the words: “according to the election of grace,” is therefore this: In virtue of the election of Israel as the salvation-people, God has not left them in our days without a faithful remnant, any more than He did in the kingdom of the ten tribes at the period when a far grosser heathenism was triumphant.