Romans 11:6

“ Now, if it is by grace, then is it no more of works; since grace would be no more grace. ”

The apostle wishes to express the idea, that if Israel possess this privilege of always preserving within their bosom a faithful remnant, it is not because of any particular merit they have acquired before God by their works; it is purely a matter of grace on the part of Him who has chosen them. The instant there was introduced into this dispensation a meritorious cause, whether for little or for much, there would be taken away from grace its character of freeness; it would no longer be what it is. Why add this idea here? Because it is only inasmuch as the maintenance of the faithful remnant is a matter of grace, that the rejection of the mass (of which Paul is about to speak, Romans 11:7-9) is not an injustice. If there were, on the part of Israel as a people, the least merit arising from work as the ground of their election, even that partial rejection, of which the apostle speaks, would be impossible.

The word οὐκέτι, no more, should be taken here in the logical sense: the principle of grace being once laid down. The verb γίνεται (literally, not is, but becomes) should be explained as Meyer does: Grace ceases to show itself as what it is, ceases to become in its realization what it is in its essence.

The second proposition, parallel to the former, which is found in the T. R., is entirely foreign to the context, and for this reason alone it must appear suspicious. But it is decidedly condemned by its omission in the greater number of documents, and in particular by the harmony on this point of the Alex. and Greco-Latin texts, excepting the Vaticanus. It is impossible to imagine a reason copyists could have had for rejecting it. Volkmar, in order to remain faithful to the Vatic. alleges this very fact of the want of relation to the context as that which struck copyists, and gave rise to its rejection. This is to do them too much honor. We should have had much graver and more numerous variants in the N. T. if copyists had proceeded so freely. It is much more probable that a reader composed a proposition parallel and antithetic to the former, and wrote it on the margin, whence it passed into the text. Cases of this kind are frequent.

It is obviously wholly unnecessary, in order to explain this verse, to hold, with the Tübingen school, that the apostle means to refute the Judeo-Christian principle of the mixing up of works and grace. Besides, would not the apostle have addressed himself directly in this case as he does to his Gentile-Christian readers in the passage Romans 11:13-14, which Volkmar himself puts parallel to this?

Let us again remark the correlation between this passage, Romans 11:1-5, and the preceding, Romans 9:6-13. The latter referred to the carnal portion of the nation, and proved the right God had to reject them (as much as Ishmael and Esau); the present passage refers to the faithful portion, and establishes the fact that God has not failed to maintain a similar elect number in Israel. These two points of view taken together form the complete truth on the subject.

Reuss finds in this passage two theories placed side by side with one another, but “which logic deems contradictory.” The one, he thinks, is that of unconditional grace, by which the holy remnant are kept in their fidelity; the other that of works, by which Paul explains the rejection of the nation in general. But there is no contradiction between these two points of view; for if the faithfulness of the elect supposes the initiative of grace, it nevertheless implies faith on their part, and if the mass of the nation are rejected, this rejection only arises from their voluntary and persevering resistance to the solicitations of grace.

The apostle put the question whether the present relation between God and Israel was that of an absolute divorce; and he began by answering: no, in the sense that a portion at least of Israel have obtained grace, and form henceforth the nucleus of the church. But, he adds for this is the other side of the truth it is certainly true that the greater part of the people have been smitten with hardness. This is what he expounds in Romans 11:7-10, showing, as his habit is, that this severe measure was in keeping with the antecedents of the theocratic history and the declarations of Scripture.