Jethro Bodine
Member
Don't misunderstand, I'm not saying God has forsaken Israel forever. The text plainly says they have not been rejected forever. The problem is, Freegrace is trying to use the rise and fall and eventual rise again of Israel, and the keeping of his promise in election to them, to prove that a believer can also fall in unbelief, and stay in unbelief, and still have God's promise of justification and eternal life. I've been trying to show him he can't do that because the Israelites are being spoken of as a whole, not in terms of any one individual Israelite.God will not toss them aside and never has. Paul was quite clear that God has neither abandoned nor forsaken Israel.
Romans 11
1 I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid.
11 I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid:
Israel is a picture of the carnal fallen judged man engaging in Gods Full Intentions to make spiritual sons and daughters.
The individual Israelites who have been cut out of the vine and have forsaken the calling of God and lost the gifts given to them, and the Israelites who will get the gifts back are not the same Israelites. Paul is speaking in terms of the nation of Israelites as a whole, spread out over many, many generations. That is the only why Paul can say Israelites have lost the calling and gifts, yet at the same time make the seemingly contradictory claim that the gifts to Israel, that they do not presently have, are irrevocable. Paul would have to be speaking of the same individual Israelites--and Israelites who continue in their unbelief, but retain the gifts nonetheless--in order for his doctrine to prove that God's calling and gift of justification and eternal life are irrevocable for the individual believer in the church no matter if they believe but then do not continue to believe.
So there is a world of difference between the picture of carnality being overcome by spirituality being played out among many, many different generations of individual Israelites, and that picture and illustration being played out in any one individual believer.