Or, The Blessed Option
Scripture: Romans 11:11-15
Date: May 14, 2023
Speaker: Sean Higgins
I’ve been talking about being jealousable, about how jealousability itself is an argument, and have referred to the Lord’s blessings as the key. There’s more to say about all of those in Romans 11:13-15. The subtitle for all these messages (now up to part 3) has been “The Blessed Option.” But what is the “Blessed Option”?
Rod Dreher published a book in 2017 called The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation. (The men read Dreher’s follow up, Live by Lies, in Men to Men a couple years ago.) Benedict was a 5th-6th century monk; our Omnibus students read his Rule of Saint Benedict to get an idea of how monks were to conduct themselves in a monastery. The basic gist of the Benedict “option” is that the culture is already lost, and Christians should be separating themselves and building institutional bunkers so that when civilization collapses we will have preserved the faith and our culture in order to come out from our shelters and rebuild. The image on the front cover of the book is of Mont-Saint Michel, a tide-island in northern France, an isolated and self-contained society.
Preserving has a place. But not long after that some others started to argue for “The Boniface Option.” Boniface was a Benedictine monk turned missionary who took the gospel throughout Europe in the 8th century. The story is that that Boniface came to a group of pagans worshipping Thor’s Oak, and they believed that if you touched it Thor would kill you with a lightening bolt for your desecration. Bonficae chopped it down and they repented and were baptized in Christ’s name. Though he was martyred for his faith years later without putting up a fight, those who prefer the Boniface Option are less about preservation and more about pressing forward; they aren’t necessarily looking for a fight but they aren’t running from one either.
That’s good too, right? All are yours. And not to be too third-wayism about it, why not the Blessed Option? By grace through faith we build communities because Jesus is Lord, by grace through faith we battle strongholds and destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God (2 Corinthians 10:4-5). We father sons to respect their fathers so that our sons would also pursue and enjoy fatherhood. We pray against and vote against and laugh at those who make laws against the parents who don’t want their boys to believe gender lies. We’re blessed to worship the Lord Jesus as an assembly on Sundays, and we’re blessed to boldly announce that Jesus is Lord in the public square.
The blessings are God’s riches to us, salvation riches that are felt in soul and that come out our fingers; we present our bodies as living sacrifices. These riches include individual and group, even world, assets. These God-given riches are God-ordained means to “make Israel jealous” (Romans 11:11), and this kind of jealousy over blessings moves the Jews to believe for salvation. Their jealousy is not the end state, but a call to faith. We’ll see that again in verses 13-15.
Paul denies that Israel has stumbled to a final fall, and shows the sequence of how Israel’s rejection of Christ led to the salvation of Gentiles leading to the Israel’s jealousy and then full reconciliation to Christ for amplified riches for all. We saw an argumentative denial (11a), an argumentative sequence (11b), and an argumentative amplification (12). There are a couple more parts to the argument in verses 13-15. What does Paul do about this in light of God’s covenant word to Israel? He magnifies jealousability.
While Paul’s argument has been applicable to Jews with questions as well as to any Gentiles paying attention, he addresses Gentiles directly.
Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them. (Romans 11:13–14 ESV)
Why call them out? First because they are a special concern of his. Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles. Paul had been saved to preach salvation to the Gentiles. The Lord told Ananias to go heal Saul/Paul, and after Ananias balked, the Lord said that Paul was “a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel” (Acts 9:15). When Paul told his conversion testimony to King Agrippa, Paul said that the Lord told him:
“I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.” (Acts 26:16–18 ESV)
Peter was the apostle to the Jews, Paul to the Gentiles. So he addresses the Gentiles in the Roman church with a sense of responsibility, but responsibility for their jealousability. He wanted the Gentiles to see his efforts as a pattern for them.
Provoking jealousy was conscious conduct; I magnify my ministry (τὴν διακονίαν μου δοξάζω). The magnify is the same Greek word from which we get doxology. Paul praised his work of blessing-bringing so as to show it to be great. There was no embarrassment, but intention. And it’s an odd way to say it if all he meant was that Gentiles were praying the prayer. He was deliberately seeking to provoke jealousy by pointing out God’s salvation blessings.
It was a strategic argument, in order to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them. The “my fellow Jews” is actually “my (own) flesh.” I get that people wonder whether Jewish DNA can be isolated, and what about those who have some percentage of Jewish blood in their ancestry. Especially for us, 20 centuries after Paul, and who knows how many more centuries of possible confusion there could be before these promises are fulfilled. But the Lord knows, and if He can and does raised the dead, He can and will be able to gather Israel.
Paul thought his ministry would provoke some, while anticipating the fulness (τὸ πλήρωμα, verse 12) later, that “all Israel will be saved” (verse 26).
What would make them jealous about his ministry? A ministry that resulted in the sort of blessings that Israel was looking to the Lord for, as found in the Old Testament, as sung in Psalms. They could be called “Deuteronomic blessings” (a term Doug Wilson uses), the kind that come when God’s people obey Him.
These blessings are found in every thumb’s width, all the spheres, from center to circumferences. I gave a variety of specific examples last Sunday, but add to that list medicine and healthcare, words, wood work, wine and whiskey, beer and books, received in thanks and employed in the name of the Lord.
To the degree that these are comprehensive blessings, visible among the nations, it’s no distraction to see more Gentiles coming in. Actually, this ministry will extend “until the fulness of the Gentiles has come in” (Romans 11:25), an elect number who will be saved, and then “all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:26).
Election to salvation (chapter 9) makes no contradiction with jealousable arguments (chapter 11). Conversion to the true God, confession that Jesus is Lord (chapter 10), consecration as living sacrifices (chapter 12), standing out from those conformed to the world. It is our transformation that is jealousable.
In verse 12 he had the “if this, then how much more that” argument from lesser to the greater. He comes back to a similar pattern.
For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? (Romans 11:15 ESV)
The contrast is between rejection and acceptance. They stumbled over the Stone, they did not receive Jesus as Lord. That led to the gospel going out to the nations, the reconciliation of the world, not that every individual person without exception would believe, but that tribe, tongue, or language does not limit the kinds of people who receive salvation blessings. This will be true and glorious diversity.
As in verse 12, the riches would be amplified at Israel’s full inclusion, so Israel’s acceptance will be like life from the dead. While it could be taken as individual regeneration, and while it certainly includes that, the argument is for something more. It is an argumentative renaissance.
Of course “The” Renaissance is the revival of art and literature and original sources in the 14th-16th centuries. But it comes from the French re- ‘back, again’ + naissance ‘birth’. It is to be born again, like life after death. And thinking about that broad movement in history a few centuries ago might give us a small idea to what life from the dead will look like in the future.
Or consider the imagery in Ezekiel 37:1-14. A valley full of dry bones, that come together, sinews and flesh returned, covered with skin, and given breath “that they may live” (verse 9). “These bones are the whole house of Israel” (verse 11). Thus says the LORD God: “I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land” (verse 14).
Salvation, riches, more, reconciliation, more, life from the dead; “a blessing far surpassing in its proportions anything that previously obtained in the unfolding of God’s counsel” (Murray).
The lack of specific strategies spelled out, but under the full certainty of fulfillment, says, 1) think about it, and 2) go for it. See Romans 12, 13, and 14-15. Think about the blessings that cause others to ask us about our hope as in 1 Peter 3:15.
The world will be transformed as if made alive from the dead. How we live by faith, founding new things in Jesus’ name, or go down fighting in Jesus’ name. This is the blessed option, magnifying His greatness and His goodness to us unto the whole earth being filled with His glory.
Paul described the self-indulgent widow as “dead even while she lives” (1 Timothy 5:6). To live while you live is then not self-indulgent, but finding pleasure in the promises of God to bless the work of your hands (Psalm 90:17). To have life from the dead means fruitfulness for others. Make much/magnify all your work in Jesus’ name.
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. (2 Peter 1:3–4, ESV)