"The key facts which Paul had already established regarding Israel are: (1) they are not all Israel who are of Israel (Romans 9:6), making it clear that there are, and always have been, two Israels: (a) the external Israel, the state, the nation, the visible Jewry on earth, and (b) true Israel, called ‘His people,’ that is God's people, children of the promise, the seed of Abraham, the people whom he foreknew, etc.; (2) the external Israel God had rejected and hardened, as extensively prophesied by their own prophets, and as just punishment for their rejection of God, climaxed by their stumbling on Christ; and (3) the true Israel are now the redeemed in Christ, but such a fact excludes no one; ‘Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved’ (Romans 10:13). These three important facts about Israel should be kept in view. For centuries the two Israels had been almost indistinguishable, there being no sharp separation between them, but Paul showed in the beginning of this chapter that the separation had been made, with the true Israel continuing as Christianity, and the ‘rest’ (Romans 11:7) hardened, the latter being the whole of external Judaism.“ (Burton Coffman) Likewise, the congregation contrasts with the universal church.
“I say then, has God cast away His people? Certainly not!” “Literally, it may not or cannot be. This is an expression strongly denying that this could take place; and means that Paul did not intend to advance such a doctrine; Luke 20:16; Romans 3:4, Romans 3:6,Romans 3:31; Romans 6:2, Romans 6:15; Romans 7:7, Romans 7:13.” (Albert Barnes) "Though God had denationalized them, and sentenced them to dispersion; and though no nation was so inveterate against the Christians; yet the door of hope was ever open for their [individual] conversion.” (Joseph Sutcliffe) “For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.” (Romans 11:1) “To show them that he did not mean to affirm that all Jews must of necessity be cast off (or damned), he adduces his own case. He was a Jew; and yet he looked for the favor of God, and for eternal life.” (Albert Barnes)
“God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew.” (Rom 11:2b) Foreknew— “In customary Semitic fashion, Paul seems to be using the word know to mean ‘intimately love.’ … In this context, Paul has Israel as a corporate whole in mind, not individual Jews, for one of his primary goals throughout Romans 9–11 is to show that not all Jews are real Israelites. Israel was in God’s affection and plan long before she became a nation—she was foreloved—even though at the time Paul was writing most of the Jews individually had rejected God’s plan.” (Gregory Boyd)
“The thought that God ever had any covenant with the ancient kingdom of Israel, in the sense of their state, through any of their kings, is repugnant. The very existence of their line of kings was contrary to God's will, existing with his permission, but not with his approval, as a glance at 1 Samuel 8:7 proves. It was precisely in the events there recorded that Israel ‘rejected God’ from reigning over them; and the great historical rejection of God by the fleshly Israel, in their irrevocable repudiation of God as their king and the elevation of one of themselves to rule over them, was the pivot upon which all their later apostasy turned.” (Coffman Commentary)
“Or do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel, saying, ‘Yahweh, they have killed Your prophets and torn down Your altars.’ [1 Kings 19:10, 14]” (Romans 11:2b-3) “Built upon extraordinary occasions by special dispensation, and with the authority of the Lord’s prophets; altars which pious people attended who could not go up to Jerusalem, and would not worship the calves, nor Baal; these separate altars, though breaking in upon the unity of the church, yet being erected and attended by those that sincerely aimed at the glory of God, and served him faithfully, God was pleased to own for his altars, as well as that at Jerusalem; and the pulling of them down is mentioned and charged upon Israel by Elijah as a heinous sin.” (Joseph Benson) They thus chased after other gods— “and I alone am left,”—“To withstand and reform the common corruptions.” (Trapp)— “and they seek my life’?” (Romans 11:2b-3)— for telling them the truth about their sins.
“But what does the divine response say to him? ‘I have reserved for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.’ (1 Kings 19:18) Even so then, at this present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace.” (Romans 11:4-5) God lead them in the wilderness to the promised land for the sake of the remnant. “In Elijah’s time, when the prophets were murdered, there was a remnant of seven thousand men, for whose sakes the nation was spared. When king Ahaz had lost the whole of his kingdom, except Jerusalem, there was a small remnant that saved them from being destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah. (Isa 1:9). In Paul’s time the remnant obtained mercy for their city; but when they fled, the Romans burned it.” (Joseph Sutcliffe)
“Significantly, the separation between the two Israels, the true and the fleshly, was not the result of some whimsical ‘eternal decree’ of God, choosing some and rejecting others; but it was based solidly in fundamental and profound differences between the true and the false. Paul stated the basis here as the fact that the true Israel ‘had not bowed the knee to Baal.’ God's election is always based upon qualities in people themselves, but in no sense of such qualities actually meriting or earning God's favor. Of those who will obey God's gospel, or refrain from bowing the knee to Baal, as in those days, it is God's ‘eternal decree’ that such persons are his ‘people whom he foreknew.’ Lard explained it thus: ‘Obedience is man's own free act, to which he is never moved by any prior election of God. Choosing, on the other hand, is God's free act, prompted by favor and conditioned upon obedience. This obedience, it is true, God seeks to elicit by the proper motives; but to this he is led solely by the love of man, and never by previous choice. [He is no respecter of persons.] True scriptural election, therefore, is a simple, intelligible thing, when suffered to remain unperplexed by the subtleties of men.’[Moses E. Lard, op. cit., p. 346.]…” (Coffman Commentary)
“And if by grace, then it is no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace. But if it is of works, it is no longer grace; otherwise work is no longer work.” (Romans 11:6) “The true text of this verse differs considerably from that which is translated in the Authorised version, ‘But if by grace, then is it no more of works, otherwise grace is no more seen to be grace.’ The preservation of the remnant cannot be due to grace and works at the same time; it must be due to one or the other.” (C. J. Ellicott)
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