Root, Shoot, and Branches

Romans 11:17–24

If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, “Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.” Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but be afraid. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.

Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off. And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!

If there is any one thing that illustrations are supposed to accomplish, it is that they are to make what is being taught clear. Charles Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher who was exceptionally good at illustrations, called them “windows that let in light.”

The interesting thing about the Bible’s illustrations is that they do not always do that. In fact, they sometimes seem to do the opposite. Think of Jesus’ parable of the sower (Matt. 13:1–23). After Jesus had described to the masses of his listeners the four kinds of soil and the four results of the farmer’s sowing, the disciples, who did not understand him, asked what the story meant and why he was speaking in parables. Surprisingly, Jesus replied, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. … This is why I speak to them in parables …” (vv. 11, 13). He was saying that the purpose of his story was to obscure, rather than make the teaching plain.

A Difficult Illustration

The apostle Paul was not trying to be obscure when he introduced in Romans 11 the illustration of the olive tree with its rejected and newly grafted branches. He was trying to be clear. Nevertheless, the illustration seems to have been unusually difficult for subsequent readers of this letter. I gave what I considered to be the obvious meaning of the metaphor in the last study—the “root” is Abraham, the branches that have been “broken off” are subsequent generations of unbelieving Jews, the branches that have been “grafted in” are believing Gentiles. But not everyone thinks it is that clear. One commentator remarked that he uncovered at least a half-dozen different interpretations in the course of his preparation of these verses.

In my opinion these difficulties stem largely from the most common of all errors in studying parables or illustrations. That is, to press them beyond the simple, single point of the illustration. Sometimes people do that by overly stressing the illustration’s details. At other times they treat the stories too literally.

Let me show what I think has happened here. I think the chief problems with the treatment of the illustration of the olive tree comes from treating it as concerned with individuals alone, on the one hand, or with nations, on the other. What happens if you think of the broken off branches in terms of individuals? Obviously, you have introduced the thought that a person’s salvation can be lost. That allows us to warn against presumption, which we must do in any case. Our next study will do exactly that. But the idea that salvation can be lost runs counter to Paul’s explicit teaching in Romans 8, in which he stressed that nothing in all creation will ever “separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (v. 39).

Even worse, if that is the view we take, there is no purpose to Romans 9–11. For the only reason for Paul to be writing these chapters is to answer the objection that we cannot believe in eternal security if Israel is lost, since in that case God would not have been faithful to them.

But suppose we treat the illustration as having to do with nations? In that case, the nation of Israel is replaced by Gentile nations, and we find ourselves beginning to think about some kind of Gentile supremacy. The commentator I mentioned earlier, the one who discovered at least six different interpretations of the illustration of the olive tree, did just that. For in his detailed treatment of Romans 11, the chapter that follows his study of the olive tree is entitled “Gentile Domination.”

These difficulties can be eliminated if we realize that Paul is not talking about either individuals or nations specifically, but only about the masses of Jews and many Gentiles. His point is that most Jews have not believed on Jesus Christ and are therefore cut off from the spiritual blessings that should belong to them because of their being Jews, while many Gentiles, who have no claim upon the spiritual blessings granted Israel, have nevertheless entered into those blessings by faith in the Jews’ Messiah.

As far as the covenant of God with Israel is concerned, Paul says that it is being fulfilled, though not with every individual Jewish person. Those whom God has elected to salvation are being saved, both Jews and Gentiles, and in the end there will be a time of repentance and spiritual blessing for Israel nationally.

An “Unnatural” Illustration

In the case of this illustration there is also another problem that we have to deal with, namely, that the grafting process Paul describes seems to be unnatural. Wild shoots are not usually grafted onto cultivated roots, as Paul describes. Rather it is the other way around. William Sanday and Arthur C. Headlam say rightly, in their well-known commentary, “Grafts must necessarily be of branches from a cultivated olive inserted into a wild stock, the reverse process being one which would be valueless and is never performed.”

Paul’s “error” has led some commentators, like C. H. Dodd, to make smug remarks about the apostle’s supposed ignorance. Dodd wrote, “Paul had the limitations of a town-bred man. … He had not the curiosity to inquire what went on in the olive-yards which fringed every road he walked.”

Well, the process may not have been as impossible as all that, and Paul may not be writing in ignorance. Some years ago, William Ramsay, one of the great students of the apostle Paul’s teaching and travels, did a study of “The Olive-Tree and the Wild-Olive,” in which he produced what seems to be ancient confirmations of what Paul described. According to Ramsay, the Roman writer Columella said that “when an Olive-tree produces badly, a slip of Wild-Olive is grafted on it, and this gives new vigor to the tree” (Res Rustica, V, 9, 16). Similarly, Palladius wrote that “the Wild-Olive graft invigorated the tree on which it was set” (Opus Agriculturae, XI, 8, 3). Ramsay referred to the renowned Mediterranean fruit-tree botanist Theobald Fisher as saying that the process described by Paul “is still in use in exceptional circumstances at the present day.”

However, there is a problem with Ramsay’s solution, too. According to Ramsay, the purpose of grafting in the wild shoot is to invigorate the old tree or root. But, according to Paul’s use of the illustration, the Gentiles, who are represented by the wild olive shoots, bring nothing to the fusion. Ramsay’s solution, while it may be true horticulturally and may excuse Paul from the charge of ignorance, actually confuses the issue.

In my opinion, the real explanation is in a phrase Paul himself uses in verse 24, when he speaks of the Gentiles being grafted into a cultivated olive tree as “contrary to nature.” If this is to be taken at face value, it means that Paul was fully aware that what he was describing—the grafting of a wild shoot into a cultivated stock—was unnatural. But that is precisely his point. It was utterly unnatural that God should work in this manner to save Gentiles. Yet it is what God has done. Salvation is of grace. However, if God did the unnatural thing in saving Gentiles, how much more should we expect him to do the natural thing eventually and thus bring about the future widespread belief of Israel in their own Messiah?

An Instructive Illustration

But enough analysis! What is the point of this substantial biblical illustration (eight verses)? What are its lessons? I see seven of them.

1. There is only one people of God. This is an obvious point of the olive-tree illustration, but surprisingly it is often completely overlooked, particularly by those who, like myself, believe that Romans 11 is prophesying a future day of Jewish blessing. A large number of those who do this are dispensationalists who tend to locate the widespread conversion of Israel in a future age and describe it in terms that give the Jews an identity and destiny quite different from the church. I believe in Israel’s future conversion, because I believe that Romans 11 and other passages teach it. But the opponents of dispensationalism are right when they insist that there are not two peoples of God with two destinies but one only.

In this letter, Abraham has been presented as the father of all who are saved, since they are saved by faith, as he was. He is the root of the tree. Therefore, all who are saved, whether Jews or Gentiles, are saved only by believing God, as he did, and are thus part of the one olive tree.

Moreover, when Paul speaks of the future day of Jewish conversion, he is not speaking of something outside of or beyond history, nor of a dispensation yet to come. This is within history. It is within the very flow of events that we ourselves know that Gentiles and eventually Jews will all believe in Christ and the entire company of God’s elect will be made up.

2. The people of God must (and will) bear fruit. Paul does not speak of fruit-bearing specifically in these verses. But that is the whole point of grafting: to produce a more fruitful tree. Besides, although Paul does not speak of fruit by that term, this is certainly what he has in mind when he writes of unbelieving Jews being broken off “because of unbelief” and of believing Gentiles being grafted into the Jewish tree “by faith” (v. 20). Unbelief is the ultimate expression of fruitlessness, and faith is the first of all fruits.

I observed in the previous study that the olive tree is not a prominent image in the Old Testament, especially in regard to Israel. Nevertheless, it is used of Israel in two passages: Jeremiah 11:16 and Hosea 14:6. They have nothing to do with wild branches being grafted into the old stock. But they do have to do with fruitfulness. Jeremiah 11:16 reads:

The Lord called you a thriving olive tree

with fruit beautiful in form.

But with the roar of a mighty storm

he will set it on fire,

and its branches will be broken.

Why is the tree to be destroyed by fire and its branches broken? The next verse explains that it is “because the house of Israel and the house of Judah have done evil.” That is, they were not fruitful. They were not believing. It is possible that Paul got the idea for his more elaborate illustration in Romans from this passage.

And perhaps from Hosea 14:6, too, the only other verse that applies the olive-tree illustration to the Jewish nation. I say this because, like Romans 11, this verse looks forward to a future day of blessing for Israel, saying, “His [Israel’s] splendor will be like an olive tree, / his fragrance like a cedar of Lebanon.”

The point, of course, is that God requires fruitfulness in his people. In fact, without fruitfulness they are not his people. This is what Jesus taught in the discourse recorded in John 15, though with the illustration of a vine and its branches rather than an olive tree and its branches. He said, “I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes [trims clean] so that it will be even more fruitful. … I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit. … This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples” (John 15:1–2, 5, 8). The vine illustration is prominent in the Old Testament (see Ps. 80:8–16; Isa. 5:1–7).

3. Gentiles contribute nothing to the salvation process. This is the point at which I found William Ramsay’s material to be unhelpful and even misleading. For although the point of grafting is to bring the strength and fruitfulness of the shoot to enrich the old tree, in Paul’s illustration it is entirely the reverse. The engrafted branches are the Gentiles, and the thrust of his words to them is that they are not to boast over the cut-off branches, as if they were valuable themselves. Instead, we who are Gentiles are to bear in mind that we “do not support the root, but the root supports you [us]” (v. 18).

We stand, but our standing is by faith alone, and that means that we stand only by grace. We have no inherent claim to anything.

It follows, too, that there is no “good” in Gentile religion. People today think in terms of all religions bringing their little bit of truth to the whole, each one adding its part, but this is utterly at odds with Paul’s illustration. Asians do not contribute their little bit of yin and yang. Africans do not contribute their little bit of superstition from their tribal religions. Indians do not contribute their little bit of folk wisdom or dances. Americans do not contribute their democracy or capitalism. According to Paul’s illustration, Gentiles are a “wild olive” (v. 17), one of the most worthless of all trees.

And let’s not overlook the word wild. Apart from the grace of the gospel in Jesus Christ, all we have are our wild ways. And they are destructive ways, too. The only true way is the way of faith in Christ that has come to us through Judaism.

Do you remember what Jesus told the Samaritan woman? She wanted to engage him in debate over which of the two religious traditions she was acquainted with was best, the religion of the Samaritans or the Jews. “I can see you are a prophet,” she said when Christ told her she was living in sin. “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem” (John 4:19–20).

Jesus answered that although a time was coming when the place of worship would be irrelevant (“Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem”), nevertheless, this did not mean that the religions of the Samaritans and Jews were equal—“You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews” (vv. 21–22).

The only true religion is the revealed religion, which God has given to us through the channel of Judaism. Not all Jews are saved, of course. Paul is saying that clearly. Nevertheless, he is also saying clearly that Jews are not saved by becoming Gentiles; rather Gentiles (as well as Jews) are saved by becoming true Jews. That is, all who are saved are and must be the true spiritual children of Abraham.

4. Neither do Jews. I have said that Gentiles contribute nothing to the salvation process. But now we have to add that neither do Jews. Is that contradictory? Didn’t I just quote Jesus as saying that “salvation is from the Jews”? Yes, but that is quite different from saying “salvation is being Jewish.”

The word from implies a channel. It means that the way of salvation has been made known through the revelation given to Israel, through its kings and prophets, above all through Jesus Christ. Jews become beneficiaries of that revelation, not by being Jews or by bringing any innate measure of spiritual understanding or intrinsic righteousness to God. They benefit only and in exactly the same way Gentiles do, which is by believing on Jesus. “They were broken off because of unbelief,” Paul says—“And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again” (vv. 20, 23). He could hardly make his point clearer.

Weren’t those broken-off branches in the Jewish tree called “holy,” in Paul’s original use of the root and branches illustration? In what sense, then, were the branches holy? The answer, as we saw in the previous study, is that they were “set apart” to God’s purposes. What were those purposes? They were that the Jews might be:

The receivers of the law, the prophets, and the writings. That is, we received our Bibles through Judaism.

The preservers of these for the world. We would not have our Bibles, especially not our Old Testaments, had not Jewish scribes faithfully and meticulously preserved these ancient documents for us.

The earthly line of the Messiah. Jesus was a descendent of Abraham through the tribe of Judah. He was a descendant of King David.

God’s witnesses to these truths. All the early preachers, including Paul himself, were Jews. Without their faithful witness to these truths, none of us would have known of Jesus, understood the gospel, or believed.

5. Do not boast. The fifth application of the truths embodied in the illustration of the olive tree is the one Paul himself emphasizes. At this point of the letter he is writing to Gentiles specifically, as he says in verse 13, and the burden of his words is that they dare not boast over the Jews because of their present favored position. It is true that Jewish branches were broken off so that, in God’s providence, the gospel might come to Gentiles. Their rejection has been a source of Gentile blessing. But Gentiles are not to boast, since they stand only by faith and will themselves be broken off if they do not continue in it.

We must not forget the warnings throughout the Bible about boasting. If we boast, we are not believing. For boasting is being proud of our own (supposed) achievements, and believing is receiving what God in Jesus Christ has done for us.

6. Do not presume on God’s favor. The sixth application follows closely on the warning not to boast. For when we boast we are presuming on God’s favor, and that is fatal. Presuming means assuming that everything is right between ourselves and God, regardless of what we may believe or not believe or of how we may act. The only way we can avoid presumption is to obey God and pursue righteousness diligently. As I have often said, if we are not following after Jesus Christ in faithful discipleship, we are not disciples. And if we are not disciples of Christ, we are not Christians.

7. Fear (respect) God. Finally, fear God (vv. 20, 22). This does not mean that we are to cower before God if we are Christians. It has to do with respect. Still it is nevertheless a holy, awesome respect we are to have—awe before both God’s kindness and severity. This is reminding us that God is not mocked. Sin will be punished, and unbelief does exclude us from the good tree of salvation, whoever we may be. We need to consider that there is indeed only one people of God and that entry into that one people is by true faith in Jesus in all cases.

 Boice, J. M. (1991–). Romans: God and History (Vol. 3, pp. 1343–1350). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.