Branch Theology - Romans 11:15-24

Introduction

Paul is continuing his examination of the fate of national Israel in the context of God’s sovereignty and supremacy in salvation. Paul is holding a razor’s edge between two false views, both of which have not gone away in the last 2000 years since Paul wrote these words.

On the one hand, Paul’s desire is to refute those who would say that because of their unbelief and indeed because of their great wickedness in crucifying the Messiah, that God has removed Israel entirely from His purposes of redemption.

On the other hand, Paul’s desire is equally to refute those who say that Israel is part of God’s plan of redemption simply by virtue of the Abrahamic blood that runs in their veins.

The problem with both of these views is that they place the operative principle of salvation somewhere other than grace by faith in Jesus Christ.

So Paul is working diligently and rigorously to apply his soteriology to all people, both Gentiles and Jews. In other words, he wants the Roman church and everyone else to understand that salvation is according to faith and faith alone. It doesn’t matter whether you descended from Abraham according to the flesh, and indeed, as scandalous as this may sound, it doesn’t matter whether you crucified the Messiah. Grace is applied by faith and faith alone.

So we continue tracing Paul’s train of thought into a vivid and rich illustration, one that is packed with Biblical-theological significance.

Dough and Root

Verse 16 sets some important precedents and definitions for the rest of this section, so we need to ensure that we are clear on what Paul intends to communicate with his analogy in verse 16.

Some confusion has arisen regarding verse 16, and if you get verse 16 wrong, you miss the rest of the point that Paul is making in chapter 11 and you will likely fall prey to the very things Paul is writing to help you avoid.

What does Paul mean when he speaks of the holy first piece of dough and the holy root?

Many people have tried to put forward that the first piece of dough and the holy root is national Israel. They argue that ethnic Israel is the first people of God, so they are the first fruits and the holy root of the people of God. But this interpretation fails to factor in the very next verse in which Paul clearly refers to national Israel as the branches, and the branches are separate from the root. Therefore Paul cannot intend the dough and the root to be understood as national Israel.

So we need to dig in and try to discover what Paul intends by this notion of dough and root.

The first place we need to go is Numbers 15:14-21. Someone turn there and read that for me.

Numbers 15:14–21 LSB

‘And if a sojourner sojourns with you, or one who may be among you throughout your generations, and he offers an offering by fire as a soothing aroma to Yahweh, just as you do so he shall do. ‘As for the assembly, there shall be one statute for you and for the sojourner who sojourns with you, a perpetual statute throughout your generations; as you are, so shall the sojourner be before Yahweh. ‘There shall be one law and one judgment for you and for the sojourner who sojourns with you.’” Then Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘When you enter the land where I am going to bring you, then it shall be, that when you eat of the food of the land, you shall raise up a contribution offering to Yahweh. ‘Of the first of your dough you shall raise up a cake as a contribution offering; as the contribution offering of the threshing floor, so you shall raise it up. ‘From the first of your dough you shall give to Yahweh a contribution offering throughout your generations.

What’s going on here? Pretty basic stuff. Come into the land, offer a sacrifice from the first fruits of the harvest.

There are a couple interesting observations to be made here however.

The first is the inclusion of the sojourner in this little ceremony. Notice the emphasis Moses places on the singularity and unity between the sojourner and the Israelite. It’s almost as if he’s saying natural olive branches and wild olive branches are intended to worship as one people before one God...

The second is this phrase from verse 20 “Of the first of your dough.” The thought is, the very first thing that comes out of the harvest, before you make bread for yourself, you make bread for the Lord. By offering that first lump of dough to the Lord, you sanctify as holy the whole harvest.

This notion of this dough, this bread, that is presented first before the Lord prior to anything else, is woven all throughout the Old Testament. Nehemiah speaks of it, Ezekiel speaks of it, the Proverbs speak of it.

So why does Paul invoke the language of Moses as he gives a fairly innocuous command about a ceremonial ritual? I believe it is because these first-fruit sacrifices serve as a type and shadow of Christ, and Paul wants to demonstrate that the dough is in fact Christ.

Think about it. John 6 is a chapter about bread if there ever was one. Jesus starts off by feeding five thousand people with a couple loaves of bread. He then proceeds to tell the disciples that He is the bread of life and that He is the true manna, fulfilling the imagery of manna falling from heaven to provide for the needs of God’s people in the wilderness. Perhaps the most compelling part of John 6 is toward the end of the chapter. Someone read for me:

John 6:48–58 LSB

“I am the bread of life. “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. “This is the bread which comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and also the bread which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.” Then the Jews began to argue with one another, saying, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. “For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me. “This is the bread which came down out of heaven, not as the fathers ate and died. He who eats this bread will live forever.”

What Jesus is saying here is this: He is the one who fulfills the dough and bread imagery of the Old Testament, not just the manna, but all the bread imagery.

He is the one who was offered up to the Father so that the rest of the lump might be holy.

We know in 1 Corinthians 15 that Christ is described as the first-fruits, and in Colossians and Luke and Revelation, He is described as the first-born which is directly connected to the first-fruits.

I believe then that Paul’s intent here is to put forth Christ as the first-fruits, the first-born if you will, of the holy lump of dough, which, by His own innate holiness, makes the entire lump holy.

To use the language of John 6 and Numbers 15, by partaking of the holy bread in faith, we are made holy ourselves.

Christ is the dough, but is he also the root? That one is far easier to prove.

We see the language of roots tracing as far back as Deuteronomy. The first time it is applied to Christ in the Old Testament is in Isaiah 11:1-5. Someone read that.

Isaiah 11:1–5 LSB

Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, And a branch from his roots will bear fruit. The Spirit of Yahweh will rest on Him, The spirit of wisdom and understanding, The spirit of counsel and might, The spirit of knowledge and the fear of Yahweh. And He will delight in the fear of Yahweh, And He will not judge by what His eyes see, Nor render a decision by what His ears hear; But with righteousness He will judge the poor, And decide with uprightness for the afflicted of the earth; And He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He will put the wicked to death. Also righteousness will be the belt about His loins, And faithfulness the belt about His waist.

Then someone else read Isaiah 11:10

Isaiah 11:10 LSB

Then it will be in that day, That the nations will seek the root of Jesse, Who will stand as a standard for the peoples; And His resting place will be glorious.

Then someone else read Revelation 5:5

Revelation 5:5 LSB

And one of the elders said to me, “Stop crying! Behold, the Lion that is from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome so as to open the scroll and its seven seals.”

And finally someone read Revelation 22:16

Revelation 22:16 LSB

“I, Jesus, sent My angel to bear witness to you of these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.”

I show you all of this to demonstrate that the preponderance of Biblical evidence demonstrates to us that Jesus is the dough and the root of verse 16.

Clarity on this point will prevent us from getting lost in the weeds as we continue to study this passage.

Dough to Lump, Root to Branch

Paul argues further in verse 16 that the characteristics of the dough and the root are passed on to the whole lump and to the branches, depending on which analogy you decide to trace.

The point for Paul is what it has been throughout the last 11 chapters: salvation comes in equal measure to your attachment to Christ. His holiness as the firstfruits is our holiness as the fullness of the harvest. His holiness as the root is our holiness as the branches.

Paul’s argument is thus from the lesser to the greater. If Christ is holy, how much more then are His people holy? And the argument works in reverse as well. If anyone is to be holy, they can only be so if they are in Christ.

This applies to holiness on all fronts. Not only our positional holiness, in which we are made right in Christ before God, but also our progressive holiness, in which we are continually conformed to Christ’s image of holiness, and our perfected holiness, in which we are finally rid of the smear of sin and walk in complete light before God in Christ for eternity. If any of that holiness is to be ours, it must be ours through Christ and Christ alone.

Paul has sounded this trumpet before and will continue to do so. Paul is relentlessly Christ-centered in his understanding of salvation and the Christian life, and this analogy only continues to bear that out.

Branch Theology

Verse 17 now launches us into one of the most important passages in all of Scripture as it related to salvation, how salvation happens, and what the relationship is between Christ, Israel, and Gentiles.

Before we can really understand branch theology, we have to go back to where it started, and where Paul gets his ideas.

Someone read John 15:1-6

John 15:1–6 LSB

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vine-grower. “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He cleans it so that it may bear more fruit. “You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit from itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. “If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned.

This is the origin of Paul’s branch theology, and we have to keep it in mind as we continue to work through his analogy. We see in the words of Christ the basis for a number of things that Paul puts forth: the use of the word branch, the concept of branches being broken off or cut off, and the importance of bearing fruit as a sign of true life within the branch.

So how does Paul move through the analogy?

He begins by putting forth a scenario: some of the branches have been broken off. The implication is that these are the natural branches of verse 21. In other words, some of the natural branches have forsaken the vine. To put it in theological terms, some of God’s covenant people have broken the covenant, putting themselves outside of it.

That breaking off therefore clears the way for wild branches to be grafted in among the natural branches. In other words, those outside the covenant are brought into the covenant. We see this pattern throughout the Old Testament, as early as the third generation of the patriarchs. Both Judah and Joseph married women outside the covenant, Judah with Shua the Canaanite and Jospeh with Asenath the Egyptian, and brought, by these Gentile women, covenant children into the world. The pattern continues with the grafting in of Zipporah the Midianite, the wife of Moses, Rahab the Canaanite, Ruth the Moabite, and even Bathsheba the Hittite. All these women were born outside the covenant and brought into it later, therefore being grafted in.

Paul’s assertion that wild olive branches would be grafted into the true vine is not a new idea.

This grafting at the end of verse 17 results in partaking in the rich root of the olive tree. Paul therefore centralizes the root. The life and richness of grace and salvation come through the connection to the root. Nothing more, nothing less. In other words, it doesn’t matter whether or not you’re a natural branch or a wild branch, your life comes from the richness of the Root of David.

So as a grafted branch, what should you do according to verse 18?

Do not boast against the natural branches. Why? You’re a branch just like them. You’re supported by the root just the same as they are.

A quick word of application: it’s easy to look at the Jewish people today and get angry, frustrated, or proud. Why? Well, we say, they have this rich history of nearness to God and nearness to the Messiah. They are so close to the truth and yet they miss it. They must be so stupid. But what Paul is telling us here is that such an attitude is prideful and arrogant, as we’ll see in verse 20. The realities of saving grace that have been poured in our lives as grafted branches are absolutely not a cause for anything but humility before God. All of us have sinned, and all of us have sinned in like manner to Israel. What Paul would have us affirm is that just as none of our works or heritage save us, none of their works or heritage save them.

19 and 20 then get us into the real meat of Paul’s branch theology: the operative principle of attachment to the root is faith. Those who are broken off are broken off because of their unbelief, and likewise those who are attached are attached on account of their faith.

A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans Commentary

It was not for any personal considerations that the one was rejected and the other chosen. The Jews were rejected because they rejected the Saviour, and the only tenure by which the advantages of a covenant relation to God can be retained is faith.

Faith is therefore the key for Paul. If you are to abide in the vine and reap the richness of the root, you must do so by faith.

This reality yields a response. Do not be haughty, some translations might say arrogant or proud. Our attachment to Christ the vine, by virtue of our faith, has nothing to do with us. If you are to boast, boast in Christ, as Paul says elsewhere.

What ought to take the place of boasting? Fear. Fear here being that kind of joyful trembling that comes before the face of God with trepidation before His majesty and holiness. Fear that cries out with the heart of Isaac Watts and says:

How sweet and awesome is the place with Christ within the doors, while everlasting love displays the choicest of her stores.

While all our hearts and all our songs join to admire the feast, each of us cries, with thankful tongue, "Lord, why was I a guest?

"Why was I made to hear your voice, and enter while there's room, when thousands make a wretched choice, and rather starve than come?"

'Twas the same love that spread the feast that sweetly drew us in; else we had still refused to taste, and perished in our sin.

Pity the nations, O our God, constrain the earth to come; send your victorious Word abroad, and bring the strangers home.

We long to see your churches full, that all the chosen race may, with one voice and heart and soul, sing your redeeming grace.

Verse 21 continues with a word of warning: God is the one who saves and God is the one who cuts off. He is the vine-dresser. He grafts in and he cuts off of his own free will and his own good pleasure.

Paul then bursts out in a kind of poetic statement in verse 22: Behold then the kindness and severity of God. We have here an interesting tension. The same God, the same vinedresser, can cut off a natural branch and graft in a wild branch, and in the same way he can cut right back out the wild branch and graft back in a natural branch. We have echoes of Romans 9 here: who are you, O man, to answer back to God. The sovereignty of God in salvation, the sovereignty of the vine-dresser, to follow the analogy, ought to spark humility and gratitude in our hearts, not arrogance and pride.

But beyond that, God’s sovereignty in salvation ought to spark something else in us: hope. Hope that God is indeed able to graft back in those branches which were formerly cut off. This is also something we’ve seen before, this notion of temporary hardening, temporary removal from the covenant, that will eventually be reversed in God’s grace and mercy. We will look more closely at the fullness of this reversal next week.

Paul closes this section with a rhetorical question that draws us to the conclusion of Romans 11 that we will consider next week: If God can graft wild branches into the olive tree, how much more will He be able to graft natural branches back into that tree after they have been cut off? We now see an argument from the greater to the lesser. The inclusion of Gentiles in the covenant is actually the greater miracle that Jews being brought back in after a time of temporary hardening.

Conclusion

So what do we learn from these verses?

All of God’s covenant people are attached to the same root. We are all part of the eternal covenant of grace, administered to us by faith in Christ the dough and root. There ought to be no distinctions made between Jews and Gentiles in this regard.

Boasting is excluded. We have no reason to boast against the natural branches, for we are all supported by the same root, the same grace, the same faith, the same covenant, the same Messiah.

Our response to grace ought to be humility and fear. We cannot puff ourselves up and think that we are better because we have been grafted into the olive tree while others have been cut off. Rather, with humility and gratitude we must count ourselves wholly reliant on the grace of God for all that we have.

We ought to look forward with hope to the day when God will graft the natural branches back into the olive tree. As we saw last week, this will be a time of great rejoicing and blessing as we anticipate the resurrection from the dead.

I believe this analogy of branches is one the best and clearest ways in all of Scripture to help us understand the nature of our own salvation and the nature of our relationship as Gentiles to Israel.

May we abide in the Root of David, in the true vine, and may we be branches that bear much fruit.