Most Christians, if pressed, will admit they have never quite known what to do with Romans 11. The first eight chapters of Romans they love. Justification by faith. No condemnation. The gold standard of the gospel. Romans 12 they love too. Living sacrifices, hands and feet, the body of Christ. But Romans 9, 10, and 11? Those three chapters about the Jewish people? Most folks turn the page a little faster.
That is a mistake. Because Romans 11 contains one of the most beautiful — and most humbling — pictures of what it means to be a Christian that the New Testament gives us.
But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches. Romans 11:17–18
Did you catch what just happened? Paul, writing to a Gentile church in Rome — to people like you and me — looked at us and said: you are the wild olive shoot. You are the branch that did not belong on this tree. You are the late arrival. The graft. The mercy.
The tree was already there
The God who chose Abraham, who made covenant with Isaac and Jacob, who carried the Hebrew children out of Egypt, who spoke through Moses and the prophets, who pitched His tent in the tabernacle and walked among Israel as a cloud by day and a fire by night — that God planted an olive tree in human history. The Jewish people are the natural branches of that tree.
And then, in the fullness of time, He sent His Son. Born of a Jewish virgin. Circumcised on the eighth day according to Jewish law. Raised in a Jewish town. Reading from a Jewish scroll in a Jewish synagogue. Crucified under a sign that read, in three languages, King of the Jews. Risen on the third day, in fulfillment of Jewish Scripture. Sending Jewish apostles into the world.
The gospel did not start with us, friend. The gospel came to us. We are the wild branch.
Why this matters
Two thousand years of church history have proven Paul a prophet. He warned the Gentile believers in Rome not to become arrogant toward the natural branches. He saw it coming. And come it did. By the fourth century, Christian preachers were already preaching against "the Jews" as a permanent enemy. The Crusades came. The Inquisition came. The pogroms came. Luther — God's instrument in the Reformation — wrote, late in life, things about the Jewish people that no Bible-reading Christian should ever read without weeping. The Holocaust came in a country full of baptized Christians. Romans 11 was written to prevent all of that. And it was ignored.
Today, in 2026, the church has another chance to read this chapter rightly. Antisemitism is climbing again. It wears progressive clothing on one campus and far-right clothing on another. It is fashionable in some circles and unconfessed in others. The Christian who knows his Romans 11 has only one posture toward the Jewish people: love, prayer, and humility.
What humility looks like
One — Knowing whose tree this is
The Bible we read was written almost entirely by Jewish men. The Christ we worship is a Jewish carpenter. The God we pray to is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The salvation we have is the fulfillment of promises made to a Jewish nation. Every time we pick up our New Testament we are reading a Jewish book about a Jewish Messiah.
Two — Refusing arrogance
Paul says it plainly: do not be arrogant toward the branches. The Christian who looks at the Jewish people and feels superiority — for whatever reason, theological or political or cultural — has not understood Romans 11. The branch does not boast against the tree. The graft does not boast against the root.
Three — Praying for their salvation
Paul's deepest sorrow in Romans 9 is that his own people, the Jewish people, have not yet recognized their Messiah. His longing in Romans 10 is that they would be saved. His confidence in Romans 11 is that they will be — that one day, the partial hardening will lift, and a great number will see Yeshua for who He is. Until that day, our calling is to love them, pray for them, and lay down our lives for them as Paul was willing to.
The kindness and the severity
Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off. Romans 11:22
That is a sobering word. The same God who grafted the wild branch in is fully capable of pruning it back out. The branch's only standing is the kindness of the gardener. Not its own merit. Not its own theology. Not its own history. Mercy.
If you are a Christian today, beloved, take a moment and let it land. You did not earn this tree. You did not plant this tree. You were a wild shoot, growing in some unproductive ditch of the world, and the gardener — at His own cost, with His own hand, by means of a Jewish cross — grafted you in.
The right response to that is not arrogance. It is awe. And the right posture toward the natural branches, the people through whom this whole tree came to be, is the deepest possible love.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Pray for the salvation of Israel. And give thanks, every day, that the gardener saw fit to make a place for you on a tree that was never yours.