May 21

“In the same way also there has become, in the present season, a remnant according to an election of grace” (Romans 11:5).

This is a very important passage of scripture that we should all know and understand.

The “present season” is the prophetic era in which we now live, that which was ushered in by the Messiah; it is the season of “these last days” when God spoke in His Son (Hebrews 1:2), and is contrasted with the previous prophetic era, those “times past” when God spoke to the Jews through the prophets (Hebrews 1:1).

Other ways in which the “present season” is described is “the season of the gentiles” (Luke 21:24); or the dispensation of grace, as compared to the dispensation of law (John 1:17); or the dispensation of Christ, which supplanted the dispensation of Moses (John 1:17).

With the words “in the same way”, used in this passage of scripture, Paul is referring to the situation with Elijah in Horeb when Elijah complained that he was the only one left of God’s faithful people. Not so, said God, for He had 7000 in Israel who had not bent their knee to Baal (1 Kings 19).

“In the same way”, Paul says, or, in other words, just as it was then, so it is now, there is a remnant of the faithful amongst God’s apostate people. This remnant, leimma in Greek, meaning also “small part”, “survivors”, or “minority”, is a “remnant according to an election of grace”. What does this mean?

Election means a “choosing out” or “divine selection” by God, and was originally applied to Israel, as the community of people chosen by God to carry out God’s plan of redemption for mankind. In the event, their apostasy meant that God chose from amongst them a remnant to manifest and exhibit His grace in the fallen world.

Now grace is not the abolition or replacement of the Law, for Jesus said that until heaven and earth pass away, not one iota or smallest letter of the Law will pass away (Matthew 5:18). Grace actually encompasses the fulfillment of the Law; it is that divine enabling that, alone, empowers a believer to keep the Law in the same way that Jesus kept it; by doing “always those things that are pleasing to the Father” (John 8:29).

It is grace, and grace alone, that enables us to hear the voice of the Great Shepherd of the sheep (John 10:27); grace gives us, firstly, the teaching, and then also, the strength, to put off the natural man so as to make room for the new man (Ephesians 4:23-24). It is grace that enables us to receive revelation from Christ the Revelator; it is grace, alone, that enables us to be obedient to what is revealed.

We are told to “come to the throne of grace that we should receive mercy and that we might find grace” (Hebrews 4:16). Mercy is freely given, but grace must be searched for before it can be found.