When we say ‘all Israel will be saved’ what do we mean?

Question 10108.

When Paul writes that all Israel will be saved at Romans 11:26, I understand him to mean the ethnic descendants of Jacob who are physically alive at the Second Coming of Jesus, turning to their Messiah in a national conversion at the end of the Tribulation. It does not mean every Jew who has ever lived, and it does not mean the church.

This is one of those verses where your conclusion is largely decided before you reach it, by how you have been reading Romans 9 to 11 and by whether you think God has finished with Israel. So I want to lay out the options honestly, show you why I reject three of them, and then show you what I think Paul is doing.

The sentence in its setting

Romans 9 to 11 is a single sustained argument, and it exists because Paul has a problem. He has just declared in chapter 8 that nothing can separate us from the love of God, and an obvious objection arises: God made promises to Israel, and Israel has largely rejected the Messiah, so what happened to those promises? If God’s word to Israel has failed, why should the Roman Christians trust his word to them?

Paul’s answer runs for three chapters and ends with a doxology. Along the way he insists that God has not rejected his people, that a remnant exists now, that the hardening is partial and temporary, and finally that in this way all Israel will be saved.

The whole argument collapses if Israel in chapter 11 means something different from Israel in chapter 9. Paul is defending the reliability of God’s promises to a specific people, and a solution that redefines the people is not a solution at all. It is a change of subject dressed up as an answer.

Option one: all Israel means the church

This is the most common alternative. On this reading Israel in verse 26 means the true Israel of God, Jew and Gentile together, so that all Israel will be saved simply means that the whole church will be brought safely home.

It is not a foolish reading, and the people who hold it are often better exegetes than I am. Its supporters point to Galatians 6:16 and the Israel of God, and to Paul’s own statement that not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.

But look at how Paul uses the word across these chapters. He uses Israel eleven times, and every other instance means ethnic Jews. In verse 25 itself he contrasts Israel with the Gentiles, and then in verse 26 he supposedly switches the meaning of Israel to include those very Gentiles, without warning, in the next breath. That is not how anyone writes. It is special pleading, and I do not think it survives contact with the text.

Option two: all Israel means the elect remnant across history

A second view holds that all Israel means the total number of believing Jews gathered throughout the whole of history, the remnant added up. On this reading nothing future is being promised; Paul is simply saying that God will save every Jew he intends to save.

The difficulty is that it empties the passage of its force. Paul has already conceded that a remnant exists in his own day. If all Israel means only the sum of the remnant, then verse 26 tells us nothing that verse 5 did not already say, and the great crescendo of the argument becomes a restatement.

It also cannot account for the language of mystery. Paul introduces verse 25 by saying he does not want us to be uninformed of this mystery, a term he reserves for something newly revealed. There is nothing mysterious about God saving those he saves.

Option three: all Israel means every Jew who ever lived

A third view takes all in the widest sense, so that every ethnic Jew of every generation is finally saved. It is held by very few, and I mention it for completeness.

It cannot stand, because Paul spends chapters 9 and 10 in anguish over Jews who are not saved, and says plainly that his heart’s desire and prayer is for their salvation. He would not grieve over a group whose salvation was guaranteed regardless.

The word all in Scripture is routinely bounded by context. All Jerusalem went out to John the Baptist, and not one commentator thinks the city emptied. All Israel means all of a particular group at a particular point, and the context tells us which.

What I believe Paul means

The mystery Paul reveals has three parts. A partial hardening has come upon Israel. It lasts until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And then all Israel will be saved.

The word until does the heavy lifting. A hardening with an expiry date is a hardening that ends, and when it ends something happens to the people who were hardened. Paul then quotes Isaiah: the Deliverer will come from Zion and banish ungodliness from Jacob.

So all Israel refers to the Jewish nation as a whole, alive at that moment, turning to Jesus when he appears. Zechariah 12:10 describes it from the other side: they will look on the one they have pierced and mourn for him as one mourns for an only child. That is a national conversion at a datable moment, not a trickle across the centuries. I have set out the wider case in my answers on whether ethnic Israel will be saved and on Romans 11:26.

The grammar of pas Israel

The Greek is pas Israel, and the phrase has an Old Testament pedigree. It appears repeatedly in the historical books, where all Israel gathers, all Israel mourns, all Israel goes up to battle. In none of those cases does it mean every last individual, and in none of them does it mean anything other than the nation.

So the phrase carries a corporate and national sense. It is Israel acting as Israel, the nation as a whole, rather than a precise headcount. That fits exactly what Zechariah describes.

There is also the little phrase and in this way, which begins verse 26. It is houtos, in this manner, rather than then, at that time. Paul is describing the mechanism as much as the timing: this is how God will do it, by hardening, by Gentile ingathering, by provoking jealousy, and finally by the coming of the Deliverer.

Why replacement theology cannot be right

Behind the debate about all Israel lies a much larger question. Has the church replaced Israel in God’s purposes, inheriting the promises while the curses stay with the Jews?

Paul answers directly. Has God rejected his people? By no means. The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. As regards election they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. Those are not the statements of a man who thinks Israel has been written out.

There is also the argument from the olive tree. Gentile branches are grafted in contrary to nature, and Paul warns them not to be arrogant, because the natural branches can be grafted back into their own olive tree. That warning is meaningless if there are no natural branches left to graft. I have written more on replacement theology.

The fullness of the Gentiles

Verse 25 sets a boundary: until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. This is not the same as the times of the Gentiles in Luke 21, which concerns Gentile political domination of Jerusalem.

The fullness of the Gentiles is the completion of God’s saving purpose among the nations during the present age. When the last Gentile of this age is brought in, the age closes, and God turns openly to Israel again. Many of us would connect that completion with the Rapture of the church.

That gives the present moment its character. We live inside a parenthesis in which the gospel goes to the nations and Israel is largely hardened, and the parenthesis has an end. I have written on the fullness of the Gentiles separately.

How will all Israel be saved?

On exactly the same terms as everybody else. There are not two ways of salvation, one for Jews and one for the rest. Paul has already said there is no distinction, that all have sinned, and that the same Lord is Lord of all and bestows his riches on all who call on him.

What is distinctive is the timing and the manner. The nation will see the Messiah they rejected, recognise the wounds, and mourn. Salvation comes to all Israel through faith in Jesus, as it must, and the shock of recognition is the means God uses.

This is why I have no patience with theories that suggest Jewish people do not need the gospel now. They need it exactly as urgently as anyone, and Paul’s own practice was to the Jew first. A future national conversion is no excuse for present neglect.

Why this matters for how we read the whole Bible

If God keeps his word to Israel, the promises we lean on hold. That is Paul’s actual argument. The reliability of God towards a nation that failed him is the ground of our confidence that he will not abandon us.

It also settles a question of method. If plain promises about land, throne, city and people can be spiritualised into something else, then the same technique can be applied anywhere, and eventually to the resurrection and the return of Jesus. I would rather take the promises as they stand and let God keep them as he said he would.

And it keeps the church humble. We are wild branches, grafted in, living off a root we did not grow. That is worth remembering whenever Christians speak carelessly about Jewish people.

There is a sober historical footnote here as well. Wherever the church has taught that God is finished with the Jews, the treatment of Jewish people has tended to get worse, and the record of European Christendom on this point is genuinely shameful. Bad theology about all Israel has never stayed in the study. It has always found its way onto the street eventually, and that alone should make us handle Romans 11 with care and with a good deal of humility.

Zechariah, Hosea and the prophetic witness

Paul is not inventing a future for the nation. He is quoting Isaiah, and the prophets behind him are unanimous. Zechariah 12:10 speaks of God pouring out a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that they look on the one they have pierced and mourn. Zechariah 13 follows with a fountain opened for sin and uncleanness, and Zechariah 14 with the Lord standing on the Mount of Olives.

Hosea describes Israel dwelling many days without king or prince or sacrifice, and then returning and seeking the Lord their God and David their king in the latter days. Ezekiel 36 promises a new heart and a new spirit given to the house of Israel after they are brought back to their own land. Jeremiah 31 promises a new covenant made with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, and attaches to it a guarantee that Israel will not cease to be a nation before God while the sun and moon endure.

Read those passages together and Paul’s conclusion about all Israel is not an innovation at all. It is the natural summary of the prophetic hope, and it is the reading that requires the least explaining away.

So when does the salvation of all Israel happen? At the end of the Tribulation, at the return of Jesus in glory. That is where Zechariah puts the mourning, and it is where Revelation 19 puts the appearing. It is worth saying plainly that this is a public, datable, historical event in the same sense that the crucifixion was, even though we have no business trying to date it.

The sequence I hold runs like this. The church is removed at the Rapture. The seven-year Tribulation follows, during which God deals with the nation again and a great many Jews and Gentiles come to faith. At the close of it the Deliverer comes from Zion, the surviving nation looks on him and mourns, and all Israel is saved. Then the kingdom is established with Jesus reigning from Jerusalem.

That timing explains the shape of Romans 11 rather neatly. The hardening lasts until the fullness of the Gentiles, which is why it cannot end during the present age, and the salvation of all Israel is tied to the coming of the Deliverer rather than to the progress of missions.

What all Israel does not license

Two cautions. Believing in a future for Israel does not oblige me to endorse every policy of the modern state, and it does not make political commentary a branch of prophecy. God’s covenant faithfulness is not a foreign policy position.

Nor does it license date-setting, headline-reading or the sort of prophetic journalism that treats each election as a fulfilment. The Deliverer will come from Zion, and I do not know when. Anyone who tells you they do is selling something.

What it does license is prayer, love and gospel witness towards Jewish people, and a settled confidence that God finishes what he starts. Those are not small things, and they are considerably harder than having opinions about the Middle East. See also my answer on the distinction between Israel and the church.

So, now what?

If you have been taught that the church simply replaced Israel, read Romans 11 slowly this week without a commentary and count how many times Paul says the opposite. It is a striking exercise.

If you have Jewish friends or neighbours, let this doctrine make you warmer rather than simply better informed. Paul’s great longing was their salvation, and his theology never once became a substitute for that longing.

And if you are a believer wobbling over whether God will keep his promises to you, notice where Paul’s argument lands. It lands in a doxology about the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God. Does your theology still make you worship?

And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob.

Romans 11:26, ESV

For Further Study

For the exegesis of Romans 9 to 11, John Murray and Charles Hodge are worth consulting even where I differ from them, and Arnold Fruchtenbaum sets out the dispensational reading with unusual clarity in Israelology. J. Dwight Pentecost handles the national conversion within the prophetic programme in Things to Come, Charles Ryrie treats the Israel and church distinction in Dispensationalism, and Millard Erickson surveys the competing views fairly in Christian Theology. Walvoord on Israel in prophecy remains a useful older treatment.