"For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office: If by any means I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and might save some of them. For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches. And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert graffed in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree; Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be graffed in. Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear: For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee."
Paul opens today's quote by professing that he, being God's chosen Apostle to the Gentiles, kept preaching to the Jews so that some of them might be saved, and that by doing so he expanded his work for the Lord.
What we should remember from the entirety of today's lesson is that the Jews were chosen by God so that through them came the prophesied tree of life, into which we Gentiles, through faith, can be grafted.
Referring to his Jewish brethren, Paul said, "because of unbelief they were broken off" therefore, by being grafted onto the tree through faith, the saved replace the Jews who were broken off when Jesus completed His divine sacrifice and fulfilled the Law.
That same *tree of life that is mentioned in Genesis is our savior Jesus Christ, and by being grafted into Him we are returned to the favor of God and thereby inherit the promise of eternal life.
"And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the *tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:" (Genesis 3:22)~
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