Thou, being a wild olive-tree, &c.— This is another way of expressing the justification and election of us Gentiles; and it is also an incontestable proof, that we Gentile Christians are taken into the Abrahamic covenant, (for the Sinai covenant is abolished) as truly and fully as ever the nation of the Jews were. Consequently, any argument relating to our church privileges, taken from the nature of the Abrahamic covenant, must be just and valid; for we are grafted into the church, which sprung from that root, and are partakers of its fatness. It is to very little purpose to object, that it is unnatural to suppose an ignoble branch grafted on a rich stock; for it was not necessary that the simile from inoculation should hold in all its particulars; and the engagement to humility, arises in a considerable degree from the circumstance objected against. Had the scion been nobler than the stock, yet its dependence on it for life and nourishment would render it unfit that it should boast against it: how much more, when the case was the reverse of what in human usage is practised; and the wild olive is ingrafted on the good! See Doddridge and Calmet.
Related Commentaries of Romans 11:17
Romans 11:17
17 And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert graffed in among them,d and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree;