NOTES for Rom 11:28
The spiritual life and history of the people of God are full of paradoxes. And the main paradox lies in how God's plans are fulfilled with the participation of those whom He considers His own. In fact, the situation Paul describes in relation to the Jewish people and their attitude toward the Church is only a particular case of this paradox. The paradox is that God most often carries out His plans with the participation of those who, though chosen by Him Himself, nevertheless usually turn out in the realization of the plan to be more of a burden than a help. So it was from the very beginning of Jewish history, from the very giving of the Torah, from Sinai itself.
From that very story with the golden calf, after which God makes a paradoxical decision: the people do not deserve to enter the land promised already to the fathers, but they must go precisely there, to the borders of this very land. Because the land was promised to Abraham. Because this is God's design, part of His still larger plan for the salvation of humanity. And because, of course, Moses does not reject his people and does not refuse to lead them further. There is God's plan, and there is someone who understands it enough to participate in it consciously. That is the necessary minimum for the fulfillment of God's plan. And the rest of the people, what are they? A burden? No.
Rather, a field of possibilities. Possibilities about which one can never be certain that they will be realized, but which in the field of God's attention, or in biblical language, God's memory, will exist until the completion of the present great spiritual age. Until the second coming. Until the moment of the complete triumph of the Kingdom. Only then will the time come to sum things up. So the Jews also remain such a field of possibilities. In the mass they do not accept the Messiah, just as the contemporaries of Moses often did not accept his words and his guidance.
They are enemies to Christians simply because they do not want the Christian path, do not accept it, preferring their own path. But for God they are unrevealed potential, an unrealized possibility. This is understandable: no one who has at least once taken part in the fulfillment of God's plan drops out of God's attention forever. And what His attention will lead to in each concrete case is known to Him alone. We can only wait patiently. Perhaps until the end of time.