The Ingrafting of the Gentiles, Part 2

"Here observe, First, the privilege which the Gentiles had by being taken into the church. They were grafted in, as a branch of a wild olive into a good olive, which is contrary to the way and custom of the husbandman, who grafts the good olive into the bad; but those that God grafts into the church he finds wild and barren, and good for nothing. Men graft to mend the tree; but God grafts to mend the branch. 1. The church of God is an olive-tree, flourishing and fruitful as an olive, the fruit useful for the honor both of God and man. 2. Those that are out of the church are as wild olive-trees, not only useless, but what they do produce is sour and unsavory: Wild by nature. This was the state of the poor Gentiles…and it is the natural state of every one of us, to be wild by nature. 3. Conversion is the grafting in of wild branches into the good olive. We must be cut off from the old stock, and be brought into union with a new root. 4. Those that are grafted into the good olive-tree partake of the root and fatness of the olive. It is applicable to a saving union with Christ; all that are by a lively faith grafted into Christ partake of him as the branches of the root - receive from his fulness." – Matthew Henry