In this portion, we will look at the promises given to Abraham and how they connect to election in Christ of all who as John says, "receive him and believe in his name."  In Genesis 12:2-3, God tells Abraham:

    I will make you into a great nation
       and I will bless you;
       I will make your name great,
       and you will be a blessing.

In answering his question in Romans 11, "did God reject his people", Paul observed that he himself was a Jew.  He then cites from the book of Kings were Elijah fears he is the only remaining prophet of Yahweh.  Yahweh corrects the weary prophet, saying, "I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal" (Romans 11:4).  Even so, Paul assures his readers, God has a remnant within Israel, chosen by grace-the grace that is in Jesus Christ.  God has not chosen this remnant because of their work of keeping the law, but by His grace, which is entered through faith in Christ.  God's people, then, are not those who know the law in their minds and have an outward faithfulness to it, but who have died with Christ to the law (which condemns them because of the sinful nature) and are made alive to God by the Spirit (who is now transforming them into the likeness of Christ).

Paul is not teaching God's election of individuals.  God's election is based not on works, or even on an individual's faith, but it is based on God's grace.  And what has Paul taught about grace?  "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus" (Romans 3:23-24).  By God's grace in Christ, we are justified and redeemed.  How do we enter this grace? "We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand" (Romans 5:1-2).  We "have gained access by faith".  Election is not in nationality, invidividual merit, but in Christ by the grace of God, and we enter through faith in Christ.    

Now if we enter this grace by faith, then is our election in Christ based on our merit?  Not at all!  In Romans 5, Paul calls our salvation a gift.  This grace that is in Christ is a gift from God.  Now, a gift comes at he expense of the giver. It is God's own effort and Christ's righteousness that has purchased the gift.  Even as the gift is offered, it must be received.  Now we cannot take this gift with our hands, and we cannot simple have cognition that the gift is available.  We must receive it by faith.  John says that as many as "received him and believed in his name" were given the right to be God's children.  We must receive the gift of God in trust-trust in the merits of Christ on our behalf; not in our own merits.          

Election in Scripture (i.e. the Old and New Testament) is primarily related to Israel.  God chose Israel as a people of His very own.  Therefore, say to the Israelites: 'I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.  In Exodus 6:6-8, Yahweh says, "I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.  I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.  And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession."  In the NT, Peter greets the "elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia" (1 Peter 1:1 ESV).  No less is this evident in the epistles of Paul.

In Romans, Paul expresses his heart for his kinsmen.  "I wish that I would be cut off from Christ," he says, "if it would mean my fellow Jews could be saved."  Then he explains why the unbelief of his Jewish brothers is so tragic, because, "theirs is the adoption as sons...divine glory...covenants...receiving of the law...temple worship...the promises...the patriarchs...the human ancestry of Christ" (Romans 9:4-5).  In Ephesians 1:4-5, Paul tells his Gentile audience that "For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will."  By "us" Paul means the Jews, and this reveals the purpose of Israel's election.  God chose Israel for His purpose, and by His love.  He chose the Jews to bring His Son into the world so that through Him the world might be saved.  Even their rejection of Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ (i.e. Messiah) was made a blessing for the Gentile world.  For as Paul explains in Romans 11, " because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles" (v11).  Yet Paul finishes that sentence by stating that salvation has come to the Gentiles to make the Jews jealous.  Paul made much of his ministry to the Gentiles in hope of stirring that envy in his kinsmen so that they too would receive what they were promised long before the Gentiles.

Does the election of Israel, then, mean that every Jew will be saved, or that they are saved by virtue of their election?  While the former is barely fathomable, the latter is surely untrue.  Paul himself, and all the apostles teach in the NT that only through faith in Jesus Christ is anyone, Jew or Gentile, saved.  Moreover, election is not on an individual basis.  Israel was God's elect people (i.e. nation or group), not His elect individuals.  God did not choose Israel because of the character of her people, just as God did not choose to bless Jacob instead of Esau because of Jacob's outstanding character (which it was not).  So when Paul is confident that "all Israel" will be saved, he is not thinking in terms of every individual.  In Romans 11:26, Paul quotes from Isaiah, where he says, "The deliverer will come from Zion;/ he will turn godlessness away from Jacob."  The deliverer who comes from Zion is Jesus, who will turn godlessness away from Jacob (i.e. Israel) through the New Covenant that is in His blood (thus Paul also quotes from Jeremiah 31:33).  As Isaiah says, He will turn godlessness away from those of Jacob who repent of their sin, for in the New Covenant, Yahweh promises to forgive their sin.

Earlier in Romans 11, Paul asks the question, "Did God reject his own people?"  His answer is emphatically, "By no means!"  And appeals to Elijah (1 Kings 19) to demonstrate that there is a remnant of Israel that is "chosen by grace"  Elijah thought himself to be the only one left who was faithful to Yahweh, yet God had thousands of faithful prophets.  So it is with Israel and the New covenant.  As a nation, Israel has not entered into that covenant, however many Jews did enter that covenant, and those Jews represent the remnant of Israel, chosen by grace and delivered from ungodliness through faith in Jesus the Messiah.