The Meaning of Being Grafted

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The Grafted Tree

Trees are designed to reproduce themselves by producing appealing seeded fruit. Animals eat the fruit and spread the indigestible seeds through their waste, allowing new trees to be planted. However, the trees that will grow will not be identical to the original tree. This is because fruit trees are not “true to seed” — meaning if you plant apple seeds, they will not grow a tree that produces the same apples. It will instead grow a random, different variety of fruit, and is often weaker and may produce inedible fruit.

The reason for this is that the majority of fruits are not self-pollinating. Strawberries, for example, will accept the pollen from one of their own flowers onto another, so that the strawberries produced contain 100% of the DNA from the original plant — this is a self-pollinating fruit. However, most fruit trees need two different plants and varieties in order to be pollinated and produce fruit, resulting in a mixed DNA. It is similar to pregnancy, in which a mix of DNA from both the mother and father will produce something new. This is a good thing for humans, but a bad thing for when you want the exact same variety of fruit.

The secret to growing trees that will produce our favorite kind of fruit is grafting. Grafting is a way to clone a tree by taking part of the desired tree and grafting it to another unrelated tree. The new tree accepts and grows both parts, so that it can produce the intended fruit variety without having to take the gamble of growing it from seed. The tree that will become the support tree, also called a rootstock, provides a solid foundation for the graft through its roots and base. The graft, also called a scion, comes from an existing fruit tree. Both the scion and rootstock will be cut, then attached together at the cuts and attached together until the tree’s natural response to injury kicks in. The tree protects its wound by growing around the graft site, permanently binding the rootstock and scion and creating one new tree. The rootstock will continue to grow the roots, while the scion will grow the branches, which will eventually produce the fruit. Grafting is a lot of work, but allows us to grow our favorite kinds of fruit, as well as preserve varieties that would have otherwise gone extinct.

The Grafted Gentiles

Gentiles who believe in Christ are branches that have been cut off from their own wild olive tree — the religions of the world. God has given gentiles the ability to be grafted into the cultivated olive tree — Israel — with the apostles and prophets as the tree’s roots and Christ as the seed. The grafted branches “became a partaker of the root and fatness of the olive tree” (Rom. 11:17). Just as a scion is nourished and supported by the rootstock, becoming a fruitful part of the tree, the Gentile believers now have the ability to be bound to Israel through faith,  growing and bearing fruit unto God.

The unbelieving Jews who rejected Christ were dead or unfruitful branches of the cultivated tree that were cut off. These branches still have the opportunity, however, to be revived and grafted back in, if they “do not persist in unbelief” — if God can graft a wild olive branch into the tree, how much more can He graft back in the original branches; and if the natural branches were cut off, how much more will the wild branches be cut off because of unbelief (Rom. 11:24).

Paul speaks of Gentiles as a wild olive brach that is grafted into a cultivated olive tree. This seems contrary to the normal grafting process — nobody would want to add wild fruit branches onto a tree that already produces good fruit on its own. But that is precisely the point; God graciously accepted and grafted in the wild Gentiles into the Jewish tree. The natural branches did not have to be cut off in order for the wild branches to be grafted in — for what purpose do wild branches have in an already cultivated tree? But it was simply because God desired it to be, that the Gentiles are grafted in. 

The rootstock of the Jewish tree now grows and supports both Gentiles and Jews. The grafted wild branches must not think they are better than the original branches, as Paul says, “You do not support the root, but the root supports you . . . they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but tremble.” (Romans 11:18, 20).

The Gentiles, who were once “separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world,” have been given the opportunity to be grafted in with the Jews and share in God’s new covenant through Christ (Eph. 2:12). “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility” (Eph. 2:14-16). Just as the grafted tree takes two separate trees and unites them, the Gentiles and Jews were united together as God’s true Israel, through faith in Christ, to produce God’s desired fruit.