"All Israel will be saved" can refer to a large mass of Jews one day converting to Christ when God opens their heart in an Isaiah 40:9 way, "Behold Your God!" But this does not refer to every single Jew being saved. Paul has established in Romans 11:1-10 that God preserves a remnant. They are being hardened until the full number of Gentiles are grafted into the tree of the promises of Abram through Christ. Then God will save his people.


Also, "all" here isn't referring to "every single Jew" or "every single Gentile." I say that because in v.30-31, the "you" is referring to Gentiles in a corporate sense--Melchizedek and Ninevites were both saved in the Old Testament times when God had let the nations undergo a season of disobedience. And now not every Gentile is going to be saved, either in this season of the mercy of God to the nations. Just as the "they" is referring to Jews corporately--not all Jews, in fact many, were not saved even though they were the subject of God's workings and mercy. In this day and age, thought not many, there are Jews who do come to faith in the Messiah. Paul and Peter and the earliest disciples were Jewish.

It seems to imply, prima facie, that either all humans will come to salvation or that Christ’s work was indeed universal.

If this is what you get from this verse, I think you have missed the point of the apostle Paul. First, if you read the verse, "For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all." The point of the verse is that God consigned the Jews and Gentiles to disobedience is that he might have mercy upon them. Our hardening of heart was so that God could be merciful towards us and save both Jews and Gentiles! God gave us up to our sin so that he could rescue us from sin, both Gentile today and the Jews in the next season! I think that this is to highlight Romans 9:16, "So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy." God's plan in redemptive history is such a plan that it highlights the fact that it depends not upon us, but only upon him. It is to put himself at the center of history as Lord of history! And in doing so, it validates that we need God's mercy to believe! It means we need God's sovereign grace to reverse his consignment to disobedience. We need God's mercy otherwise there is no hope!

One of the things that I am becoming more and more aware of over these past few years, and months especially, is that the Bible is God-centered. God is God-centered. God works out history to glorify himself. Isaiah 48:11; Ezekiel 36:22-23. These texts explicitly teach that all God does is for his own sake, for his own glory and honor. God is not about man, he doesn't need man. He is about God and brining honor to God. To honor his name, he will have mercy because Exodus 33:19 and Exodus 34:6-7 say that his name means mercy! Jeremiah 9:24 God says he delights in having steadfast love, justice, and righteousness. Thus I think we do a terrible disservice to Scripture and to God to make Romans 11:32 about man and not about highlighting God's sovereign consignment of both the Jewish nation and the Gentile nations--corporately and not individualistically--to disobedience so that he can have mercy upon us. I ask the question, if there was no reason to have mercy upon us, why then how can he fully show the fullness of his glory when part of that is to have mercy? And then there is the flip-side to that question. How can God show us justice and righteousness (in a judgment sense) if there is no reason to judge? If his desires is to express most fully his mercy (cf. Romans 11:32) then he must have people to have mercy upon. Thus he consigns people to disobedience that damns them to hell so that he can show us his mercy in saving them from that hell and disobedience. The reason? Paul answers this in Romans 9:23, "in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory."

When I read Romans 9-11, I cannot help but follow Paul in his doxology in vv.33-36,

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.