Is it vital for the Christian to maintain that God still recognizes the people of Israel? Without a doubt. According to Romans 11, God has “by no means” rejected them and has a place for a great number of them in His eternal plan. But are there any qualifications that need to be attached to that?
Absolutely.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t dispute at all that the elect of God within natural Israel will be preserved and reconciled to God, that “if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in” (Rom. 11: 23), and that such a restoration may very well occur en masse in the future (though Scripture doesn’t necessitate this).
That being said, this still doesn’t mean that all of physical Israel is representative of elect Jews. If anyone were to argue that physical Israelites have ever been or are able to be part of the true covenant people of God without faith in Christ, it’s absolute heresy. It stands in direct opposition with everything the Bible declares about salvation in Christ. The Old Testament saints were saved by faith in Christ just as we are – that was the thrust of my initial post.
While there are some who might say that “the Church has replaced Israel,” I’m not one of them. I don’t know anyone who’s ever argued such a thing either. The position of my original article is that elect members of natural Israel were always members of the Church, the people of God, the Body of Christ, the assembly, the ekklesia. The addition of gentiles to that body, then, is a far cry from a “replacement” of one Body of Christ for another. If anything, I advocate a theology of enormous expansion!
One article by Daymond Duck frames my position as one in which “the Church has permanently replaced Israel as God’s people.” In reality, all I could be arguing is that God’s elect people have replaced God’s elect people. That’s nonsensical. All I can affirm is what the Scripture already makes clear, that the New Covenant has taken away the Old (Heb. 8:13). The people, though, have remained one consistent community of faith. There’s no overriding or replacement of anyone. When Paul speaks in Ephesians 4 of “one body and one Spirit … one Lord, one faith, one baptism,” should he instead have distinguished between the body of national Israel and that of a New Testament church? Between two different Spirits? No, he shouldn’t have; he never did either. There’s no “old elect” and “new elect.” There’s only one elect.
Again, when Paul declares that “all Israel shall be saved” and that “as touching the election, they are beloved,” he says so almost immediately after qualifying who Israel actually is – it isn’t all who are “Israel” by ethnicity, but those who are part of true Israel by faith. Even when Paul speaks of “God’s gifts and his call [that] are irrevocable,” he is talking about the election of God through mercy unto salvation. He says absolutely nothing about the physical land of Israel, the inheritance of which was contingent on obedience to the covenant (cf. Deut 30). If Jews returned to even a square foot of the physical land without a return to God preceding it, then it simply couldn’t have been a fulfillment of anything God has promised. It certainly wouldn’t have been a fulfillment of Ezekiel 37.
This can’t be emphasized enough. What the dispensational system seems to envision by seeing 1948 as a fulfillment of Ezekiel 37 (“Dry bones”) is an Israel coming back to the land in total disbelief. But that passage, we must remember, clearly shows a return of Jews that are given life because God puts His Spirit into them and enables them to live (Ezek. 37:14). That’s regeneration, raising people from the dead, the same thing that would prompt any faithless Jew to finally believe in Christ, just as it would for anyone else. A return from exile with unbelief maintained is simply antithetical to everything that’s ever happened with Israel throughout all of history.
Consider again what Galatians says:
“And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.” – Galatians 3:29.
Paul isn’t saying that anyone is an heir of the promises as a result of being a physical descendant of Abraham. He explicitly says that if someone knows Christ through faith, it is then that they become an actual spiritual descendant of Abraham (as opposed to merely a natural descendant). The two distinct groups are not the Church and Israel, but spiritual Israel (the elect) and natural Israel (the non-elect). “For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel: Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children” (Romans 9:6-7).
In terms of salvation, yes, God will ultimately bless only Abraham’s faithful seed, and not the natural seed. But why should we be surprised? It’s always been that way. Jesus declared the same thing to the Jews trying to kill him in John 8:33-47. “If God were your Father, you would love me,” He says, “for I came from God and now am here … You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. … He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”
The last matter to address is this issue of what was going on when, as one commenter suggested, “Christ promised to establish His millennial kingdom in Jerusalem.” My response: Where did Christ ever promise to establish a millennial kingdom in Jerusalem?
Someone might point to Acts 1:6, where the disciples ask Jesus, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replies by saying “It is not for you to know the times or dates,” but assures them that they “will receive power … will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Contextually, then, the fulfillment of the restoration of the kingdom to Israel must begin at Pentecost; what indication is there at all that Jesus changed the subject?
Not surprisingly, near the end of Acts, we have James addressing the meaning and scope of Amos 9, which speaks of similar themes concerning the return and restoration and rebuilding of Israel. James, however, claims it was fulfilled more than 1,900 years ago. According to many dispensationalists, he must be spiritualizing this prophecy:
“We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we [Jews] are saved, just as they [Gentiles] are … The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written: “‘After this I will return and rebuild David’s fallen tent. Its ruins I will rebuild, and I will restore it, that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things’”
Even here, James says nothing about any future restoration, nothing of a fulfillment that was yet to come. On what basis can anyone introduce that idea to the text?
Photo: Billy Alexander