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Israel and God’s People

Because of the prominence of dispensationalism and the Left Behind phenomenon in evangelical circles, it is important for us to reflect on a fundamental emphasis in contemporary prophecy discussions: Israel. This is also important in that Israel does very clearly play a prominent role in Scripture. In this brief series I will provide a brief study of the Scripture’s view of Israel from a Reformed perspective both exegetically and theologically.

As all Christians know, throughout most of the Old Testament Israel is God’s special people — beginning in seed form with the calling of Abraham in Genesis 12. She is God’s elect nation (Deut 7:7–8 ; 10:15; Zech 2:8; Rom 3:1–3; 11:1) and the focal point of his redemptive mercies in history (Deut 4:7–8; Psa 147:19–20; Amos 3:2; Rom 9:4). Because of her commanding presence in old covenant history and her central role in Old Testament prophecy she becomes a crucial issue in understanding the Bible.

Dispensationalism’s Error Presented

Perhaps the leading distinctive of dispensational theology is that ethnic Israel remains God’s key and favored people who will continue to star in his major plan for history. This view of Israel involves dispensationalism in its most destructive error. All of dispensational theology orbits around Israel as its theological center of gravity.

Let us focus briefly on this error as explicated by dispensationalism’s leading scholar, Charles C. Ryrie. Ryrie points to the centrality and exaltation of Israel as the first of the three essential elements of dispensationalism: “A dispensationalist keeps Israel and the Church distinct.” [1] He defends this position over against all other evangelical theologies by arguing that:

(1) The Church is not fulfilling in any sense the promises to Israel.
(2) The use of the word Church in the New Testament never includes unsaved Israelites.
(3) The Church Age is not seen in God’s program for Israel. It is an intercalation.
(4) The Church is a mystery in the sense that it was completely unrevealed in the Old Testament and now revealed in the New Testament.
(5) The Church did not begin until the day of Pentecost and will be removed from this world at the rapture which precedes the Second Coming of Christ.” [2]

Unfortunately, each one of Ryrie’s points is mistaken. As a result, the dispensational house is built on sinking sand. Let us see how this is so.

The dispensationalist understanding of Israel and the Church as separate, distinct peoples of God, is a house built on sinking sand.

1. The OT anticipates the expansion of God’s People

The Old Testament writers foresee a time in which God will expand his people by bringing blessings on the Gentiles and including them within Israel. This hope is established early in Israel’s formative history when God establishes his covenant with Abraham: “As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, And you shall be the father of a multitude of nations” (Gen. 17:4).

Perhaps the clearest and more remarkable expression of this appears in Isaiah 19:23–25. There we read that God will include Israel’s greatest enemies in his covenant:

In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrians will come into Egypt and the Egyptians into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians. In that day Israel will be the third party with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying, “Blessed is Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance.”

Zechariah expresses this hope by referring to Israel’s earliest enemy within the Promised Land:

And a mongrel race will dwell in Ashdod,
And I will cut off the pride of the Philistines.
And I will remove their blood from their mouth,
And their detestable things from between their teeth.
Then they also will be a remnant for our God,
and be like a clan in Judah,
and Ekron like a Jebusite (Zech. 9:6–7).

The conversion of the Gentiles in the new covenant is simply the fulfillment of these prophecies which adopt even Israel’s enemies into her family.

2. The NT applies OT prophecies to the Church

In Jeremiah 31:31 we read of God’s prophecy of the new covenant with Israel: “‘Behold, days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.” Christ inaugurates this “new covenant” toward the end of his ministry as he establishes the New Testament phase of his church. During his Last Supper he states: “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood” (Luke 22:20).

The sudden appearance of the “new covenant” in the New Testament record without qualification or explanation, demands that it refer to Jeremiah’s well-known new covenant prophecy (see: Matt 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25). As understood by the New Testament, the prophecy of God’s new covenant with Israel applies to the New Testament church. Paul even promotes the new covenant as an important aspect of his ministry: God “also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant” (2 Cor 3:6). Thus, he is a minister of the new covenant even though he is the “apostle to the Gentiles” (Rom 11:13; cp. Acts 9:15; 22:21; 26:17; Rom 1:5; 15:16; Gal 1:16; 2:7; Eph 3:1, 8; 1 Tim 2:7; 2 Tim 4:7).

Likewise, during her rebellion in the Old Testament, God promises “the sons of Israel” that “in the place where it is said to them, ‘You are not My people,’ it will be said to them, ‘You are the sons of the living God’” (Hos 2:10b). Paul cites this glorious prophecy of inclusion in God’s family and directly applies it to the church:

even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles. As He says also in Hosea, “I will call those who were not My people, ‘My people,’ and her who was not [my] beloved, ‘Beloved.’ And it shall be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘you are not My people,’ there they shall be called ‘sons of the living God'” (Rom. 9:25–27).

3. The new covenant church receives OT Promises

Not only do we learn that Old Testament prophecies regarding Israel are fulfilled in the church, but we even see that old covenant promises for Israel apply to the church. The new covenant church is the recipient of old covenant Israel’s blessings.

For instance, when Paul speaks to the Gentiles in Ephesians, he reminds them that “formerly” they were “at that time” in the past “strangers to the covenants of promise” (Eph 2:12). That is, in their past they were devoid of God’s “promise.” But this no longer is true!

Paul adds: “but now in Christ Jesus you who were formerly were far off have been brought near” (Eph 2:13). Interestingly, Paul is citing Isaiah 57:19, which was a promise of future blessing to Israel given though she was currently in sin. In Isaiah 56:1 through 66:24 Isaiah is focusing on the shame and glory of Zion, that is to be followed by her glory. Yet Paul applies a promise for Zion in Isaiah 57:19 to the Gentiles in Ephesus.

Dispensationalists teach that the new covenant church is separate from Abraham's children. The New Testament, however, deems the Church as the direct recipient of God's covenant with Abraham, by faith in Christ.

In Galatians 3:29 he refers to the foundational promise to Israel contained in the Abrahamic Covenant. He applies that promise to the Gentiles: “if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.”

Dispensationalists teach that the new covenant church is an aside, an intercalation in God’s major plan, a parenthesis in the outworking of redemptive history. The New Testament, however, deems her the direct recipient of God’s covenant with Abraham, by faith in Christ, regardless of whether one is a Gentile or a Jew by birth.

4. The new covenant church is not a mystery wholly unrevealed

Based on Ephesians 3, dispensationalists argue that the new covenant era, international church was a mystery that is “completely unrevealed in the Old Testament.” Certainly the clarity of the revelation of God’s expanding people increases in the New Testament. But that revelation was, in fact, given in the Old Testament.

To begin with, we must discern for whom the revelation was a mystery. Ephesians 3:3–6 reads: “By revelation he made known unto me the mystery . . . which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men.” Thus, the “mystery” now revealed was not previously made known to the “sons of men,” that is, the Gentiles. It was made known to the “sons of Israel” through their prophets. The phrase “sons of Israel” appears often in the Old Testament (e.g., Exo 3:3, 14–15; 4:31; 5:14–15; 6:5; etc.), setting them over against the rest of the world, the Gentiles, the “sons of men.” When God speaks to Ananias he distinguishes between “the Gentiles” and “the sons of Israel” (Acts 9:15; cp. Luke 2:32; Acts 4:27).

This is made indisputably clear in Romans 16:25–26. There Paul points out that the “mystery” of Gentile salvation was hidden only from the Gentiles, not from the Old Testament prophets — for he defends his doctrine of the mystery by referring to “the scriptures of the prophets”: “the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began, but now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith.”

Paul declares that the “mystery” is “now made manifest” to “all nations” — not just to Israel.

5. The new covenant unites Jew and Gentile into one body

Paul teaches us that Gentile Christians of the new covenant church are grafted into the stock of Israel (Rom 11:16–19). Indeed, we are united with the patriarchs of the old covenant, even while many ethnic Jews are cut out of the kingdom of God: “if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches; but if you are arrogant, remember that it is not you who supports the root, but the root supports you” (Rom 11:17–18). God’s people are symbolized by one tree, not two.

Furthermore, Paul expressly declares that Christ’s death wholly removes the wall of separation between Jew and Gentile, merging them into one: “He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one, and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall” (Eph 2:14). Nothing hints that this great redemptive truth is temporary and will be removed later in the millennium, as per dispensational teaching.

In fact, the “cementing” agent in this union is the powerful blood of Christ: “But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Eph 2:13). Consequently, he was “abolishing [not temporarily halting] in His flesh the enmity” that separated Jew and Gentile (Eph 2:15). This comports well with what Christ teaches when he presents himself as the Good Shepherd in John 10:16: “And I have other sheep [Gentiles] which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they shall hear My voice; and they shall become one flock with one shepherd.”

Dispensationalism demands two groups and thus attempts to rebuild the barrier wall that Christ broke down, making two separate people out of those whom Christ has made one. The more biblical position would be to affirm: “What God has joined together, let no man separate.”

6. The new covenant church is called Abraham’s Seed

Israel’s biological descent from Abraham was a source of great Jewish pride. God is often called in Scripture “the God of Abraham” (Gen 28:13; 31:42, 53; Exo 3:6, 15–16; 4:5; 1 Kgs 18:36; 1 Chron 29:18; 2 Chron 30:6; Psa 47:9; Matt 22:32; Mark 12:36; Luke 20:37; Acts 3:13; 7:32). Because he is “the God of Abraham” the Jews expected blessings in terms of their Abrahamic descent (Matt 3:9; 8:11; Luke 3:8; 13:16, 28; 16:23–30; 19:9; John 8:39, 53; Rom 11:1; 2 Cor 11:22). Yet in the new covenant, Gentile Christians are called the children of Abraham.

We see this in Galatians where Paul writes: “therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘All the nations shall be blessed in you’”(Gal 3:7–8). Then a few verses later he forthrightly declares: “if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Gal 3:29).

7. The new covenant church sees old covenant Israel as their “fathers”

Following up on the redemptive truth regarding our being children of Abraham, we discover also that new covenant Gentile Christians call Abraham “our father” (Rom 4:16). Paul, speaking to the Corinthian church calls the old covenant patriarchs “our fathers” (1 Cor 10:1), clearly evincing a spiritual relationship uniting the new covenant people with the old covenant people, related as a seed to its fruit.

8. The new covenant church is given Jewish titles and descriptions

Scripture frequently applies old covenant terms to new covenant citizens: we are the “the circumcision” (Rom 2:28–29; Phil 3:3; Col 2:11; cf. Gen 17:13; Acts 7:8), “a royal priesthood,” (Rom 15:16; 1 Pet 2:9; Rev 1:6; 5:10; cf. Exo 19:6), and the “temple of God” (1 Cor 3:16–17; 6:19; 2 Cor 1:16; Eph 2:21). These terms clearly reflect Israel’s covenantal identity, but are applied to the new covenant people.

Peter piles up some of these Old Testament designations and others applying them to the church. He calls Christians: “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation” (1 Pet 2:9–10), which is based on Exodus 19:5–6 and Deuteronomy 7:6. He and Paul call Christians “a peculiar people” (1 Pet 2:10; Tit 2:14), which is a familiar Old Testament designation for Israel (Exo 19:5; Deut 14:2; 26:18; Psa 135:4).

9. The new covenant church is actually called “Israel”

Dispensationalists strongly resist the application of “Israel” to the church, asserting that “the Scriptures never use the term Israel to refer to any but the natural descendants of Jacob.” [3] But if according to the New Scofield Reference Bible Abraham can have Gentiles as his “spiritual seed,” [4] why may we not envision a spiritual Israel?

In fact, Paul applies the name “Israel” to Christians when he writes: “And as many as walk according to this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God” (Gal 6:16). Here he is referring to Christians as “the Israel of God.” In the Greek the “and “preceding “the Israel of God,” functions epexegetically. That is, we should translate the verse “peace and mercy upon them, that is, upon the Israel of God.” Thus, according to Paul “as many as walk according to this rule [Christian faith]” are the “Israel of God.”

Dispensationalists see Galatians 6:16 as applying to Jewish converts to Christ, “who would not oppose the apostle’s glorious message of salvation.”[5]  But such is surely not the case, for the following reasons. The entire epistle of Galatians opposes any claim to a special Jewish status or distinction: “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:26–28).

So here Paul declares that in the new covenant Christ does away with all ethnic distinctions. Why would he hold out a special word for Jewish Christians as “the Israel of God,” when he states immediately beforehand that we must not boast at all, save in the cross of Christ (Gal 6:14)? In fact, “in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation” (Gal 6:15). Elsewhere, Paul can even speak of an uncircumcised Gentile as “a Jew who is one inwardly” whose “circumcision is that which is of the heart” (Rom 2:28–29).

10. The new covenant removes all ethnic distinctions

In several places Paul drives home the point that the days of ethnic distinction in God’s kingdom are over with. “There is neither Jew nor Greek . . . for you are all one in Christ” (Gal 3:28). “There is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised” (Col 3:11). “For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call upon Him” (Rom 10:12). This principle of “neither Jew nor Greek” explains why the Old Testament promises and prophecies can apply to Gentile Christians and the pan-ethnic new covenant church. It also explains why we should not re-impose ethnic distinctions in our doctrine of the church.

Conclusion

Old Testament Israel was long the special, singular people of God. Dispensationalism is system of interpretation built on the view that Israel, as an ethnic people, remains God’s special people and, therefore, that Israel and the church must remain distinct. We have seen, however, that the Old Testament expected the fulfillment of the new covenant to include the expansion of Israel, including all the nations of the world in God’s covenant people. The New Testament speaks repeatedly of that expansion as having been accomplished by Jesus on the Cross. In this way, we must see that the church is the Israel of God.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Charles C. Ryrie, Dispensationalism (2d. ed.: Chicago: Moody, 1995), 39.

[2] Ryrie, The Basis of the Premillennial Faith, (Neptune, N. J.: Loizeaux, 1953), 136.

[3] Charles L. Feinberg, Millennialism: The Two Major Views (3rd ed. Chicago: Moody, 1980), 230. “The term Israel is nowhere used in the Scriptures for any but the physical descendants of Abraham.”

[4] New Scofield Reference Bible, 1223 (at Rom 9:6).

[5] Ibid.

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