“For they are not all Israel who are descended from
Israel; nor are they all children because
they are Abraham’s descendants…That is, it is not the children of the flesh who
are children of God, but the children
of the promise are regarded as descendants.” [Romans 9:6-8]
Jewish people are beautiful. They are dearly
loved of God, and they were the people God chose [through Abraham’s bloodline]
to deliver a Messiah to us all through the incarnation of Christ.
But being Jewish [that is, being one of the
physical descendants of Abraham] does not make you “Israel”. What makes you, or
anyone, “Israel” is Christ. Without Christ, no one is the “Israel of God”,
according to the New Testament.
The Apostle Paul was very clear about this when
he wrote to the Christian church in Galatia:
"And if you
are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise."
(Gal. 3:28)
When Paul says that belonging to Christ makes you
“Abraham’s offspring” he doesn’t mean that you suddenly become transformed into
a Jew…at least not ethnically. But spiritually, yes, we are transformed into
the offspring of Abraham by remaining in Christ because it is Christ who makes
us “Israel”, not our ethnicity or bloodline.
In Galatians, Paul spends a lot of time explaining specifically
how that promise to Abraham was fulfilled in the Church, not in the physical
descendants of those of the ethnic nation.
Paul says, "The promises were spoken to Abraham and
to his seed. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as referring to many, but rather
to one, “And to your seed,” that is, Christ." (Gal. 3:16)
Here, Paul is specifically referring to the OT promise made to
Abraham in Genesis 12:7 - "And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and
said, Unto thy seed will I give this land."
So, his entire point is this: Being in Christ
makes you “Israel”, or “Abraham’s offspring”, and therefore the promise made to
Abraham is now imparted to you because of Jesus, who was the “seed” being
referred to when God made His promise in Gen. 12:7.
Paul makes the case that the promise made to Abraham was made to
Jesus, not to every single Jewish person alive. Therefore, only those who are
"in Christ" are the "offspring of Abraham and heirs according to
the promise."
Paul's teaching clarifies to whom this promise is valid. It is
not valid for those Jews who claim Abraham as their Father but do not do the
works of Abraham (have faith in God and obey).
Both John the Baptist and Jesus both affirmed that those who claimed
to be the children of Abraham were liars if they continued to reject Jesus as
Messiah. [See Matt. 3:9 and John 8:39-44]
The nation of Israel [that is, the people who claimed to be “Israel”
but rejected Jesus as their Messiah] was destroyed in AD 70 for rejecting
Christ. Just as Christ prophesied it would be in the Olivet Discourse (see Mark
13, Matthew 24, Luke 21).
The true “Israel” of God -- that is, those people
who were in Christ and were spiritually the children of Abraham -- were spared
and did not die in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
Church history
reveals that several among them received dreams and visions which warned them
to flee the city to Pela, a neighboring town, and the Christian community
escaped by obeying that warning.
Notice also that the promise mentions giving the
land to the seed, which is Christ, not to everyone who claimed to be in Abraham’s
bloodline. The only right given to the “Holy Land” was given directly – and specifically
– to Christ.
In the process of giving the right to inherit
this land to Christ, those who rejected Christ lost any and all rights they may
have had otherwise.
Those who once “tended the vineyard” were
punished for rejecting the son and killing him. Because of this, the vineyard
was taken from them and “given to another people who will produce its fruit”,
as Jesus explained in his Parable of the Vineyard in Matthew 21:33-46.
This should come as no surprise since the land
itself never belonged to the Jewish people in the first place.
According to Leviticus 25:23,
the land wasn’t given to the Jewish people forever. It was conditionally
promised to them for as long as they remained faithful to God:
'The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers.” – [Lev. 23:23]
And: Leviticus 20:22 says:
'The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers.” – [Lev. 23:23]
And: Leviticus 20:22 says:
"'Keep all my decrees and laws and follow them, so that the
land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out.”
So, the Jewish people are a beautiful people, and
they are still dearly loved of God. But if they continue to reject Jesus as the
Messiah, then they are not “Israel”, they are separated from God, and "antichrist", according to 1 John
2:22:
We, like Paul, may continue to pray that they
might embrace the Good News that their Messiah has already come and follow the
path of Jesus. We may even wish that we would be accursed so that they might be
saved [if that were possible].
But until they follow Jesus, they are not Israel.
Jesus makes
us Israel, and only Jesus.
-kg
No comments:
Post a Comment