Theology Thursday: Israel

Theology is the study of God, his relation to the world, and our relation to him.

Welcome to Theology Thursday!

Today’s question:
Is 2024 Israel the same Israel from the Bible?

Pastor Brady’s thoughts:
The current State of Israel, founded or “re-established” - depending on your view of geopolitical history - in 1948, clearly has a racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious heritage connected to the Israelite/Hebrew/Jewish people we read about in the Bible and with whom God established his original, pre-Christ covenants.

But does this mean present-day Israel is the inheritor of God’s promised deliverance, and does it share the Old Testament Israelites’ status as God’s covenantal chosen people?

(“Covenant” means “promise.” In the biblical sense, it’s a divine blending of both law and love. It’s a relationship more intimate and loving than a legal contract, yet it’s also more enduring and binding than mere personal affection. And it’s mutual. When God makes a covenant with his people, he promises his eternal presence and invites their participation in his glory, but in both the Old and New Testaments he expects his adopted children to honor him through obedience and the pursuit of holiness.)

This topic matters because it has implications for how we think of the New Testament’s relationship with the Old Testament, how we think of God’s plan for ultimate personal and creational redemption, and how we think of the saving work of Christ Jesus (to say nothing of how we think of modern day politics and foreign policy!).
 
First, let’s declare that God did indeed elevate a specific people to special status as God’s chosen people and bestowed upon them a special purpose. Through the Jewish people, under the covenant he established with Abraham (Genesis 12:1-13), and then with Abraham’s son Isaac (Genesis 21:12; 26:3–4) and then with Isaac’s son Jacob (Genesis 28:14–15), God would work out his plan of salvation.

(God actually changed Jacob’s name to Israel to signify this special promise.)

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession. (Deuteronomy 7:6)

God’s promises to his people included land, many descendents, and other blessings. The ultimate goal of God’s choice of the Jews as His chosen people was to produce the Messiah, Jesus Christ, who would be the savior of the world.

Before Christ, the path to salvation included obedience to God through faithful observance of his commandments. Throughout the Old Testament, faithful Jews (including not just biological Jews but those who converted) came to salvation because they believed that God would someday rectify their sin problem. Today, Christians believe he did rectify our sin problem, through Jesus’s sinless life and atoning death on the cross (John 3:16; Hebrews 9:28).

Second, let’s declare that Jesus did indeed fulfill that original promise and establish a new covenant under which all people who believe in his saving work on the cross are recipients of the grace of God.

This was always God’s plan. Jeremiah 31:31-34 prophesied the coming of a new and different covenant: “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel…”

And Jesus declared that this New Covenant was established with his own blood in Luke 22:20:  In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.”

Consider Paul’s sermon in a synagogue in Pisidian Antioch:

We tell you the good news: What God promised our ancestors he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. (Acts 13:32-33).

Then there is Paul’s alignment of God’s divine promises with Jesus:

For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. (2 Corinthians 1:20).

So, perhaps a better way of asking our original question is: what became of the biblical Israel upon Jesus’s incarnation and his fulfillment of the old covenant? The same salvific scenario as is present today: believers in Jesus were/are saved; those who reject Jesus weren’t/aren’t.

The inheritance which was promised to Israel finds its fulfillment in Christ, the kingdom of Christ, and the new creation over which Christ reigns with his church. From this we can conclude there is no fulfillment of scriptural hopes for modern-day Israel’s restoration outside of Christ or apart from Christ.

Christianity is centered around something that happened, something that happened to and through Christ Jesus.

Bible scholar N.T. Wright says: “Christianity is all about the belief that the living God, in fulfillment of his promises and as the climax of the story of Israel, has accomplished all this - the finding, the saving, the giving of new life - in Jesus.”

God has still elevated a specific people to special status as chosen people and bestowed upon them a special purpose. But those people are not ethnic Jews in the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob anymore, but all who claim Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

Adding reasoning outside of the purely theological realm, scholar Mike Bird argues: “I hasten to add that Israel is a secular state, it is not a theocracy. There is no temple, no high priest, and no Davidic king. In fact, Israel is a liberal democracy, with gay pride parades, religious freedom (with degrees of religious discrimination), and Israel is yet to reach a settlement with its Palestinian neighbors in Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank. Thus, to see in the Israeli State biblical tropes or realized hopes is, I believe, misdirected.”

So, our answer is no. 2024 Israel - or modern-day Jews living outside of the State of Israel, for that matter - is not a nation or a people chosen by God (except for any current ethnic Jews who, by grace through faith, have been saved!). We may be “pro-Israel” for various political reasons, but we needn’t elevate them above any other people group in terms of our understanding of the state of their souls or relationship with God.

We should consider them as we do any others in our world who have not been washed clean by the blood of the Lamb: as sinners in need of a Savior.

The modern State of Israel is not the heritage of God’s family, the church is. Christians are.  

As with all matters of historical and religious reality, Jesus changes everything.

To know Him and to make Him known!
- Pastor Brady

Have a question for Theology Thursday? Send an email to minierccstaff@gmail.com and we'll respond, or we'll include in a future Theology Thursday Buffet.