Is There a Future for Israel?
— Friday, January 9th, 2009 —
All Christians everywhere believe in a future for Israel.
Where Christians disagree is on is exactly who Israel is.
Dispensationalists insist that Romans 9-11 reaffirms the OT covenant promises to Abraham’s genetic descendants-promises of a rebuilt temple, a restored theocracy, and reclaimed geography. For dispensational premillennialists, this is a primary purpose of the Millennium-ethnic Israel is reconstituted as a political state and serves as a mediator of God’s blessings to the rest of the nations. Some dispensationalists further argue that this future for Israel demands current support for Israeli claims to all of what once was Canaan-along with virtual carte blanche support for Israeli policies since “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse” (Gen 12:3).
Covenant theologians argue that the future restoration of Israel will be fulfilled-but fulfilled in the church, a largely Gentile body that has “replaced” the Jewish theocracy since the nation rejected her Messiah at Jesus’ first advent. Covenant theology then (quite wrongly) sees great continuity between Old Testament Israel and the new covenant church-both are mixed bodies of regenerate and unregenerate members (believers and their children), and the sign of circumcision is replaced with the sign of baptism (and, like circumcision applied to new converts and to covenant children).
Both covenant theology and dispensationalism, however, often discuss Israel and the church without taking into account the Christocentric nature of biblical eschatology. The future restoration of Israel has never been promised to the unfaithful, unregenerate members of the nation (John 3:3-10; Rom 2:25-29)-only to the faithful remnant.
The church is not Israel, at least not in a direct, unmediated sense. The remnant of Israel-a biological descendant of Abraham, a circumcised Jewish firstborn son who is approved of by God for his obedience to the covenant-receives all of the promises due to him.
Israel is Jesus of Nazareth, who, as promised to Israel, is raised from the dead and marked out with the Spirit (Ezek 37:13-14; Rom 1:2-4). All the promises of God “find their Yes in him” (2 Cor 1:20), as Paul puts it, and this yes establishes a Jew like Paul with Gentiles like the Corinthians “in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee” (2 Cor 1:21-22). The Spirit guarantees what? It guarantees that all who share the Spirit of Christ are “joint heirs with Christ” of his promised inheritance (Rom 8:17 NKJV).
This is the radical nature of the gospel in the New Testament. Dispensationalists are right that only ethnic Jews receive the promised future restoration, but Paul makes clear that the “seed of Abraham” is singular, not plural (Gal 3:16). Only the circumcised can inherit the promised future for Israel. All believers-Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female-are forensically Jewish firstborn sons of God (Gal 3:28). They are in Christ. Circumcision is not irrelevant. Instead, both Jews and Gentiles in Christ are “the circumcision” because they have “the circumcision of Christ” (Col 2:11-12).
In Christ, I inherit all the promises due to Abraham’s offspring because I am “hidden” in Abraham’s promised offspring so that everything that is true of him is true of me. As Paul puts it, “Christ is all and in all” (Col 3:11). It is not that God changes his mind about a rebuilt Temple. He fulfills it-in the temple of Christ’s body, a temple Jesus builds with living stones.
The future of Israel then does belong to Gentile believers but only because they are in union with a Jewish Messiah. Paul speaks of a future conversion of Jewish people but he is careful to denote this salvation as the growth of a single olive vine with a Jewish root-with a grafting on now of Gentiles and a future grafting on of more Jews. The church, as Israel was promised, does now “bear fruit”-the fruits of the Spirit (Gal 5)-but it does so only because Jesus is the vine of Israel. We share his inheritance because we are the branches, united to him by faith (John 15:1-11).
Is there a future for Israel? Yes. Does this future mean material and political blessings? Yes. Does this future mean the granting of all the land promised to Abraham in Canaan? Yes, along with the entire rest of the cosmos (Rom 4:13). Does this promise apply to ethnic Jews? Yes, one ethnic Jew whose name is Jesus. Do Gentile believers share in this inheritance? Yes, if they are in Christ, one-flesh with him through faith (Eph 5:22-33), they receive the inheritance that belongs to him (Eph 1:11).
Amen! This has to be the proper view if we want to consider ourselves people of the New Testament. I don’t understand the view that seems so prevalent in SBC(as well as other)circles that sees two classes of God’s people, Jews and Christians. Thank you for your post.
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Thank you Dr. Moore! My wife and I have recently been discussing this and I haven’t been able to put that concept in quite so eloquent of terms. But it is so wonderful to know that the gospel is in the center of all of theology, even Revelation and the Old Testament. Keep the great articles coming!
Grace and Peace,
Jeff
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Beloved brother Moore,
Thank you.
You have said it well. It is ALL about Unity IN Messiah.
I have found in my limited studies much difficulty with all the Established Escathologies, whether of my Reformed brethren, of the Dispensational brethren or of the others.
I am glad to be one with Christ and thus to know that all His promises to ALL His people are established in Him for me and ALL His children equally, whether Jew or Gentile.
I am just grateful that I am also grafted in by grace Alone through Faith Alone, in Messiah Alone, for our Triune YAHWEH’s glory Alone.
Your brother & servant in service with the Gospel of grace Alone
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I first came across this teaching in your book “The Kingdom of Christ”. I find it fascinating, and as a young SBC pastor, who was raised in a dispensational fundamentalist church, I find it to be the most sensible understanding of the Old Testament promises toward Israel. In all things, a Christocentric focus helps to clarify the issue. God bless you and your ministry.
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Dr. Moore,
You theological beast! You’ve done it again w/ a fantastic little article on a topic that is one that I am very interested in and passionate about! Funny, but I popped in MacArthur’s first “talk” at Shepherd’s Conference ‘07 a few days ago in my car (entitled something like, “Why every Calvinist is a premillinialist”) - not b/c I like it, but b/c I think it’s so ridiculously argued (hermeneutically) and I want to analyze his thinking. He sets up so many “straw men” and knocks them over that I feel like I’m watching Scarecrow in the “Wizard of Oz” get torn apart, not to mention his ad hominem attacks, too. I love Johnny Mac, b/c he had a HUGE impact upon my life in the 1990’s (ate up his tapes like potato chips), but he’s downright awful on that topic. Maybe next time Dr. Mohler can’t make it to Shepherd’s, you can fill in for him and preach a sermon entitled, “Why every Calvinist Uses a Christocentric Hermeneutic.” That’d be sweet!
(I think if I ever did a Ph.D., it’d definitely be on the topic concerning which you wrote in this article.)
Thank you for teaching me to think with a Christocentric hermeneutic while at Southern, showing me how to do so through your teaching/preaching while under you in both the classroom and 9th & O.
Brother, you’re da’ man!
In the grip of the gospel,
Ryan Gold
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Dr. Moore, this is why you’re one of my favorite teachers! Thanks for your clear headed teaching on this subject. I’m an assistant pastor and had to deal with both a Dispensational Messianic Jew and a Reformed Paedo Baptist in my congregation. The first believed that Jewish DNA automatically made someone one of God’s People. The other believed that children born of believing parents and baptized as babies were automatically a part of the People of God.
As I studied through both views I was amazed because I found myself debating both points of view in almost the same way using almost the same scriptures. The bottom line when dealing with both points of view is to ask the question, “Who are the children of God?” Genetic Jews? Baptized babies? John answers this question clearly:
“But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:12-13)
We are sons of God due to our connection to the Son of God. Amem to every word you said Dr. Moore!
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Demer, I just had another pastor tell me about a similar situation in his church, with a kind of contemporary Galatian heresy about Jewish ethnicity, food laws, circumcision, etc. Let’s hope this doesn’t become more widespread. Blessings to your ministry.
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Ryan, I am glad that, as of just a few weeks ago, I now know that “you beast” is a compliment! I suppose I’ve spent too much time in Revelation 13….and Genesis 3.
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Dr. Moore,
In your last paragraph, you mentioned that there are political blessings for Israel. Can you elaborate on that in light of your Christocentric hermeneutic? In other words, what are the specific political blessings?
Andrew
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Too few recognize that the Name of Israel belongs to the Son. His people called by his name are Israel’s children. Many passages either explicitly or implicitly call the first born by His name and go a long way in explaining the meaning of the name given to his children in John 17. He is not divided. Particularly, his children which are given to him form one body. And they are those who were given to him, who were in Him, in covenant with the Father. That body is intimately connected to his incarnation. And further, it does not part from him when he goes to the cross and it is the same body which was resurrected.
Quite to the contrary to the claims of many today, the children “were” crucified with Him (Paul), being in Him, just as the Seed, was in Abraham, or as Hebrews intends, Levi paid tithes through Abraham (the father of the multitude in whom the Seed was from whom the seed is derived.
Particular atonement is attacked as not taught in Scripture. Dividing out of Christ those for whom he was incarnated, those for whom he was crucified, though, strips from Him the essence of the meaning of his name. He is the Head of His body and there are no other members of it that went to the cross. Once the integrity of Israel is broken, and the body of Christ becomes some for whom Christ died who were not in Him at Calvary, the bifurcation will result in a non-Christocentric hermenuetic. Then it becomes about what we do to inherit -what a contradiction in terms. The only view that can maintain Christocentricity, is limited atonement.
Is there a true Israel and a false one? There are many anti-christs. There are many who go out from us, many who came out of Egypt only to fall in the rebellion. How is it that the promise is only found in Israel? Why are there two different circumcisions; one of Promise received and one of promise to come? How is it that the Promise is a person, not persons, but persons are who make up the Promise? And how is it then that a covenant (promise) includes those for whom it was never intended?
Jesus is the firstborn among the dead. He is the first and only Son who in bringing many sons to glory was perfected and by that perfected, past tense, those who are being save. Which means, when a Southern Baptist is baptized without the knowledge that it was because he “was” crucified with Christ, and merely thinks that his acceptation of Christ is what places him there as opposed to the eternal covenant made with Israel, his baptism is founded not upon the Jesus of the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection, another Christ. No wonder then that they amount to nothing more than baptized infants having never come to a knowledge of the Son.
The nation of Israel believed they were Israel. The church thinks that it is. But Scripture reveals to us that we have been adopted and that by promise. There is one Israel, and he has given us his name because we were given to him as a promised inheritance. Again, inheritance does not include in the terms of it any provision for anything which is not intended in it, nor for anyone whose name is not written in it.
Israel is the Lamb whose name is written in the Lamb’s book of Life. We must then be careful how we transcribe it lest he comes and finds additions to it which do not belong. For then he will remove those names and subtract from them the blessings and add to them, just as they have added to Him, the curses found in it.
Is there a future for Israel? I think that in any case, no matter what one thinks of who Israel is, throughout Scripture there has always been the types, anti-types, and proto-types, shades, shadows, and usurpers. The final day will reveal the truth, who is the real Israel, and who is not, who is the wheat and who are the tares, but we can be assured that there is a future for Israel. Can it be political? I believe in either case, the end portends political isolation for Israel, be it His body, or a mere representation of it.
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Yes, but I have always heard it argued : (a) Romans 11 seems to point to national Israel’s being restored to full faith in Christ at some future point, probably at Christ’s return; and (b) it still seems to be part, in some way, of God’s purposes in the future, unsaved and unregenerate as it now is. Views/clarification?
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Fascinating article. I agree with the Christocentricity of it. Thanks for sharing this. I’m interested in hearing you develop this view more. If I’m not mistaken, you do this in “The Kingdom of Christ: The New Evangelical Perspective”.
Recently I’ve tried to tackle some of these issues at my blog. I stress a Christological, redemptive historical interpretation of the Old Testament, and I lean toward covenant theology in many respects. Again I greatly appreciate how much you said in this succinct post.
Regarding Romans 11, I recently read O. Palmer Robertson’s book “The Israel of God: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow”. He argues that Romans 11 is not teaching a far flung eschatology but focuses on what was happening in Paul’s day, with Paul himself as one of the proofs that God hadn’t rejected Israel. Robertson’s chapter on Romans 11 is worth a look.
Blessings in Christ,
Bob Hayton
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