Grafted-In, Pt 3: Who is Israel?

Romans 9:6-8                              6It is not as though God’s word had failed.  For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.  7Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children.  On the contrary, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.”  8In other words, it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.

Genesis 21:11-13                         9But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking, 10and she said to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”  11The matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son.  12But God said to him, “Do not be so distressed about the boy and your slave woman.  Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.  13I will make the son of the slave into a nation also, because he is your offspring.”

God’s Word has not failed

God has had a plan from eternity past to bless his people and through them to bless the world.  We know now that this blessing was through the line of Abraham which would ultimately produce the human side of Jesus.  God had promised Abraham that the world would be blessed through his offspring which would be “more numerous than the stars in the sky”.  Families were large back then, so if you think about it you realize that the bulk of Abrham’s descendants would not be part of the blessing.  If the blessing came through one of the children, then the others would simply watch from the sidelines.  Normally inheritance came to the first-born son, but in this case this tradition was ignored.

At the time of God’s promise to Abraham, he was 75 and Sarah was 90.  She was long beyond childbearing age, so it must have seemed as if the prophecy was nonsense.  Abraham took matters into his own hands, not trusting God, had relations with Sarah’s handmaiden Hagar, and produced the first-born son Ishmael.  Twenty-five years later, when the parents were 100 and 115, Isaac was born and it was he, not first-born Ishmael, who carried the blessing promised by God.

Descendants, children, and offspring

The conclusion to be drawn here is that there is a difference between ‘descendant’ and ‘child’.  Both Isaac and Ishmael, and all the others, were Abraham’s children because Abraham was their physical father.  But descendant carries the connotation of ‘furtherance of intent’ or ‘seed of promise’.  This narrows the focus to just the line of Isaac.  But both Isaac and Ishmael and other Abrahamic children were to become Jews and part of the nation of Israel.  The implication, then, is that the ‘children of promise’, those through whom the Kingdom of God will advance, exist within the larger group that is physical Israel.  And thinking even further, it implies that those who join with Abraham in exercising faith in the Father of all Creation can join in with those children of promise through grafting in even though they may or may not be actual children of Abraham.

11Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— 12remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.  13But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. (Ephesians 2:11-13)

26So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, 27for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.   28There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  29If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. (Galatians 3:26-29)

Replacement theology

There is a bias in modern language, especially modern English, that new is better than old.  So, it is said, the ‘New’ Testament is better than and replaces the ‘Old’.  From this, over the centuries, developed a heretical teaching that the Church, established by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, has replaced, or superseded, Israel as the means though which God brings his blessings to the world.  This heresy holds that the blessings promised to Israel are removed from her and given to the church, but, of course, no conversation is given to the removal of the curses levied against Israel for her idolatry or immoral behavior.  They don’t seem to have transferred to the Church.

33“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD.  “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.  I will be their God, and they will be my people.  34No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” (Jeremiah 31:33-34)

Just a few verses before, God calls this a ‘new’ covenant unlike the previous covenant broken by Israel.  But ancient Hebrew treats new as ‘fresh’ or ‘different’ not necessarily ‘replacing’ so the Jeremiah verse can be seen as a different way of expressing an old covenant.  In Hebrews 8:13, the problem is further confounded:

13By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear. (Hebrew 8:13)

What proponents of Replacement Theology fail to understand is that there is nothing ‘new’ here.  God is narrowing his focus though to the individual; rather than expressing the promise nationally through a corporate relationship called the Law, he is expressing it now through individual relationship with each believer through faith.

This is the basis for being grafted in.  We now, as individuals, have relationship with God the Father through God the Son.  We have the privilege of joining in, as spiritual descendants and offspring of Abraham, to the promises and blessings of Israel because of our obedience to his Son and his precepts.  But we also have the consequence coming from rejection or failing to obey.

What about me?

In Romans 10:4 Paul uses the Greek word telos which can mean either ‘end’ or ‘goal’.  Many translations use ‘end’, but NIV gets it right when it says,

4Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.

This is one of the verses used, because of mistranslation, to through away the Old Testament, and discriminate against the Jews.

You have a choice.  You can accept only what is in the New Testament, or you can allow yourself to be grafted into the true Israel.  The true Israel is those, whether children of Abraham or not, who join with the remnant of Israel within the larger Israel, who strive through both faith and works to further the Kingdom of God.  It is a grand and wonderful opportunity to join into God’s eternal plan for the salvation of all mankind.