Who is Israel in the NT

The true Israel

Warm-up: Have you ever had the chance to visit Israel? What fascinates you about this country and its people?

Background: To rightly interpret Scripture in general, and the book of Revelation in particular, it is necessary to realize that both the Old and New Testament make an important distinction between a ‘spiritual’ Israel and Israel as a nation: While the latter comprises the biological offspring of Abraham through the line of Jacob (Israel, Gen 32:28), irrespective of what they do or don’t believe, the spiritual ‘Israel’ includes everyone who walks in the faith of Abraham, whether Jew or Gentile. E.g. the OT prophet Isaiah twice distinguished between them within the same sentence when he called the former “the people” (Isa 42:6) or “the tribes of Jacob” (Isa 49:6) and the latter “Israel, my Servant” (Isa 42:1; 49:3), i.e. the Servant of the Lord who will gather and bring back into Himself from the people the “ones He kept”, in one body together with Gentiles. When trying to interpret Biblical prophecy and its theology, a cardinal mistake is to ignore this distinction and thereby jumble together and confuse everything the Bible has to say about each of them. To explore further what the Bible reveals about this mystery, start by asking:

1) For whom was Jesus born at his first coming? What did devout Jews in Israel think about that, e.g. according to the song of Mary (Lk 1:54 Israel), or Zechariah (Lk 1:68 “his people”), or Simeon (Lk 2:28-32)? 

  • What was their understanding of who is Israel?
    • Does this mean that the calling of the Gentiles was only God’s plan B? Or does he have two separate plans of salvation for Jews and Gentiles?
  • What did Jesus say about that? cf Jn 1:47; 10:14-16
    • How many flocks did he come to shepherd? cf Jn 17:21

2) What makes someone a ‘true’ Israelite according to Jesus?

  • Compare Jn 1:47 and Jn 8:31-41 => Who is not a true Israelite, and who is?
  • Read Isa 49:5-6.  => Whom did the OT prophet Isaiah consider to be “the true Israel”?
    • Who is this “Servant of the Lord”? Why can it not possibly refer to the tribes of Israel Jacob? Hint: How could Jacob bring himself back to himself?
    • cf Mt 8:17, a quote from Isa 53: Implies that He is the ‘Servant Israel’ that Isaiah wrote about.
    • cf Mt 12:50, Jesus and ‘his brothers’
    • cf Gal 3:16, Jesus is the (singular) promised offspring of Abraham

3) How did the apostle Paul define a Jew, and why?

  • cf Ro 2:28-29 => Did Paul make up this theory by himself?
    • Read Deut 10:14-17; Jer 9:25-26: => Those of Israel who are ‘uncircumcised of heart’ remain under God’s wrath
    • What is ‘circumcision of the heart’? How is it an appropriate metaphor for genuine conversion? [By the Spirit: Not by human hands, Eph 2:9, but by the sharpness of his word our ‘nakedness’ is exposed before the eyes of God: Heb 4:12-13. Redemption and purification of God’s ‘Israel’ is not without the shedding of blood: Ex 4:23-26; Heb 9:14]

4) By the time we come to the book of Acts, how did apostles other than Paul define who are God’s people in the NT era?

  • Read Acts 3:17-23 Here, Peter quoted from the Septuagint translation of Deut 18:17-19 from Hebrew into Greek: “Whatever man shall not listen to every word that this prophet shall speak in my name, I will take vengeance on him.” Clearly, Peter in v23 interpreted that this “vengeance” in Deut 18:19 means to be “…completely cut off from The People”. How would you explain that Peter arrived at this radical interpretation? cf Jer 4:4

5) Since both the NT and OT exclude Jews from Israel as God’s people who have an “uncircumcised heart” and reject Jesus, who then is left as God’s people?

  • Read Acts 15:15-18 -> What did the apostle James mean by “God’s promise to the house of David“, and how/in whom did he see it being fulfilled?
  • cf Heb 8:7-9, a quote from Jer 31:33 which explicitly addressed Israel, the house of Judah. To whom did the author of Hebrews apply it?

6) The first Christians who were all Jews struggled to grasp that the re-built “house of David” will include the Gentiles. This can be seen e.g. in Acts 11:2, where Peter was criticized by some fellow believers that he mingled with non-Jews over a meal. Similarly, when Peter witnessed the Spirit baptism of the household of Cornelius in Acts 10, this was a big deal. Why?

  • What excluded non-Jews from the promise to Israel until Jesus came? cf Eph 2:11-15
  • How did the coming of Jesus put an end to this distinction?
    • Did Gentiles replace the Jews as the true Israel of God? Why not?
    • Read Eph 2:15-16 => How does this differ from a replacement theory that Gentiles replaced Jews as God’s people? cf Gal 3:26-28

7) Personal and application

  • What do you conclude: Is it right to consider yourselves part of the true Israel and entitled to its promises if you follow Jesus, even if you are not of Jewish descent and do not live in Palestine? Why or why not?
  • Do you think that God still has a plan also for Jews who are Israelites by physical descent?
    • Especially Ro 11 (another chapter…) teaches that God can (and will) graft the Jews back into the root of the olive tree from which they have been cut off in the past as a nation. How do you expect this might happen or look like?
    • Do you think that our views on these questions are of any practical (or even political) relevance? Why or why not?

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.