Some months ago, the Christian doctrine of “ordo amoris” (the order of loves) made its way into mainstream discussion after J. D. Vance invoked it in an interview on the immigration issue. Now, something similar is happening with another Christian doctrine, God’s covenant with Israel, after a Ted Cruz interview with Tucker Carlson.
The issue is this: Is the modern nation state of Israel theologically and prophetically significant? Who are the covenant people of God today? Cruz invoked Genesis 12:3 to claim we are biblically obligated to support Israel if we seek God’s blessing — and we will be cursed if we do not support Israel, militarily and otherwise. But is that really so? Is the modern nation state of Israel the subject of Genesis 12:3? The question is not as straightforward as it might seem. After all, the apostle Paul says in Romans 9:6 that “not all who are Israel are Israel.”
Cruz’s views have been shaped by a school of theological thought called dispensationalism. While dispensationalism does not enjoy nearly the widespread acceptance it once had among American evangelicals, it is still very popular and has certainly made its mark on American foreign policy. Dispensationalism is a relative novelty in terms of church history — it only traces back as far as the 19th century, when it was first systematized and promoted by John Nelson Darby and the Plymouth Brethren. Its popularity is a distinctly American phenomenon, accelerating especially after the modern nation of Israel was established in 1948.
Dispensationalism became hugely influential through study Bibles (Scofield and Ryrie especially), end times charts, and the Left Behind book series. As a theological system, dispensationalism is defined primarily by maintaining a sharp distinction between Israel and the church. God has distinct plans for Jews and Gentiles. He has an earthly people with land promises (Israel) and a heavenly people with spiritual promises (the church). In dispensationalism, the church is a kind of “plan B,” a parenthesis unforeseen from the perspective of Old Testament prophets. Dispensationalism is a form of Zionism, holding that the Jews are the key to God’s purposes, and it is vital for Israel to be in the land promised to Abraham.
Dispensationalism was a significant departure from the more historic view of Israel’s relationship to the church, known as covenant theology. Covenant theology has been most fully developed in the Reformed tradition and teaches that Old Covenant Israel stands in fundamental continuity with the New Covenant church. The Bible tells one story, from beginning to end; God has one people sharing a common salvation; and the unity of God’s saving plan is found in Christ, who unites Jew and Gentile in Himself. Covenant theologians claim the church is the new and true Israel — the “Israel of God,” as Paul puts it in Galatians 6:16. Covenant theologians point to passages like Romans 4 and Galatians 3 to demonstrate that those who trust in Christ are the true children of Abraham.
Children of Abraham
The real point at issue between dispensationalism and covenant theology is precisely the question Paul seeks to answer in Romans 4. Paul opens the chapter asking about Abraham’s fatherhood. Who are the children of Abraham?
Paul answers in verses 11-12: Abraham is the father of the circumcised who have faith in Jesus (Jewish believers) and of the uncircumcised who have faith in Jesus (Gentile believers). Together, all believers form the one family of Abraham. In this way, Paul explains, the promise of Genesis 12, that all the families and nations of the Earth would be blessed in Abraham, comes to pass. Abraham becomes the heir of the world, just as God promised — the father of a worldwide, multinational family of faith.
In other words, the song many of us learned in Sunday school (Cruz excepted, apparently) is exactly right:
Father Abraham had many sons.
Many sons had Father Abraham.
I am one of them, and so are you,
So let’s just praise the Lord!
If believers are the family of Abraham, then it follows that believers are also the true Israel.
Galatians 3 deals with the same issue even more explicitly. In 3:16, Paul says the promises were spoken to “Abraham and his Seed. … He does not say, ‘And to your seeds,’ as of many, but as of one, ‘And to your Seed,’ who is Christ.”
In other words, Christ is the promised Seed of Abraham, and so all the Abrahamic blessings are found in Him, and Him alone. Jesus is the true Israel. The Seed in view in 3:16 is probably not just Christ but totus Christus, head and body, Christ and those who belong to Him by faith. The point is that there is one Messiah and one Messianic people, one true and perfect Son of Abraham, and one family of redeemed sinners in Him.
Thus, according to Galatians, the blessing of Genesis 12 comes upon those who bless Jesus, and the curse comes upon those who curse Jesus. Because there is only one Seed, there is no other place to find the promised blessing. God’s plan was to use Abraham’s family to bring the promised Seed into the world, and through that Seed, God would form the one worldwide family promised to Abraham. There is neither Jew nor Greek in Christ (Galatians 3:28); those who are united to Christ are the true Israel. Paul finishes off the argument in verse 29 in the most definitive way possible: “If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”
Of course, that raises the question: Gentiles can be incorporated into Abraham’s family by faith, but what about the natural descendants of Abraham who rejected (and continue to reject) Jesus as the promised Christ? How can we say God keeps his promises if the actual flesh and blood descendants of Abraham are cut off from their own Messiah?
Paul wrestles with that question in Romans 9-11. Without going into all the details, Paul makes several key points. He explains that “not all who are Israel are Israel” (9:6) — which counters Cruz’s argument that “Israel” must refer solely to modern-day Jews.
Paul goes on to explain that there was a partial and temporary hardening of Israel, which was necessary in God’s saving plan: By rejecting and crucifying Jesus, salvation for the nations was accomplished. Jews have been cast off and will remain cast off so long as they remain in unbelief. But they will not be cast off forever.
In Romans 11, Paul explains that there is one covenant people existing in history, represented by the olive tree in his metaphor. The New Covenant did not entail planting a new tree, but rather a pruning out and grafting in process of the one covenant tree already established. The natural branches, children of Abraham after the flesh, are broken out of the tree if they do not believe in Jesus, which happened en masse in the first century. Gentiles, the wild olive branches, can be grafted into the tree by faith. There is one tree, one people, one covenant, one family. But the identity of that family is determined by faith. So long as the fleshly descendants of Abraham remain in unbelief, they are broken-out branches. But Paul anticipates a day when they will be grafted back in, which means they will be brought to faith in Jesus.
Consider some other clues. In Matthew 3, John the Baptist warns those who boast in descending from Abraham that Abrahamic blood does not make them immune to judgment; they must repent and bear good fruit, or else they will be cut down in judgment. In John 8, the Pharisees boast that Abraham is their father, but Jesus says they are children of the Devil. If they were truly Abraham’s children, they would share Abraham’s faith and rejoice in Jesus. In Romans 2, Paul says true Jews are those who have the Spirit. In Revelation 2, we find some who claim to be Jews are not, and their synagogues have become synagogues of Satan.
In Ephesians 2, Paul shows that believing Jews and Gentiles are now one people. Gentiles who used to be “aliens to the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise,” have now been “brought near by the blood of Christ.” Describing this New Covenant Jew/Gentile unity in the church, Paul says Christ “has made the two one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation … to create in himself one new man from the two, thus making peace. … Now therefore you [Gentile believers] are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God … being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:14-22).
In 1 Peter 2:4-9, Peter takes several titles and descriptions of Old Covenant Israel and applies them to the Jew/Gentile church: The church is God’s chosen people, His royal priesthood, and His holy nation (2:9).
Not a ‘Replacement’
Some dispensationalists accuse covenant theologians of holding to “replacement theology,” that the church has replaced Israel. But that’s not quite right. The church is not the replacement of Old Covenant Israel, but the fulfillment of Old Covenant Israel and the promises God made through the prophets. The New Testament continually appeals to Old Testament prophecies to explain what is happening in the mission and ministry of the church (e.g., Isaiah 49:6 in Acts 13:47, Amos 9:11-12 in Acts 15:15-17, etc.).
The church is not a plan B or a parenthesis in God’s plan; the church is the full realization of God’s saving plan for the nations. The church is Israel expanded, transformed, matured, and renewed. The only way Jews and Gentiles can be saved is by trusting in Jesus as the sin-bearing Messiah and entering into His body and bride, the church. If Jews have some promised blessing not available to Gentiles, or if Gentiles receive some blessing not also given to Jews, then the unity of our salvation in Jesus is disrupted. In Christ, we all have the same promises, the same salvation, the same status, and the same glorious inheritance. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1, all the promises of God are “yes” and “Amen” in Him.
Jesus does make it sound as if the church will take Israel’s place in Matthew 21, in explaining the parable of the wicked vinedressers. Jesus says to the Jewish leaders, “[T]he kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people bearing the fruits of it” (21:43). But the taking-and-giving transition described here is not one of simple replacement; it is the same pruning-and-grafting process Paul describes in Romans 11. Jesus is saying those Jews who reject him and kill him will be judged. This judgment will culminate with the destruction of their temple, which Jesus prophesied in Matthew 23-24, and which took place in 70 A.D. The kingdom will belong to all who receive Jesus as King and follow Him with an obedient faith.
What does all this mean for the modern nation state of Israel? Whatever we think about the future God has promised for Israel (and, as indicated, Romans 11 seems to suggest Jews will be grafted back into the covenant tree at some future point), there is no sense in which the reestablishment of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people in 1948 fulfills prophecy. There are no promises or blessings given to Israel under the New Covenant that are not also given to Gentiles.
But more to the point, so long as most Jews living in the land today reject Jesus, their presence there in no way indicates God’s covenant blessing or the fulfillment of a covenant promise. The modern nation of Israel is a secular state that rejects the gospel. The vast majority of Jews living in Israel today are broken-out branches, not connected with Christ or the covenant people of God. As Paul says, “Concerning the gospel, they are enemies” (Romans 11:28) — enemies with a future, yes, but still enemies for now.
All of this is the straightforward teaching of Scripture, grounded in a broad tradition of Christian theology. The whole claim here is that Jesus is the true Semite, and in union with Him, all believers, Jew and Gentile, can experience God’s gracious salvation and become a single covenant family. The entire Old Testament bears witness to Jesus as the promised Savior and King; in other words, the Old Testament is Christian. We do not have to Christianize it; it is always and already about Jesus Christ (Luke 24).
This is what dispensationalism misses. Modern Judaism must be considered an idolatrous faith, and the modern secular nation of Israel is in no sense God’s covenant people. Unbelieving Jews do not worship the same God Christians worship because, as Scripture teaches, if you reject the Son, you also reject the Father (Matthew 10:33; 1 John 2:23; and Galatians 4:8-10, which compares returning to Judaism as equivalent to returning to paganism).
A Paradigm Shift
Cruz is simply wrong. There is no sense in which Christians, or America, owe the modern nation of Israel unconditional support. This may require a difficult and shocking paradigm shift for many American Christians, but it’s a shift that absolutely must happen. If we want the blessing of Genesis 12, we must bless Christ and His church.
Thus the weird obsession with Israel has to end. Recently, a Department of State spokeswoman said America is “next to Israel” in terms of national greatness. Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., claimed the first time he shook hands with Netanyahu, he did not wash his hand until he could touch the heads of his children. Many evangelical American political leaders have boasted, “I stand with Israel.”
This is bizarre and misguided. The modern nation of Israel should not be treated as theologically “special.”
The true Israel of God is not located on a strip of land in the Middle East. It is not launching missiles at Iran or hiding behind an Iron Dome. The true Israel is gathering to worship the Triune God at a church near you this Sunday. The true Israel finds her identity in the preaching of the gospel, the waters of baptism, and the celebration of the Eucharist. The true Israel is a blood-bought, Spirit-filled communion drawn from every nation, tribe, tongue, and people. The Israel of God advances her mission not with tanks, jet fighters, and machine guns, but by declaring Jesus to be the promised Prince of Peace and embodying His kingdom in lives of service, wisdom, and love.
Want to stand with Israel? Great, take your stand with Jesus and His church!