Israel & the Church

Every time the Middle East is in the news, my feed fills up with the same claim: Christians must support whatever the modern State of Israel does, because Israel is God's chosen people, and Genesis 12 says God blesses those who bless Israel.

I get why that sounds right. It's got Bible verses attached to it. It sounds bold and faithful.

And it's not coming from fringe voices. Some of the most well-known preachers in America teach it. John Hagee built an entire organization, Christians United for Israel, around it. Robert Jeffress preaches it from one of the most famous pulpits in Texas. Jack Hibbs, Greg Laurie, David Jeremiah, and Costi Hinn stand in that same tradition. And a generation before them, Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth and those Left Behind novels put this theology on millions of nightstands.

Even the late, great "Johnny Mac", John MacArthur, was also a dispensationalist, but he was notably more restrained about tying it to modern Israeli policy. So if you're a Christian you've probably heard a lot about modern day Israel that we need to talk about.

Let me say this clearly about the people I just referenced: I believe these men love Jesus. I believe they love the Bible. Many of them have done real good for the kingdom, and their instinct to stand against antisemitism is right and honorable. This isn't a post about villains.

But meaning well and reading well aren't the same thing. And on this one, I believe they're off. Not off on the Gospel. Off on how the story of Israel fits together. So I want to walk you through why. Not because I've gone soft on the Bible. Because I wanna take the Bible more seriously than that argument does.

AN INCORRECT ASSUMPTION

The whole thing rests on one assumption: that the modern State of Israel, founded in 1948, is the same thing as covenant Israel in Scripture.

But the New Testament never makes that identification.

The State of Israel is a modern nation. It deserves justice, security, and moral accountability, same as every other nation on the map. And let me be crystal clear: Jewish people must be defended against antisemitism, full stop. Antisemitism is evil. But opposing antisemitism doesn't require giving a modern government special covenant status, or a blank check.

WE'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE

If you my last blog post, "pick and choose" you already know the move Jesus makes. He takes the ceremonial law, the priest, the sacrifice, the temple, and He fulfills all of it in Himself. He takes the civil law of the theocratic nation of Israel and transforms it into a new nation, the church, gathered from every tribe and tongue.

This Israel question is that same principle, just one layer up.

The question isn't "did God break His promises to Israel?" The question is "how does God keep them?" And the answer is the same as it always is. He keeps them in Jesus.

JESUS IS THE TRUE ISRAEL

Here's the big thing the New Testament wants us to see: Jesus fulfills Israel's calling. Watch how carefully the Gospel writers line it up.

None of that is coincidence. It's the point. Jesus isn't just another Israelite. He's the faithful Israelite. He does what Israel couldn't do. That's why Paul can say God's promises were made to Abraham's "offspring," singular, meaning Christ (Galatians 3:16).

SO WHO'S IN THE FAMILY NOW?

Here's where it gets good for you and me.

"If you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise" (Galatians 3:29).

If you belong to Jesus, you're in the family. Believing Jews and believing Gentiles, together. We Gentiles didn't get a side covenant. We didn't become ethnic Jews. We got grafted into God's one covenant people through Israel's Messiah (Romans 11:17-24).

Peter even takes Israel's covenant titles, chosen race, royal priesthood, holy nation, and puts them on the multinational church (1 Peter 2:9). That's not me stretching a verse. That's Peter quoting Exodus 19 and applying it to a church full of Gentiles.

"SO IS GOD DONE WITH THE JEWISH PEOPLE?"

Absolutely not. And I want to be careful here, because this is exactly where folks think guys like me have gone wrong.

Paul spends three whole chapters on this, Romans 9 through 11, and his conclusion is that "all Israel will be saved" (Romans 11:26). God has not written off the Jewish people. There is a remnant now, and Paul looks ahead to a great future ingathering of Jewish believers. God keeps His word.

But notice how He keeps it: Jewish people who come to faith aren't saved by a separate track, off to the side, through their bloodline or their passport. They're saved the way anyone is saved. Through Jesus. And they're brought into the same church as everybody else. Every since Christ rose from the dead there's one Gospel and one "people of God". A restored Israel doesn't sit alongside the church as "a second people". Jewish believers are grafted back into their own olive tree (Romans 11:24) and Gentile believers are grafted in next to them.

And here's a detail I love. Even as Paul insists Jew and Gentile are one in the church, he never flattens them into sameness. He keeps, as one writer put it, an eye fixed on their distinct place in God's family. Oneness isn't erasure. The Jewish people remain precious to God, and He is still keeping promises to them, in Christ, inside His church.

So when someone says folks like me believe in "replacement theology," that God chucked Israel out the window and started over, that's not it. God didn't chop down one tree and plant a new one. There's one tree, rooted in His promises to Abraham. Unbelieving branches get broken off. Believers, Jew and Gentile, get grafted in. Same tree. Same story. Same Savior.

WHAT ABOUT "I WILL BLESS THOSE WHO BLESS YOU?" 

Read Genesis 12:3 all the way to the end. God promises that through Abraham, all the families of the earth will be blessed.

Paul tells us exactly what that means. He says that promise was the Gospel preached in advance, and it reaches the nations through Christ (Galatians 3:8, 14-16).

Genesis 12 is a promise about Jesus. It was never a timeless guarantee that Christians must endorse every policy of a future secular nation-state called "Israel". Turning Genesis 12 into a foreign policy proof text isn't taking the Bible literally. It's taking it out of its own story.

And can I be honest? The "take every word literally" folks are fun, because they'll swear up and down that Scripture means exactly what it says, no exceptions. Then Jesus says "I am the true vine," and you ask, real innocent, "So is our Lord a houseplant?" And suddenly, well, no, THAT one's a metaphor. Funny how the literal ones are always the other guy's verses.

WHERE THE COVENANT IDENTITY LIVES NOW

Jesus relocated everything around Himself.

Not ethnicity, but union with Christ.

Not possession of earthly territory, but inheritance of the renewed creation.

Not a national temple, but Christ and His Spirit-filled people.

Not warfare against flesh and blood, but Gospel witness among all nations.

SO HOW SHOULD WE THINK ABOUT THE MIDDLE EAST?

Here's the thing I most want you to hear. This whole conversation is about the salvation of the Jewish people, not about handing a modern government a blank check. Those are two completely different questions, and the popular teaching smashes them together.

So let's keep them apart.

We oppose hatred of Jewish people, because they bear God's image and because antisemitism is evil.

We love Palestinians, including our Palestinian brothers and sisters in Christ, for exactly the same reasons. And, yes, there are a LOT of eastern Christians in the region known as Palestine.

We pray for peace, and we hold every government, including Israel's and our own, to the standards of justice God requires of all nations. No nation gets a divine exemption from doing justice. Targeting and killing kids is evil and the world should stand together to say so.

Our allegiance doesn't belong to any government. It belongs to Israel's Messiah, Jesus. And in Him, both Jew and Gentile have become one new people of God.

I'm grateful for anyone who loves the Bible enough to argue about it. But on this one, brothers, I think the story points somewhere better. It points to Jesus.