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Redemptive History:

God’s Chosen People – Who Are They?

What is the relationship of the people of God in the Old Testament to the people of God in the New Testament?  Let’s turn to Romans 11.  In chapters 9-11, Paul is dealing with the great problem of the unbelief of Israel. “ The overall problem,” Paul’s detractors would say, “is how is it possible that the gospel you preach, Paul, is really the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises if the nation of Israel has rejected it?  Because they of all people on the face of the earth should be in a position to know what the Old Testament promised and taught, and they of all people ought to be in a position to evaluate your preaching as to whether it is indeed the continuation and the fulfillment of Old Testament theology.  And since the vast majority of the nation has rejected you and your teachings, then doesn’t that cast considerable doubt upon the truthfulness of what you teach?” 

And so in these chapters, 9-11, Paul is dealing with that particular question.  But Paul says, “That’s not the case at all.  This doesn’t discredit the gospel.”  Rather, he says, there’s a misunderstanding generally prevalent among the Jews that simply being a Jew in itself is sufficient to become an heir of the promises of God.  But that’s not true, Paul states. 

In 9:6 Paul says, “But it is not as though the word of God has failed.”  In other words, the fact that Israel is in unbelief doesn’t mean that God has now gone back on his word or that His promises aren’t going to be fulfilled.  Why not?  “For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel.”  But what does this mean?  Simply that not every natural born, physical Israelite is considered by God to be a part of the covenant community, which He knows is Israel.  More plainly, not every Jew who is a descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is going to inherit the promises that God made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  You have to be more than just a physical Jew to inherit the promises of God.  And Paul goes on to point out that it is those who are the children of believing Abraham, in the sense of faith, that will receive the promises, not just the physical lineage per se. 

In chapter 11 Paul uses the parable or the analogy of the two olive trees in order to illustrate his point.  Verse 13 says: “But I am speaking to you who are Gentiles.  Inasmuch then as I am an apostle of Gentiles, I magnify my ministry . . .”  It’s important to note that in this section of his letter he’s speaking to Gentile Christians.  Verse 14-19: “. . . if somehow I might move to jealousy my fellow countrymen and save some of them.  For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead.  If the first piece of dough is holy, the lump is also . . .”  Then he changes the analogy, “. . . and if the root is holy, the branches are too.  But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches; but if you are arrogant, remember that it is not you who supports the root, but the root supports you.  You will say then, ‘Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” 

Well, Paul says, that’s not entirely true.  Verse 20-24: “Quite right, they were broken off for their unbelief, but you stand by your faith.  Do not be conceited, but fear; for if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you, either.  Behold then the kindness and severity of God; to those who fell, severity, but to you, God’s kindness, if you continue in His kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off.  And they also, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again.  For if you were cut off from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these who are the natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree?”

In effect, Paul says that there are two olive trees, each having branches.  He refers to one olive tree as the good or cultivated olive tree.  The other one he refers to as the wild olive tree.  Without question the wild olive tree is identified as being the Gentiles, because throughout the passage he says they are the Gentiles.  In verse 24: “For if you were cut off from what is by nature a wild olive tree. . .”  In verse 13, he says “you who are Gentiles.”  So therefore without any difficult we can identify the wild olive tree as being the Gentiles.  What would that leave, then, as the good olive tree?  It can hardly be anything other than Israel, and this is clearly borne out by Old Testament passages like Jeremiah 11:16 and Hosea 14:6 in which the nation of Israel is pictured as an olive tree.  Particularly in the Jeremiah passage, the prophet even speaks of the branches being broken off, which is obviously a parallel passage to what we have in Romans 11.  The root of the good olive tree would be the patriarchs of Israel – Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – and the promises which God made to them, the promises of the Abrahamic covenant originally made to Abraham in Genesis 12 and later reiterated through Isaac and Jacob. 

Follow Paul’s thought here.  He says that God broke off some of the branches on the good olive tree because of unbelief.  This is the “not all Israel are descended from Israel” idea.  Some of the Israelites, some of the actual descendants from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, are now broken off the tree because of unbelief.  The tree, then, represents Israel and the channel through which the blessings promised to the patriarchs were eventually to be realized.  The Jews who rejected Jesus as their Messiah were broken off the tree, that is, they were cut off from the promises God made to their fathers.  Then, in their place God took some branches off the wild olive tree and grafted them in to the good olive tree. 

If you know anything at all about the grafting process, this isn’t the way it’s usually done.  You normally take a graft from a good plant and graft it in to a poorer plant in an effort to improve it, to improve the strain.  Here God has done just the opposite, and Paul recognizes this in v. 24 because he says this is contrary to nature.  Here God has taken something from the wild and grafted it into the cultivated, which is backwards to the way grafting practice normally works.  So the people who are grafted in are Gentiles.  Realize too that there are branches still left on the wild olive tree, that is, unbelieving Gentiles who aren’t grafted in at all.

But to be grafted as Gentiles into the good olive tree doesn’t necessarily insure their salvation, because, Paul goes on to say, if these branches should turn out to be unbelievers, they will be broken off just like unbelieving Jews get broken off.  And furthermore, if the Jews who get broken off should later come to believe, they can be grafted in again to their own olive tree.  Therefore, it seems obvious that being a branch on the good tree in itself is simply an evidence of mere association with God’s people.  It’s a profession, an association, a joining of yourself to a group.  The ultimate test of reality is actually the fruit. 

A parallel passage is the parable in John 15, where Jesus said during the upper room discourse that “I am the vine, you are the branches,” etc.  He said on that occasion that the branches bearing fruit God prunes so that more fruit will be borne.  But the branches that don’t bear any fruit are cut off and burned.  Interestingly, this is told in the immediate context of Judas departing the scene to carry out his betrayal.  Judas, then, is a perfect example of a branch that was on that vine for three and a half years, but which didn’t bear any fruit and was finally broken off and burned.  He was a professing disciple but was never really born again.  This same picture is illustrated in the parable of the wedding feast in Matthew 22:1-14, where not everyone who came into the wedding hall was allowed to stay ultimately, because some were found to be improperly attired; they weren’t wearing the righteousness of Christ with which we must be clothed to be acceptable to Him.  Those who weren’t clothed with the proper garments, in the righteousness of Christ, eventually had to be dismissed from the wedding.  These all picture the same thing.  In the kingdom of God, in this age in the professing body of believers in Jesus Christ, there will be both the true and the false, genuine and professing believers.

Back to our primary thrust, however.  The Gentiles who are grafted in and who do bear fruit and thereby become a genuine, permanent part of the tree are, in Paul’s language and terminology, now a part of the olive tree of Israel.  Notice that?  The olive tree is Israel.  Nothing is said in the passage about a change of olive tree, a replaced olive tree, and nothing is said about taking off the Jewish branches that remain on the tree, because those branches are believing Jews.  Paul was one of these.  Peter, James, John.  The believing Jews are still on the tree, still partakers of the root and richness, that is, the promises of God made to their forbears.  But now Gentiles, through belief in Jesus as the Messiah, are grafted in to the same tree and now become inheritors of the same promises, the same blessings; they have the same hope as believing Jews.

Turn to Ephesians 2.  The same teaching occurs here under a different symbolism.  Once again the apostle Paul is writing to Gentile Christians.  In v. 11-12 he says, “Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called ‘Uncircumcision’ by the so-called ‘circumcision,’ which is performed in the flesh by human hands – remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”  So here’s the picture of the unbelieving Gentile.  He’s without Christ, an alien from the commonwealth of Israel, and a stranger to the covenants of promise, covenants that were made to the Israelites.  Therefore, by definition, if a person is a stranger or alien or non-citizen with reference to the commonwealth of Israel, he’s also cut off from the covenants of promise that were made to Israel. 

Paul is looking at our proposition from the standpoint of a city, a city-state, which he speaks of as the commonwealth of Israel, looked on at this point as a national, political entity.  Next he says the Gentiles before Christ, unless they became Jewish proselytes, were on the outside looking in; they were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, meaning they weren’t citizens and therefore were restricted in their privileges.  As aliens the promises of God, the covenants of God, were foreign to them because they were outside of the commonwealth.  Look what Paul says.  Verse 13: “But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”  Then he goes on to point out in vv. 14-18 that Jesus Christ through His death has reconciled Jew and Gentile to each other and has reconciled both groups to God.

So in v. 19, now therefore as the result of the work of Christ, as a result of the reconciliation available in Christ, “you (Gentiles) are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household.”  Gentiles aren’t cut off any longer.  They aren’t aliens or strangers anymore either.  Instead, they are now fellow citizens with the saints and the household of God.  What he’s saying here is that the persons of vv. 11-12 were said to be outside the commonwealth of Israel, aliens, cut off, non-participants in the covenants that God made with the fathers.  But now, through the work of Christ, they’re brought inside and made fellow-citizens with the saints.  So who were the saints?  The Jewish saints obviously.  Fellow-citizens of what?  The commonwealth of Israel.  That’s the only entity in the passage of which they possibly could be citizens.  Therefore, through Christ’s work Gentile believers are now brought into the commonwealth of Israel.  Somebody’s probably saying, “Are you telling us that believing Gentiles today are actually a part of the commonwealth of Israel?”  That’s exactly what I’m saying, or better, what Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is saying. 

Turn to Ephesians 3.  In v. 3 Paul says, “that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery.”  The mystery.  In v. 4 again he speaks of his knowledge of the mystery of Christ.  A mystery in the New Testament is a truth that was once hidden from human beings but that’s now revealed by God.  It is a truth that unless God revealed it would forever remain unknown.  In v. 5 he explains this as a mystery “which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men.”  This is a very important point coming next.  Why?  Because someone is going to say, “Wait a minute, I can take you to passage after passage in the Old Testament, and I can prove to you that these promises were made just to the nation of Israel.”  Of course you can!  That’s exactly what Paul says here – “in other generations.”  That means that before the time of the New Covenant, this mystery wasn’t made known to human beings, but “it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit.”  Of course this wasn’t known before because it was a mystery during Old Testament times.

When you read through the Old Testament, you get the impression, by and large, that God’s promises are for Israel only, and only indirectly or perhaps in a peripheral sense for Gentiles.  But Paul says that’s not the final word on this subject.  There’s progressive revelation going on here.  There’s more to come that hasn’t been revealed, and he’s now revealing it.  So what is this mystery?  It’s defined in v. 6, “to be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”  And that’s precisely what we’ve just looked at here.  It’s now made known through the apostles, particularly Paul, that it has been God’s eternal purpose from the beginning that the nation of Israel should not be an end in itself, but rather should be a channel, a means through which God will accomplish his purpose for all persons, that is, all who would believe.  And therefore the privileges and the status, which in the Old Testament was reserved for Israelites and for proselytes to Israel, is now by God’s grace thrown open to all those who have received the gift of eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ and they’ve become fellow citizens, fellow heirs, fellow participants in all that God has promised to his ancient chosen people.

Turn to Galatians 3.  Let’s review briefly why Paul wrote Galatians.  He’s writing to the churches that he founded in Galatia on his first missionary journey.  These are the cities of Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, the part of Asia Minor where he and Barnabus went on their first missionary journey.  And after they had returned, some men came up from Jerusalem known as Judaizers and confused Paul’s converts by telling them that belief in Jesus as Messiah was not sufficient of itself to produce all the blessings that God intended them to have.  The Judaizers were saying something like this: We think you should believe in Jesus as the Messiah.  And it’s possible that they were even admitting (though this is a disputed point) that a person could have eternal life just by believing in Jesus.  But, they were saying, there’s so much more.  Look at all that God has promised His people Israel.  He’s promised them a land, a king, an eternal inheritance.  All of these things are reserved for His people Israel.

Throughout the centuries there have been Gentiles who have been attracted to Yahweh and to the promises that He’s made to His people and have voluntarily become proselytes to Judaism.  But there were two different kinds of proselytes.  One kind went all the way.  They were circumcised, they became full-fledged Israelites, they undertook to keep the law of Moses to observe all its ordinances, they became in effect full-fledged Jews.  And these were accepted as being one with them and were fully integrated into the Jewish community.  But there were other Gentiles who were not willing to go all the way, but they nevertheless were attracted to the ethical teachings and the monotheism of Judaism, and therefore they attended the synagogue, they participated in the worship, and they listened to the instruction from the Torah, but they were on the outskirts, the periphery.  They were called “proselytes of the gate,” because they didn’t go all the way in. 

The Judaizers were telling the Galatians that a Gentile who simply receives Jesus as his Messiah but doesn’t undergo the rite of circumcision or who doesn’t attempt to keep the Mosaic law (thus, never becoming a full-fledged Jewish proselyte and remaining a “proselyte of the gate”), he may receive some of the blessings of God, but he misses out on many blessings because he doesn’t have the fullness of the blessings of God.  Therefore, they were urging Paul’s converts not only to believe in Jesus but also to become a full-fledged Jewish proselyte so that they could inherit all the blessings that God had promised to the Jews. 

So Paul responds in this letter to this false teaching, and he does call it false teaching.  In v. 13 Paul writes, “Christ redeemed     us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us – for it is written ‘CURSED IS EVERYONE WHO HANGS ON A TREE’. ”  Therefore, Jesus became a curse, “in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (v. 14).  In v. 16, it says, “Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.  He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as referring to many, but rather to one, ‘And to your seed,’ that is, Christ.”  The promises made here refer back to Genesis 12, where God said to Abraham, “I will bless you and I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless your seed after you, I will bless them that bless your seed, and I will curse them that curse your seed, and I will make you a blessing and through your seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed.”  That’s what Paul is referring to here.  The promises were made to Abraham and his seed.

Again, “He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as referring to many, but rather to one.”  The promises go to his seed – singular.  This is very important.  Paul is now exegeting selected passages from Genesis.  He says that when God made the promise to Abraham and to his seed singular, he didn’t say seeds plural because that would have implied all the descendants of Abraham without division.  He didn’t mean a blanket inclusion of all the descendants of Abraham.  Rather, God said, to his seed singular, which Paul next defines to be Christ.

God made certain promises to Abraham that we call the Abrahamic covenant.  We know that Abraham at first misunderstood the Abrahamic covenant and the promises of God.  He understood it to mean that God would bless all his descendants.  Remember that since he didn’t have any physical descendants, he first of all decided that perhaps Eliezer of Damascus, his servant, should be adopted as his heir and God would bless him.  God said that’s not what I meant at all, Abraham.  Then Sarah his wife decided that she should follow the custom of the day to raise up a child by Hagar, her maidservant, which Abraham did.  And his son Ishmael was born.  Abraham proudly took Ishmael before the Lord and thanked Him for the fulfilled promise of a descendant.  But God said that’s not what I meant at all, Abraham.  Rather, you and Sarah are going to have a child, and according to Romans 4:19 Abraham was about a hundred years old, making Sarah about ninety.  Past the age of having children for both of them.  Paul makes the point that this is a miracle of God, that He actually brought life out of death in this case.

But when Isaac was finally born, God made it clear that the blessings that He had promised to Abraham and to his seed singular applied only to Isaac and not to Ishmael.  Therefore, Abraham learned a lesson – that when God made this promise He didn’t intend it for all his descendants but only for some of them, those who came through the line of Isaac.  This was repeated again in the next generation, because Isaac also had two sons, Jacob and Esau.  So God once again made it clear that it wasn’t all of the physical descendants that He had in mind when he promised the seed of Abraham would be blessed.  It came as just as much of a shock to Isaac as it did originally to Abraham when he found out that God had chosen to go through the seed of Jacob and not the seed of Esau.  This isn’t saying that the descendants of Esau and Ishmael can’t be saved.  That’s not the point.  Rather, we’re talking about the line through which the covenant promises and the Messiah would come. 

Jacob’s name was eventually changed to Israel, and he had twelve sons who eventually became the twelve tribes of Israel.  So what God meant, then, when He used the term “seed of Abraham” was actually the descendants of the twelve sons of Jacob?  No, that’s not quite right either, because as you work through several passages in the Old Testament – Isaiah 6 and others – we find out that even in this group there are two distinct categories.  One group who were believers in Yahweh and thus “saved,” to use New Testament terminology, and those who weren’t believers and were lost.  This is further brought out by Romans 9:6, “They are not all Israel who are descended from Israel.”  In other words, even in the Old Testament those who were unbelievers weren’t considered to be a part of covenant Israel.

So do we have it straight now?  The believing members of the twelve tribes of Israel constitute the seed of Abraham.  No, that’s not the last word either.  Paul says in Galatians 3:16 that what God really meant when He made the covenant with Abraham and his seed was that that seed finally narrows down to Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the seed, the descendent singular of Abraham.  That’s what Paul says in this verse.  The promises were made to Abraham and to his seed, which is Christ.  So the only persons who will be blessed with the Abrahamic promise are just Abraham himself and Christ?  No.  That’s still not the last word.  Look at v. 26ff.  “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.  For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise” (emphasis supplied). 

In summary, here’s the final revelation on the subject of the seed of Abraham.  The seed of Abraham consists of Jesus Christ and all those who belong to Christ by faith.  This now includes the believing Israelites who are descendants of the twelve tribes who’ve come down through the line, but now it also includes the descendants of Esau, Ishmael, and everybody else in the world who believes in Christ regardless of their lineage, nationality or background.  This is the seed of Abraham.

But someone will say, “You’re confusing the spiritual seed of Abraham with the physical seed of Abraham.”  No, because the Bible nowhere makes that distinction.  Someone else will say, “It’s true that Gentiles receive the spiritual blessings of Abraham, but they don’t receive any of the physical blessings, such as the land of Canaan.”  But that interpretation doesn’t work either.  Look at Genesis 13:15, “For all the land which you see, I will give it to you and to your descendants forever.”  Literally, “And to your seed.”  The Septuagint here has the precise wording in Genesis 13:15 that Paul quotes in Galatians 3:16.  Therefore, Paul is alluding directly to Genesis 13:15 when he speaks of the promise that God made to Abraham and to his seed.  It’s in the direct context of the promise of the land of Canaan.

What does all this mean?  Precisely this.  There is continuity between the people of God in the Old Testament and the people of God in the New Testament.  One last illustration will demonstrate this.  We have Abraham and the nation of Israel descended from him.  At the time of the first coming of Christ, Israel was faced with a momentous decision.  Should they receive this man as their Messiah or should they reject Him.  We now know historically that there were two answers to this question.  Most of the nation rejected Jesus.  Some accepted Him.  So, in effect, the nation of Israel, as it were, split in two over the question of whether or not Jesus of Nazareth was their Messiah.  Peter, James, John, the rest of the twelve, the women, the 120 in the upper room, as well as others did accept Him.  Almost all the leaders of Israel and great masses of the people did not accept Him, and they eventually put Him to death.  There’s no question that in a racial, religious and political sense both of these halves are Israelites.  They’re all descendants of the patriarchs, they’re all Israelites in every sense except, as we’re showing, the covenant sense. 

Here’s the great question, and this is where evangelicals differ in their interpretation.  The crux of interpretation is this:  The promises that God made to Abraham and his descendants had been incorporated in the nation Israel down through the centuries as seen in the Old Testament.  At this point, however, when the nation comes to the crossroads concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which way do we find the promises going?  To the believing half or the unbelieving half?  It’s obvious that they can’t go both ways. 

Classic dispensationalism says that the promises went with the unbelieving Israelites.  So what happens to the believing part?  It is cut off entirely from Israel and became an entirely new, separate and distinct entity, which we know as the church of Jesus Christ.  And God replaced the promises that they lost by becoming the church with a whole new set of promises that are sometimes called church promises.  The original promises made by God to Abraham – the land, the blessing, the Davidic king, etc. – these promises remain with the unbelieving Israelites, but they couldn’t be fulfilled at this time because of their rejection of Christ.  But the promises are still resident within the unbelieving branches of the olive tree, and they are historically postponed as to their fulfillment until the second coming of Christ when many Israelites will be saved.  All the promises held in abeyance all these centuries will eventually be realized through these unbelieving branches.  When will this be?  During a literal millennial reign of Christ after the second coming.  The church, on the other hand, has a whole different set of promises given to them by God, distinct from Israel.  So they have their own  separate destiny and plan, and these aren’t to be confused with God’s destiny and plan for unbelieving physical Israel.

The viewpoint of historic premillennialists and amillennialists, however, says that the promises travel down the believing line.  In other words, with Peter, James, John, etc., those who were the true Israelites.  Not Caiaphas, Annas, and their kind, but Jewish believers in Jesus.  And so the promises went in the believing direction, to the group that became the church, and the promises were cut off from the unbelieving line.  To this group, God’s providential mercy eventually added Gentiles, also by faith, starting with the house of Cornelius in Acts 10.  Plus, unbelieving Jews continued to be saved and brought into the church, though their numbers grew smaller than the Gentiles after a time.  This, in effect, is the grafting back on to the olive tree of the natural branches that had previously been broken off, but only when these branches believed in Christ.  This, it seems to me, is what the Bible teaches. 

Believers in Christ like the apostle Paul were never cut off from the promises that God made to Israel.  How can we read a chapter like Romans 11 (which says that there’s a remnant even today within Israel, and that Paul himself was a part of that remnant just like, say, the thousands that didn’t bow their knee to Baal in Elijah’s day) and not conclude that Paul received the promises of God, that he is a part of the believing remnant of Israel?  How can Paul make statements like he does if he’s a part of the other half that’s been totally cut off from the promises?  How can we read Ephesians 2 about Gentile believers becoming a part of the commonwealth of Israel, fellow citizens with the Jewish saints, and how can we read about the mystery that God has now put the two halves together into one body – the church – without seeing that Paul, Peter, James, etc., are now fulfilled Israelites.  They aren’t cut off from Israel.  They’re what Israelites were intended to be from the beginning!

Those that are cut off, however, aren’t necessarily cut off permanently.  Anyone who believes in Jesus Christ can be grafted back in again.  This is what Jewish evangelism is all about.  Personally, I believe that at the second coming of Christ a whole host of Jewish persons will come to believe and get grafted back in to the olive tree.  If this is true, then the church is the believing remnant of Abraham.  It is the seed of Abraham, according to Galatians 3.

It’s important to note, however, that whichever view one holds, it’s not a point of orthodoxy.  It’s not a dividing point for Christians that inhibits fellowship.  And it’s not one of the fundamentals of the faith either way.  But it is important in the sense that to travel eschatologically down the dispensational road, you end up with two of almost everything – two comings of Christ, two judgments, two resurrections, etc.  If you see the people of God as being a single continuity between the Old and New Testaments, then there’s really only one people of God, now collectively known as the church, and God is dealing with this one single believing group.