From TFZ Volume 1, No 7 March 1983
Copyright 2024 Joseph Shulam
HAS GOD REJECTED HIS PEOPLE?
Recently, a dear sister from the United States sent me photocopies of pages from Max King's book and also an article Zealots at Masada and Zealots at Jerusalem. I was amused to see people, who claim to be members of the "New Testament Church" and "to speak where the Bible speaks", give an answer so diametrically opposed to the answer Paul gives in Romans 11:1.
"I ask, then, has God rejected His people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite..."
I'm quite aware that the problem of Israel is not a simple one. Most of the people who seem to show support for Israel are walking the primrose path of protestant traditional theology. However, between the theological excess of the millenarians and the words of Paul in Romans 1 there is not necessarily a connection. We ought not to fall trap to the traditional anti-Jewish feelings of "Christianity". This feeling is well summarized in the words of Erasmus of Rotterdam, "If it is Christian to hate Jews, then we are all good Christians."
However, we are all so quick and careful to point out that, as disciples of the Messiah, we love the Jews. As a matter of fact, some of my best friends are Jews - my doctor, lawyer, and jeweler.
Let me share with you some basic guidelines for the understanding of Israel and the Jewish problem in light of the New Testament:
1. Salvation, for all men, is always on a personal basis of faith and obedience to God's word (i.e. it cannot be on a national basis).
2. Just because salvation is on a personal basis of faith does not mean that the Almighty has stopped dealing with nations or keeping His promises. (Is not the U.S.A. "one nation under God". Do you believe that God had anything to do with the establishment of the United States or with Finland? See Romans 13:1-4.)
3. Election and salvation are independent of each other. God chose Israel and said:
"The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth.... It is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath which He swore to your father...." Deut. 7:6,8. However, to the same generation in the wilderness He said: "I swore in my anger that they should not enter my rest". Psalms 95:11. God elected Israel but they were not all saved and they did not all take benefit of the election of God. However, Romans 11:28 states in a clear way that although hated concerning the Gospel, they are s t i l l elect for the Father's sake.
4. The dispensational ideas which have conquered the evangelical christians have been the major exponents of pre-millennialism. Is dispensationalism an early church doctrine or did Darby first come up with it and Schofield make it popular? Why should we, as first century Christians, hold any different attitude from Paul, Peter, or James about Israel? Paul best expressed his attitude toward Israel in Romans 9:2-5.
"I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I, myself, were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsman, by race. They are Israelites, to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the Law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race according to the flesh is the Christ who is over all be blessed for ever. Amen.``
5. The concept that has become prevalent in our Western Christianity that everything concerning the church and the family of God started at Pentecost is a concept that does not take into account the full picture presented by God's word. God did not start all over again at Pentecost. What happened at Pentecost was that which God had expected, prophets had prophesied, and people waited for. At least, some of the Jews were waiting for The Messiah, (Luke 2:25; Mark 15:43) The apostles repeatedly taught and claimed that they were preaching that which was from the beginning, that which God had declared to Abraham, and that which was before the foundations of the world, not something which was the result of a mistake which God had made when He chose the Jewish people to carry the flag of salvation and to bring to the earth, the Savior, the Messiah. (See Romans 1:2, 15:8; Acts 26:6,7; Eph. 1:4; Acts 2:23; Hebrews 1:1)
Let us consider this scenario with you. Let us say that God elected the Jewish people and expected them to do a job and that they, as a nation, did not live up to God's expectations and did not accomplish that job. Therefore, God had to choose somebody else, the Gentiles, to come and to do the same job which the Jews were chosen to do. Would that not make God one who has made a mistake? Would this mean that God was imperfect in His choice of the Jewish people? Even worse than this, would that not make God a liar? God has promised that the people of Israel would be His election to the end of the world. (Read Jeremiah 31:35-37; Isa. 54:8-14;) Jeremiah says, "that as long as the sun is in the heavens and the moon is in the skies God will not reject His chosen people." By all this, I don't mean that the Jews have any special privileges regarding salvation or in regard to benefits that they can receive and Gentiles can't. I do mean to say that God still has a job and task for them in history. A Task which is not only to bring the Messiah but to accept the Messiah themselves as Romans 1 clearly states that they will. Of course, we all know that this will not happen without faith and it will not happen without their obedience to the Gospel, just like everybody else. It is, the choice, of God's election, and a proof that God did not make a mistake. The Gentiles or the Jews are not better than each other but are, together, bound both in unbelief and in belief. In addition to all this, if God did not keep His word to the Jewish people, even though they were not always faithful, what guarantee do the Christians of this world have that God will keep His word to them? Jesus, as the Messiah, vindicated the election of Israel by being born in Israel, to a Jewish mother, in Bethlehem; fulfilling that which God has foretold by the mouth of His prophets. He was Israel par-excellence. If one reads the servant passages in Isaiah one finds immediately that the servant is called Israel, Jacob. He is the one who is the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 and He is the one who bore our sins and our transgressions and by whose Stripes are healed . Of c o u r s e , we all realize that Jesus is useful and that we h a v e witnessed His crucifixion not as a Huguenot or Lilliputian but as King of the Jews. It would also be of benefit for us to read passages in the book of Acts where Paul witnesses of his own f a i t h . Like in chapter 24:14-17, that he believes all that is written in the law and in the prophets. In Philippians and in Acts Paul continually states in the present tense, "I am a Jew" not "I was a Jew" but "I am a Jew". Who said that we stopped existing? We are people who breathe and eat and create and compose and invent and have identity. We have received, handed down to us, through the centuries the love of God even in our diaspora. God is still waiting for us to respond, by faith, and to believe in the Messiah. We have to work hard and take our faith to Israel as a proof of the great love which God has loved the world not excluding His very children in the flesh. As Jews, we are incomplete without Jesus as our Messiah. How- ever, that incompleteness does not mean that we don't exist.
6. There is no Biblical grounds to hold the position that God has rejected Israel or that He is finished with them and no longer interested in their salvation. The contrary is true. God has not rejected His people (Rom. 11:1, 25-29) and anyone who holds to such a doctrine is contrary to the Holy Scriptures of God and contrary to the very promise that God has made to the church that they will be grafted into the olive. This was the point which Paul made when he spoke about the Gentiles in Ephesians 2:11-22. Before they received Jesus Christ the Son of the living God, the Messiah, they were without God, without hope, outside the commonwealth of Israel. Now that they have received the Messiah, they have become fellow citizens of the same city and members by implication of the commonwealth of Israel. I don't say this to aggrandize myself or the Jewish race or the Jewish people but I do say it because it is a Biblical doctrine and because 2,000 years of "Christian anti-semitism" must come to an end before the church, the believers, the Christians can provoke Israel to jealousy. The great restoration preachers all held by and believed the promises of God. All wanted to return back and be like the early church. It is significant that we should restore also the attitudes of the early church toward Israel, unashamedly, and proclaim that God is still interested in the Jewish people and in their salvation by whom, through whom, and for whom Christ shed His blood.
In summary, I want to repeat and say that we ought not to accept the anti-Semitic theological grounds that have driven " Christianity " into such bestiality as we have witnessed in our generation. Germany, of our generation, was the same Germany that Martin Luther came from and that the reformation started from. It is the same Germany that was so influential in the beginning of the return of Christianity back to a more Biblical faith. We ought not to forget this point. The Holocaust happened in Germany and it was going on while the people were going to their Lutheran churches to pray to a Jew on a cross. It could happen again to those that are limiting the love of God just to their own family and race. Let us open up and receive the word of God, rightly dividing in the light. If we are going to truly restore the family and the church which Yeshua, Jesus the Christ, established in the first century we must do so in light of what the prophets of Israel have spoken many centuries earlier all the way back to Abraham. Let me conclude a few lines from Augustine that will show his mind as regards to the Jews: "Let us preach to the Jews, whether we can, in a spirit of love, whether they welcome our words or spurn them. It is not for us to boast over them as broken branches. Rather let us consider by whose grace, and with what loving kindness, and into what kind of root it was that we were grafted." One does not have to be a millenarian to see that God is keeping His promises. I am not a pre or post millennialist. I am a Jew who believes that Jesus is the Messiah, Son of God.
I hope you are my brother.
Joseph Shulam
P.S. If there are questions about the article or our faith and actions would you be so kind and act according to Matthew 18:15. "If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone...." I promise to answer every letter.
P.S.S. Questions might come up about passages like Gal. 3:1-5 , 19 - 4:20, 5:2-4 o r Hebrews 9:9-15 etc . If you read these passages you do not find anything about the people of Israel - only about the legal aspects of the old covenant.
A list of suggested books:
1. Jacob .M Myers. Grace and Torah, (Fortress. 1975)
2. Gerard S. Sloyan. Is Christ the End of the Law?, (Westminster. 1978)
3. Daniel P. Fuller. Gospel and Law- Contrast or Continuum? (William P. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1980)
"HEAR, O ISRAEL, THE LORD OUR GOD, THE LORD IS ONE. AND LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL ,AND WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT. AND THESE WORDS WHICH I COMMAND YOU TODAY, SHALL BE UPON YOUR HEART.” (DEUT. 6:4-6)