Identifying the People of God in the Theology of Paul
Who are the people of God? While it is very clear in the Old Testament beginning in Genesis 12 that it is Abraham’s family that is chosen by God to become a great nation and a blessing to the nations, the picture becomes a little blurrier in the New Testament as the gospel goes out to the gentiles. Merely to raise this question about the identity of God’s people is to open the door for potentially controversial answers. On one end of the spectrum of this discussion is what might be called the Zionist perspective which would argue that there are two peoples of God and two different plans or paths to redemption. In this view, the people and the nation-state of Israel are in some way still the people of God distinct from the church.[1] On the other end of the spectrum, there is what has been referred to (fairly or unfairly in some cases) as a “supercessionist” position where the church is perceived as replacing Israel as a new institution after God’s divorce of his unfaithful people, Israel.[2]
While this position would recognize significant continuity between Israel and the church, it is often articulated in such a way as to suggest that the church is a new body consisting of former Jews and gentiles who are called out from their previous identities and now enjoy a personal relationship with Jesus by faith apart from the law. The truth is not always to be found in the middle of two extremes; however, in this case neither end of the spectrum quite captures the place of Israel in God’s story of redemption of the world according to Paul’s gospel. For Paul, there has only ever been one elect people of God and the question he is addressing is how gentiles are brought into that people through the person and work of the Messiah. Thus, the church represents an expansion of that one people of God beyond the boundaries of Israel to include the gentiles through their participation in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ in baptism, which also has a transformative effect upon Israel, but does not eliminate the Jewish identity markers given to them through Abraham and Moses.
There are three texts in Paul’s epistles that most clearly address the relationship between Jew and gentile within this one people of God. Those passages are Ephesians 2:11-16, in which Paul speaks to the unity of Jew and gentile in the Body of Christ because of Christ’s work on the cross; Galatians 3-4, wherein Paul affirms the need for the gentiles to be united to Abraham and his seed, but rejects circumcision as the basis for that union; and Romans 9-11, as Paul affirms God’s faithfulness to and the continuing relevance of Israel as the olive tree that supports the branches. From these three key texts we see that there are neither two peoples of God, nor is there one people of God whose identity changed in the New Testament, but rather, there is and always has been one Israel of God. Paul’s gospel then entails the removal of the curse of the law by Christ who provides the way for gentiles to become children of Abraham and the means by which Israel fulfills their calling to be a blessing to the nations.
Ephesians 2: Breaking Down the Dividing Wall
It is in Ephesians 2:11-16 that Paul most clearly presents the nature of the relationship between Jew and gentile toward one another within the one people of God. After summarizing his gospel in 2:1-10, Paul describes that which is accomplished by the gospel as peace and tranquility between two groups, Jew and gentile, that had previously been hostile to one another. Paul in verse 11 introduces a “therefore”, clearly rooting what he is about to say concerning the reconciliation of the horizontal relationship between Jews and gentiles in the reconciliation in the vertical relationship between God and humanity by grace through faith articulated in the previous verses. The very first imperative of the epistle is addressed to gentiles. They are to “remember” what they had been: called “uncircumcised” (literally “foreskin”) by the Jews, separate from Christ and alienated from the covenant promises given to Israel. But despite their hopelessness in the world, they have now been brought near by the blood of Christ. It is the gentiles who have had their position changed in relationship to Israel’s God through the breaking down of the “dividing wall of hostility” (v. 14). This imagery of a dividing wall, such as that which separated the inner courts of the Jews from the outer Court of the Gentiles surrounding the temple, serves as a powerful metaphor for the barrier to entry presented by the Mosaic law to gentiles attempting to join the covenant people of God.[3] Israel had to be extremely intentional about its worship in order to preserve its identity surrounded by various forms of pagan syncretism.[4]
However, now that the Jewish Messiah had come, it is through Him that the gentiles are brought near. It is not exclusivity and separation by which Israel’s light is preserved from the nations as had been the case under the old covenant, but rather through the shedding of the Messiah’s blood that peace is established as this light goes out to the nations. The coming of Christ allows both groups to have access to God without changing their ethnic identities. “Though rooted in Israel’s story, this divine intervention does not involve a covenant based on physical circumcision; Gentiles are not becoming Jews.”[5] The gentiles are told they are no longer strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens, a political status, and members of the household of God, a familial status, while remaining uncircumcised gentiles (2:19). The Jews are not addressed at all. They remain Jews in covenant with God as they have been baptized into the death and resurrection of their Messiah. Thus, it is important to recognize that redemption does not entail the creation of a new third category wherein both gentiles and Jews leave their former status behind and become one new, third body, which is a mistaken implication of Galatians 3:28. Rather it is gentiles that join God’s household that had previously been limited to Israel and do so without changing their gentile status.
The central point of this passage is that for Paul there is not, nor ever has been, more than one people of God or one plan of redemption. It was to the Hebrew nation that Yahweh revealed Himself directly and it was with them the old covenant was made. Out of all the nations of the earth, Yahweh chose the nation of Israel to be his treasured possession (Deut. 7:6). The coming of the promised Messiah did nothing to change the status of God’s covenant people, but rather allowed them to truly be the blessing to the nations they were always called to be through the expansion of the household of God. The real change was the fact that gentiles were brought near to God without having to become Jews. The gentile can now access the inner court and stand side by side with the Jew. Paul is adamant that there should be no division between Jew and gentile within the people of God for both stand there by grace through faith, not of works, lest any should boast (Eph. 2:8-9). This is the mystery that had been previously hidden in ages past that Paul has now been entrusted with revealing. The unity between Jew and gentile as coheirs of the promises is a proclamation to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms that their reign is over (3:10). We can begin to see how division within the body would signal the opposite is true and why Paul would believe that the gospel itself was at stake.
Contra Bi-covenantalism
Contrary to this view of a single people of God are various forms of bi-covenantalism, which argue that God established different plans of redemption for Jews and gentiles in different ages or dispensations. According to this view, God established one path to salvation for the nation of Israel through the keeping of the Torah and another for gentiles through faith in Jesus Christ. The church of Jesus Christ was founded as an alternate plan of redemption after the Jews rejected Him as their Messiah. Once God’s plan for the church in history is complete, the church will be taken out of the world and God will reinstitute his original plan for the nation of Israel. The most popular form of this view which still holds a grip upon large segments of American evangelicalism is dispensationalism. John Walvoord, one of the leading dispensational theologians of the 20th century, taught that there were two “new covenants”, one for Israel and one for the church. References to the “new covenant” in Scripture, says Walvoord, including “the new covenant in my blood” that Jesus established at the Last Supper (Lk. 22:20) and the “better covenant” mediated by Jesus Christ (Heb. 8:6) are not the same as the new covenant to Israel spoken of by the prophet in Jeremiah 31:31-34 because they do not represent literal fulfillments of the promises made to Israel as a nation. The new covenant to Israel, says Walvoord, is not fulfilled in this present age of the church. Therefore, he concludes,
The proper doctrine is rather that while many of the blessings of the church are similar to those promised Israel, the promises to Israel remain intact to be fulfilled entirely by Israel. While the church may claim promises specified in the “new covenant” when it is not identified with Israel’s new covenant, it should remain on its own ground of blessing in Christ.[6]
Attempting to uphold a literal interpretation of the Old Testament prophets, Walvoord adopts a novel interpretation that contradicts the clear teaching of Paul in the New Testament by proposing two covenants for two different peoples. Later in Ephesians, Paul exhorts his readers to be diligent in preserving the unity of the Spirit because there is “one hope of your calling” (4:4). The dispensational view teaches that Jews and Gentiles look forward to two different hopes based on two different (even if similar) promises.
Another version of the bi-covenentalist perspective is provided by author Matthew Thiessen in his book, A Jewish Paul. In Thiessen’s view, Paul never really converted to “Christianity,” but merely shifted from one form of Judaism, a religion that Thiessen argues was by no means monolithic in the first century, to another, much like changing denominations.[7] Paul’s opposition to circumcision, according to Thiessen, applied only to gentiles. On the other hand, Paul upheld the practice, not merely as a matter of indifference for Jews, but a matter of necessity. Thiessen is careful to reject the notion that Jews have a separate path to salvation apart from Christ. In fact, he specifically affirms that the Jews needed to embrace Jesus Christ as their Messiah.[8] However, Thiessen does not seem to recognize the need for Jews to be united to Christ through baptism as was the case for the gentiles.
Thiessen’s project is to provide pushback against N.T. Wright, who tends to emphasize the ethnocentrism of the Jews as their main problem. For Wright, the Jews needed to turn away from those things that made them distinctly Jewish and that differentiated them from gentiles such as circumcision and the keeping of the Torah and embrace a multicultural vision of the church. Thiessen will make much of Paul’s circumcising of Timothy as well as Paul’s refutation of the charge made against him by Jews that he was teaching Jews that they should not be circumcised (Acts 21:21). Overall, Theissen’s emphasis on the Jewishness of Paul is a helpful corrective to the emphasis placed on multiculturalism in the church by modern theologians. Just as gentiles did not have to become Jews to be Christians, it is also important to recognize that Jews did not have to become gentiles and reject their traditions and cultural markers.
However, they did have to share in one baptism. It was not enough for Jews on Pentecost to recognize that the crucified and risen Christ was the Jewish Messiah; they needed to both repent and be baptized into his death and resurrection life just as the Gentiles would. While it was perfectly legitimate for Jews to keep their traditional identity markers and follow the customs and traditions of the Torah, they could not do so as a basis for their membership in God’s family. Both Jews and gentiles must be baptized, and both must walk by the Spirit so as to be pleasing to God as fellow heirs of the kingdom. To say otherwise is to open the door for two different pathways to redemption for Jews and gentiles, which implies that God has two different peoples. In sum, nations can remain ethnically distinct in their customs and practices within the kingdom of God, but their cultural particularities may not serve as barriers to entry into the kingdom of God.
Galatians 3-4: The Basis of Unity
Ephesians 2:11-16 teaches that the division between Jew and gentile has been broken down, but Galatians 3-4 addresses why the unity cannot be based in circumcision or the keeping of Torah without denying the necessity of the gentiles to be adopted into Abraham’s family in order to be saved. A proper reading of Galatians needs to keep both truths in balance. In order to do that, we have to avoid reducing the message of Galatians to an argument about salvation by faith versus salvation by works. The issue addressed in the epistle to the Galatians is not whether salvation comes by faith or comes through works but is rather about the conditions necessary for gentiles to be incorporated into the family of Abraham. The Jewish people fully recognized that their status as the elect nation of God was wholly a matter of God’s grace bestowed upon them.[9] In Galatians, Paul is dealing with a controversy with his fellow Jewish Christians as Paul makes clear in chapter 2. It is Peter and Barnabas that Paul confronts in Antioch for their failure to partake in table fellowship with gentiles once Jewish Christians arrived there from Jerusalem. Peter, being the leader of the apostles in Jerusalem and the preacher of the Pentecost sermon, and Barnabas, Paul’s partner during his first missionary journey to the gentiles in Asia Minor, were not teaching that salvation came through works as opposed to faith. Yet, Paul claims that nothing less than the gospel was at stake in their desire to distance themselves from uncircumcised gentiles. The issue for Paul is that division within the body of Christ between Jew and gentile implies that Christ’s work of reconciliation through the cross has not occurred. The implications of the teaching and actions by those who came from the church in Jerusalem are devastating, but that does not mean that they are teaching salvation by works. In the words of English Reformer, Richard Hooker, Paul “who condemned their error confessed nonetheless that they knew God and were known by him. He did not take from them the honor of being termed sons begotten of the immortal seed of the Gospel.”[10] Hooker then quotes Martin Bucer to the same effect, who writes of the Judaizers that though they had “a very religious affection for the truth”, they “unwittingly rejected and resisted the truth! They acknowledged Christ to be their only and perfect Savior, but did not see how repugnant their believing in the necessity of Mosaic ceremonies was to their faith in Jesus Christ.”[11] This is not in anyway to suggest that Paul is not addressing a first-order issue in his letter to the Galatians, but we need to be clear about what the issue actually was. If it is reduced to a mere refutation of works righteousness set in opposition to justification by faith alone, we are at risk of missing the details that speak to the specific situation in Galatia that was threatening the unity of the body between Jews and Gentiles.
Galatians 3 deals with how it is that gentiles can be brought into Abraham’s family. In verses 8 and 14, Paul references the fact that the election of Israel was for the purpose of being a blessing to the nations. To that end, the Law was given to the Jews to preserve their distinctiveness from the rest of the world, not to be an end in itself. Despite Israel’s repeated failures throughout their history, the Law served its purpose and maintained the particularity of the Jewish people and functioned as a light to the nations in a limited sense as they were scattered in exile. Gerald McDermott highlights the appeal of Jewish monotheism and morality to the gentiles and the influence of the Septuagint upon the Hellenistic world: “since it was used in all the synagogues of the diaspora, it prepared the way for the Messiah by showing its audiences in Europe, Africa, and Asia that the Messiah had been prophesied for thousands of years.”[12] The first century historian, Josephus, testified to the substantial impact Jewish culture had upon the Greco-Roman world:
The masses have long since shown a keen desire to adopt our religious observances; and there is not one city, Greek or barbarian, nor a single nation, to which our custom of abstaining form work on the seventh day has not spread, and where the fasts and the lighting of lamps and many of our prohibitions in the matter of food are not observed.[13]
The problem with the law is that it came with a curse for all those who could not perfectly keep it (Gal. 3:13). Without a Messiah who could fulfill the Law and bear its curse, it provided a moral way of life superior to the polytheism of the pagans but was not ultimately good news for the nations. It had the power to condemn, but not the power to save. Moreover, the relationship between Judaism and Hellenism was not a one-way street in terms of influence. Hellenism also had a considerable effect upon Judaism, resulting in increasing diversity within the beliefs and practices of Second Temple Jews.[14] Thus, it was the case in the first century before Christ, as N.T. Wright notes, that the Jews had a deep sense that they were chosen by God for the redemption of the world, but were struggling through an identity crisis due to their former exile to Babylon, the pervasiveness of Hellenism, and the current political occupation of their homeland by Rome.[15] If the redemption of the world must pass through Israel, how was Israel ever going to be in a position to redeem the world in their current state? Pharisaism grew out of this context wherein it was believed that a greater commitment to the purity laws would bring about Israel’s political deliverance from their Roman occupiers and usher in the age that was to come, one in which Israel fulfilled their calling to be a blessing to the nations as the elect people of God. With the coming of the Jewish Messiah, Israel’s purpose was found. Jesus Christ is the very embodiment of Israel, God’s Son (Ex. 4:22, Hos. 11:1), who keeps the law that Israel could not and dies in their place, bearing the curse of the law in his person on the cross. Because of this, the blessing of being Abraham’s children and the reception of the Holy Spirit could be experienced by the gentiles. In short, Wright summarizes:
Paul sees Jesus as the one who has been established as Messiah through his resurrection, drawing Israel’s history to its strange but long-awaited resolution, fulfilling the promises made to Abraham, inheriting the nations of the world, winning the battle against all the powers of evil, and constituting in himself the promise-receiving people.[16]
Therefore, the death and resurrection of the Jewish Messiah accomplished both the incorporation of the gentiles into God’s covenant with Abraham and the enablement of Israel to be the blessing they were always meant to be (Gal. 3:14). This is the basis of unity and reconciliation within the body of Christ that Paul is calling for.
The next question that is raised by the text, and the crux of the dispute within the Galatian church is the means by which gentiles are brought in as members of this covenant community of Israel. Is it necessary that gentiles must become Jews by practicing circumcision and observing the laws of the Torah to enjoy the blessings of covenant membership? Paul reminds his readers that the promises to Abraham that Israel would be a blessing to the nations preceded Moses and the giving of the Law. What made Abraham the father of this nation of God’s people was not his keeping of a law that did not yet exist, but rather the gracious promise of God (Gen. 15:6). Thus, it must be possible to be connected to Abraham and receive the benefits of the promises given to him apart from the Mosaic law. Indeed, that is what we find in Galatians 3:16 in Paul’s distinction between “seeds” and “seed.” Children of Abraham are those who belong to Abraham’s offspring, which is Christ, the promised seed (not seeds). One becomes attached to Christ through faith and baptism Paul says in 3:26-27: “for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (ESV). Those who have been baptized into Christ have been crucified with him and have died to the law. To attempt to become a child of Abraham through the law as a gentile is to sever oneself from the grace of God (Gal. 5:2-4) because it makes the sacrifice of Christ unnecessary. The shedding of blood in circumcision pointed toward the shedding of blood on the cross. Once Christ’s sacrifice was complete, continuing to shed blood in circumcision as a basis for gentiles to come into the covenant nullifies the grace of God. It turns the covenant sign of the Jews that points toward salvation by grace through faith in the Jewish Messiah into an end for gentiles who should be able to look to the reality of Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension and participate in that reality through baptism.
In Galatians 4, Paul makes this point even clearer in his allegorical interpretation of the story of Hagar and Sarah. It is possible to be an offspring of Abraham and not be an heir to the promises given to Abraham. Ishmael was a natural son of Abraham born by Hagar, but he was not the child of promise. Isaac was the heir of Abraham because he was born, not by natural means, but by supernatural means. Paul’s point in using this text in this way is to show that those insisting upon circumcision as a requirement for the gentiles to be brought into the people of God are insisting on creating sons of Abraham by natural means through Hagar rather than producing sons of promise through Sarah. Paul’s warning here, according to Thiessen, to his readers is that “if one tries to become a son of Abraham through the fleshly rite of circumcision, beware, because Abraham’s original fleshly son, Ishmael, failed to inherit.”[17] Just as Isaac must be a child of promise, conceived by supernatural means, so too Gentiles become a part of the people of God through the supernatural means of the Spirit, which is given in baptism and not through circumcision, which is no guarantee of membership into the people of God.
In this framework, Israel should not be understood as being replaced but rather is renewed.[18] It is important not to lean too heavily on Paul’s statement in 3:28, “there is neither Jew nor Greek,” as implying that one’s identity as a Jew or a gentile is left behind in the formation of a new body of believers based on faith. In the words of Thomas Aquinas, grace does not obliterate nature but perfects it.[19] Just as men continue to be men and women continue to be women in the Body of Christ and do not transform into an androgynous species, so also Jews and gentiles do not leave their cultural customs and traditions behind. Paul is speaking here in Galatians 3 of the oneness that exists within the body of Christ even amidst diversity. He is not suggesting that in Christ we become transhuman and our created natures are obsolete.
To read Galatians as Paul speaking of salvation by faith as opposed to salvation by works is to read Paul as calling both Jews and gentiles away from their respective former religions to a new religion based on faith. This is exemplified in John Stott’s commentary on Galatians in which he writes within the vein of Luther and Calvin that the problem for the Judaizers is that they failed to understand that salvation comes by faith alone and not based on the works of the law.[20] Salvation is about leaving behind the arrogance of a false religion that would take pride in its ability to please God through works and turning to Christianity in which salvation is received by grace through faith alone. While this is doctrinally sound, it is not exactly the point Paul is trying to make in this text. On the contrary, Paul insists that in order to be part of the people of God, you must be one of Abraham’s children. Indeed, this comes by faith and not by the keeping of the Torah, but the goal is to become a Jew inwardly. This is the Israel of God (Gal 6:16).
Romans 9-11: The Future of Israel
The key text that still must be addressed is Romans 9-11 wherein Paul deals with an objection to the gospel he has articulated in the first eight chapters. Given the inclusion of the gentiles in God’s plan of redemption, and given the fact that Jews are a minority within the people of God, has God been unfaithful to Israel? If Jesus is the Jewish Messiah and the gospel is to the Jew first and then to the gentile, why does the church consist primarily of gentiles rather than Jews? The weight of this objection is not mitigated by simply pointing to the fact that there are Jewish people included in the new covenant, nor by the fact that the early church consisted of a rather large number of Jews.[21] The Jewish nation was the original kingdom of priests from whom blessings would flow to the rest of the world. To them the Jewish Messiah was promised. Now that the Messiah has come and has been rejected by Israel, it would seem that He has found a new bride in the gentiles who constitute the majority within the church, which happens to include some few believing Jews.
Thus, the objection that God has abandoned his people for a new people is a valid critique that Paul takes the next three chapters to show that God has in no way been unfaithful to Israel. In doing so, Paul uses the terminology of Jew and gentile in a way that seems to imply they are separate groups. This has lent some credibility to the bicovenantal view discussed above, that Jews enjoy access to God through the Torah that is distinct from Christians who come to God through Christ. The dispensationalists lean heavily on this passage as a key text that points toward the future for the nation of Israel that is distinct from that of the church. In this view, Paul’s argument for God’s faithfulness to Israel depends on a future political state of Israel on the physical location of Mt. Zion rather than a heavenly city.[22]
While this text is something of a mystery – Paul concludes the passage with a doxology speaking to the inscrutability of God’s judgments – more light is shed on the question of the current and future state of Israel if understood within the broader context of the epistle. In Romans 1 and 2, Paul demonstrates that both the gentiles and the Jews stand guilty before God and need a savior. The gentiles, on the basis of natural revelation, are condemned for suppressing what they knew to be true (1:18-25), and the Jews, on the basis of the Mosaic law, are condemned for violating the commandments directly revealed to them (2:12-24). The Jews, then, enjoy an advantage over gentiles in that they have been entrusted with the revelation of God (3:2); however, they have no advantage in judgment before God because it is obedience to God’s law that is required (3:9), not the mere possession or hearing of the law.[23] Jews cannot boast over gentiles because they, like the gentiles, are equally guilty before God and are equally saved by faith (3:27). Both Jews and gentiles are children of Abraham (4:16) and both Jews and gentiles must be united to Christ in baptism (6:3-11). Thus, Gorman concludes, “Romans offers one gospel for all – specifically for both Jews and Gentiles – creating one people of God that calls upon the name of the Lord (Jesus) and is saved.”[24]
Having established that Jews and gentiles exist in one body and that those in Christ cannot be separated from the love of Christ, Paul now moves to explain the paucity of Jewish members in this body in relation to gentiles. He does this by making a distinction between children descended from Abraham and true Jews (Rom. 9:6-8). True Jews, those who are the children of promise like Isaac, as opposed to Ishmael, and those who constitute the elect of God like Jacob, as opposed to Esau, have always been the minority. In other words, if being a son of Abraham did not make one a Jew (Ishmaelites), and being a son of Isaac did not make one a Jew (Edomites), being a son of Jacob did not make one a Jew either. Not all Israel (Jacob’s new name) belong to Israel. True Jews were always a subset of the Nation of Israel as a whole. Lest God be accused of unfaithfulness to Israel or of rejecting Israel since the Messiah has come, Paul makes it clear that the true Israel has always been a remnant within the broader nation. The true Israel has never been coterminous with the nation of Israel, and he quotes Isaiah 29:10, Deuteronomy 29:4, and Psalm 69:22 to support that claim.
In commenting on the passages cited here in Romans 11, author Jason Derouchie notes that God goes further in the following chapter of Isaiah, instructing the prophet to write down his words on a tablet for a future audience that would not be blind and deaf to his message (Is. 30:8).[25] If the true Israel has always been a remnant or subsection of the nation, nothing has really changed under the new covenant where true Jews remain a minority. The only difference is that now the majority consists of believing gentiles rather than unbelieving Jews. God is not cutting Israel out of his covenant for a time in favor of new program for the gentiles only to return to his original program for Israel in the future.[26] The good news for Israel is that because of their unbelief and their persecution of the Way, the gospel went out to the gentiles. The book of Acts documents numerous occasions where the gospel was believed by the gentiles and they were baptized and received the Holy Spirit, just like the believing Jews. This, Paul says, would cause the Jews to feel jealous and thereby have the effect of saving some (11:14). In sum, the rejection of the Messiah and persecution of his body led to more Jews being saved than otherwise would have. God has been faithful to Israel, using even their rejection of Him for their good.
Yet, one problem remains. Should not the coming of the Jewish Messiah mark a change in the status quo for Israel? If the true Israel has always been a remnant, should not the Messiah bring about redemption for the whole nation of Israel? Paul addresses this by turning the tables on the gentiles. Just as Jews were not to think themselves better than gentiles because they had been entrusted with law of God (Rom. 3:9), gentiles should not be boastful as if God’s plan of redemption now revolves around them. The Gentiles do not get a new olive tree; rather they are grafted into the true Israel’s tree (11:17-18). Isaiah had prophesied that salvation would come from Mount Zion (Is. 21:5). God was not going to raise a series of mountains to which people could flock. There was always one mountain to which the nations would come, and it was Israel’s mountain. Likewise, there is only one tree, and it is Israel’s tree. Jews might be a minority in relationship to the gentiles in the kingdom of God, but they are the root and the trunk of the tree to which the gentile branches will be grafted in. Thus, God had not been unfaithful to Israel but was still using them as the means by which the gentile nations would be blessed just as He always said he would.
So what does Paul’s statement that “all Israel will be saved” mean for the nation of Israel? Must the nation-state of Israel be restored in the future based on a separate Jewish covenant built on Torah observance for God to be deemed faithful to Israel? As much as the bi-covenantalists want to insist that anything less than the physical and political restoration of Israel and the rebuilding of the temple on Mount Zion amounts to a spiritualization of the promises, they will have to qualify the statement in some way. Strictly speaking “all Israel” must refer to every single Jew. Even dispensationalist John Walvoord limits it to the Jews living at a particular time.[27] What about those who are only half Jewish? Those who are Jews by conversion or descended from Jewish converts and have no Jewish DNA? Are they included? Non-dispensationalist commentators who believe a future revival will see the conversion of many Jewish individuals to Christ must admit this is still a far cry from a literal interpretation of the statement “all Israel will be saved.” While it is certainly possible that there will be a future mass conversion of Jews to the Messiah and a restoration of the nation of Israel as a Christian state, a future Judaist nation-state is not what Paul is promising here as evidence of God’s faithfulness to Israel.
Two exegetical arguments from the surrounding text support the interpretation that Paul is saying that all who belong to the true Israel will be saved. First, Paul qualifies the statement by saying “in this way all Israel will be saved” (emphasis mine) in verses 25-27 and then quotes from Isaiah 59 testifying that the Deliverer would come out of Zion, banish the ungodliness from Jacob, and take away their sins. This is the way in which “all Israel will be saved.” This is extremely significant because the true Israel is, and always has been, the root that supports the Gentile branches that are grafted in (11:17-23). It is the olive tree that must be purified and made whole again. All of it must be redeemed to serve as the root or backbone of God’s plan of redemption for the world. God has the power to graft old branches back in (v. 23), but that doesn’t mean they all will be grafted back in. Second, the statement that “all Israel will be saved” needs to be seen in parallel to the statement just prior to it regarding the “fullness of the Gentiles”. Douglas Moo writes, “this ‘fullness’ (pleroma) may refer to a great number of Jews who come to salvation, but the word more naturally has a qualitative force, referring to the full experience of kingdom blessing that the Jews one day will experience.”[28] Therefore, just as the “fullness” of the gentiles does not mean that every gentile will be saved, the “fullness” of the Jews does not mean that every Jew will be saved. The promise that all Israel will be saved then is referring to the fullness of the Israel that will be accomplished and experienced in its role as the olive tree, the means by which the gospel branches out to the gentiles.
The Necessity of Regeneration in Baptism
Of these three views on the people of God, it is the view of one united people of God that is most consistent with the Anglican tradition. Article XXVII on Baptism states that
Baptism is not only a sign of profession, and mark of difference, whereby Christian men are discerned from others that be not christened, but it is also a sign of Regeneration or New-Birth, whereby, as by an instrument, they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church; the promises of the forgiveness of sin, and of our adoption to be the sons of God by the Holy Ghost, are visibly signed and sealed, Faith is confirmed, and Grace increased by virtue of prayer unto God.[29]
For Anglicans, baptism is not merely a public statement of one’s commitment to Christ, nor a symbol of God’s covenant grace that will result, hopefully, one day in truth faith. Rather, baptism is the “sign of Regeneration or New-Birth” which incorporates the individual baptized into the church. The baptismal liturgy within the Book of Common Prayer refers to the child baptized as “now being regenerate,”[30] implying that a change of status is brought about in baptism, rather than a symbol or sign of a change in status that occurred prior or subsequent to the act of baptism. Paul speaks of baptism as putting on Christ in Galatians 3:28. In Romans 6, Paul says that in baptism the sinner is a participant in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. The old man dies in baptism and the new man is raised to new life. This is the basis of Paul’s ethical teaching: “if we have died to sin, how do we continue to live in it?” In Galatians 2:21, Paul says he has been crucified with Christ and for that reason no longer lives to himself, but unto Christ who has given His life for him. Since baptism regenerates the initiate and brings him or her into the body of Christ, and regeneration necessary for all who are brought into the new covenant, the implication is that baptism provides a basis of unity between Jew and gentile. All must experience the washing of regeneration to enter into covenant relationship with God. Jews do not have to become gentiles just as gentiles need not be Jews, but all must enter by faith with repentance and through the waters of holy baptism.
In this way, Israel is transformed through the process of sharing the good news with the world, however, it is not a revolutionary transformation that requires Jews to abandon their identity as Jews. Jewish people are not forbidden from practicing circumcision or keeping the Torah as their custom, but they are forbidden from imposing these requirements upon gentiles that desire to join Abraham’s family. To do so is to fail to see Christ’s sacrifice as sufficient for opening the gospel to the gentiles and for breaking down the wall of separation that had previously existed. To hold to a bicovenentalist view of the relationship between Jews and gentiles, on the one hand, is to say that the former group does not need to be baptized, but the latter does. Each group comes into the covenant a different way. To hold to a supercessionist reformed view on the other hand, individual Jews and gentiles are called out away from a religion based on works to a relationship with God based on grace through faith. Avoiding both mistakes recognizes the reality that it is the gentiles baptized into Christ that are brought into the one people of God.
Regardless of the political or social pressures of the day that would cause one to fear one being labeled as anti-Semite for distinguishing the true spiritual Israel from the modern nation-state or being labeled as ethnocentric for affirming the right of Jews to continue to practice the customs set forth in the Mosaic law, both of these truths must be maintained for the sake of the unity of the body. Real unity cannot be maintained by treating unbelieving Jews as if they are in something like a “Half-Way Covenant” with Christians, nor can it be maintained by insisting that Christians must abandon their common bonds of language, heritage, custom, and nation and embrace multiculturalism in order to be unified in Christ. Grace restores nature, but it does not replace it. It is the diversity of nations within the body of Christ that allows the glory of Christ’s work of redemption to shine even brighter.
Image: View of Jerusalem from the Valley of Jehoshaphat, Auguste Forbin (1825). Wikimedia Commons.
[1] This view, known as dispensationalism, was articulated in academia primarily at Dallas Theological Seminary by Lewis Sperry Chafer and John Walvoord.
[2] See Kenneth Gentry, The Divorce of Israel: A Redemptive-Historical Interpretation of Revelation, (Acworth, GA: Tolle Lege Press, 2024). Gentry argues that the Jewish rejection of the Messiah led to God’s divorce of the nation of Israel for her breaking of the covenant. This divorce is evidenced by the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. Christ’s new bride is the church, for whom Christ died and through the Holy Spirit is enabled to keep God’s law. The new bride of Christ will not be unfaithful like the former bride.
[3] Benjamin L. Merkle, Ephesians: Exegetical Guide to the Greek New Testament, ed. Andreas J. Kostenberger and Robert W. Yarbrough (Nashville, TN: B & H Academic, 2016), 72.
[4] This is evidenced both in the text of the Torah as originally given by Moses, as well as in the exacting detail with which the returning exiles planned the restoration of the temple and the city of Jerusalem in Ezra.
[5] Michael J. Gorman, Apostle of the Crucified Lord: A Theological Introduction to Paul & His Letters (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017), 591.
[6] John Walvoord, Eschatological Problems X: The New Covenant with Israel. https://walvoord.com/article/27
[7] Matthew Theissen, A Jewish Paul: The Messiah’s Herald to the Gentiles (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2023), 42.
[8] Thiessen, 155.
[9] Thiessen, 153.
[10] Richard Hooker, A Learned Discourse on Justification in Modern English, ed. Brad Littlejohn, Rhys Laverty, and Ken Cook (Landrum, SC: Davenant Press, 2022), 48.
[11] Martin Bucer, De unitate ecclesia servanda, quoted by Richard Hooker, A Learned Discourse on Justification, 49-50.
[12] Gerald McDermott, A New History of Redemption: The Work of Jesus the Messiah through the Millennia (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2024), 116.
[13] Josephus, Against Apion, 2.282, quoted in N.T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, The New Testament and Its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2019), 165.
[14] Constantine R. Campbell and Jonathan T. Pennington, Reading the New Testament as Christian Scripture:
A Literary, Canonical, and Theological Survey (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020), 37.
[15] N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 148-149.
[16] Wright and Bird, 383.
[17] Thiessen, 97.
[18] Wright and Bird, 381.
[19] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Q. 1; Art. 8.
[20] John R. W. Stott, The Message of Galatians, (Downers Grove, Il: Inter-Varsity Press, 1986), 85. This is not unique to Stott, but is a typical way of framing the issue among Reformed commentators.
[21] McDermott estimates a minimum of four hundred thousand Messianic Jews in the Roman Empire in the first century, A New History of Redemption, 189.
[22] Walvoord. “Eschatological Problems IX: Israel’s Restoration”, https://walvoord.com/article/26: “When Christ returns, the situation will be changed. Instead of a remnant, instead of a small part, Israel as a whole will be saved. It will be a national deliverance.”
[23] Campbell & Pennington, 194.
[24] Michael J. Gorman, 403.
[25] Jason Derouchie, Delighting in the Old Testament: Through Christ and For Christ (Wheaton, Il: Crossway, 2024), 43.
[26] Walvoord, “Eschatological Problems IX: Israel’s Restoration”, https://walvoord.com/article/26: “The terminus of Gentile blessing is the point in time when Israel’s blindness is lifted. When Israel’s blindness is lifted, the way is opened for the work of the Deliverer who will bring spiritual restoration as well as physical.
[27] Walvoord, “Israel’s Restoration”.
[28] Douglas J. Moo, Encountering the Book of Romans: A Theological Survey (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 168.
[29] Article XXVII of the Thirty-Nine Articles.
[30] The Book of Common Prayer: And Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, According to the Use of the Reformed Episcopal Church in North America, Together with the Psalter or Psalms of David, fifth ed. (Philadelphia, Pa.: Standing Liturgical Commission of the Reformed Episcopal Church, 2013).
