The recent attacks by Hamas on the State of Israel and the rapidly expanding war in the Middle East that has followed have prompted many Christian preachers and pew-warmers to try their hand at theo-political punditry. This, by itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. The last few years have rightly undermined confidence in the competence of credentialed experts in many fields. We should bear in mind, however, that the fact the experts are making it up as they go is not an argument for the superiority of uninformed and ill-thought out opinions.
Many dispensationalists, predictably, see the latest violence in Israel as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy and harbinger of the last days. The fact this is how they have interpreted every instance of violence involving Israel since their particular prophetic perspective appeared in the mid-1800s does not seem to dim their enthusiasm and confidence in reading the tea leaves of providence.
Christians who lean left politically (or long ago toppled over) can be heard making arguments about nuance, context, and the evils of colonization, as if any of those things had anything to do with deliberate war crimes against a civilian population, rape, kidnapping, multilation of the dead, and calls for systematic genocide against an ethnic group. If this argument is relevant, I suppose we might offer the same nuance and context for the Holocaust and Final Solution carried out by Nazi Germany. Maybe there was something to their claims about the Jews and their manipulation and control of financial markets after all.
Even among, more politically conservative, Reformed Christians there seems to be a perverse need to state the obvious. Ethnic Israel is no longer the covenant Israel of God and The political State of Israel is not God’s chosen people—believers in Jesus are. That is true, and there is a place for noting it. So many Christians in the west have been indoctrinated by dispensational theology that we must be prepared to offer such clarifications. But what does such a claim have to do with recent violence and the present war? Why would we make this clarification our emphasis at such a time? Is it helpful or appropriate?
How are we to think christianly about ethnic Israel? The Jews are not accepted by God simply on the basis of their heritage. Membership in the covenant is delineated by faith in Christ, not merely by biological lineage.
For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
(Galatians 3:26-29)
This does not, however, mean there is no longer any distinction to be found between ethnic Jews and the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. The same apostle who wrote Galatians 3 also clearly affirmed:
What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision? Much in every way! Chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God. For what if some did not believe? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect? Certainly not!
(Romans 3:1-4a)
He goes on in the same epistle to the Roman saints:
I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises; of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen.
(Romans 9:3-5)
These historical, bibliographical, religious, and spiritual advantages do not mean that Jewish people are saved apart from faith in Christ.
Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved.
(Romans 10:1)
The Jews must embrace their Messiah, but Paul says they will.
For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: “The Deliverer will come out of Zion, And He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob; For this is My covenant with them, When I take away their sins.”Concerning the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For as you were once disobedient to God, yet have now obtained mercy through their disobedience, even so these also have now been disobedient, that through the mercy shown you they also may obtain mercy. For God has committed them all to disobedience, that He might have mercy on all.
(Romans 11:25-32)
All Israel will be saved. All Israel, i.e. ethnically Jewish people, as Jews, will come to faith in Christ. This means that while the wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles has been broken down in Christ, ethnic identities still exist. The fact that the Jews are no longer God’s chosen people in the way they once were does not mean they have merely been absorbed into a mass of undifferentiated humanity. That is not what Scripture claims, quite the contrary.
Even under the Mosaic economy, the Jews were in proximity to covenant blessings that could only be fully and finally possessed by faith (John 8:31-58). Those who trusted in their ethnic heritage would not be accepted by God. They were sons of the Devil, not of Abraham. Abraham’s children have always been defined by their participation in Abraham’s faith. What has changed is not the recognition of Jewish ethnicity but the expansion of Abrahamic blessings to all nations through the resurrection and reign of Israel’s long-awaited Messiah.
God does not have two people groups with separate identities and destinies, as dispensationalism claims. But the Bible does acknowledge the persistence of the Jewish people, their distinctiveness as an ethnic group, and their future conversion to faith in Christ. Their destiny is not distinct from the Church of God but is rather to ultimately be united with the Church of God.
How are we to think about the recent attacks against Israel and their war with violent Islamists who openly state their intention to exterminate the Jews? All of the theology explained above may be true, and it may be helpful to Christians who are ill-taught on these issues. But it is of little use or relevance in responding to the kind of godless slaughter we have lately seen. Christians are sometimes guilty of the kind of theology as comfort practiced by Job’s friends. Miserable comforters are you all (Job 16:2).
Would Christian pastors have chosen September 12, 2001 as an opportune time to remind us that many of those killed the day before were unbelievers and now in Hell? Would it be helpful to observe, what is undoubtedly true, that American believers have more in common with Arab Christians than unbelieving New Yorkers who worked in the World Trade Center? The death of a neighbor’s child is not the time to lecture them about the mysteries of election. The young woman may have been dressed inappropriately, but the hours after her rape are not the best moment to discuss the importance of modesty.
It is true that American believers have more in common with a Palestinian Christian than they do with a secular Jew. It is also true that a believer has more in common with an American Christian than with his unbelieving cousin. But it would be naive and inappropriate to imagine that because one person (or group) is unbelieving, there can be no special connection to them. I have family members who are not walking with Christ, and I have far more affection and compassion for them than for anonymous Christians I have never heard about or met.
The Jews are the Christian’s cousins, and one day the family will be reunited. Christianity is a Hebraic faith. There is no denying the impact of Hellenistic language, philosophy, and culture on various aspects of the Christian tradition, but insofar as the two streams of Hebraism and Hellenism stand in opposition to one another in interpretation of Scripture, typology, liturgy, and ethics, the Christian faith stands in line with the tradition of the Hebrews, not the Greeks. Christians worship a Jew as the Son of God. Our spiritual fathers, first teachers, and foundational Scriptures are all Jewish. This is not to diminish the way in which God used the Greek language and culture to advance the cause of Christ. It is not to deny that the Jewish people, by and large, rejected their Messiah, fell under God’s condemnation, and have been estranged from the covenant of promise. But we should affirm that the Christian Church has more in common with modern Jews than with the average Gentile unbeliever, and we have vastly more in common with the State of Israel than we do with militant, Islamic terrorists.
One does not have to be a Zionist, neo-con, or dispensationalist to support Israel in its war with Hamas. The State of Israel is largely secular, but the conduct and stated mission of Hamas is explicitly, indefensibly evil. There are no mitigating circumstances, no excuses, no room for context, nuance, or negotiation. The Arab-Israeli conflict may be complicated. The Israel-Hamas war is not. To think christianly means not only thinking theologically and covenantally; it requires us to think with ethical clarity.
