Should Christians support Israel? Since the founding of the modern nation of Israel in 1948, this has been a contested question in Christian circles. Christian attitudes toward Israel and the Jewish people have ranged from Zionism, which sees supporting the modern state of Israel as a Christian duty, to, on the other end of the spectrum, anti-Semitism, which claims to find in Christian theology a rationale for a negative attitude toward the Jewish people. What is the correct way for Christians think about the modern state of Israel and Christian-Jewish relations today? Before attempting to answer this question, we need to carefully examine what the New Testament really has to say about Israel, the Jewish people, and the church’s relationship to them.
Israel and the Church in the New Testament
One of the key issues in biblical interpretation is how to understand the relationship between Israel and the New Testament church. According to dispensationalism, Israel and the church are completely distinct, and God has distinct plans and promises to fulfill for the nation of Israel in distinction from the church. According to covenant theology, the New Testament church is a continuation of Old Testament Israel, and all of God’s Old Testament promises are fulfilled in the church. A careful reading of the New Testament will show that the latter view, in which there is continuity between Israel and the church, is the correct one.
Throughout the New Testament, it is very clear that Jesus did not come to found a new religion or to create the church from scratch as a brand new entity; Jesus came to fulfill God’s covenant promises to and bring salvation to His people Israel. The Old Testament prophets had promised a future ideal Davidic king, an anointed one (Messiah) who would bring salvation to Israel and set things right between YHWH and His covenant people. According to the New Testament, Jesus is that Jewish Messiah, the king of Israel. Jesus did not come to bring salvation to humanity in the abstract; He came to “save His people [Israel] from their sins” (Matt 1:20).
In Romans 9-11, the apostle Paul wrestles with the question of why, if Jesus is the Jewish Messiah and Savior of Israel, so many Isrealites have rejected Jesus and failed to obtain that salvation. Paul’s answer is not that God has a different plan for the nation of Israel in distinction from the church; Paul’s answer is that it has always been the case that only some ethnic Israelites were true Israelites who would receive God’s promised blessings, and that there is hope that the majority of Israelites who have rejected Jesus the Messiah will eventually believe in Him and be saved.
Using the image of an olive tree as a metaphor for God’s covenant people, Paul speaks of Jews who reject Jesus as branches which have been broken off of that tree, and Gentiles who believe in Jesus as wild branches which have been grafted into that tree (Rom 11:13-24). It is abundantly clear here that Paul sees continuity between Old Testament Israel and the church as God’s covenant people. There are not two trees, but one. The problem for Jews who reject Jesus is not that they have failed to graft onto a new tree, but that they have actually broken off of the one tree (Israel), thus losing out on God’s promised blessings to Israel.
In the New Testament, Gentiles can be included in the church without first becoming Jews, and this is indeed a new development that was not the case for Old Testament Israel. However, this does not mean that the church is a brand new entity that is distinct from the nation of Israel; it means that Gentiles are now being included into the covenant people of Israel. As Paul puts it in Galatians, “If you belong to the Messiah, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (3:29). By faith in the Messiah Jesus and union with Him, Gentiles can now become grafted into God’s covenant people Israel, thus becoming heirs of God’s promised blessings to Abraham’s Israelite descendants.
This is the good news the New Testament has for Gentiles: “formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.. . Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household” (Eph 2:11-13, 19). The good news is that, through Christ, Gentiles can now have citizenship in Israel and be recipients of God’s promises to His covenant people. There is one covenant people of God, across the Old and New Testaments.
There is no hint anywhere in the New Testament that God has a plan for the nation of Israel apart from the salvation that comes through being part of the church, the body of the Messiah. “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ” (2 Cor 1:20), writes the apostle Paul. Paul is here speaking of God’s covenant promises to Israel. All of them are fulfilled in Jesus. Everything God promised His covenant people Israel in the Old Testament is fulfilled in and through Jesus, and thus in and through the church.
Old Testament Prophecy and Israel
Given these New Testament teachings, why do so many Christians hold to the view that Israel and the church are completely distinct, and that God has distinct plans and purposes for the nation of Israel in distinction from the church? The answer has to do with the issue of the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. There are many Old Testament prophecies about the future of Israel, that contain details which, taken at face value, it seems could not be fulfilled in the church. Therefore, many argue, the details of these prophecies must be fulfilled literally in the nation of Israel at some future time, and so God’s plans and promises to the nation of Israel and the church must be distinct.
Such a perspective represents a faulty understanding of the nature of prophecy and its fulfillment. A prophet is not someone who predicts the future. A prophet is someone who gives a message from God to human beings. That message is intended to communicate the divine will to a contemporary audience. Prophecy may include references to future events, but this is always for the purpose of achieving an effect on the contemporary audience. The prophet may speak of future blessings in order to give comfort to God’s people, or the prophet may speak of future calamities in order to warn God’s people to repent of their sins. Almost always, these references to future events are conditional; whether they in fact will come to pass is dependent upon the response of the audience to the prophecy. God clearly and explicitly articulates this conditional nature of prophetic fulfillment in the book of Jeremiah: “If at any time I announce that a nation of kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down, or destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it” (18:7-9).
All this means that not every detail of every Old Testament prophecy that gives promises about the future of Israel has to be fulfilled by things actually happening in exactly that way. The Old Testament prophets always spoke to their contemporaries using terms and images that would be meaningful to them at that time. When the time comes for God’s promise He gave through that prophet to be fulfilled, its fulfillment may look quite different than the details of the prophecy as it was originally given. Prophecies are often fulfilled in quite surprising ways. Reading many of the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, it is surprising to see them fulfilled by Jesus, a Messiah who suffered and died on a cross. Yet Christians believe that Jesus did in fact fulfill the Old Testament promise of a Messiah; He defeated the powers of evil not by military victory of the national enemies of Israel, but by His suffering, death, and resurrection.
There are many Old Testament prophecies that promise future blessings for God’s covenant people Israel using specific details and imagery that seem to only fit with Israel as a political nation dwelling in the Promised Land, not with the church. Yet we should still understand these prophecies as being fulfilled in the church. For example, we should understand Ezekiel’s detailed prophecy of an ideal, eschatological temple (Ezek 40-48) as being fulfilled in the body of Christ as God’s temple (Eph 2:19-22), and not in a literal third temple building that will one day be built in Palestine. And we should understand God’s promises of the nation of Israel dwelling safely and securely in the Promised Land as being fulfilled in God’s people inheriting the entire earth (including the Promised Land) when Jesus comes again (Matt 5:5, Rom 4:13), and not in ethnic Israelites occupying Palestine today.
Conclusion
Biblical Israel and the modern state of Israel share a name, but they are two very different things. God’s covenant promises to Israel are fulfilled in the church, not in the modern state of Israel. The modern state of Israel is a secular nation-state that has no theological significance. Christians should have the same attitude toward it as toward any other nation state. Yet Christians should certainly not have any kind of negative attitude toward the Jewish people; anti-Semitism in any form is radically antithetical to everything the New Testament has to say. God has not in any way rejected the Jewish people; the Bible is very clear that ethnic Israelites forever remain God’s chosen people (Rom 11: 28-29). But at the same time, those Jews who reject God’s Messiah Jesus are cut off from receiving God’s promised blessings to His covenant people. Christians are to show love for God’s people Israel by preaching the Gospel to them, not by supporting the modern nation-state that bears the name Israel.