The People of God

Many Christians refer to the Jews as “God’s chosen people.” If, by this expression, they merely mean “the people whom God chose to form a covenant relationship through whom He gave the world its Saviour in His Son Jesus Christ” then it reflects Scriptural truth. Unfortunately, the usage of the expression suggests that more often than not it means something like “God’s favourites, whom He loves above all other people, the treatment of whom is the standard by which God judges everybody else, so you have better be nice to them and say nothing bad about them or God will get you”. This is not Scriptural truth but a doctrine of racial supremacism. Ironically, those who are most likely to use the expression in this way are those who pride themselves the most on following the Bible rather than “man-made tradition” and on interpreting it literally rather than figuratively.

When the expression as used in this manner is taken seriously and applied to world politics it has some truly terrible implications. We recently considered religious Zionism which, contrary to the orthodox teachings of both Judaism and Christianity, identifies the current state of Israel with the Restoration Israel prophesied in the Old Testament and so gives that state its unqualified support, encouraging our governments to do the same lest they lose God’s blessing and invite His wrath. Israel is to be preferred over the terrorist organizations with which she is perpetually at war, because she is a legitimate state representing a civilized society whereas they are irresponsible madmen who aim rockets at her civilian neighborhoods from bases they put in their own civilian neighbourhoods so that when she strikes back their own women and children are killed. That she takes their bait, however, is to be attributed to the fact that she is under the control of a radical, nationalist/expansionist, faction with a growing fringe element that increasingly uses the language of racial supremacy to justify their own cause and the language of extermination about their enemies. Under these circumstances, it is insane to offer her support without qualification or condition.

The problem with this concept goes much deeper than its political implications. Scripturally, it is correct to say that God made a covenant with the children of Israel, after rescuing them from slavery in Egypt, in which He agreed to be their God, and they agreed to be His people. In making this covenant, He went out of His way to demonstrate that He was and is not just another petty tribal deity like Baal, Chemosh, Moloch, Dagon, and every other idol that the other peoples of the ancient Near East worshipped, but rather the One true and living God of the whole world. The way many Christians seem to think of the relationship between God and the Jews, however, tends to reduce God to the level of one of these tribal deities.

That God is the one true and living God and not just another idol is a doctrine established from the very first words of the Torah in which God is declared to have created the heavens and the earth – including all things which the heathen nations worshipped as gods, such as the sun, moon, and stars. The first promise of redemption in the Torah, is made not to the patriarchs of the nation Israel, but to the mother of all living (Gen. 3:15).

Therefore, when God called Abram to leave his country and go west to Canaan, promising to make a great nation out of his descendants, He said “in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed”. (Gen. 12:3) a promise He reiterates when Abram, now Abraham, passes the test of his faith when he is commanded to sacrifice Isaac. (Gen. 22:18). He further repeated this promise to Isaac (Genesis 26:4) and Jacob (Genesis 28:14). To each of the patriarchs of Israel, the promise that their descendants would be made into a great nation was linked with the promise that all of the peoples of the world would thereby be blessed. God’s purpose, therefore, in bringing this nation into being and entering into covenant with them, was much larger than the nation itself, but pertained to the whole world.

After God delivered the Israelites from bondage in Egypt, He brought them into the wilderness of Sinai and presented them with an offer. If they obeyed Him and kept His covenant, He would in turn make them a kingdom of priests and holy nation (Ex. 19:1-6). This offer was accepted and the terms of the covenant were handed down to Moses, beginning with the famous Ten Commandments which begin by prohibiting the worship of any other gods and the making of idols. These were announced to the Israelites by Moses, then written down in a book and read to the Israelites, who each time agreed to the terms, and the covenant was sealed with the blood of a sacrifice. (Ex. 24:1-8).

The overarching theme of the covenant, the details of which continue to be spelled out throughout Exodus and Leviticus and which are reiterated in Deuteronomy on the eve of entry into the Promised Land, is that God is not like the gods of the other nations, and therefore Israel is not to be like those other nations. The gods of the other nations lead their worshippers into practices the true and living God considers abhorrent, therefore Israel is not to worship those idols, or commit those practices, but is to keep herself separate and holy. To further the distance between her and the idolatrous nations, she is given detailed instructions on where and how to worship God, her own priesthood, and a set of ceremonial and dietary instructions.

Yet when we come to the prophetic literature of the Old Testament we find that it is filled with promises of a day when the nations of the world would flock to Jerusalem to learn the ways of God (Michah 4:2, Zechariah 8:22) and the Temple in Jerusalem would be a house of prayer to all people (Isaiah 56:7). Most significantly, it is prophesied that God would raise up priests and Levites out of every nation (Isaiah 66:20-21), indicating that in this day, all peoples would be God’s people.

The literature that contains these promises was addressed to the nation at the time when she was facing imminent judgement, in the form of the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities, after a history of violating the covenant by worshipping idols and following after the practices of the heathen. The promises are connected to the message of hope contained within these prophecies of doom – that God would break the cycle of rebellion and judgement, by sending a final deliverer, the Messiah, Who would make good on all the promises God had ever made to Israel and her patriarchs, would establish a new covenant in which His laws would be written on their hearts, and would restore them to the land promised to their forefathers.

Judaism is still looking for that Messiah, but Christians know that He has already come, and furthermore, that He has established the new covenant by the blood of His sacrifice on the cross, a fact of which we are reminded each time we come to the Lord’s Supper and hear the words with which the Lord instituted the sacrament on the eve of His crucifixion. How does this affect our understanding of the old covenant, and the people with whom God made that covenant?

There is much confusion about this due to a number of errors that have sprung up. One new doctrine, very popular among North American evangelicals, teaches that the present age in which God is working through the Church, is a parenthesis in His dealing with Israel which will be resumed after the Church is removed in the rapture. Another doctrine, teaches that God has rejected His ancient people, just as they rejected His Messiah, and that the Church has replaced Israel as the people of God. The truth, as traditionally understood, is more nuanced than either of these views.

God does not have two different covenants with two different peoples. The first covenant, the old covenant, was fulfilled by Jesus Christ, Who also established the new covenant. God’s people, are those with whom He has a covenant relationship, and since the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, such a relationship is through the new covenant.

The new covenant offers salvation from sin through the grace of Jesus Christ to be received freely through faith. The offer is made to the whole world. Anybody can receive this grace by believing in Jesus, and when they do so they are made part of the people of God. This does not mean that God has replaced His old people, Israel, with a new people, the Church.

The Church is a continuation of Israel, not a replacement for it. This is clearly what St. Paul the Apostle teaches, when he writes that the ceremonial law, which separated Israel from the Gentiles, has been torn down so that believing Gentiles are no longer “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel” but “fellow citizens with the saints” (Eph. 2:11-19). In the Book of Acts we see this unfold, as Christ commissions His disciples to take His Gospel, from Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, then to the rest of the world (Acts 1:8), as the Gospel is taken to the Gentiles, and the dietary laws (Acts 10) and circumcision (Acts 15) are revealed or ruled to be unnecessary in the Church, the body of Christ in which the Gentiles are united with Israel, through faith in the Messiah. St. Paul uses the metaphor of an olive tree to illustrate how the Church is a continuation of Israel. Israel is the root and trunk of the olive tree, from which certain branches (unbelieving Jews) have been pruned, and into which wild branches (believing Gentiles) have been grafted (Rom. 11). The tree of Israel in this condition – unbelieving Jews cut off, believing Gentiles grafted in, is the Church.

When he uses this metaphor, St. Paul writes that the day will come in which the unbelieving bulk of the nation will believe and be grafted back into the tree (vv. 23-31). This clearly coincides with the Old Testament prophecies of the Final Restoration, and equally clearly makes the conversion of the unbelievers to faith in Jesus Christ the necessary pre-condition for that Restoration. The unbelieving state of Israel in the Middle East today is therefore not that Restoration, although there are good grounds for supporting that state against her mortal enemies for other reasons.

Under the new covenant, a person who does not believe that Jesus is the Christ cannot claim a covenant relationship with God on the grounds of racial descent from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whereas a person who does believe that Jesus is the Christ, although ethnically a Gentile, has been made a full partaker of the commonwealth of Israel. That is the orthodox Christian doctrine on the subject, and there is no support in it for the kind of racial supremacism in which Arab life is treated as cheap and worthless compared to Jewish life, which supremacism is disturbingly becoming more prevalent among Israel’s governing class, and her supporters.

Obeying God

“He that honoureth his father shall have a long life; and he that is obedient unto the Lord shall be a comfort to his mother.” – Ecclesiasticus 3:6

“Trust and obey, for there’s no other way
To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.” – John H. Sammis

Obedience is a character trait which does not come easily to human beings. As children we have to be trained to obey our parents, our teachers, and other authority figures, and we resist that training every step of the way. We have a strong inclination to rebel against authority and break the rules. This inclination is what theologians call “Original Sin”. The Holy Scriptures just call it “sin” and St. John defines it as lawlessness, i.e., the rejection of all authority and law over oneself.

The institutions of traditional society stressed the importance of obedience. In the family, children were to obey parents, in the classroom they were to obey their teachers. All members of society were expected to obey the laws of the land as enforced by the Queen’s police. Most importantly, the Church taught obedience to the commandments of God Himself.

Today, however, these institutions are finding it more and more difficult to instill obedience to traditional authorities. Indeed, various popular educational and psychological theories seem designed to discourage parents and teachers from even attempting to do so. Child protection agencies and governments seem determined to strip parents of their authority and their right to back that authority up with discipline.

Behind all of this there is a philosophy which has gradually permeated Western societies over the last few centuries. This philosophy asserts that people as individuals own their own selves and that therefore the only legitimate authority over them is that which they have voluntarily consented to. The name of this philosophy is liberalism.

Where traditional social institutions sought to contain the ill effects of that human condition known as sin and to cultivate the obedience to lawful authority necessary for human societies to thrive, liberalism encourages the sinful attitude of rebellion and undermines traditional authority. While liberalism, as a social and political philosophy, is only a few centuries old, the attitude behind it is much older. Indeed, Samuel Johnson, the 18th Century lexicographer and moralist, correctly identified the source of that attitude when he said “The first Whig was the devil”. The devil rebelled against God, in his pride asserting his own will against that of his Creator and Sovereign.

Sadly, the devil’s liberal attitude has permeated even the Church of Jesus Christ. It is now common, even in Churches which profess doctrinal orthodoxy, for people to respond to a Scriptural command by saying “Yes, but I think…”

This is the exact opposite of the attitude the Holy Scriptures enjoin upon us. A search of the Scriptures for the words “obey” and “obedience” reveals that God expects and requires obedience from all people, but especially from the people He has identified as His own and called by His name. This was true under the Old Covenant and it is true under the New Covenant, although there is a major difference in how God commands obedience in the two Covenants.

The New Testament also commands Christians to obey all the traditional social authorities. Children are told to obey their parents (Eph. 6:1, Col. 3:20), servants are told to obey their masters wholeheartedly out of fear of God (Eph. 6:5-6,Col. 3:22), wives are told to submit to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22-23, 1 Peter 3:1), and all believers are told in several places to obey the civil authorities who are identified as God’s ministers (Rom. 13:1-7, Titus 3:1, Hebrews 13:17). Submission to and obedience to these authorities is treated consistently, in the New Testament, as part of the obedience we owe God. There is not the slightest sympathy with Whiggish thought anywhere in the Apostolic writings. Of course there are also commands to those entrusted with authority not to abuse it – fathers are told not to provoke their children (Eph. 6:4), Husbands are told to love their wives as Christ loves His Church (Eph. 5:25-28), masters are reminded that they too have a Master and are told not to threaten their servants (Eph. 6:9).

The Whig concept of self-ownership was thought out by John Locke in the 18th Century. It was the foundation of his theory of natural rights. Locke conceived of rights as claims or title deeds to property, with the right to one’s own property as the basis of all other rights. Property ownership, however, is not universal and Locke was looking for universal natural rights which belong to each person. Thus, he argued, individuals who have no other property, have at least their own selves as their own, their lives and their liberty.

The Holy Scriptures declare, however, that the earth and everything in it, belongs to God. The Psalmist says “The earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1) “Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine”, God declares, in Ezekiel 18:4. He then goes on to say “the soul that sinneth, it shall die”, an assertion of His right as the owners of all souls to punish the soul that disobeys.

Rather than belonging to ourselves, therefore, we belong to God. This is true of all human beings by virtue of the fact that He is the Creator and Ruler of all things. It is true of Christian believers in a special way, however. In addition to being His by right of Creation we are also His by right of purchase, for He purchased us with the price of the blood of His Son Jesus Christ (Acts 20:28, 1 Cor. 6:19-20, 1 Pet. 1:18-19, Rev. 5:9). All people, as God’s creation, subjects, and property owe Him our obedience. He is entitled to our obedience, He has a right to it, and we do not have a right to withhold it. As Christians we owe Him our obedience because He has purchased us, redeemed us from the slave-market of sin, and brought us into servitude to His Son, which servitude is true freedom (Rom. 6:17-18).

Under the Old Covenant, God’s people Israel owed God obedience because He had redeemed them out of their slavery in the land of Egypt. After bringing them out of Egypt He made His covenant with them at Mt. Sinai. The terms of the Covenant were that He would give them the land He had promised to their forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and would be their God, and they would be His people. They were to obey the commandments He would give them, which terms they agreed to in the sacrifice that sealed the Covenant. They would be blessed in the land if they did so obey, they would be punished and even driven from the land if they disobeyed (Exod. 19:3-8, Deut. 11:27-28). When driven from the land, they were to remember their God, return to Him, and obey His commandments and He would restore them (Deut. 30:1-5).

Much of the Old Testament consists of the history of the Israelites under this covenant, their disobedience, their judgement, their repentance, and their restoration. Towards the end of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, when the Assyrians and Babylonians would take God’s people captive and remove them from the Promised Land, God sent prophets who prophesied the great judgement God was about to send upon His people, but promised that God would one day break this cycle, would send them a Savior, and make a new and better Covenant, in which He would write His laws upon the hearts of His people rather than upon tablets of stone (Jer. 31:31-34). That New Covenant was established by the blood of Jesus Christ, shed on the cross (Matt. 26:28, Mk. 14:24, Luke 22:20).

There are similarities and differences between the two Covenants. The Old Covenant was made with a particular nation, the entire world was to be invited to enter the New Covenant through the proclamation of the Gospel, and under the New Covenant the people of God are those who accept that invitation by believing in Jesus Christ. The Book of Hebrews tells us that the Old Covenant was a shadow image of the New Covenant. Just as a picture is inferior to the real thing it represents, so the Old Covenant was an inferior representation of the New. The Aaronic High Priesthood was an image of the High Priesthood of Christ. The Tabernacle and later the Temple, were pictures of the Tabernacle of God in heaven. The sacrifices of the Old Covenant, repeatedly offered on the altars of Israel for the sins of the people, could never take away those sins, but they pointed to the one sacrifice of Christ. That sacrifice, was Christ’s death on the Cross, and the Book of Hebrews tells us how that one sacrifice, the blood of which, Christ as High Priest brought into the heavenly Holy of Holies, once and for all effectively took away the sins of the world.

The New Covenant is also superior to the Old Covenant in the way it calls God’s people to obedience. The Old Covenant, was based upon the principle of Law – do and be blessed and live, do not and be cursed and die. Law demands obedience, but it cannot change the hearts of fallen people, whose sinful natures rebel against the Law. The Law, therefore, can only condemn and is a curse to those who are under it (2 Cor. 3:7-9, Gal. 3:10) The New Covenant, offers the blessings of God freely, as a gift to be received by faith, and calls upon believers to respond to God in obedience out of love. “If ye love Me”, Jesus said “Keep My commandments” (Jn. 14:15). With the everlasting life, pardon for sin, and justification, offered freely in the Gospel to believers on the basis of Christ’s effective sacrifice, God also promises the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, to provide the power for believers to overcome sin and obey Christ’s commandments.

That the New Covenant promises the indwelling Holy Spirit and His power to help us obey Christ’s commandments is all the more important because the standard Christ calls us to is higher than that found in the Law. There are 613 commandments in the Mosaic Law. The best known of these are the Ten Commandments, which are the Law's basic commandments of which the others are largely just applications of the principles contained in the Ten to particular situations. Jesus, however, when asked which commandment was most important, condensed the entire Law even further into two commandments, Deuteronomy 6:5’s “And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might”, and Leviticus 19:8’s “thou shalt love they neighbor as thyself”. “On these two commandments” Jesus said “hang all the law and the prophets” (Matt. 22:40). Note that Jesus did not say that His message was contained in those two commandments, which is how these verses are often misread. He said that the Law and Prophets – the Old Testament – was summarized in these two commandments. Shortly before His crucifixion, Jesus gave His Church a new commandment, which is similar to these two in that it uses the verb love. It is found in the 13th chapter of St. John’s Gospel:

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. (34)

As with all other aspects of the New Covenant, this new commandment is superior to the two which Jesus said summarize the Old. The phrase “as I have loved you” has a double meaning here. The first meaning is “in the manner in which I loved you”. Later that same night, the night of the Last Supper, Jesus repeated the new commandment and immediately after said “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (Jn. 15:13). This is what Jesus was about to do for the world and especially for His believers and disciples. Jesus therefore, in giving this new commandment, was calling His disciples to a higher love than that demanded by the Law. Earlier, Jesus had challenged His followers by saying “Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me” (Mk. 8:34).

The cross mentioned in that verse does not mean, as it is often interpreted as meaning today, any sort of burden a believer may have to bear. No one hearing Jesus speak would have understood Him that way. To “take up the cross” was to do what Jesus Himself did, when He bore His literal cross of wood down the Via Dolorosa to Calvary. In calling upon prospective disciples to take up their cross, Jesus was literally telling them they needed to be ready to die for Him.

The new commandment is a restatement of this call, which again displays how the New Covenant is superior to the Old. In the call to take up the cross, Jesus was speaking to people under the Old Covenant, under the Law, and the call is stated in terms of an absolute demand, a price that the prospective disciple must pay for the privilege of following Christ. In the new commandment, given on the eve of His crucifixion, it is restated in terms of grace, rather than law. The other meaning of “as I have loved you” is “because I have loved you”. Under the New Covenant, we are called to take up our cross, and be prepared to love each other the way Christ loved us, by laying down our lives for each other, not as a cost to be paid for discipleship, but as an expression of our love for Christ in response to His love for us.

This then, is the standard Christ calls us to, to love each other, with the same kind of love He showed for us when He died on the cross, a love that includes a willingness to lay down our own lives for each other. This is the commandment we are called to obey, a commandment which expresses a standard higher than all the commandments contained in the Law and the Prophets. We are to obey this commandment, not in order to obtain God’s blessing which is given to us freely by grace, but as an expression of our love for God in response to His love for us (1 Jn 4:19). In this life, in which we still have our sinful natures, we will not obey it perfectly, and by grace our standing before God does not depend upon our obedience, but in Christ we are given the power to obey, which the Law could never give to those who were under it.

Let us seek to avail ourselves of that power so as to give to God, out of love for Him, the obedience to which He is entitled.