The Israel of God and the nation-state of Israel

The Lord who reigns over all the families of the earth elected one of those families to be his “peculiar possession”. But, crucially, God’s election of Abraham was for the nations:

“Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Gen 12:1-3)

In establishing the family of Abraham, YHWH sought a vehicle through which the nations would be sifted. Those who bless and align themselves with the Abrahamic family would be blessed, and those who cursed the Abrahamic family would themselves be cursed. That promise is reiterated in Genesis 15.

However, as is well known, Israel fails to be a light to the nations. The judgment of exile, in accordance with the covenant curses, unfolds in the undoing of the northern kingdom by Assyria and the Babylonian exile of the southern kingdom.

The great promises of the end of the exile involved not simply return to the land, but the gift of the Spirit (Isaiah 40; Ezekiel 36). In Matthew 2, Matthew quotes Jeremiah during Herod’s slaughter of the Bethlehemite babies (“Rachel weeping for her children”). This is no accident. Just as Israel was in exile in Babylon, so Israel is still in exile under Herod. The full restoration has not come.

The restoration of Israel would involve, somehow, Israel “possessing” the nations (Isaiah 60); the treasures of the nations become her own. And yet, this obviously did not happen under Roman rule.

But the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost was the sure-fire sign that the exilic judgment of Israel was over. Israel would now “possess” the nations.

It is this image that helps us understand the mission to the Gentiles. Israel possesses the nations, not by subjugating Gentile peoples, but by engrafting them into herself. After Israel was resurrected in the resurrected Christ, she was now reconfigured around the true Israelite head: the Messiah. And so one becomes Israel in Christ.

Hence, Gentiles were at one time alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, but now are brought near (Eph. 2:12-13). They were “grafted into” the olive tree—a stock image for Israel. Thus, Gentile believers in the Lord inherit the promises given to Israel right alongside Jewish believers in the Lord because Israel was always predestined for expansive reconfiguration. Her destiny was always to grow to include the Gentiles. The promise given to Abraham is therefore given to all who have faith in the promise, now summatively achieved in the Messiah (Romans 4).

In Romans 4, the promise of “the land” has become the promise of the whole world—because the New Jerusalem expands the original Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. But, then, the holy land is the property of the church—for the church is Israel in her resurrected existence. She is not Israel’s replacement, but Israel’s resurrection under the gift of the Spirit of the Messiah.

How does that orient our relationship to the holy land? First, if the form of Israel’s existence is fundamentally reconfigured around her Messiah, then her form needs to be one of laying her life down to make co-heirs of her enemies. That is the form of her Messiah’s life, and as such we cannot justify any crusades to take the holy land. While it is ours, we are called to lay our lives down to share it. Second, it means that the nation-state of Israel is not the true Israel. This has nothing to do with “replacement theology”, since the Israel of God never ceased to exist. She always was the community of those to whom the promise was given (the Israel within Israel), now expanded to include the Gentiles.

Hence, we have no special allegiance we owe to the contemporary nation-state. The current conflict must be assessed along the lines of ordinary justice we’d apply to any political actor. The nation-state of Israel, like Gaza, belong to those groups of nations that need to be redeemed.