Misconception #4

The Jews are still ‘God’s Chosen People.’

ALL of them never were! Here are three historic reasons why:

Reason #1.) Not all of Abraham’s physical descendants were included under the unconditional but by faith Abrahamic covenant. Nor were they all children of the promise. God made his covenant with a person, Abraham, and not with one nation. But it was always by faith that Abraham and his descendants were justified before God, and not by national origin (Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4:3-22; Jas. 2:23).

God further specified that “In Isaac [not Ishmael] shall thy seed be called” (Gen. 21:12). Of Abraham’s two sons, Isaac’s birth was supernaturally determined by the Spirit and required the patient faith of Abraham and Sarah. Ishmael’s birth was different. It was conceived by human possibility in the flesh. Faith was thus the decisive factor differentiating the manner of these two births. But from Isaac’s twin sons God chose Jacob and rejected Esau. Both were the direct grandsons of Abraham and of equal physical lineage and natural descendancy status. They had the same mother. But by God’s sovereign right and election, Jacob’s descendants, not Esau’s, carried forth the Abrahamic seed promise as those “called” [in the sense of “invited”] of God. In this manner, God set forth the by faith precedent for future covenants.

Reason #2.) Four hundred years later, God further clarified his seed promise to Abraham when He made a conditional covenant with Moses and the Jewish people. Faith again, not natural descendancy, would continue to be the determining factor of inclusion or exclusion for those “called” as “God’s Chosen People.”

Under this nationalistic, Mosaic covenant, God set the ethnic nation of Israel apart from the other nations, and brought them into a conditional covenant relationship with Him. It required them to be holy (Lev. 20:24, 26) and provided either blessings or cursings (Exod. 19:5; Deut. 28). Membership was mostly restricted to Jews, but could be gained or lost. Gentiles gained inclusion via the proselyte laws¾circumcision, ritual cleansing, repentance, obedience to the Torah, and renouncement of natural parentage and heritage. On the other hand, ethnic Jews who committed certain high sins and refused to repent could be excommunicated. They were then treated as pagans. Many ethnic Jews refused to be part of “God’s Chosen People.” Through their unbelief, hardening, idolatry, or refusal to keep the Law, they lost their identity, citizenship, and covenant privileges. Once again, faith, not natural descendancy, was the basis of inclusion, and disobedience the basis of exclusion.

Reason #3.) With the birth coming of Christ, the long-promised New Covenant broke into human history (Jer. 31:31-37; Ezek.16:60; 36:26, 27). The two designations for one identical people, “the Israel of God” and “God’s Chosen People,” were then covenantally redefined (Gal. 3:16, 26-29; 4:21-31; 6:15, 16; Acts 2:16-21; 1 Pet. 2:9, 10). The basis of inclusion or exclusion changed (John 3:1-8; Luke 19:9) and expanded to the whole world (Matt. 21:43).

Jesus summed up this by-faith inclusiveness and the dichotomous division within the Jewish people of his day quite succinctly, saying:

“Many are called, but few are chosen” (Matt. 22:14).
“You belong to your father, the devil” (John 8:44a; Rev. 2:9; 3:9).
“Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham” (Matt. 3:9).

Surely, these words of Jesus shocked his hearers. But long before Jesus, Isaiah had prophesied of this contrast between these two Jewish groups and their different destinies (Isa. 65:7-16). Likewise, God through the prophet Hosea prophesied about many Jews, “Ye are not my people” (Hos. 1:9-10; 2:23). They were only Jews outwardly, but not inwardly (Matt. 3:9; John 8:37, 39; Rom. 2:28, 29). The Apostle Paul confirmed, “For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel” (Rom. 9:6). Thus, it should be evident that either a Jew or a Gentile could be a member of Israel physically, nationally, culturally, and religiously without being a member of the true Israel, spiritually. Inclusion was never grounded in physical/biological descendancy.

So even though God chose Israel out of all the nations (Amos 3:2) to be a people for Himself, a witness to the nations, the channel for his revelation, and through whom the Messiah would come, the whole nation of Israel never was “God’s Chosen People.” It was only the faithful remnant (Rom. 9:27; 11:5; Isa. 10:20-22). That’s why today, neither the modern-day nation nor all ethnic Jews worldwide should be so considered. Who counts as the true Israel, the children of the promise, was not and is not determined by a blood-line or a race-line, but always by a faith-line which transcends the natural descendancy realm. In Old Covenant times, only the righteous remnant in the midst of the greater Israel was “God’s Chosen People” and the true Israel of God. Nowadays, Abraham’s real descendants (“seed”) are believers in Jesus Christ, whether they are racially Jews or Gentiles. We are all on equal footing. This is the promised and ultimate fulfillment of biblical prophecy. And, consequently, there is no other stage of fulfillment needed or to come.

Source:

1 The Israel Illusion (future book – est. 2016) by John Noe