Modern Israel & the New Testament


Some (in my view, misguided) Christians believe that we should revert to the practice of some kind of (messianic) Judaism in order to demonstrate faithfulness to Scripture.  Such views reflect a misunderstanding of the central thrust of the NT, i.e. that Jesus, as Israel's Messiah, has fulfilled the Old Covenant and launched the New Covenant, membership in which is open to all peoples through faith in Christ, which, as Paul says to the Romans and the Galatians, is the same faith as that of Abra(ha)m, who believed the promises of God and was counted righteous as a result (Rm. 4, Gal. 3).  This same kind of faulty reasoning stands behind Christian interpretations of the 1948 founding of the modern state of Israel as being the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

I believe that the appropriate form of appreciation for our Jewish heritage is not to go back to the Old Covenant and its practices, but rather to embrace the biblical teaching that there is only one people of God, launched with the call of Abra(ha)m and renewed through Messiah Jesus and now composed of people from all the nations (as Jesus pointed out, some Gentiles managed to enter God's people through the back door: Lk. 4.23-7).  I believe that this understanding of biblical revelation removes all possibility of a separate eschatological destiny for ethnic Israel (my cards are now on the table). My reading of the NT tells me that there is one (renewed) "Israel of God" (Gal. 6.16), marked out, no longer by the "works of the law", but by faith in Christ.  
In other words, the Church is said to be the fulfillment of the Jewish belief in One God, One People of God, and One Future for that people and the whole world (judgment and new creation).  The Church is the Creator's covenant-partner, sharing God's objective of reclaiming all of humanity for his redemptive purposes.

This is an excerpt from a homily I delivered in July 2018 and seeks to demonstrate how Jesus' messiahship fulfills the Old Covenant and provides the covenantal promises of forgiveness of sins and a worldwide kingdom to those members of the (re)New(ed) Covenant:

"The (true) King of Israel.  The word “Christ” is another one of those words that we’ve become so accustomed to hearing that it has become (almost) meaningless.  Well, maybe not completely meaningless.  I was sitting in church at Easter-time and I overheard a conversation between a child and her mother in the pew behind me.  The child exclaimed in shocked surprise: “Mommy, the priest said ‘JESUS CHRIST’!”  Well, at least the name of Jesus is still present in our popular culture…  (It’s up to us to tell people that it’s not just a swear-word).  When the New Testament applies the word “Christ” to Jesus, it means that Jesus is the Messiah, i.e. the “anointed” king of Israel.  Why is that important?  Remember, we can only understand Jesus, and his death and resurrection, in light of …the biblical story of Israel.  In the Old Testament, starting at the time of King David, God made the promise to his people that a descendant (“son”) of David would one day rule, not only over the nation of Israel, but over all the nations of the earth (cf. Ps. 2, 89; 2 Sam. 7.12-16; indeed, “Son of God”, in these passages, refers to the king of Israel).  Going further back in time to the call of Abraham, God had promised to bring salvation to the world through Abraham and his descendants.  “Salvation is of the Jews” as Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well (cf. Jn. 4.22).  But of course, and Paul will make this point in Romans chapters 2-3, Abraham’s descendants – as someone once said – “were like everyone else, only more so”.  The members of the people of God were also sinful, just like the pagan nations.  So, God has a dilemma – how can he be faithful to the covenant-promise to save the world through the descendants of Abraham, as well as provide atonement for the sins of Abraham’s descendants themselves?  Solution: what was required was a faithful Israelite who would represent God’s people, and atone for their sins as well as those of the entire world, thereby fulfilling the purpose of God’s covenant with Abraham (i.e. to save the world).  You guessed it: Jesus was the answer.  Jesus, the King of Israel, who represents the entire nation – as a human being and by laying down his life on the cross – offered to God the faithfulness that God had always required from Israel, his covenant-partner.  On the cross, Yahweh’s faithfulness met the faithfulness of Israel’s Messiah (“Christ”), and the covenant (whose intention had always been to save the world) was thereby fulfilled.  So, there’s a lot of meaning packed into the word “Christ”."

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