Can Jews be righteous or heaven-bound outside of Christ? Does this path to salvation or justification still exist to any Jewish people after Christ, including the Jewish people of today?

I have heard it taught that while Christ absolutely is the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through him, there are many Jewish non-Christians who will be in heaven on account of their righteousness through some approximation or application of the Old Covenant. We know this is true to some extent for pre-Christian Jewish men of righteousness described in the Old Testament. Does this path to quote salvation or justification still exist to any Jewish person after Christ, including the Jewish people of 2025, who are sometimes also referred to, both broadly and specifically, as Israel today?

Can someone be saved apart from Christ? The answer is no. What about those who have never heard of Jesus? I can imagine a hypothetical Jewish person who has never been presented with who Jesus is and what is the gospel of Jesus Christ. How will that person be judged? They will be judged on the basis of what they did with God, with what God didreveal to them, what they’ve heard through creation and conscience. For a Jewish person, they’d be held to account for what they’ve heard through the word of God, because they’ve had the word of God in the form of the Old Testament, which they call the Tanakh.

This is what we know with absolute certainty. No person who rejects Jesus as Messiah is right with God. Jesus said that He is the only way to God, and if you reject Him, you reject the Father. There’s no doubt about it; no person can be justified by the Old Covenant apart from Jesus Christ. And if they put their trust in Jesus, they’re no longer under the Old Covenant. They’re in the New Covenant that Jesus established by His person and His work.

In theological terms, I am what people call a dispensationalist. In other words, I believe that there is a difference between the church and Israel. I believe that, in His unfolding plan of the ages, God has a continuing purpose for the Jewish people, who are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In some measure, that makes me a dispensationalist. I’ve listened to a lot of opponents of dispensationalism, usually from the Covenant Theology perspective, who like to talk about the dispensationalist position. They assume that dispensationalists believe that there are two peoples of God. But that’s not accurate. We don’t believe that there are two ways to God, as if you could come to God through Jesus, or through the institution of Judaism apart from Jesus? No, I don’t believe that. I don’t know any dispensationalist who believes that. There are not two peoples of God in the sense of two ways to come into right relationship with God. No, not at all.

I do believe that the church, the people of God who are in right relationship with God under the New Covenant, through the person and work of Jesus Christ, are a people of God. Absolutely. Nobody disputes that. But I also believe that the Jewish people are a people of God in a sense. Not in the sense that they’re in right relationship with God because of their Judaism, but they are a people of God in the sense that they have a continuing role in God’s unfolding plan of the ages. God has not rejected them or divorced them from that role.

There are not two peoples of God in any salvific sense. But that doesn’t mean that God has abandoned His promises to the Jewish people, the people of Israel. God said that they will have a continuing role in His unfolding plan of the ages, and I would say even till the end of the age. That’s how I would make the distinction.