Can Believers Appropriate Promises That Were Made To Israel?
Q: I believe in the sovereign election of Israel and the grafting in of the church. Are the promises made to Abraham for Israel alone, such as Galatians 3:16 and 2 Corinthians 1:20, or can they be appropriated by the Church?
Galatians 3:16 – Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as of many, but as of one, “And to your Seed,” who is Christ.
A: Yes, Galatians 3:16 has to do with the promise that Israel would be a blessing, that God would make both Abraham and His seed a blessing to every nation in the world. This promise was clearly fulfilled in Jesus Christ, just as Paul says here:
2 Corinthians 1:20 – For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.
Every promise of God finds its fulfillment ultimately in and through the person and work of Jesus Christ. But here’s the thing that I think people miss: God made specific promises to the covenant descendants of Abraham. He promised them a land, He promised them a nation, and He promised them a blessing. The Bible plainly states that this covenant blessing was clearly meant to be fulfilled through the covenant descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Now, there is a spiritual aspect to the Abrahamic covenant that’s very much connected with God declaring Abraham to be righteous because of faith. All those who are declared righteous by faith are the spiritual sons and daughters of Abraham. Remember the children’s song, “Father Abraham had many sons / Many sons had Father Abraham / I am one of them, and so are you / So let’s all praise the Lord”? That says it. We are spiritual sons and daughters of Abraham through faith, through the righteousness that comes by faith. In that sense, Abraham is the father of all the faithful. He’s the first one specifically declared in Scripture to be made righteous by faith. However, I don’t think he was the first one made righteous by faith. I believe, in his own way, Adam was made righteous by faith, Enoch was made righteous by faith, Noah was made righteous by faith, and many others as well. But of Abraham first it was said, “He believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness” (Genesis 15:6).
So, we see this beautiful, powerful phenomenon of being a spiritual son or daughter of Abraham by faith. But God has not given up His working through the genetic descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who today we loosely call the Jewish people. God knows who they are. And if some people have self-identified and consciously taken on practices and customs that are connected in some way or another to the Jewish people of the Bible, they likely have a legitimate claim to being Jewish.
So, what’s more important: being a material, physical son of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or being a spiritual son? There’s no comparison. Being a genetic son or daughter of Abraham will not get you to heaven. Jesus warned about that specifically – Don’t think that your father, Abraham, is going to save you from the fires of hell (see Matthew 3:7-12, John 8:33-58). No, being a genetic son or daughter of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not going to save you. There’s no separate salvation covenant for the Jewish people. And if you had to choose between being one or the other, there’s no choice at all. The only choice to make is to be a spiritual son or daughter of Abraham by faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ. When people think that one cancels out the other, that’s when all the confusion comes in.
If you go through the New Testament and look at every reference to the Jewish people or to Israel, there are a few important passages that speak of what we might call “spiritual Israel,” or the spiritual sons and daughters of Abraham, and praise the Lord for that. It’s an important concept, and it’s one that we can’t overlook. However, it does not cancel out the far greater number of times that even the New Testament speaks of God’s work in and God’s promise to genetic Israel.