The promise of the land – abrogated?

Given the current polarisation of opinion over the legitimacy of the State of Israel, I want to consider the theological status of the promise of the land to Abraham (eg Genesis 17:8: “The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you, and I will be their God”). This reflects the threefold blessing of the original promise to Abram of Genesis 12 (“the gospel in advance” – Galatians 3:8) of (a) a great people, (b) a settled nation and (c) blessing both for themselves and for the world’s nations. Maybe my discussion will give readers some food for thought on the present conflict.

The covenant promise of permanent possession of the land was not unconditional, however, for Deuteronomy both warns of, and predicts, exile for Israel’s breaking of faith with Yahweh. Yet the eschatological promise remained that, even from the farthest exile, should Israel repent, “[God] will bring you back to the land that belonged to your fathers, and you will take possession of it.” Furthermore, “The Lord will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live” (Deuteronomy 30:5-6). Hebrew salvation and the land of Canaan go hand in hand, it seems.

This geographical promise is carried forward into the New Covenant prophecies of the prophets, made at the very point when Judah finally went into exile under the Babylonians. For example Ezekiel 11 promises that in gathering them from the nations, “I will give you back the land of Israel again.” And of course, Ezekiel’s eschatological temple vision centres on an earthly Jerusalem in its idealised geographical setting.

Although many exiles returned to the land after 70 years, according to Jeremiah’s prophecy, many Jews of Jesus’s time considered (rightly, in my view) that because they had remained under foreign rule ever since, and because sin still weighed them down, they were still in exile until Messiah should come to change the hearts, defeat the enemies, and (according to Isaiah, for example), usher in a new heavens and a new earth with a renewed Jerusalem as its centre. In this they echoed Nehemiah’s prayer, which admitted after the return from Babylon, “We are slaves today in the land you gave our forefathers so that they could eat its fruit and the other good things it produces” (Nehemiah 9:36).

In the light of this, it is not surprising that even Jesus’s disciples, living in the promised land but under Roman rule, expected him to remove their political yoke and restore the land as the spiritual centre of the earth. His reply was, essentially, to teach them the “already but not yet” message of his passion and resurrection under which the Church lives today. Forgiveness and eternal life are present gifts for all believers – the Jew first, and then the gentile – but the final consummation of the Kingdom awaits his return after “the time of the gentiles,” during which it grows throughout the world by preaching and by modelling the triumphant suffering of Christ.

Yet when, before his ascension, the disciples ask Jesus in Acts 1 if now is the time that the kingdom of Israel will be restored (as per so many OT prophecies), his reply is not a rebuke at their misunderstanding of the Kingdom, but a statement that those times and dates are in the Father’s hands. That sounds more like “not yet” than a change of plan.

I used to work for a magazine with a strong Christian Zionist stance, which I never fully embraced when it deviated from the humble respect for our spiritual parentage of Romans 11, and appreciation of the unique insights of Jews into their own Scriptures, and instead became an obsession with Hebraism even (for some) to the point of downplaying the need of Jews for Jesus for salvation, together with uncritical support for a mainly secular State of Israel.

Christian Zionists see their great spiritual enemy as “replacement theology,” the view that Israel has been replaced by the Church, all its promises unceremoniously being transferred to gentile believers. I would have to say that, in the circles I’ve moved, I’ve only come across such an extreme view once, in a college Christian Union talk in around 1973, where it raised my hackles. The (American) guy said that, in his view, because of their long disobedience to Christ, God had “finished with Israel.” But as Romans 11:29 says of Israel, “God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable.” How and why is that? Simply because God’s grace in election (and hence in salvation) is sovereign and unchanging. I guess the speaker was an Arminian.

A more common, and defensible, Evangelical position is that espoused by Greg Beale (in Union with the Resurrected Christ) and my old friend Steve Motyer (in Israel in the Plan of God). Because the risen and ascended Christ is, thereby, declared both the new Adam and the new ideal Israel, he completely redefines Israel as those who are spiritually united to him by faith, whether Jews or gentiles. This is thoroughly scriptural, not only in the teaching of Paul in Romans and Galatians, or John in his gospel (one flock, one shepherd), but in the OT prophets who made their new covenant promises, including that of the land, only to a faithful remnant of Israel, and to gentiles included in the over-sufficiency of God’s provision (eg Isaiah 49:6).

Since, as I have already mentioned, the Kingdom is “already, but not yet,” Jewish and gentile believers equally share complete forgiveness, with the promise of future perfection; the life of Christ, with the promise of perfection through the resurrection of our bodies; the blessings of the Holy Spirit, with the promise of dwelling forever before the face of God in the age to come; and actually being the place, or temple, where God dwells, with the promise that the whole renewed earth will eventually be our realm.

You will see that such a view, whilst proclaiming the Gospel as being for Jews as well as gentiles, pretty much sidelines any particular destiny for the Jews after the coming of Christ. Jews, like gentiles, will be saved one by one throughout the Church Age, and Christian antisemitism is to be abhorred and repented, but the Jewish people have no eschatological role, and still less does a Zionist State in the Levant. The end-times prophecies of Daniel or Revelation about a final battle of Armageddon, for example, must be entirely interpreted as a spiritual attack on the worldwide Church, for Jerusalem is now no more than a Bible theme-park and a metaphor for heaven.

Whilst I thoroughly agree with its “inclusion theology,” and so see myself as an honorary Israelite by adoption, I find I can’t go along with such a thoroughgoing spiritualisation of Israel. For one thing, I see careful ongoing distinctions in the New Testament between Jew and Gentile, and between Israel the nation and believing Israel, that especially in Romans 11 seem to make the gentile predominance in Christianity merely a stage before a national turning of Israel to their Messiah, corresponding with his return. Furthermore, some of the OT promises – especially the return specifically to the land of Canaan – appear to me too precise to be fulfilled adequately by an eschatological new creation.

Imagine, for example, an early Judaean Christian convert, living in the literal promised land and literally oppressed by real Romans and corrupt priests. Theologically speaking, his salvation in Christ has redeemed him from spiritual exile into the new Covenant, and according to the prophets the title deeds of the land have therefore been returned to him by God. If he is to accept ongoing Roman and Sadducee rule, and even more if he is to accept the actual exclusion of Jews from Jerusalem after the Bar Kochbar revolt of 130AD, he has to do some serious theology to make sense of it.

For judgement to fall upon a perverse generation that, as a nation, has rejected and killed its Davidic king makes perfect sense. But for even the righteous remnant in Christ to be either literally, or culturally, exiled from the Covenant land only makes sense in terms of something like sharing the unjust sufferings and rejection of Christ. But that explanation entails that, like Christ, the believing Jews of Israel will eventually be vindicated by the fulfillment of the land promise, not by its abrogation.

Bear with me for a thought experiment. Let us suppose, counter-factually, that Israel as a national entity had accepted the message of Jesus after Pentecost – as many other nations did in the subsequent centuries. Yes, I know that this is foolish, for God is the Lord of history, and doesn’t deal with “might have beens.” Israel’s rejection of Jesus as their King was, in real life, a means to God’s mysterious ends. But just as good theology is done by asking what was intended for Adam had he not sinned, so I think we might learn from my speculation.

And so let’s imagine Herod is converted (and so demotes himself to viceroy), along with the priestly class, and a large majority of the people follow suit. The temple, in due course, is turned from a place of sacrifice to the nation’s communal house of prayer. A deal is negotiated (by God’s grace) for the Romans to go home and let Israel be self-governing. We are still in the “already but not yet” Kingdom, mind you, for the Great Commission to the diaspora and the gentiles needs to be undertaken, no doubt centred on the Jerusalem Church rather than Rome or Constantinople. Yet both Jews and gentiles would still be looking for the eschatological blessings of Christ’s return, and the prophecies of an end-times “man of sin” would still be studied. Wars and rumours of wars would still abound.

Are we to suppose that, under such a scenario, the land of Israel with its Holy Sepulchre, its associations with Jesus and the apostles, its temple, and its deep historical association with the revelation of Yahweh, should be considered irrelevant to faith? Augustine and some early Popes condemned pilgrimages to the Holy Land as distractions, but if Israel had been the quintessential Christian State, would Zechariah 14:16 not be taken literally? Would the Church not take an attitude if Israel was attacked by unbelievers?

Now, the nation of Israel in Jesus’s generation did not, in fact, come to Christ (and was judged for it, losing both temple and land), though never forget that many thousands of Israelites did. But if the nation’s eventual conversion is even a scriptural possibility from Romans 11:25-32, like the war against Jerusalem of Ezekiel, Daniel and Revelation, does that not make the re-emergence of Israel as a State in 1947 significant to us? Some argue that the foundation of Israel was a political attempt to force the fulfillment of prophecy illegitimately, as it were. But that presupposes that God is not the Lord of actual history – prophecy foretells facts, not restricting how they will become facts.

Yet even apart from one’s interpretation of those Scriptures, does not the demonic hatred for historical Israel, evidence by rampant antisemitism not only now, but down the years (and so similar to the mindless hatred for Christians worldwide) indicate that the nation of Israel, and its tiny patch of real-estate, are still relevant to God’s purposes, and that Satan knows it? It seems to me that if Israel had become just another nation in Christ’s economy, the Jews would have been left alone (and probably disappeared from history).

I don’t think that makes me a Christian Zionist. But I do observe that a largely secular and liberal Israel has over the last year regained its national focus, and has done so by rallying around its religious heritage and its God. What might happen were it to realise at last that the apex of its religious heritage is the Messiah who suffered, and rose, on its behalf?

For if their rejection brought reconciliation to the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? (Romans 11:15)