Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible (44/50) – The New Israel
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. To God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces... You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
1 Peter 1:1; 2:9-10
The Lord called to (Moses) from the mountain and said... ‘Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’
Exodus 19:3-6
Peter wrote to the churches of Asia Minor, small fellowships of Jews and Gentiles and gave them a new and powerful identity, using the titles given by God to the newly formed nation of Israel at Sinai.
As we read the New Testament documents, we can see how the writers are being led by the Holy Spirit into a new understanding of what it means to be the people of God; that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus have taken them into a new dispensation, a new age. Now Jew and Gentile together are the church, the redeemed people of God. But this did not mean simply that Gentiles should become Jews, grafted in to all that Judaism entailed, law and regulations for living, temple and sacrifices, land and ethnic identity. Nor did it mean that these were swept away and forgotten as a new faith sprang into life.
Now all the great symbolic identity markers of Israel are pulled into focus, finding their true and final meaning through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is our sacrifice (Hebrews 9:11-14), his body the temple destroyed and rebuilt in three days (John 2:19). Now we, as Christians, are also identified as temples of the Holy Spirit, both individually and together (2 Corinthians 6:16, Ephesians 2:21). Now there is no longer one ethnic group in one geographically outlined land, but new communities of ‘saints from every tribe and language and people and nation, a kingdom and priests serving our God’ (Revelation 5:9). As Stephen Sizer (Christian Zionism, IVP, 2004) notes: ‘The church is Israel renewed and restored in Christ, but now enlarged to embrace people of all nations.’ All the heritage of Israel, from Abraham through David to John the Baptist, has been transformed into the heritage of his redeemed and chosen people throughout the earth.
And Israel’s call – their identity and role with respect to the world – is now taken up by the church, by all followers of Christ. God’s mission to bless all nations continues to be worked out through us, his people – wherever we may find ourselves ‘scattered’ – placed in the world for the sake of the world.
Margaret Killingray
For further reflection and action:
1. There is a group in the United States who have started a fund to rebuild the temple. Some Christians believe God has a special plan for Israel and that the return of Jews to Palestine in the 20th century is part of that plan. Interpretations of some of the prophecies in the Old Testament lie behind much of the complexities and tragedies of Middle East politics. These issues are addressed (from different perspectives, coming to different conclusions) in the following works: Colin Chapman, Whose Promised Land? (Lion, 2002), Barry Horner, Future Israel (Broadman & Holman, 2007), Mark S. Kinzer, Postmissionary Messianic Judaism (Brazos, 2005), and Stephen Sizer, Christian Zionism (IVP, 2004).
2. If there are no chosen nations, no ethnicities special to God, no land with a particular and unique blessing, but all barriers are broken down and Christians are all one in Christ, what are the implications for our churches? Are there divisions that still affect our lives together?
3. In his book, The Radical Disciple (IVP, 2010), John Stott writes: ‘I doubt if there is any New Testament text which gives a more varied and balanced account of what it means to be a disciple than 1 Peter 2:1-17.’ Read the passage, and reflect on his assessment of its ‘varied and balanced account’.
Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible is a series of emails designed to move through the main contours of the biblical story, seeking to show how whole-life discipleship is woven through Scripture as a whole, from beginning to end.
Comments
Thank you, James. Yes. I’m familiar with that work – an excellent choice. In fact, I will include it in the online version of the email, along with Mark Kinzer’s Post-Missionary Messianic Judaism which I also rate very highly. Others are free, please, to use the comments facility to recommend other pertinent works.
Thanks Anthony for your gracious response. Barry Horner's book "Future Israel - Why Christian anti-Judaism must be challenged" is a sane, scholarly, sensible and non-dispensationalist response to the views of Chapman and Sizer, which merits careful consideration and engagement.
Thanks for your links... both very helpful. And thanks to others who are engaging with us on this issue. As I’ve already indicated, Stephen Sizer is more than capable of defending his opinions – and does, quite clearly, on pages 16 and 17 of Zion’s Christian Soldiers? where he discusses this, and categorically says: ‘It is not that the church has replaced Israel.’ I myself don’t like the terms ‘replacement’ and ‘supersessionism’ because of the negative connotations that frequently go with them. I would want the emphasis to fall not so much on replacement as on continuity and fulfilment. It appears that Jesus-believing gentiles, for both Paul and Peter, participate in a kind of non-supersessionist ‘commonwealth of Israel’, where the church does not replace Israel but expands Israel. I’m somewhat surprised by the assumption that a mention of Sizer and Chapman (in the questions for further reflection and action) entails an ‘uncritical endorsement’ of what they say. It was simply a way of taking people forward on the issues involved in that particular question. I have already decided that in any future use or publication of the email series, we will refer to books which take other views – though that too will not imply ‘uncritical endorsement’ of what they say. I’m happy to credit our readers with sufficient intelligence and diligence to sift the evidence for themselves. Even the few posts here more than suggest that’s the case. Beyond all this, I have now re-read the email several times, and remain happy that it effectively provides a faithful, albeit very brief, midrash on the passage from 1 Peter. In fact, the email makes it clear that elements of Judaism were not ‘swept away and forgotten as a new faith sprang into life’. As I’ve said already, even the quotation from Stephen Sizer speaks of Israel being ‘enlarged to embrace people of all nations’. Peter, like other New Testament writers, is a Jew looking to a Jew who he believes is Israel’s Messiah, hoping that all true Jews would now gather around him, but also aware that God was finally fulfilling his promise to bring the gentiles into the blessing too, which gave them the privileges – and responsibilities – that went with the covenant. Far from dishonouring Israel, it’s absolutely crucial for gentiles to understand their heritage. Sizer and Chapman aside, I am not at all persuaded that the email says anything at all that departs from the passage in question. Thanks again for your reflections.
Anthony, That's a fair comment but the thrust of Stephen Sizer's argument (and, presumably, Margaret Killingray's) is that because the church is (apparently) "Israel renewed and enlarged"), therefore there is no longer any distinctive role for the Jewish people. What is that, if not "replacement theology"? I am also concerned and saddened by the uncritical endorsement of Stephen Sizer and Colin Chapman, both of whom have (perhaps unwittingly) introduced some very dangerous concepts into British evangelicalism. I wrote about this in some depth here: http://www.bmja.net/chai233.htm and also at http://largebluefootballs.blogspot.com/2008/04/overstepping-mark.html
Stephen Sizer is more than able to defend himself, but the quote does not refer to the church replacing Israel, it refers to Israel being ‘enlarged to embrace people of all nations’... a quite different notion altogether.
If the Church is the "New Israel", does that make Jewish people the "Old Israel"? There are many Messianic Jews who would still technically form part of the 'Old Israel', but there's nothing old about us: I'm only in my twenties! I think if there are still Jewish believers in Jesus then you can't say that God's replaced Israel with another people, as we clearly see he continues to redeem the original Israel. The Church is many beautiful things, but it is not the New Israel.
The title "The New Israel" is unhelpful, misleading and unBiblical. There is no "New Israel" in the Bible; this is a term used by those who say that The Almighty has cast off the Jewish people, which is entirely untrue. It led, through ther open racism of such as John Chrysostom, to the Nazi holocaust, supported as it was by the Church. The quote from Dr Sizer is unhelpful. His anti-Zionist position is well documented. His view is clear here, that the "Church" has somehow replaced Israel in the plans and purposes of The Almighty. This is the opposite of what the prophet Jeremiah says. I had hoped for better. Perhaps that hope was misplaced.
I'm not so sure Rev Sizer is able to defend himself, didn't he recently set the police on someone who challenged him? http://www.hurryupharry.org/2010/01/23/anglican-vicar-uses-police-to-intimidate-blogger/ http://www.hurryupharry.org/2010/02/20/stephen-sizer-and-the-khomeini-family/ http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/01/31/stephen-sizer-cites-another-holocaust-denier/
Date:
2010-02-20 14:02:48
Author:
Luke Rodgers