The End of Israel – Part 1

Since origins determine destiny, discerning whether God has any future plan for the Jewish people begins with understanding why He needed to set them apart in the first place. We can only figure out the “end” of Israel by understanding the telos, the ultimate goal, of Israel.

Every journey in the Bible begins with a single step, usually on some reptile’s head. That was the case not only for Adam but also for the nation of Israel. To understand God’s plan for Israel today, we must begin with the original “Adamic” blueprint. To use another analogy, tracing Israel’s journey through history requires us to use the map that God provided at the beginning of the world.

All of this is to say that this dissertation is a bit of a “road movie,” more of a journey than a destination. The arguments made in what follows here could no doubt be honed to make a sharper point, but then we would miss much of the spectacular scenery to the left and to the right. As I like to say, God did not answer Job’s question directly; instead, He opened Job’s eyes to the significance of many things that he already knew.

So grab your shades, throw some things into a duffel bag, hop in, and strap in. I am easily distracted by surroundings, so you might not like the way I drive. Much of the trip is uphill and some stretches of the road might seem a little out of the way. But between the red earth and the blue sky, there’s a theological convertible with the lid off and a seat with your name on it, plus a trunk full of food and wine.

God chooses His friends

While most theologians are content to argue over isolated proof texts, definitive answers to any worthwhile question—such as “What is Paul talking about in Romans 11?”—are only found in a holistic understanding of the Scriptures.

Observing what God did is the job of the scholar, who in many respects is merely a spectator. The job of the theologian, however, is to discern why, and that difference relates to the contrast between a servant who simply does what he is told and a “friend” or confidant who knows his master’s mind and is in on his plans (John 15:15). If Abraham, who became a “friend” of God (2 Chronicles 20:7; Isaiah 41:8; James 2:23) and was thus in on His plans, saw the promise of a heavenly country wrapped up in the possession of an earthly one (Hebrews 11:16), who are we to argue about whether the word translated “forever” from the Hebrew and the Greek means “eternally” or merely “for this age”?

Concerning the destiny of the Jews as a people, are we like the scribes (mere scholarly observers) or are we like Jesus, the one who had a deep understanding of the Father’s ways because He not only knew the Scriptures but also understood the internal logic of the Father’s mind and the desire of His heart (Matthew 7:28-29)?

Did God reject His people (Romans 11:1)? As in Eden, criticism of God’s apparently “unjust” ways is rooted in a suspicion of His true character and a failure to comprehend the scope of His plans. Such small-mindedness is at the core of the rivalry that Paul was seeking to address in Romans, and he concludes that the chaotic first-century divine machinations, once they came to fruition, would vindicate God entirely. His cunning wisdom would be unveiled in an earth-shattering denouement that would render His critics speechless with awe. It is little wonder that Paul could not contain himself, and ends the pericope by bursting into doxology. Sadly, what God actually did remains “unsearchable” and “inscrutable” to many of us. Like the Jewish people, we are still not in on His plans—at least not on this issue, anyway.

God’s ways are only mysterious if we are not paying attention. Although His works throughout the Bible are constantly surprising, He was really just doing the same old thing over and over but in bigger and better ways. Paul understood this, so what we wrongly perceive as hermeneutical eccentricity in his writings is merely the practice of extrapolation from previous events.

Closing up the flesh

From Genesis 1, we ought to have learned that God’s ways in history are always architectural in nature, but somehow we have gotten it into our heads that this facet of the Scriptures is merely poetic, an ornamental flourish, a vestige of ancient mythology or tradition, and that incorporating an awareness of things such as “forming and filling” into our methodology, let alone into our understanding of history and of the world, is not crucial but optional.

But what if the similarities and the differences between the Creation Mandate and the Great Commission can be explained by their comprising of a history-long sacrificial work of “forming” the nations according to the flesh and then “filling them” with the fire of the Spirit? Suddenly the reason for both the continuity and the discontinuity between the vocation of Old Testament Israel and that of the New Covenant Church can be perceived as complementary components in a single process—like building a house (the work of the bridegroom) and then transforming it into a home (the work of the bride).

The relationship between forming and filling also explains the intentions of Jesus’ “replacement” of the words of Moses. “You have heard it said… but I say to you” was not a “supersession” but a shift from the pronouncement of commandments relating to external behavior to the thoughts and intents of the heart, from the visible fruits to the hidden seeds, from the external rules of childhood to the internalized love of godliness in maturity. Moses and Jesus are not in opposition because the Law leads us to Christ. As Paul tells us, “but when the perfect (full-grown, mature) comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways” (1 Corinthians 13:10-11). The “partial” did pass away. And first-century believers—both the believing Jews and the believing Gentiles—gave up their “childish ways,” the “elementary principles of the world” (Galatians 4:3, 9-10; Colossians 2:8, 20), the “Edenic” taboos which had defined the Jews and the Gentiles, albeit in diverse manners.

Pitting Israel against the Church is not only like pitting the two related acts of forming and filling against each other (obviously a false dichotomy), but also like pitting Jesus’ body before His death against Jesus’ resurrection body. Are Israel and the Church the same body? Yes. And no. Like a caterpillar on the earth and the resulting butterfly in the heavens, each must be viewed as a necessary stage in a single work with one glorious goal.

I suspect that if we could question the Apostle Paul today on the subject of Israel, and what he actually meant in Romans 9-11, after he pointed us back to Genesis 1, he would then direct us to Genesis 2, and then, even more abstrusely, to Genesis 3. And after we had stared at him blankly for a few moments, he might say something like, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not understand?” In other words, “Why are you still thinking like caterpillars?”

We have had Paul’s writings for two millennia, but we have yet to grasp Jesus’ groundbreaking “hermeneutic,” the inspired approach that He bequeathed by the Spirit to the writers of the New Testament. They thought not in words, but in pictures, and not only in pictures but also in moving pictures—that is, visual, visceral processes of creation, construction, sacrifice, harvest, and growth to maturity, all with the goal of ultimate glory. The theosis of the Man at God’s hand results in the theoscaping of the world at the hand of the Man. That is why the cutting of the flesh of Adam must be seen as a prefiguring of the circumcision of the household of Abraham, which would ultimately become a blessing to all nations. Both of these acts of “death” (well, deep, deathly sleep) would result in miraculous gifts of abundant life.

The simplest answer to the question of whether the vocation of the Jews continues today is found in Genesis 1 and 2. God cut Adam open, constructed a bride for him, and then closed up the flesh. God made two of the one flesh (without consent), and then the two became one flesh (with full consent) in a new way, a way that would transcend addition and move human life into the realm of multiplication. The New Testament is about the fulfillment of the last stage of this process in a corporate sense, which is why it ends with the marriage feast of the Lamb.

But the cutting of Adam was also the human equivalent of putting a firmament between heaven and earth, a temporary “veil” that will ultimately be torn away—something that is not pleasant but still necessary, like the disciplining of a child that ultimately bears the fruit of righteousness (Hebrews 12:11). Just as the creation of the firmament was the only event of the original Holy Week that was not judged to be “good,” so also the division of humanity into Jew and Gentile was only a temporary necessity during our time of childhood. Hebrews tells us that the tearing of the Temple veil corresponded to the tearing of Jesus’ body (Hebrews 10:20). This division made of the two halves of a divided Adam “one new man” (Ephesians 2:15), fulfilling the role of the Temple, not only rendering it obsolete but also signifying its imminent destruction. Those who refused to have the veil torn away and their eyes opened to their own nakedness before God would be blinded and uncovered (Genesis 3:7; Luke 24:31; Acts 9:18; Romans 11:7; 2 Corinthians 3:14; Revelation 3:17; Luke 23:30; Revelation 6:16).

The making of such correspondences between events is strange to us because we do not think in images and processes. The cutting of Adam was a “liturgy in flesh and blood” that served as a microcosm of covenant history in the Bible. The circumcision divided humanity in two (like the beasts offered by Abraham in Genesis 15), but God kept cutting away at the Adamic flesh, covenant by covenant, layer by layer, even dividing up and trying not only the heart but also the lungs, kidneys, liver, and fat, until He could set Jesus apart from Adam-kind as the perfect foundation for a bride-city that would be truly holy, entirely without blemish, just as He is.¹For more discussion, see Cosmos and Covenant.

So, if God closed up the flesh of Adam, surely the end of sacrifice means that He has closed up the divide between Jew and Gentile (Daniel 9:24)? It means not only that there are no more Jews in the eyes of heaven, but also that there are no more “Gentiles,” defined as “non-Jews.”²For more discussion, see James B. Jordan, The Future of Israel Re-examined. To deny the end of the Jew-Gentile divide is to unwittingly deny the efficacy of the crucifixion. The wild waters of the nations kept apart by the hand of Moses rushed back together like the Red Sea.

These bipolar (or perhaps schizoid) demarcations, neither of which could exist without the other, were offices for a particular period of history, and their purpose was fulfilled. But why were they necessary in the first place?

Read Part 2.

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Art: Lesley Friedmann, Jacob’s Ladder (detail) 2017.