You have to love those “Ah ha” moments in life. Like when you figure out that you have to push the bottle cap DOWN as you twist it off (stupid child proof caps). Or when you realize that the speed limit on that road wasn’t 65 mph, but actually 45 mph, and the police don’t seem to care about your ignorance. Maybe it is when you finally figure out how to start a new roll of toilet paper without ripping off three layers (seriously, you couldn’t design this any easier???). For me, I love those “ah ha” moments when you are reading the Bible. One of my biggest ones came while reading Romans 9.
In Romans 9:6 says, “It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.” What??? What does that mean that “not all who are descended from Israel are Israel”??? That seems to be a completely illogical statement from Paul. As you read the rest of the chapter, you begin to understand what Paul is doing. He creates two different Israels in this chapter: one is the literal nation made up of the physical Jewish people group; the other is a figurative Israel, or spiritual Israel, that has nothing to do with bloodlines and heritage, but has everything to do with faith in Jesus. He describes how to be in this spiritual Israel in verse 8, “In other words, it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.” He makes this same point in Galatians 3:7-9, “Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.”
Paul had been building up to this point in the whole book of Romans. The church of Rome had split into groups of both Jewish and Gentile home churches. There was much fighting and ethnic issues between the two groups (Rom. 14:1-15:13). Paul needed to show them how they are now one body, both Jew and Gentile, in the church of Christ. He starts with creating a figurative circumcision and Jew in Rom. 2:28-29, “A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person’s praise is not from other people, but from God.” This would have been radical enough if Paul stopped there, but he didn’t. He went on in chapter 4 to declare that there are figurative descendants of Abraham. As we saw from Galatians, these spiritual descendants are both Jew and Gentile, and are only Abraham’s children due to their faith in Jesus.
So, if we have figurative circumcision, Jews, and Abraham’s children, the next step was just a logical progression: we can have a figurative (or spiritual) Israel. This does NOT mean that there is no longer a physical Israel, or that it isn’t important. In chapters 9 – 11, Paul continues to go back and forth from the physical Jews to spiritual Israel. I believe that this teaching of Paul’s is one reason that replacement theologians went in the direction that they did. They had solid Biblical truth in the concept of spiritual Israel. The real questions however are: 1) how does the teaching of spiritual Israel affect God’s current plans for the Jewish people?; and 2) how does the concept of spiritual Israel affect our interpretation of the fulifillment of Old Testament predictions? As we saw already, replacement theology sees spiritual Israel as completely replacing physical Israel, therefore God is only focusing on the spiritual Israel in New Testament times, and all Old Testament predictions not fulfilled already in history or Jesus, should be applied to the church.
Let’s tackle the question on Old Testament predictions first, and then we can deal with God’s overall redemptive plan in the next post. If all Old Testament predictions were fulfilled either in a literal or figurative way, we would have an easy job. Unfortunately, the Bible just doesn’t do that. Some predictions have a very literal fulfillment, which is exactly what we would expect to happen. For example, Micah 5:2 predicts that the Messiah, Jesus, would be born in Bethlehem, and in Matthew 2:1-6, that is exactly what happened. However, in Amos 9:11-12, Amos predicts that “David’s shelter” will be rebuilt, Jerusalem will be restored, and that they will possess the surrounding nations. We would expect this to be fulfilled in a literal way. In Acts 15:12-21, James, the brother of Jesus, stands up and declares that Amos’s prediction has been fulfilled through the Gentile inclusion in the church. This means that there is a figurative or spiritual fulifillment of Amos in that God is buidling up the spiritual Jerusalem (Galatians 4:26).
The dilemma then is how do we know if an Old Testament prediction will have a literal or a figurative/spiritual fulfillment? The real answer is that unless the New Testament specifically gives us the fulfillment, we can’t be 100% sure. Remember how sure the disciples and Jews were about how they thought the predictions about the Messiah would be fulfilled. They were all looking to a physical king who would come and kick out the Romans and reestablish Israel, and so they missed Jesus and his true mission often. Hindsight is always 20/20 when it comes to Biblical predictions. Isaiah 11:11 could have a literal fulfillment in God regathering the Jews, or it could have a figurative one. We will have to find another way to make our decision on which one is right. Don’t you love cliffhangers? Tune in next time, when we tackle that issue. It will take us to the ultimate big picture question: how does Israel fit into the overall redemptive plan of God for all time? Easy, right?
The Bible Nerd 