The Church"s Identification
This is an ultimate call to the Church in the willingsetting aside of our own cherished cultural and ethnic identification. It calls for everything that both Jews and Christians want to preserve, but which must be brought up to the "mount of sacrifice," for God has something in the bush that is better. That something will not be ours until we are willing to forsake that which we presently clutch inour need for an identification of some kind, even one that is earthly, natural and demonic. We have not had an appeal presented to us that transcends culture, race, nationality and ethnic distinction, and there is only one gospel that does. It is the gospel of God, which has made a way for those who were far off to be brought in by the blood of the Messiah Jesus that they might enter, and have full participation in the purposes and the glory of that commonwealth. In the very doing, they move a presently unrepentant nation to jealousy. Now we can better understand why Paul concludes Rom. 11 with "Oh, the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!" (Rom. 11:33).
A Jew that can be moved to jealousy is one who can recognize in that Gentile something transcendent that is beyond race, culture and nationality. He needs to see a resonance of the depths of the God of Israel and the reality of that God through one in whom he would never have suspected it could be found. Now that is the mystery, and it is a mystery that has been lost to the Church for millennia. It seems that we, as the Church, have wanted a God who is, like unto us, either through anti-Jewish sentiment, or ignorance of the nature of the faith of Israel into which we have been brought.
The Roots of the Faith
Our hope, then, is rooted in having part in Israel"s covenants and promises. To be without hope and without God in the world, and strangers to the covenants, is to be, at the same time, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel. To have hope, to have the promises, to have expectancy is to be in the commonwealth of Israel. Even while the state of Israel is itself presently far removed from this commonwealth, we, remarkably, are in it, and init for the purpose of bringing back those branches that were broken off. They will recognize in us what they have been missing for so long, and what they have been missing is not just an equivalent to their Judaism, but itexceeds anything that can be called Judaistic, and precedes even the adoption of present rabbinical Judaism.
Jews are presently seeing in the Church a religious, cultural alternative that is essentially non-Jewish. One reason for this would be the Church"s failure to take to heart the fact that God has not called it to be an alternative to the Hebraic faith that preceded it, but that it is its very continuation, completion and fulfillment. This is not a call to some kind of affectation of Jewishness that brings a sentimental dimension to our otherwise arid Christian life, but rather, the deepest spiritual appropriation of the faith of God as being the faith of the "God of Israel" in all of His deep-rooted history with that people.
With the advent of Messiah, both Jews and Gentiles are included in the "Israel of God." We are not in some fictitious, ethnic identity that is ours by reason of the faith. We are still Jews and we are still Gentiles, or else we rob God of the potential of the mystery that makes of the two, one new man. First-century Judaism was so hostile towards Gentiles that Jews were not even permitted to be in the house of a Gentile. The apostle Peter, himself, was so steeped in the historical prejudice, pride and superiority that he required a vision of the transformation of what had been considered unclean until then. The inclusion of the Gentiles was a mystery and a surprise to the first Jewish believers, who were expecting the Lord"s imminent return, but they did not realize that God was revealing something that was yet to have a two thousand year history, a parenthesis, and that this was the Church age made up predominantly of Gentiles with a small remnant of Jews. They did not see the Church being the key to the restoration of Israel to their God and to their Land at the end of the "times of the Gentiles." The early believers had to be instructedin thisbecause it had been hidden to them.
Gentiles have been grafted in, but the God who grafted us in by His power is also able to graft Israel in again. Can He not do for erring Jews what He did for us who were dead in our sins and transgressions? Not only can He do it, He will, and it ought to be the most glorious celebration when we welcome our kinsmen and brethren into their own faith that we have preserved for them through these centuries.
We were grafted into the living body of historical Israel, and now the only thing that remains is that they themselves be grafted back into their own root. The issue of their re-entry is our witness, our moving them to jealousy, the depth of our supplication and travail and our anxious desire for them to be part, because we know we are not complete without them. We know that their King, and ours, will not come until they come, and they will not come until they see a demonstration from us that is something far more than whatthey have historically observed.
The Reconciliation of All Things
The faith of God, the call of God and the gospel of God have to do with the gospel of the kingdom, the theocratic rule of God over the nations from Zion as well as the redemption of all creation. The world today is awash in the blood of racial hatred, animosity and ethnic differences that provoke men to be at each others throats, but the ache and heart of God is reconciliation. The wisdom of God is the reconciliation of men through the power of the Cross, by which is made the one new man. When that is demonstrated to the Powers of the air, the story is over, the drama is finished, and the saga is concluded. The purpose for the Church in its creation has been established; the Powers of the air are defeated and the King comes to establish His throne and His glory. His nation is restored. The earth, long in bondage and groaning and travailing, even until now, in the corruption that has been visited upon it, breaks free, and thenthe trees will clap their hands and the hills skip like lambs, for redemption has come to the reconciled sons of God!
The Powers of darkness know better than the Church the centrality of Israel to this faith,and have done everything to oppose this heavenly realization. The Ephesian letter, by virtue of its breadth and majesty, describes the supremacy of that which, in the divine intent, eclipses time, culture and nationality, and is the calling and eternal purpose of the Israel of God, comprised of Jew and Gentile in Messiah Jesus, one as He is one.
How odd of G*D to choose the Jew. But not as odd as those whochoose
the
Jewish G*D, and hate the Jew! ~ Francis A. Schaeffer
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"Blessed is He who Comes in The Name of The Lord"
The Church's Identification
