6.08. The Promises
THE PROMISES
“Now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers”
“AND the Promises.” This constitutes another of God’s great and irrevocable “gifts” to Israel. Perhaps the great Abrahamic promises with regard to the land and the promised seed, in whom all families of the earth should be blessed, are uppermost in the Apostle’s mind—the promises which are unfolded and amplified in the words of God subsequently spoken to Isaac and to Jacob, and, later, to the whole people, through Moses and the prophets, and which are wonderful and comprehensive in their scope; and are God’s guarantees for the blessing of Israel, and through Israel, for all the nations of the earth.
Now, on this point, especially professing Christendom, and many true Christians even in Protestant countries, have through ignorance been at variance with the Apostle and with the clearly revealed mind of God. The general belief of Christians for many centuries has been that the promises made to Israel have, in consequence of their rejection of Christ, been either annulled or bodily transferred to the Church. This has arisen from the erroneous belief that God hath utterly cast off His people which He hath foreknown, and that there is no more a national future for the Jewish nation.
“The attitude of such Christians in relation to the Jews has been humorously illustrated by that prominent Jewish witness for Christ, the late Joseph Rabinowitch, in the following story: During the last Russo-Turkish war, after a great battle, a certain number of men in a particular regiment were returned in the list as dead, and an officer with a company of soldiers was commissioned to attend to the sad duty of seeing them decently buried.
“While engaged in this task, they came across a poor man who was badly wounded, and left on the field for dead, but who had life enough in him to refuse to be buried. But the amusing part of the business was that the officer in command seemed very much perplexed. He asked the poor man’s name, looked at his list, and then said, ‘Well, I do not know what to do with you; in my list you are put down as dead.’ This, Mr. Rabinowitch said, is the attitude of many Christians in relation to the Jew.
“In their political and religious creeds, the Jews as a nation are put down as dead, and even many true Christians, when reading in the Scriptures the exceeding great and precious promises which God made to Israel, say, ‘Oh yes, Israel that is a nation that once lived, but died some nineteen centuries ago, when they rejected Christ, and now “Israel” means no longer Israel, but the Church which has entered into their inheritance.’ But Israel, though seriously wounded, is not dead, and refuses to be buried; and the remarkable signs of vitality which as a people they are now manifesting are in themselves sufficient to show that they are not merely a nation of the past, but preeminently the nation of the future.”1 1 Quoted from my book, “The Ancient Scriptures and the Modern Jew.” When the Apostle Paul wrote these words, Israel had already rejected Christ, and it was on that account that he pours out the great sorrow and uninterrupted pain of his heart,—yet and this is one great purpose he had in writing these three chapters—he proceeds to show how that, though all men be liars, God abides faithful, and that His gifts and calling of Israel (in spite of all that has happened) are “without repentance” or a change of mind on His part.
Therefore, it is with design that he says, not that they were Israelites, and that to them belonged the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the service of God, and the promises: but who are Israelites, and that theirs still are all these gifts which constitute their high calling, for God hath not cast off the people which He had foreknown; and though the majority of many generations of Israel may exclude themselves through unbelief from the enjoyment of these great privileges, they are reserved in the purpose of God against the time when “all Israel shall be saved,” and when, through Christ, they shall experience nationally what we now experience individually, that all the promises of God, “how many soever they be,” and whether relating to spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, or to national and “temporal” blessings in earthly places in Canaan “in Him is the yea” of verification, “and through Him also is the Amen” of response and of experience “to the glory of God through us” (2Co_1:20).
Meanwhile, far from the death of our Lord Jesus being the occasion for the canceling or annulling of the promises made to Israel, the Apostle assures us that “Christ was made a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God that He might confirm the promises made unto the fathers” (Rom_15:8); and since they have been ratified with His own precious blood, they have been made doubly sure, and can never fail.
I am speaking to Christians, and do not want to be misunderstood. I believe that there is not a promise in reference to spiritual blessing which the least and weakest believer in Christ may not apply and enjoy as if uttered to himself, and (as I said elsewhere) remember that in all His words and acts to Israel the heart of Israel’s God is opened up to you, whoever you may be, who have learned to put your trust under the shadow of His wings. For this God is your God forever and ever—the Father of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who wants you to learn from His infinite grace and faithfulness to His unworthy Israel that His faithfulness to you, too, can never fail. But what I want you to know is that your inclusion into promises made to Israel in no way alters the meaning and force of the words as primarily uttered to that nation, and that you can be no gainer, but rather much of a loser, by the so-called spiritualizing, or phantomising, method of interpreting Scripture, by which “Zion,” “Israel,” “Jerusalem,” etc., are explained to mean the “Church,” or “heaven”—a method which is largely responsible for the fact that the Bible, especially the prophetic Scriptures, has become a sealed book to the majority of professing Christians, who in consequence become an easy prey to every wind of false doctrine, or to the specious rationalism in relation to God’s Word which now, alas! permeates the Churches.
“Theirs are the promises,” and not one thing that God spake will ever fail—”For thus saith Jehovah, like as I brought all this great evil upon this people [and so literally fulfilling all the threatenings and curses which He had uttered against them], so will I bring upon them all the good that I promised them.” “He will turn again, He will have compassion upon us; He will subdue our iniquities, and Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. Thou wilt perform the truth unto Jacob, and the mercy to Abraham, which Thou hast sworn unto our fathers from the days of old.” And then, when Jehovah “hath remembered His mercy and His truth toward the house of Israel, all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of God” (Jer_32:42; Mic_7:19-20; Psa_98:3).