How Should Christians Think About Israel?
Five thoughts for Christians to consider when thinking about Israel.
News has been breaking and breaking our hearts as we hear of the horrific evil done against Israelis by the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas. Many are calling for Christians to “Pray for Israel.” A Christian friend called me last week, asking why so many American Christians are siding with Israel. “Isn’t the true Israel made up of all believers, no matter their ethnicity?” he asked. “Shouldn’t we be on the side of Christians, whether Jewish or Palestinian?” We had a good discussion, one I’ve been reflecting on. Here I want to offer some thoughts on how Christians should think about Israel.
1. Start with the Image of God
Human identity and human nature precedes ethnic identity. In the storyline of the Bible, we learn that God made everything and he made everyone. He created human persons in his image (Genesis 1:26-28). He breathes life into lungs so that human beings live as human beings. When we consider any person or any group of persons, we start with the image of God. Any person or group has been irrevocably made in the image of God. After the fall, the horrors of sin shattered the world, yet God still says that human beings share his image (Genesis 9:6). The victims and the villains are human victims and human villains.
2. Remember the Doctrine of Sin
After Adam and Eve sinned with the fruit, the fruit of their sin was violence and murder. Their son Cain murdered their other son Abel (Genesis 4). Both sons were their children, both fully bearers of the image of God. Yet one’s actions were wicked, and the other’s were not. Cain did evil, and the Lord dealt with Cain. The Lord called Cain’s wickedness just what it was. He didn’t equivocate or “both-sides” the discussion. There is a time for nuance and a time for straight talk. This was a straight talk kind of moment. So when one person or group perpetrates evil, we must be willing to call it evil, straight talk. Hamas is doing evil. Beheading babies? Evil. Raping girls? Evil. Burning grandmothers alive? Evil. This is evil, this we know, for the Bible tells us so.
3. Learn What the Bible Teaches About Ethnicity
God commanded the children of Adam and Eve to spread into the earth and take charge of it. Obedience would have created distinctions of location, language, culture, and ethnicity. Different groups would have clustered together, forming distinct people groups. In other words, ethnic distinctions would have developed as part of God’s good design—distinctions without divisions. We don’t know exactly how this would have worked, but we know God would have worked it out.
But people rebelled. They clustered together and tried to glorify and build monuments for themselves, culminating in the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. God responded to this human project: he cursed the people of earth with divisions of language and location. They hadn’t spread into the world under his blessing so God scattered them into the world under his curse. These scattered groups consolidated into distinct peoples or nations. The Greek word for nation is ethnos (plural ethnoi), where we get the word “ethnicity.” An ethnos was not a modern nation-state but a group of people who spoke the same way and did many things the same way. These groups were connected in several ways: covenantally, culturally, and biologically.
Think of the smallest and most important kind of human group: a family. Our family is related to each other by covenant and by biology. Our family is founded on the covenant commitment of my wife and me to each other. That leads to the biological connection of our kids. That said, biological connection isn’t the primary connection point, because parents adopt kids, making them a covenantal (and legal) part of their family. Our family as a covenantal and biological group has developed a “language,” such as inside jokes or nicknames. We have also developed habits, traditions, and practices, like opening certain Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve. Everyone in our family is a human being, and also a Slavich human being. We can’t fully separate our experience of being human from our experience of being a Slavich human.
Likewise, an ethnicity is a group that is related covenantally, culturally, and sometimes biologically. No one is born into the world as a generic “human being.” Everyone is born into the world within a specific place, time, and culture. Because of sin, God cursed the people of the world. They are divided and hostile to him and to one another. The peoples, the ethnoi, have been divided and combative for millennia. Ethnic hostility prevails in the story of the world.
4. Remember the Story of Israel
God could have let the story finish with ethnic hostility and division, but he didn’t. God set out to save and reunite the ethnoi of the world to himself and to each other. As the ethnoi scattered into the world, God called a specific man from a specific ethnos to form a new ethnos. God called Abraham to father a new nation, a group of people who would know the true and living God, worship him, and bring his truth to the world. This group of people is the Jewish people, who still miraculously exist today.
God promised Abraham that this new nation would bless the entire world of peoples and nations: “I will bless those who bless you, I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3). God called Israel to show his character and commands to the world, to be “a kingdom of priests” (Exodus 19:6). A priest was a go-between, who went between a people and their god(s). Israel would go-between the true God and the other peoples of the world. Specifically and ultimately, God funneled his blessing to the world through the “seed” or “descendent” of Abraham (Genesis 12:7), Jesus the Messiah.
This special place for Israel in the purposes of God has led some theologians to teach that Israel is the eternal people of God. They sometimes explained that the church was a short “parenthesis” in God’s plan. These theologians were called “dispensationalists,” named for the teaching of the different administrations or “dispensations” of God’s plan. Other theologians have argued that God’s people have always been defined by faith rather than ethnicity, and that the church has replaced Israel.
I think the Bible tells a more robust and even more beautiful story than either of those options. God has always preserved a people for himself, and the ultimate character of that people is faith. Abraham was justified by faith (Genesis 15:6), believing God. That said, Israel was not just a religious community, but an ethnic one. Romans 11 seems to show that God plans to continue to bring ethnic Israel to their Messiah. This makes sense of the unlikely and clearly miraculous existence of the Jewish people to this day, unlike the other ancient ethnoi. As I’ve heard it said, “When was the last time you met a Hittite or a Jebusite?”
This raises the question about how the modern nation-state of Israel relates to the ethnic and religious people of Israel. I would argue that they are related but not identical. You only have to hear the longing in the voices of Jewish friends and neighbors when they talk about Israel to know that we can’t completely separate them. Israel (the nation) and Israel (the people) have a deep connection. That said, we should not assume that the promises of God for Israel apply directly to the modern nation-state. We should be careful not to use Israel (the modern nation) and Israel (the people of God) as synonyms. This demands important care and clarity.
5. Remember Our Dual Citizenship
Christians have dual citizenship. We are citizens of a specific city of earth (for me, proudly, the good, ole US of A). Our earthly citizenship requires certain commitments and allegiances. As an American, I can side with Israel over Hamas on the basis of democratic ideals and an ally in a hostile region. At the same time, such commitments must recede if they conflict with my loyalties as a citizen of the Kingdom of God. The primary pledge of allegiance for the Christian is that Jesus is Lord. Our primary loyalty is to Jesus as Lord and his mission to make disciples of the nations, the ethnoi. We must not lose sight of the mission of the church, even and especially in light of a mission of an earthly military. In an important sense, the people of God is the church, spiritual Israel: “For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, and true circumcision is not something visible in the flesh. On the contrary, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart—by the Spirit, not the letter” (Romans 2:28-29). So in Christ we can sing the song we learned as kids: “Father Abraham has many sons, many sons has Father Abraham, and I am one of them, and so are you…”
Exactly these commitments as a Christian force me to recognize the way that Christians have treated Jewish people at points in history. Anti-semitism has sometimes stained the church’s story in dark blots. We renounce any anti-semitism or prejudice against Jewish people, both as fellow image bearers and as ethnic children of Abraham. As anti-semitic sentiments and actions surface in our culture, we reject it, passionately. Anti-semitism is anti-human and anti-Christian. Anti-semitism has never made sense to me, in any case. After all, as the old bumper sticker says, “My boss is a Jewish carpenter.” I follow and serve a Jewish Messiah.
Conclusion
If you’ve made it this far, I hope these five thoughts have helped you. I am processing some of this stuff in real time, just like you are. I do pray for peace in Israel. I pray for justice for evil-doers. I pray for Jews to turn to Jesus. I pray for Muslims to turn to the Messiah. I pray for wisdom, moral clarity, and strength of conviction and action from our leaders. I hope you will think and pray through these things with me.