Who Are The People Of God -- Israel or the Church?

The most popular end-times view today is called dispensationalism, a system of doctrines invented in the early 1,800's by an Englishman named John Nelson Darby.  At the heart of dispensationalism is the idea that God has two different peoples, with two different plans, and two different purposes -- Israel and the church.  According to dispensationalism, God made big promises to Israel in the Old Testament that still haven't been fulfilled (e.g. the promise of land).  Jesus came to fulfill those promises, but the Jews rejected Him.  Therefore God put His plan for Israel on hold while He works out a separate plan for a separate people -- the church.  Any day now the church will be raptured out of the world, and then God will continue His plan for Israel.  At the end of a seven-year tribulation in which two-thirds of the Jews will be killed by the Antichrist, Jesus will come back, set up an earthly kingdom in Jerusalem for 1,000 years, and fulfill all of God's Old Testament promises to Israel and ethnic Jews.  That's dispensationalism in a nutshell.  

There's a big problem with dispensationalism -- it is unbiblical.  The notion that God has two peoples with two plans and two purposes flies in the face of everything taught in the New Testament.  Dispensationalism is based on a reading of the Old Testament that ignores the New Testament.  But the New Testament is the crucial lens through which we should interpret the Old Testament.  We must not read the Old Testament as if Jesus never came and the New Testament was never written.

According to the New Testament's interpretation of the Old Testament, God has one people, with one purpose, and one plan -- the Church.  It is made up of both Jews and Gentiles who put their faith in Jesus Christ.  When Jesus comes back, He will judge the living and the dead and create a new heavens and a new earth where Christians of all races will live with one another in the presence of God for eternity.

In Genesis 12:1-3 God made a promise to bless Abraham and his offspring with the land of Canaan (among other things).  In the New Testament, Paul interprets this promise in the light of Christ's death and resurrection.  Galatians 3:16 says, "Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say 'and to seeds,' as though referring to many, but referring to one, and to your seed, who is Christ."  Paul says that the promises to Abraham's offspring did not refer to all ethnic Jews, but only to one of Abraham's descendants -- Christ.  Christ is the seed (offspring) of Abraham, the one true heir to the promises in the Old Testament.

Does that mean that Christ is the only one who will inherit the promises given to Abraham?  No!  Just a few verses later, in Galatians 3:28-29, Paul says, "There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; since you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise."  So, now that Christ has come, your race has nothing to do with inheriting God's promises.  Jew and Gentile are no longer significant categories to God.  All that matters is one's relationship to Christ.  If you belong to Christ (a Christian), then you also are Abraham's seed, and remarkably, "heirs according to the promise."  All of the Old Testament promises given to Abraham's offspring were actually only given to Christ, and to those who belong to Christ!

In Ephesians 2:11-22, Paul elaborates.  In verse 12 he describes the terrible condition of the Gentiles before Christ.  "At that time you were without Christ, excluded from the citizenship of Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of promise, without hope and without God in the world."  Sam Storms sums up the Gentiles' condition as "Christless, stateless, friendless, hopeless, and Godless" (Kingdom Come).  But then Christ came, changing everything.  First, "he made both groups one...so that he might create in himself one new man from the two" (v. 14-15).  In other words, Christ abolished the old categories of Jew and Gentile, and made something totally new -- the church -- to which people of all races can belong.  Then Paul says, "So, then, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints, and members of God’s household" (v. 19).  Jewish believers and Gentile believers are no longer separated into two groups, with two plans, and two purposes.  Together we are fellow citizens and members of the same family.

Some call this "replacement theology," or supersessionism, but these terms fall short of the biblical teaching.  In his book Kingdom Come, Sam Storms writes, "Believing Gentiles do not ‘replace’ anyone as recipients of God’s covenant promise.  No believing Jew in any age has been either displaced or replaced by a believing Gentile.  Rather, believing Gentiles have been admitted into the commonwealth of Israel to share equally in the promised blessings, the two (believing Jew and believing Gentile) now comprising ‘one new man,’ the church.  The ‘Israel of God’ (Gal 6:16), therefore, in and for whom the promises will be fulfilled, consists of believing Jews and Gentiles, the natural and the unnatural branches in the one olive tree of God.”

So, who are the people of God -- Israel or the church?  Colossians 3:11 says, "In Christ there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all.”  In Christ, race and ethnicity are irrelevant.  Christ is all that matters, and He dwells in all believers.  Christians are the people of God (1 Pt 2:10), God’s chosen ones (Col 3:12).  Christians are the circumcision, the ones who worship by the Spirit of God, boast in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh (Phil 3:3).  Christians are the true children of Abraham (Rm 4:11; Gal 3:7; Gal 3:28-29).  Christians are the one new man (Eph 2:15), and the heirs to the promises given to Abraham's seed (Gal 3:29).