Thoughts about being a naturalized citizen of the Kingdom

Today Israel simmers in tension.  Everywhere you go, you can feel the potential of explosive destruction.  You witness a nation filled with machine guns, mine fields and security guards.  The presence of constrained violence saturates the air like the smog that hangs over Jerusalem.  A divided land, a divided people, a divided life permeates the consciousness of every human being.  The joyful dancing at the Western Wall as the Sabbath approaches cannot hide the men with automatic weapons who overlook the square.  When I prayed with my head against Herod’s stones, the great agony of such a broken world at the feet of God’s holy temple brought nothing but tears.  There is something very, very wrong here.

Perhaps the Lord allowed me to feel this brokenness because it is symptomatic of a much deeper rift.  Even those who love the Lord are separated from each other.  Christians and Jews not only misunderstand each other; they find themselves at odds with each other on issues that should be the cause of celebration and unification.  As Moshe, the Jewish store owner told us, Jews cannot imagine how the Church could be responsible for such a long history of anti-Semitism and still claim to honor the God of Israel.  Those words shamed me.  They were the precursor to the experience of the Holocaust Museum where I wept when I saw the callous disregard of the Church for the lives of millions who were “outside” the flock.

This soul agony leads me to reflect once more on what it means to be a citizen of the Kingdom.  As a Christian, I recognize that I have been grafted into the commonwealth of Israel.  Paul makes this abundantly clear in Romans 11 and Ephesians 2.  I am a Gentile.  I am a Gentile simply because I was not born to Jewish parents.  Being a Gentile is an ethnic designation.  All the world is divided along this line.  I am either Jewish by birth or I am a Gentile.  As a Gentile, I may come to faith in the God of Israel through His gracious mercy.  In this regard, God does not distinguish between Jew and Gentile.  He provides grace for all.  I am saved by faith in exactly the same way that Habakkuk was saved (Habakkuk 2:4).  My salvation is God’s gift, just as it was a gift to Abraham, David and Isaiah.  I did nothing to earn it.  Neither did any Jew.  God chooses.  God provides.  God elects.  Salvation is from the Lord.

But when a Gentile comes to faith in the God of Israel, there is a difference between Jew and Gentile that affects the resulting life of obedience.  Jews do not convert to believing God.  They might return to the life He calls them to observe, but they do not leave behind idolatry in order to take up true belief in the Holy One of Scripture.  Of course, today there are many Jews who are Jews in ethnic status only.  They are for all intents and purposes no different than Gentiles except for heredity.  Nevertheless, when they give up their worldly outlook, they return to the God of their people.  But Gentiles convert.  They do not return because there is nothing for them to return to.  Gentiles are outside the chosen people of God so they must leave behind the worship of the world’s offerings and take up a life governed by the God of Israel.  Gentiles come to faith as Ruth came to faith.  “Your people will be my people and your God will be my God.”  Paul calls this being grafted into the commonwealth of Israel.  So, the intention of God’s plan is that all who come to Him in faith become part of His chosen people.  Jews return to their roots as the called people of God and Gentiles join those roots as converts to belief in the God of Israel.

What happens when a Gentile converts?  That was the big question in the first century.  Gentiles often converted to Judaism.  When they did, they took on all the obligations of being Jewish, including the sign (circumcision) and the lifestyle (dietary laws, sacrifices, etc.).  In the letter to the Galatians, Paul argues against those who claim that converting to Judaism saves a person.  Paul demonstrates that salvation is not a function of legal obedience to Torah.  Obedience is the result of receiving God’s grace, not the method of receiving God’s grace.  But this does not nullify the purpose of Torah.  Torah is God’s instruction for how to live after you have been adopted into the Kingdom.  It does not save you.  It allows God to use you for His purposes.  This was the function of Torah given to Israel at Sinai and it is still the function of Torah today.  So, when a Gentile comes to faith in the God of Israel and is adopted into the commonwealth of God’s chosen people, he takes on the desire to be useful to God, to be separate from the ways of the world and to live in a way that distinguishes him from those outside the Kingdom.  None of this expresses superiority.  Rather, the reason both Jews and Gentiles adopt the ways of Torah is to allow God to attract the world to Him through the way they live.

So, a Gentile does not become a Jew.  Gentile bloodlines do not suddenly alter into Jewish bloodlines.  While God does not distinguish between Jew and Gentile when it comes to mercy and grace, He does distinguish between Jew and Gentile when it comes to obedience to Torah.  For example, no Gentile will ever be a priest.  Not even all Jews can be temple priests.   Torah observance depends on bloodline, gender, age, marital status and many other conditions.  All told, only a small number of the 613 Torah commandments actually apply to any given person, but when a Gentile is grafted into the commonwealth of Israel, those that do apply become the standard of behavior for the Gentile believer.  Ruth did not proclaim her willingness to adopt Naomi’s God and then decide to eat anything she wanted, ignore the Sabbath and live as she pleased.

Notice Paul’s argument in Ephesians 2:11-18.  Paul argues that those who were called Gentiles were without a relationship to Yeshua, and as a result, were alienated from the “commonwealth of Israel.”  In this state, they were strangers to the promises of the covenants (notice the plural), without hope and without God in the world (verse 12).  But all of this changed when Gentiles came into relationship with Yeshua.  Once they were “far off,” a Hebrew idiom for unrighteous and outside the Kingdom of God.  Now that has changed.  They have been “brought near” by the blood of the Messiah.  To be “brought near” is to be a worshipper of God and an observer of God’s instructions.  Paul contrasts those who are outside the covenants with those who have been adopted into the covenants; those who are far from God with those who are near to Him and those who did not have hope with those who do have hope.  What is the summary of the difference between these two groups?  The change in their status is adoption into the commonwealth of Israel.  What does that mean?  These Gentiles are now treated as if they are part of the elect people of God.  They are naturalized citizens.  They follow Ruth by adopting the people and the ways of Israel’s God.

How is it possible to claim that today’s Christian believers, mostly Gentiles, are no longer naturalized citizens of Israel?  How can we twist the text so that Paul says, in effect, Gentiles become Christians, no longer under any obligation to live according to the constitution of Israel establish by God Himself?  This is equivalent to Ruth saying, “Your God will be my God but I will decide for myself whether or not I accept His instructions for living.”  The only way we can re-interpret the text to justify the Christian claim that Torah is no longer the standard for living is by shifting the foundation upon which Torah stands.  The Church must become the replacement of the people of Israel.  The Church, as the “new” Israel, inherits God’s blessings, but apparently without inheriting God’s commandments.  In other words, the Church takes on the authority to determine for itself which of God’s commandments it will follow and which it will ignore. Even if the Church could claim it is the “new” Israel, on what basis can it then assert that the instructions for living given by God to Israel do not apply to God’s “new” Israel?  As far as I can determine, the only basis for such a claim is the further theological proposition that the Church is now the voice of God.  This sounds suspiciously like idolatry to me.

Reading the text as it is, without replacement theology as an overlay, certainly seems to imply that Gentiles saved by grace enter into a relationship with God that looks very much like the relationship Jews have with God.  While there are specific commandments for many different groups within His Kingdom, I find no provision that allows a believer to pick and choose whatever he or she wishes to observe.  That’s not how the constitutional obligations of any government work and it certainly isn’t the way God’s government works.  Gentiles are not saved by any other means than the way Jews are saved.  Nevertheless, Gentiles do not become Jews.  They are merely citizens of the same nation and they are expected to act according to the regulations that apply to them.  Until Christians realize that God does provide specific instructions about living in His Kingdom and that these instructions apply to everyone who is a citizen no matter how they became citizens, the Church will miss out on God’s greatest blessing – to be a light to the nations rather than a religious reflection of the culture.

Saturday I stood on the temple mount, the place where Solomon built his structure to honor God.  Now it is the scene of riot control police, automatic weapons, an Islamic holy shrine and a mosque.  The day after I left, there was another clash between the growing number of radical fundamentalist Muslims and Israeli military.  There is no human solution to this nightmare in Jerusalem.  There is only weeping, fear and violence.  Perhaps God will hear the cries of His people once again and sweep away the conflict in some miraculous fashion.  Barring that, no human effort can resolve this centuries-old hatred.  Perhaps the Church will realize that it is called to be one with God’s chosen people and cease espousing its status as an independent religion.  When we Christians begin to take Scripture seriously, remove the glasses of succession theology and join the Kingdom not made with human hands, we just might find the covenants of blessing poured out on all His people – together at last.