We all know that the Bible consists of two parts, the Old Testament and the New Testament. Within those two divisions, we find that the people of God are organized differently. In the Old Testament, after the primeval period in Genesis 1-11, God begins to establish his people as a family—specifically the family of Abraham, then Isaac, then Jacob, whom he later names Israel. As the family grows, Jacob’s twelve sons become tribes constituting the people of Israel.
In Exodus, God turns this family, this people, into a nation, with defined leadership and explicit laws. And the rest of the Old Testament is the story of this nation—a turbulent story indeed.
These are the people of God.
How do you become part of the people of God? Usually, you’re born into it, but there are exceptions. When the Israelite slaves are delivered from Egypt, some Egyptians come with them; at Jericho, a Canaanite woman—a prostitute!—asks for asylum and is granted it. And the Mosaic Law provides for “strangers”—foreigners—who can be admitted to Israelite citizenship.
But for the most part, the people of God in this stage are genetically determined. And that leads to some, well, imperfections. Throughout Israel’s history, some percentage of Israelites do not believe in Israel’s God. At times, hardly anybody in Israel really belongs to God. The prophets paint a dark. stark picture. But for now, the people of God are defined in terms of ethnicity, of nationality, and, after the Conquest, of geography.
When we come to the New Testament, the whole picture changes. Now the people of God are defined by their belief in God. Ethnicity (Ga 3.28) and nationality (Ro 13) and geography (Mt 28.19-20) become irrelevant; the church begins in Jerusalem and expands throughout Judea, but soon it’s in Samaria, and then it explodes across the Mediterranean Basin. Within a generation or so it’s in India, and soon in China, and once the New World is discovered in the late 15th century* it immediately takes hold there as well.
Now. How do these two manifestations of “the people of God” relate?
So far in church history there have been two basic answers to that question. There may be other theories in the future, but for now this is what we have.
One approach is that Israel has been replaced by the church. The promises that God made to Israel in that historical context have either been fulfilled already (e.g. the land promise [Gen 15.18] under Solomon) or are now given to the church. That means that modern Israel has no biblical or theological significance; it’s just another country, like Liechtenstein or Malawi. And that means that Christ’s kingdom is not an earthly, political kingdom; it’s either the influence of the church in the world (postmillennialism) or the reign of Christ in the hearts of his people today (amillennialism).
For most of church history, this approach, and specifically amillennialism, has been by far the majority view. Today it’s called “Covenant Theology” and is held by Presbyterians and a few other groups.
Another answer to the question is that Israel and the Church are distinct—perhaps eternally distinct—entities. God has not yet completely fulfilled his promises to Israel—most especially the Land Promise. That means that he will fulfill that promise at some future time, in a political kingdom here on earth. The Temple will be rebuilt; David’s greater son, Christ, will reign from Jerusalem, and that earthly reign will last for a thousand years.
Elements of this view were held in early apostolic times; many of the Apostolic Fathers, for example, held to a literal earthly reign of Christ. But fairly soon a literal reading of prophecy fell out of favor, and the idea of spiritualizing the kingdom became dominant. But in recent centuries—the 19th and 20th—this second view, called Dispensationalism, has become popular and even dominant in evangelical Christian culture.
I prefer one of these two views, but I don’t believe that this question should cause rancorous divisions in the body of Christ. I think it helps us to see that we all agree on The Big Story:
- God is creating a people for his glory.
- He began doing so with a physical illustration (Israel), including an ethnicity and a legal system.
- That people demonstrated a need for something beyond the physical arrangement.
- Having demonstrated his point, God graciously did what Israel could not.
- Incarnate, he kept their Law in their place.
- He offered himself as the perfect sacrifice for their sin.
- He promised to return as king.
- And then he extended this offer of grace to the entire world.
Next time we tie these two entities, and more, into the Really Big Picture.
* Sure, the Vikings. But they made no lasting settlement. And the Native Americans apparently had no history of contact with Christianity before they arrived in North America.
Photo by Carlos Magno on Unsplash
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