Jesus is the New Israel of God
BibleWow, its been nearly two months without blogging. Not sure how that happened. Life just got crazy. Hopefully there is now the opportunity to get going. Here is a beginning reflection on how the Bible is all about Jesus, and how missing the fact that he is the goal of the plotline is the biggest mistake anyone can make in understanding and applying it.
Jesus is the New Israel
Here is the biggest mistake in interpreting and applying the Old Testament: to forget about Jesus. People who teach how to handle the Bible regularly teach something like this: that it is vital to set any Bible passage in its context (correct), and that the more immediate context governs the meaning of the text more that remote contexts do (also correct) and therefore the immediate context of any passage is the most important thing that governs what it means and how we should apply it (incorrect – at least in one very important way).
This last principle works only if we are considering how a passage works as a unit within its particular historical and literary context. Critically it does not set a passage within the large sweep of God’s purposes in history, or the plot line of the whole Bible. Therefore only considering immediate context when trying to determine meaning and application will fatally omit whether God subsequently introduced new elements in salvation history that alter how the application should be done. Most crucially, many people assume that whatever God says to Old Covenant national Israel, is applicable directly and without qualification to New Covenant church of Jesus Christ. Whatever he said to them, he now says to us, it is now argued without qualification.
It sounds holy to say “we are teaching the plain meaning of a passage and teaching people to obey it.” It sounds like the easy and obvious option. But it misses the most critical step in Bible handling – how does this passage relate to Jesus as the culmination of the Bible’s plotline? And does the coming of God’s king and rescuer, his institution of a new covenant of grace, and his insistence that he, rather than a geographical place, is the focus of the worship of Yahweh alter the application of Old Covenant passages?
I’ll say it does! And here is the single biggest way: the New Testament equivalent of Old Testament national Israel is not the church. It is not present day national Israel. It is Jesus Christ. He is the Israel of God, the true worshipper, the Son, the prophet, priest and king. The temple and the sacrifice. The son of Abraham and the greater prophet promised by Moses.
When Isaiah introduces the figure of the Servant of the Lord, he first shows that this servant will fulfil all the plans of God that national Israel didn’t (42:1-7) and that he will rescue the pitiful and plundered people of God (42:18-22). He will bring salvation to the ends of the earth and to the Gentiles (49:5-6). And, most critically, he will be given the title “Israel” (49:3). This is not national Israel, because this new Israel rescues national Israel in 49:5. He is the new Israel, the perfect fulfilment. The title is taken away from the Old Testament nation and given to the servant – Jesus.
Be glad to worship Jesus and be found in Him today.
Reader Comments (4)
Yes!! Welcome back.
Hi Marcus
I agree with everything you've said, but I think there are a couple of important qualifications needed. Absolutely the most critical step in Bible handling is asking, how does this passage relate to Jesus as the culmination of the Bible’s plotline? But we also need to avoid the opposite danger to the one you describe and that is to read Jesus back into the OT text too quickly without adequate - or any - consideration of its immediate contexts, both literary and historical. The controls need to be 2-way. The NT revelation of Christ must control our reading of the NT, but the OT revelation also applies some controls to the way we draw lines from it to the NT.
Second, lesser qualification: there are times when the NT equivalent of the OT people of God is the NT people of God. First, in passages which relate to the unfaithfulness of God's people. There are two levels here, you could argue. One is that we need to see the seriousness of our waywardness which prophets like Ezekiel capture with such passion and horror. The other is that the perfect faithfulness of Christ is the antithesis of their faithlessness. But it seems to me that the sheer amount of judgment on unfaithfulness in the prophets which has been preserved for us in Scripture suggests that we need to engage with the principles of the passages and not simply say, they failed but Jesus didn't. A second way in which the texts must be applied to the people of God quite directly is in those passages which address relationships within the community (principles of justice, compassion, inclusion, etc.).
Now I'm supposed to be working, so I'll buzz off. Hope you're doing OK.
tony
Tony - surely when the equivalent is the church it's cos we're 'the people of God in Christ' ?
Yes, that's absolutely true. And in terms of the prophetic oracles of judgment, that means the dynamic of how our waywardness is dealt with is significantly different.