We should read the Bible as one story, of one covenant of grace, with one church united in Christ, with Gentile salvation in view from the beginning. Yet we should also believe that God has a future plan for ethnic Jews, not by giving them a separate destiny as a separate people of God but by bringing them back to Jesus Christ through faith.

Israel is often on people’s minds. Unrest ebbs and flows in the Middle East, with Israel front and center, giving rise to practical and theological questions. Are Israelites a people of God distinct from the church? Is God with them, whether or not they believe in Christ? What is their destiny? How should Christians relate to Jews? The list goes on and, frankly, I hesitate to enter the fray.

When the most recent conflict in Israel broke out, someone at a church fellowship said to me, “You are the doctor of theology here. What should we think and do about Israel?” I stand by my reply: “I am neither competent nor able to speak to politics, but I can point people to Christ through Scripture.” The Bible’s covenant theology has something to say about the relationship between Israel and the church. Rather than politics, biblical answers tell us more about the breathtaking unity of Scripture and how Jews and Gentiles relate to Christ than other questions we might have. Ultimately, there is one people of God, including the salvation of the nations from the beginning, and Israel has a special place in God’s plan for the church.

Is There One People of God?

Moving the elephant in the room out of the way, Scripture does not teach that Israel and the church are two peoples of God with two destinies, one earthly (Israel) and one heavenly (the church). “Covenant” highlights the breathtaking unity of Scripture, making Jews and Gentiles one people of God in Christ (Eph. 2:15).

From the “first promise” of the “seed of the woman” who would crush the serpent’s head (Gen. 3:15) to one of the last promises of God’s heavenly dwelling with his people as their God (Rev. 21:3), covenant theology pulls together everything in between. The result is that we view the Bible more like a grand, epic narrative than like a collection of short stories. Seeing God’s promise to undo the ruin Satan brought through sin ties together all the pages of Scripture like a seamless thread. In this light, the promise to Abraham, that in his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed (Gen. 22:18), fits both Genesis 3:15 and Galatians 3:14, in which “the blessing of Abraham” applies to believers now. The “seed of the woman’s” suffering in the place of his people resurfaces in important passages like Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, and Romans 16:20.

Moses’s leading the people out of Egypt, and everything else he did, flowed from God’s remembering his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Ex. 2:24–25). David looked to God to forgive sins and change hearts (Ps. 51), and he pleaded that the deliverer would come through one of his descendants (2 Sam. 7; Ps. 89; Ps. 132). Solomon celebrated God’s faithfulness in establishing his seed (of the woman) over the ends of the earth, bringing blessings to all nations (Ps. 72). Peter urged believers to look to Christ’s return, teaching them that God preserves the world now for the sake of the elect, just as he did in Noah’s covenant in Genesis 6–9 (2 Pet. 3:8–9).

Covenant theology is a blessing because whatever book of Scripture we find ourselves in, every part reminds us of other parts. The entire book is about God’s covenant with his people, always pointing them to Christ (Lk. 24:44–46). Not only does the Old Testament fit with the New but the New starts to look like an inevitable result of the Old, without which the story would be incomplete.¹

A single covenant of grace envelops both Jews and Gentiles in eternal life in Christ: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Gal. 3:28–29). Whether we consider God’s covenant with Adam, Noah, Abraham, David, or with believers today under the new covenant in Christ, the “blessing of Abraham” (Gal. 3:14) comes on all believers, Jew and Gentile, who are “baptized into Christ” (Gal. 3:27).²

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