Romans 11 is not about foreign policy, it simply exhorts Gentile Christians to not be arrogant towards the Jews. It says maintain humility about your position as a wild olive shoot grafted into a tree you did not plant. None of that translates into a requirement to support any particular nation’s foreign policy. The only concrete obligation the book of Romans places on Gentile Christians toward Jewish people is to share the gospel with them, which is the same obligation we have toward every other lost people group (cf Rom 10:14-21).

Something has gone wrong in how American Christians think about the Jews, and it’s gone wrong in two opposite directions at once.

On the one side, a generation of evangelical Christians have been taught that the Bible requires them to give unqualified support for the nation of Israel, politically, financially, and militarily. They do this because they believe Israel is God’s chosen people. In order to stand with God, you must also stand with Israel. Period. Any criticism of Israel is the same as antisemitism. This view has been so thoroughly absorbed into American evangelical culture that many Christians can’t even tell you where it came from. It’s a theological reflex that they can’t explain or defend biblically, apart from perhaps a couple of proof texts.

On the other side, a growing number of Christians, many of them reacting directly to the first group, have swung hard in the opposite direction. They’ve discovered that the theological case for Christian Zionism is biblically weaker than they were told, and they’ve watched evangelical leaders embarrass themselves by fawning over and pandering to Israeli foreign policy interests. They’ve read things about how much the Jews control media, finance, and pop culture in harmful ways, and they are eager to oppose them for it.

In some cases, this frustration with “the Jews” has driven them to what can only be described as hatred for them en masse. The popular label for this is “antisemitism.” Personally, I don’t like that label because it’s a liberal coded word used to smear anyone who dares criticize Israel at all. Nevertheless, I’ll use it in this article for the sake of simplicity. There really are people out there who hate the Jews and “antisemitism” is a simple way to describe them.

What I find striking is that an overreaction to the first ditch tends to drive people into the second. In other words, when you build a pro-Israel theology on a weak foundation, and then people discover that, they often feel like the wool has been pulled over their eyes. When people feel theologically betrayed, they often run hard in the opposite direction. I think we’re seeing that happening in our day.

How Scripture Addresses the Issue

People on both sides cite scripture to support their views. Ironically, however, scripture rules out both views.

In Romans 9-11, for example, Paul is not writing a foreign policy manual. He is not telling Gentile Christians to write checks to the Israeli government or vote for politicians who promise to defend Israel. He is also not dismissing the Jewish people as just another ethnic group with no particular significance in God’s redemptive purposes. He is doing something more careful and more interesting than either of those things.

Scripture consistently forbids the sin of partiality, whether it be against or in favor of someone. James 2:9 says, “but if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors” (cf 2:1, Rom 2:11).

Christian Zionism is the sin of partiality in favor of the Jews, extending it outward to encompass the entire national entity. In Romans 9, Paul’s anguish over the Jews was not regarding the nation of Israel as we know it today, but of the Jews as his “kinsmen according to the flesh.” He was talking about people who share a common ancestry and religion.

Antisemitism is partiality against the Jews, whether it be towards individual Jews or the nation of Israel. Same principle, opposite posture, also wicked. We must not show contempt for people based on a group they belong to without respect to their individual actions.

In either case, partiality is forbidden. It is a sin.

Ironically, as people begin to realize “Christian Zionism” is an unbiblical position foisted upon them, largely under the influence of dispensational theology, and as they begin to notice instances where Jews truly have done very evil things, they suddenly feel justified ascribing wickedness to Jews as a whole, showing unnecessary contempt for people who don’t deserve such unfair characterization. Thus, as people abandon the Christian Zionism of the dispensationalists, the pendulum swings hard in the other direction and people end up in the ditch of antisemitism, showing partiality against them instead.

A Surprising Biblical Reversal

Another key text is Romans 9-11. To understand that text, you have to feel the weight of the Jew/Gentile reversal that is key to Paul’s argument. It is one of the most stunning plot twists in all of Scripture.

In the Old Testament, God’s people were the Jews who descended from Abraham. The Gentiles were outside the covenant. By definition, they were pagans and unbelievers. Thus, Israel occupied a position of extraordinary blessing and privilege. God gave them the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the law, the worship, and the promises (Rom 9:4). Everything God was doing in redemptive history, he was doing through them.

By the time Paul wrote Romans, the picture had completely flipped. The Jews had largely rejected their Messiah while the Gentiles were more receptive to the gospel. The Jews who rejected their Messiah now found themselves in the position the Gentiles once occupied: outside the covenant, cut off from the promises, and under God’s judgment. It’s difficult to overstate the significance of this. Further, Gentile Christians, who previously would have been considered “dogs” and pagans, had now inherited everything that once belonged to Israel (see Paul’s olive tree illustration in Rom 11:17-24, cf Jer 11:16, Ps 52:8, John 15:2).

You’re Living in a House You Didn’t Build

Now, think about what we Gentile Christians have inherited: the Old Testament scriptures, the covenants, the promises, the law, the worship, and even the very concept of the one true God. Further, we Gentiles can now claim Abraham as our spiritual father, though we are not physically descended from him. Abraham is the father of everyone who believes. He’s now our spiritual great-great-great-grandfather, while his own physical descendants are now considered outsiders to the covenant. Every promise that sustains us as Christians came first to the Jewish people. We are reading their mail, worshiping their God, and claiming their patriarch as our own.

Think of it this way. Imagine you’re away on a long trip, and someone moves into your home, settles in, and invokes squatter’s rights. They’re not just living in your house, they’re claiming your home as their own.

Now, imagine further that they claim the family photos on your wall as their family. They say, “that’s my mom and dad, that’s my wedding, those are my kids” in those pictures.

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