Diary of a (Maybe) Retired Pastor

Who Are The People Of God?

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. ¹⁰ Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

1 Peter 2:9-10 ( the New Testament)

How do Christians (actual believers, that is, rather than those who are Christian by heritage) talk about what Israel is doing in Gaza? “With great difficulty” is the answer. To those who are not Christians this, unsurprisingly perhaps, raises cynical eyebrows. The quandary is this: quite apart from the hesitation arising from fear of being accused of antisemitism, criticising Israel seems to go against biblical promise and covenant – Israel, after all, are the chosen people of God to whom the contested lands of  the Middle East have been gifted for eternity (which, of course, will raise hackles in other quarters!). But, on the other hand, how can the current actions of Israel be hailed as good? The result is that Christian comment is reduced to the pious prayer that peace for all can ensue quickly. Laudable as this is, it fails to hold anyone to account, the prophetic voice is self-silenced.

This hesitation is the result of confusing a label with the substance. A jar may be labelled “tea” but if the contents are actually coffee granules you will not get a cup of tea if you make a drink from it! The modern state of Israel is not biblical Israel. The New Testament makes abundantly clear, time after time, that the true people of God are those who acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. All the titles of biblical Israel are applied directly to the followers of Jesus. But this does not mean that the Jewish people have been rejected by God and that He has reneged or revoked His promises. Far from it, as the Apostle Paul argues at length in his letter to the Romans, Jesus is the fulfilment of all those promises and every Jewish person is included in them together with every other human being who chooses to follow Jesus. But that choice is an individual choice.  It cannot be made for you by someone else, neither can it be inherited as a matter of birth, nor can it be assumed by a nation or state or any other form of polity. It is the gift of God which you receive or refuse on your own responsibility. The modern state of Israel is not biblical Israel.

Hence, the actions of the state of Israel, the actions of its government, are to be evaluated in exactly the same way as any other nation state in the world, and for its present actions in Gaza the Israeli government should be condemned and held accountable. And if it is asked why are the perpetrators of the Hamas atrocity not to be similarly condemned, the answer is that the Israeli government only has itself to blame for committing a tragedy of so much greater proportion that all the attention and effort of the world is directed to trying to mitigate and bring to an end their actions in Gaza. If this were not the case then the world would be able to focus on how to bring to justice those responsible for the Hamas atrocity and on how to secure the release of all the hostages.