Israel: The Chosen Nation of God -- By: Cyndi Scarborough

Journal: Christian Apologetics Journal
Volume: CAJ 11:1 (Spring 2013)
Article: Israel: The Chosen Nation of God
Author: Cyndi Scarborough


Israel: The Chosen Nation of God

Cyndi Scarborough

Cynthia Scarborough, M.A.in Apologetics and Biblical Studies, from Southern Evangelical Seminary, Charlotte, NC.

God’s promise to Abram could not have been more explicit: “Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed” (Gen. 12:1–3).1 This covenant, reiterated by God to Abraham’s son Isaac and Isaac’s son Jacob, marked the beginning of God’s great nation, Israel. It forms the biblical basis for the definition of what it means for someone to be part of God’s chosen nation:

In the Abrahamic Covenant, a simple definition of Jewishness can be found in the repeated statements that a nation will come through the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jewishness

would then be defined as a nationality. But . . . this nationality is not confined to the State of Israel alone; it includes all the Jewish people no matter where they are. It is a nationality based on descendancy. . . . Biblically speaking, the Jewish people are a nation. Today we are a scattered nation, but we are, nevertheless, a nation because we are descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. By this definition, no matter what the individual Jewish person may believe or disbelieve, he remains a Jew.2

The unambiguous Old Testament definition of the people of Israel are those descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Yet despite the clarity of God’s identification of Abraham and his descendents as His chosen nation of Israel, many Christians today, who otherwise insist on God’s immutability, assert that the Church has taken the place of Israel in the eyes of the Lord. The analysis offered in this article addresses this invalid conclusion through a focus on the primary “three passages . . . used by Covenant Theologians to try to prove their Church–equals–Israel equation”: Rom. 9:6 and 11:26, as well as Gal. 6:16.3

The Israel Of God (Gal. 6:16)

Although the Romans verses are located prior to Galatians in the order of the New Testament epistles, t...

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