James & Tess Arendt
The other day I came across another Bible teacher I like, Dr. Sam Waldron. He was raised in Dispensationalism and came out of it through diligent study of God's Word. His excellent talk from the Scriptures totally disproves the basic foundation of Dispensationalism which says God has two Covenant peoples, Israel and the Church. Why do I think this talk is excellent? Because Dr. Waldron compares Scripture with Scripture in a clear easy to understand manner. And he uses 7 different Bible passages to prove his point! Only a man of God filled with the Holy Spirit who has studied the Bible throughout his entire life can do that. I got the main points of the talk from the YouTube below the transcription.
Samuel E. Waldron (born 1951) is a Reformed Baptist and professor of Systematic Theology at Midwest Center for Theological Studies (MCTS). In addition to teaching at MCTS, he is a pastor of Heritage Baptist Church in Owensboro, Kentucky. (Source: https://www.theopedia.com/samuel-e-waldron)
Now, there are two, and only two ways, of taking the phrase "Israel of God" here. It may be taken to refer to the Church. Or it may be taken to refer to those circumcised Christians of Jewish descent and that they are distinctively opposed to the whole church, the Israel of God. That's the way dispensationalism takes it. That's the way dispensationalism must take this passage. And thus taken, the Israel of God only refers to part of the church. The question is simply which of these two interpretations is correct? Is the Israel of God the whole church or is it just the Jewish part of the church? You understand? So there's much that could be said by way of showing that the Israel of God here is the whole church of Christ. There is one thing that I think is actually conclusive about what the meaning of this text is here. It's the context. Context is king, as I tell my students thousands of times. Context is king in the interpretation of the Bible. You notice that the phrasing question, "the Israel of God" occurs almost at the end of the letter to the Galatians in the last chapter in verse 16. And this means that if we're going to understand what Paul is talking about here, we have to read backward through the letter. And when we do that, a startling thing comes to view. In the immediately preceding context of Galatians 6:16, Paul is engaged in a polemic against those who were compelling the Galatians to be circumcised. And Paul pursues this polemic in the immediately preceding verses by affirming that those who do this (the circumcised Jews), do not even keep the law themselves.
He then asserts the true boast of the Christian is the crucifixion of Christ, not the circumcision of the flesh, verse 14.
And following this, Paul emphatically declares that in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision matters, but a new creation.
In this context, it would be startling indeed for Paul to finish his polemic by referring to a subgroup of Christians that solely on the basis of the fact that they are circumcised are the Israel of God and the whole church isn't. Do you see the problem? Well, the church is described as the new creation. It is the new creation, not circumcision or uncircumcision, that makes a man a member of the Israel of God.
In Galatians 4:28, Paul describes the Gentile Galatian Christians as the children of promise.
I had a dispensational teacher, a dear man of God, old Professor Crawford in Bible college. His comment on this passage was something like this. "You can make cooked carrots out of physical carrots, but you can't make Jews out of physical Gentiles." The point was, that you have to be a Jew to become a spiritual Jew. Now, I love Dr. Crawford, but he's completely wrong. And what he says can't be made to match with this passage. This passage says very clearly that in verses 26 and 27 the uncircumcision of the Gentile will be regarded as circumcision if one meets the spiritual qualifications. It also says that in verses 28 and 29, he is not a Jew who is one outwardly. He is a Jew who is one inwardly by the spirit, not by the letter. So if a Gentile is an inward Jew, he is a Jew for Paul's purposes.
Now, dispensationalists maintain that the "all Israel" here are the true children of promise and that it only includes believing Jews. And once again, context is king in the interpretation of Scripture. In this context, how should we understand the phrase "all Israel" and "children of promise"? We have to look at the immediate, the near, the further and the wider context. First of all, the immediate context. And I may surprise you to hear me say that in the immediate context, Paul is thinking primarily about Jews, physical Jews. Paul is explaining an obstacle to the acceptance of the gospel of Christ. That is what he is doing in the entirety of Romans 9 to 11. He is answering an objection against the Gospel and that objection is basically, well, if the gospel is true, if Jesus is the Messiah, how come the whole Jewish nation has rejected him? And how could that be? Well, Paul's response is the doctrine of the remnant. And here is what he's saying. Paul maintains to this question a uniform response throughout Romans 9 through 11. From the beginning of God's dealings with the nation of Israel, the promises have always been to the believing remnant of the Jewish nation and not to every fleshly descendant of Abraham or Israel. And he makes the point in Romans 9 through 11 that God's promise was never to every Jew. It was to Jacob and not Esau. It was to Isaac and not Ishmael. No, the promise was not given to every Jew, a physical descendant of Abraham. Later, he will argue that his own example as a believer in the Gospel of Christ. And the account of Elijah in the Old Testament also proved that God has not abandoned his promises to Israel. God has kept his promises. Paul's a Jew. Paul is saved. Paul has been the recipient of the promise of God. The elect remnant is saved. God has kept his promise and he's done so by saving the elect remnant. Therefore, I have to acknowledge that Paul's main point here is to prove that this elect remnant of Jews shows that God has kept his promises to Israel. But saying this is not Paul's main point doesn't prove that it's his only point, Or that Gentile Christians are not part of the children of promise.
So this passage now affirms that Gentiles are included in the people of God. Isn't that perfectly clear?
Philippians 3:3 also makes clear that the qualifications to be the new and true circumcision are not physical. Paul is encountering the claims of the Judaizers which he mocks in verse 2.
They are the mutilation, that's translating it nicely. They are the mutilation as he has called them in that verse. We Christians, he asserts, are the circumcision. Thus the Christian community is seen as the true Israel of God. And several things actually confirm this understanding. According to Acts 16, there was no Jewish synagogue in Philippi. There were women, but there was no Jewish synagogue. Thus the Philippian believers are clearly mainly converted Jews, like that Philippian, not converted Jews, but Gentiles like that Philippian jailer, remember, who was no Jew. They are saved Gentiles. Circumcision then is synonymous with Israel. Paul uses it synonymously in a number of other passages.
Now verse 11 begins with a number of comments about fleshly circumcision, which must not be overlooked as we examine the passage. Paul describes his readers in verse 11 as Gentiles in the flesh, so he is explicitly addressing Gentiles here. You see that. This description is significant in two respects. First Paul is clearly concerned in this passage with the contrast between ethnic Gentiles and ethnic Israel. Second this phrase strongly implies that Paul regards the believing Gentiles he is addressing as only Gentiles in the flesh. Paul emphasizes that unbelieving ethnic Israelites are only called or named circumcision. The whole verse, in other words, implies that to judge someone's Jewishness or Gentileness by physical circumcision is a mistake by implication believing Gentiles are the true circumcision.
Paul continues to build on this new unity between Jews and Gentiles in verses 14 to 18. Notice the emphasis on the new oneness between believing Gentiles and believing Israelites. The dividing wall Paul emphasizes in a number of different ways has been broken down. In the Church of Christ, there is one new man. The one flesh of Christ was broken to reconcile us on the one cross of Christ. Consequently, there is one body of Christ. See all of that oneness there. The culmination of Paul's argument though which began in verse 12 is found in verse 19. The language used in verse 19 is reminiscent of the language and concepts in verse 12 that refer to the Commonwealth of Israel. We are called, Gentiles are called fellow citizens with the saints. Now that clearly means that these Gentiles are fellow citizens with the Jewish saints. There is nothing else it could mean. They are fellow citizens with the saints.
Do you know what is even more significant? See that word citizen there in verse 19. It is from the same root that is translated as Commonwealth in verse 12. The phrase in verse 12 is the palateus to Israel and the phrase citizen in verse 19 is sumi. You can hear it again. Palatei we get political polity. All our words like that from this Greek word. They are sumpoliti. Sumpolit fellow citizens. Fellow citizens of Israel because they've been brought near to Israel. So when Paul says the Ephesian Gentiles are fellow citizens, he assumes they are citizens of the same Commonwealth as those Jewish saints. In other words, they are citizens of Israel. Thus Paul directly asserts here that Gentile believers are citizens of the Commonwealth of Israel and no longer foreigners.
Galatians 3 is a defense of the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Paul defends his doctrine first by appealing to the voice of experience and verses 1 to 5 and then by appealing to the voice of Scripture and verses 6 to 29. Paul's main contention in verses 15 to 29 is that the promise of the Abrahamic covenant is more ultimate in the history of redemption than the law. This points to the fact that it is promise, not law, which is the determining factor in God's covenant dealings. Paul points out that the Abrahamic covenant's promise was made with Abraham's Messianic seed, verses 16 and 19. And then in verses 23 to 29 Paul points out the implication of all this by introducing the concept of union with Christ. We are united to Christ by faith. We are united with the Messianic seed. Have you contemplated the implications of that? We are united with the Messianic seed if we believe, no matter our nationality. If the Messianic seed gets all the promises, if all the promises are yea and amen in Christ, what promises? The Old Testament promises to Israel. If all the Old Testament promises to Israel are yea and amen in Christ and we are in Christ even if we are Gentiles, what? We get the promises because we are Abraham's seed in Jesus Christ. So here Paul takes that which was the boast of the Jews that they were Abraham's seed and transfers that title of honor to the Church. More importantly, he regards the Messianic seed and those in union with him as the one ultimate eschatological fruition of the Abrahamic covenant. And this is important because the Old Covenant issued forth from the Abrahamic covenant. But neither that covenant nor that people, Old Covenant, Old Israel is regarded as the ultimate fruition of God's promise to Abraham. It is the Messianic seed and us in the Messianic seed that received the promises.
Those in Christ are Abraham's seed and thus the true Jew. He inherits all of Israel's promised blessings. Since we are in union with Him we inherit them in Him. We too then as Gentile Christians are Abraham's seed and true Jews.
So here's what shocked me when I first read this passage with my own eyes in Bible college. You read the Bible like you've been taught to read your Bible in your church. You grow up a little bit you finally realize that not everything you were taught in the First Baptist Church of Michigan was actually right, and so you start reading the Bible with new eyes. Here's what shocked me. the entire analogy of the olive tree. See, if I was to go with what I'd been taught, I would have assumed that God planted a new olive tree with the Church or that you had the old olive tree and now a new fig tree which was the Gentile church. But this passage is why I use the word trans-dispensational. It talks about the Old Covenant in the Old Testament times. It talks about the New Testament times and it says that throughout the whole time, there are not two trees, just one olive tree. That one olive tree doesn't get cut down and destroyed when the new dispensation comes, no, the unbelieving branches get cut off and Gentile branches get grafted into the one and the same old olive tree. When we remember that dispensationalists themselves regard the distinction between Israel and the Church as basic to their system, it's easy to see how devastating Paul's teaching here is to dispensationalism as a whole. There are not two trees, there's one olive tree throughout the whole history of the world. And that means there's one Covenant people of God, not two. That means that the really exciting things going on in the world are going on here this morning and not in Palestine.
Please also listen to the video.
My name is James Arendt. I was raised in the Hegewisch neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, served in the USAF from 1970 to 1974, and became a full-time missionary for Christ living 40 years in Japan, 3.5 years in Russia, and a few months in other countries such as Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, South Korea, Taiwan and mainland China where I also served the King of Kings, Jesus, as an Ambassador for His Kingdom. My full bio.
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