I say then, Has the Lord cast away his people? the Lord forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.
Paul is obviously speaking from his and Jewish 'chosen people' thinking.
God deals with individuals based on their attitude toward Him.
The promise of blessing the whole earth through Abraham was specifically to Abraham and Jesus.
The promise was foretold to be through Judah and then through David. But it got no more specific than that.
In general the children of Israel were blessed in order to preserve the line that would eventually produce Jesus.
The children of Israel's history was determined by their obedience.
➛ When they served the Lord they were blessed.
➛ When they disobeyed the Lord they suffered.
There never was an unconditional blessing or acceptance of Israel.
Because God was going to work through some human to bring forth His own body, and Abraham was a man of faith and relationship with Him, Abraham was chosen.
Let me repeat that: Abraham was chosen.
His descendants were blessed because of the commitment God made to Abraham.
Since the promise to Abraham was of Messiah, when Jesus came, the promise was fulfilled. There was no more commitment to Abraham or to his descendants once Messiah was here.
It is unequivocally clear that the Jews of Jesus' day rejected Him.
If there was any commitment by Him to them before, that commitment was broken by their rejecting and killing Him.
Jesus said it Himself -
It is a fact that Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, ALWAYS went to Jewish synagogues first when he came to a new town.
He had a fixation on Jewishness ('chosen people complex') that his personal revelation of Jesus Christ could not overcome.
Paul said this by the Holy Spirit -
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  |
Yet, he acted as though there WAS a difference between Jew and Greek.
Paul's determination to go to Jerusalem to preach and convert the Jews represented an irrational fixation on Jewishness as Peter and John and other of the disciples lived there attempting to convert them.
But he really could not accept their rejection of Jesus and so he kept butting his head against what has historically proven to be an immovable object - the Jewish people's total rejection of Jesus as the true Messiah.
Going back to Jesus' statement above, He was not denying any Jew's salvation, He was just letting them know that they no longer had special place in His plans for building the Kingdom of Heaven.
We know that salvation is offered to 'whosoever will' and not on any other basis.
I have, on occasion, pointed out the problem of Jewishness in Messianic Jews today.
Why don't they reject their Jewishness in favor of total Christianness?
I believe it is the 'chosen people complex' that has been ingrained in Jews since Abraham that we see in them and hear in Paul as well.
Being able to read the Word Of Truth with Holy Spirit Of Truth understanding is critical, as every writer was a human who was moved on - inspired - by the the Holy Spirit, but none of them were dictated or written by Him. The only time that God ever wrote anything down Himself was the original 10 commandments on the stone tablets which Moses broke.
In every other instance it was written by men by Holy Spirit inspiration.
I realize the danger in what I just said. But the danger is only there when the Holy Spirit is excluded from the understanding and left to the rational minds of men.
Holy Spirit understanding always glorifies Jesus Christ.
Making God into a 'respecter of persons', a petty puppet-master, or a hateful, overbearing ogre is the result of rational minds' processing the Word apart from the Holy Spirit of Truth.
Such statements as the following overshadow other imperfect statements because the Holy Spirit signature on it is loud and clear:
"The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." --
This statement applies to all men. It says that all are accepted who repent (turn to Jesus Christ). The Jewish people have not shown any tendency to turn to Christ for 2000 years and they are not turning to Him as a people even today.
No, it is not nations or peoples that are saved - it is individuals who turn to Jesus and receive His life.
I will just conclude by pointing our a very telling statement that Jesus made implying that all scripture does not have equal weight:
"Search the scriptures; for in them you think you have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me." --
The testimony of Jesus Christ as Mighty God, Saviour, Lord and King who by His Holy Spirit is above all and in all who receive Him is the pure Gospel. He is altogether lovely and altogether desirable having no shadow of turning in Him.