Question of the Week: What about the Jews?

by Anne Lang Bundy

Western Wall, Temple Mount, Jerusalem
Photo credit: Rafael Ben-Ari

Are the Jews of today heirs to the covenant made with Abraham? Are all Jews saved? Will the Lord ... allow resurrected Jews to accept Christ?
~ T. Anne Adams

God does not forget the people of His covenants or fail to provide for them.

When Jeremiah 31:31-37 prophesies of the New Covenant (the covenant established through Jesus's death), the Lord makes clear that not only is Israel heir to that covenant, but He gives the covenant specifically to Israel.

Jesus directed His Jewish followers to actively seek converts to the New Covenant. More Gentiles than Jews accepted it, and those New Covenant Jews assimilated with Gentiles and ceased practicing the Old Covenant. In time, New Covenant Jews were no longer distinguished as Jews, while Old Covenant Jews still are. This has resulted in a notion called Replacement Theology, which says the church of Jesus has replaced Israel as heir to the promises which God made to His chosen people.

Replacement Theology is not Scriptural. Although the covenant made with Moses was made obsolete by the New Covenant, covenants made with Noah, Abraham, and David are still in effect.

However, Jews are not heirs to God's covenants because of their human bloodline, but because of their faith:

Abraham "believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness." Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham.
~ Galatians 3:6-7 (NKJV)

Righteousness has always come by faith in the Lord and calling upon His name (Romans 10:11-13). All Jews are not saved, because not all Jews have the faith of Abraham. But there are many Jews with the faith of Abraham who do not yet know Jesus is their Messiah. God has promised a day when they will accept Jesus as their Lord.

Blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved.
~ Romans 11:25-26 (NKJV)

"All Israel" refers not to every Jew, but every Jew of faith. There are numerous interpretations of how Israel will be saved in connection with The Tribulation and end times. But the Bible indicates there is no second chance to come to faith after death.

The Lord has already begun to fulfill this last verse. He not only restored Israel as a nation just 63 years ago, after 1878 years with no country, but many Jews have come to faith in Jesus since that time. My own take on "until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in" is that a day will come when the Lord reveals to all of faithful Israel that Jesus is Messiah, and that the Holy Spirit will not bring any more Gentiles to faith when that point is reached.

I personally believe the end is very near.

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This post originally appeared at Bullets & Butterflies. To see ongoing dialogue in comments posted there click here.

What questions do you have about Christianity or the Bible? You're invited to leave them in the comments below (anonymous questions welcome), or email buildingHisbody [plus] @ gmail.com.

© 2011 Anne Lang Bundy, all rights reserved.

Relentless Love

Various love stories share the common premise of a person who must duplicate previous expressions of affection, day after day. The person who is object of devotion cannot remember prior attachment, whether the storyline involves a physical disorder or fantasy. Happy endings usually bring a day of transformation when relationship is recognized, love is reciprocated, and the pattern is finally broken.

My tears spring easily during any touching scene in even children's cartoons—(call me "Waterworks"). But the theme of a relentless love which endures in one heart and cannot be remembered by another moves me most deeply of all. These poignant tales stay with me for days, with an accompanying lump in my throat.

Such a story crossed my path two days ago. And for the first time, I see a spiritual parallel.

Our God often duplicates a particular expression of His affection and deliverance because we do not remember previous incidents of love and redemption. It's not that we forget, as above, but that we fail to remember. We're as helpless as characters who cannot remember. Whether The Fall altered memory bank brain cells or mortality weakens them, we have limited recall of the past.

A repeating pattern occurs throughout the books of Judges and Kings: deliverance, praise and prosperity, forgetfulness and backsliding, idolatry and lost prosperity, oppression and suffering, remembrance and repentance, cry for help and deliverance. When the people got stuck in forgetfulness and unrepentance, the Lord stepped in with horrific punishment followed by 70 years of exile, and the pattern was finally broken.

Perhaps Christians do not forget as badly, fall so far, and suffer such extreme discipline. But we tend to get stuck in ruts and routines which dampen affection, little or much. Circumstance can lure us into negative thought patterns which bring despair. Lies can be repeated often enough that we fail to remember Truth.

If we think we cannot wait another day or hour or minute for our circumstances to change, perhaps we need only call to mind past deliverance and be assured that our Deliver is standing by, waiting for the right moment to step in. If adversity brings us a taste of death, I think it is because we fail to remember the life in us.

When brokenness overwhelms, we need only recall past healing to find hope for the moment.

Regardless of whether our memory clicks in instantly or after duplicate expressions of affection, we can be sure that our God is showing His deep love, day after day, always waiting for us to remember past deliverance, recognize depth of relationship, and reciprocate relentless love.

~ ♥ ~ ♥ ~ ♥ ~ ♥ ~ ♥ ~

I am now a biweekly contributor to Everyday Testimony, where a few words of fresh thanks are daily given to God from a variety of His people. My prayer there today, of gratitude for recent deliverance, coincides with this post.

Comments, questions, and respectful disagreement are welcome. Reply to BuildingHisBody.com comments, or e-mail buildingHisbody [plus] @gmail.com
Copyright 2011, Anne Lang Bundy, all rights reserved.

Promise

"If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets
even as Michelangelo painted,
or Beethoven composed music,
or Shakespeare wrote poetry.
He should sweep streets so well that all the
hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say,
'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.' "
~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Every man and woman, boy and girl has a gift and a place to use that gift for the Lord's kingdom. Whatever the body of believers in Jesus Christ lacks, it lacks because someone has not been enfolded into the body, empowered by the Word, and encouraged with our words.

And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him... do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men.
~ Colossians 3:17,23 (NKJV)

Every person, every word and deed—however distinguished or humble—holds promise for glorifying God.

Lord, please give Your people this day a new appreciation for diversity of people and diversity of gifts which crosses all lines of denomination, race, gender, status, and age.

Comments, questions, and respectful disagreement are welcome. Reply to BuildingHisBody.com comments, or e-mail buildingHisbody [plus] @gmail.com
Copyright 2011, Anne Lang Bundy, all rights reserved.

Question of the Week: What Does Sancitifed Mean?

What did Jesus mean when He said He sanctified Himself?
~ Bud Ezekiel

This question comes from the following prayer of Jesus, immediately before His crucifixion:

"They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth."
~ John 17:16-19 (NKJV)

The word "sanctify" means to set apart as holy. Jesus was already absolutely holy before His crucifixion, so what could sanctify Him?

He appears to be referring to the sacrifice of Himself He is about to make, and how this affects us. When considering what the words may have meant to Jesus, these words can be applied to a Christian's day to day life.

In the Old Testament, some animals were set apart from the rest of the herd or flock for the purpose of being sacrificed to God. But if a priest rejected an animal as blemished, it would be used for other, non-sacred purposes. The set apart animal wasn't completely sacred, or sanctified, until the sacrifice was completed.

During Jesus' earthly ministry, He was completely set apart to do His Father's work. If He had healed and driven out demons, preached repentance, revealed the Father to us, set a good example for us, and then returned to Heaven without dying on the cross, we would have surely judged His ministry excellent.

But His ministry would have served us for only this world.

Jesus went further. He also set Himself apart as a sacrifice for sin, and then perfected that sanctification with the completion of sacrifice. Jesus didn't simply come to make our lives better in this world. He laid down His life in payment for our sin so we could have the eternal life that begins in this world, bypasses all spiritual death, and continues into the next world.

We receive eternal life when we accept Jesus as Lord and Savior and give ourselves to Him. Although salvation justifies us by changing our status before God from "sinner" to "righteous saint," the process of being set apart from the world—while at the same time being sent out into the world—continues with every choice we make. Even matters as simple as what to wear or eat provide opportunity to testify, "I live for this world," or, "I live for God."

Truth sanctifies us. Example: If I make lifestyle choices which indulge my desires, and I tell myself it doesn't matter, I believe a lie and live for this world. If I know the truth which says my body is set apart to God as His Holy Spirit's temple, and that knowledge prompts me to make healthy choices, then the truth sanctifies me.

Each sacrifice, however large or small, sanctifies us. The process of being increasingly set apart to God not only honors Him, but enables us to experience His presence and eternal life more fully.

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This post originally appeared at Bullets & Butterflies. To see ongoing dialogue in comments posted there click here.

What questions do you have about Christianity or the Bible? You're invited to leave them in the comments below (anonymous questions welcome), or email buildingHisbody [plus] @ gmail.com.

© 2011 Anne Lang Bundy, all rights reserved.
Image source: worshipconcordjournal.wordpress.com

A Promise from Jesus

"Come to Me,
all you who labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me,
for I am gentle and lowly in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls.
For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."
~ Matthew 11:28-30 (NKJV)

What is before you that seems like just too much, whether a task or a circumstance or a person?

Bring it to Jesus—not in only a moment's prayer of, "Help, Lord!" and not just today. Spend enough time with Jesus that you become yoked to Him in this matter, and feel Him shouldering the burden you carry.

"... and you will find rest for your souls ..."

This is His promise.

Comments, questions, and respectful disagreement are welcome. Reply to BuildingHisBody.com comments, or e-mail buildingHisbody [plus] @gmail.com
Copyright 2011, Anne Lang Bundy, all rights reserved.