Overview: Christians crown themselves as the “New Israel,” i.e. the new Chosen Nation of God. What do the Scriptures say, do they still apply today, and how can we prove it?
Christianity claims that the believers in Jesus as a Christ (or Deity for some), are considered the chosen peoples of God and it is only they who can earn salvation.[i] As unfortunate as it is for the missionaries, God happens to express a different view in the Torah than does Paul. The Chosen Nation of God was and will always be the Jewish People.[2]
The Christians counter that although it once was the Jewish people, they have lost their privilege due to their failure to adhere to God’s words and keep his commandments. They were abandoned and traded for a “New Israel” nation—the believers in “Christ.” They generally connect our long exile as a sign of God abandoning us.
There are three refutes to this claim:
(1) It takes a leap-of-faith for us to believe in a man claiming prophecy while changing the absolute word of God, by changing it from physical descendants to spiritual descendants. It has been physical for hundreds of years, should it suddenly change? Why should we believe him? Substantial evidence is needed to change the status-quo.
(2) The word “children” (banim) can indeed be explained as spiritual children, as we see in the Torah a few times. However, the alternative word for “children” in the Torah, “seed,” is never found to be referring to spiritual children, as understood by the definition of the word. God promised to our patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that their “seeds” shall be the chosen nation forever.[ii]
(3) Deuteronomy Ch. 28 gives us a sneak-peak into the future of the nation of Israel. If the Jews are to sin in the land God gave them as an inheritance, God foretells, they would be driven from the Holy Land and exiled to the four corners of the earth. While in exile, they would be under constant trouble and attack. The chapter undoubtedly has been played out in Jewish history, and I mean physical Jews—not the alleged “spiritual Jews,” i.e. Christians.
God continues[iii] to foretell the End of Days when they are to be gathered from the four corners of the earth, be returned to their homeland, and continue to (openly) be God’s Chosen Nation. This exile and persecution, of course, only happened to the physical Jews, not the Christians, implying that the physical descendants of the ancient Israelites are the Chosen Nation both during the exile and most certainly after.
Moving on from the Pentateuch to the Prophets:
Continuing on the same theme, it is clear from numerous passages all over the Prophets that the Jewish “captives” would be returned from the exile, the four corners of the earth where they were scattered to, return to the Land of Israel, and continue being the Chosen Nation.[iv] Were the Christians exiled from Israel and persecuted in foreign lands, as described about the Jewish People in the Prophets? It is clear that the Prophets all had in mind the physical descendants of the ancient Israelites when describing the Chosen Nation that was to be exiled and is to ultimately be redeemed.[3]
Many Christians, and most certainly Jewish Christians, agree with the above and consider the Jews as God’s chosen nation. They believe Jesus and Paul only came to give an opportunity to the Gentiles to earn salvation, but not that they in turn become the “New Israel” and thereby erase the specialness of the Jews as God’s Chosen Nation. To this, Judaism has no objection, except that the Gentiles always had the gift of potential Salvation—not through belief in Jesus but via the actions of morality expressed in the Seven Noahide Laws.[4]
[2] See: Genesis 12:2-3, 26:4, 28:14, Exodus 6:6, 19:5-6, Leviticus 20:26, 26:12, Deuteronomy 7:6-8, 10:15, 14:2, 26:17-19, 29:9-14, and more, where it says the Jews were chosen by God.
[3] Perhaps, one may argue, the prophecies of the Prophets about exile and return are referring to the Babylonian exile that indeed happened to the physical nation of Israel. Except that a few hundred years after that, Jesus replaced the Israelites with a new Chosen Peoples.
But this cannot be the case since the Prophets often describe the redemption of the current exile. They describe universal peace (e.g. Isaiah 11:6), an everlasting temple, and complete safety in the land of Israel (e.g. Ezekiel 37:25-28). This obviously hasn’t yet happened as the Jewish People are still in their exile.
[4] For a discussion on the Noahide Laws, i.e. laws for all mankind, see “Is Chosen Nation Racism?”
[i][i] E.g. Romans 10:9 and Acts 16:30-31.
[ii] E.g. Genesis 12:2-3, 26:4, 28:14.
[iii] Deuteronomy 30:1-10.
[iv] E.g. Tzefanyah 3:20, Isaiah 54:7, 56:8 60:4, Jeremiah 29:14, 30:3, 32:37, Ezekiel 20:34, 41, 28:25, 34:13, 36:24, 37:21, 38:8, 39:27, Hosea 2:2, and many, many more.—While some are referring to the Babylonian exile redemption, others cannot as they describe a more promising and complete redemption.
