Ephesians 2:11-3:6

Is Israel still God's chosen people, and does that make Christians who aren't Jewish second-class citizens?

Yes to the first and no to the second, because the question uses Israel and chosen in more than one sense. Sort them out, and the promises too, and there is one household with no second class in it.

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The question as it came to us

It came to us in exactly these words, and it is worth leaving unsoftened, because this is how people really ask it: is Israel still God’s chosen people, and does that make Christians who aren’t Jewish second-class citizens?

Something real sits behind it. Scripture says again and again that God loves Israel, and says why: it was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you… but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers (Deuteronomy 7:7-8). And there is a steady voice on Christian radio and in many pulpits saying that believers must love Israel too, usually with Genesis 12:3 attached.

So there are really three questions folded into one. First, is Israel still God’s people, and if so, which Israel? Surely not simply a nation-state, and surely not everyone who rejects Christ as Lord. Second, are the promises God made to Israel complete, or is something still owed? Third, where does that leave a believer with no Jewish ancestry at all: adopted into the family, but a guest in someone else’s house?

This page sits beside the one on replacement theology, and they are best read together. That one asks what happened to Israel’s election when the Messiah came. This one asks the question that usually comes next, and is more personal: what does that make me?

Short answer

Yes, Israel is still God’s chosen people, in the senses Scripture means. No, that does not make any believer second-class. Both answers come out of the same place, because the question uses Israel and chosen in more than one sense and lets them trade places.

Set the worry out as an argument and the fault shows. Israel is chosen. To be chosen is to stand higher with God. Gentile believers are not Israel. So they stand lower. That only works if Israel means the same thing in the first line and the third, and chosen means the same thing in the first and the second. Neither does, and Paul says so in one sentence: not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel (Romans 9:6).

There is an Israel by descent, and God has not let it go: as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable (Romans 11:28-29). Paul says that about Jews who were, at that moment, rejecting the gospel, so the love is real and it is not only for believers. But it is chosen for a calling, not saved by birth: the same apostle prays for those very people that they may be saved (Romans 10:1).

And there is an Israel of promise, the people God gathers in the Messiah, and Gentile believers stand in it on exactly the same footing as Jewish ones. Paul tells Gentiles who were once alienated from the commonwealth of Israel that they are now fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God (Ephesians 2:12, 19). Then he names the mystery he was sent to announce: the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:6). In Greek each of those three words begins with syn-, together with. There is no second class in that sentence.

As for the promises: none has failed, and not all are finished. All the promises of God find their Yes in him (2 Corinthians 1:20), so every one of them is either kept in Christ already or guaranteed in him, and Romans 11 still has a future tense. The second chart below takes them one at a time.

The gospel itself, on one side The two halves of this question do not weigh the same. Whether a Gentile believer is a full member of God’s people is not an open question: the apostles argued it in public and Paul called the other answer a departure from the truth of the gospel (Galatians 2:14). What God still intends for the Jewish nation, and what to make of the modern state, is argued among believers in good standing, and the page maps it without ruling.

What is settled, and what is not

The left column is what the page will not treat as open. The right column is where careful believers who hold everything on the left still differ.

Settled, Scripture states it

Believing Gentiles are full members, not guests. Fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise (Ephesians 3:6); no longer strangers and aliens, but… fellow citizens (Ephesians 2:19); if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise (Galatians 3:29).
The apostles settled it, in public. At Jerusalem Peter said God made no distinction between us and them, and we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will (Acts 15:9, 11). When Peter later acted otherwise at a table in Antioch, Paul said his conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel (Galatians 2:14).
God still loves the Jewish people, for the fathers’ sake. Beloved for the sake of their forefathers… the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable (Romans 11:28-29). A Christian who holds the Jewish people in contempt has contradicted the apostle, whatever his theology of the end.
No one is saved by descent, Jew or Gentile. There is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all (Romans 10:12). Paul, with the best pedigree in Israel, counted it loss for the sake of Christ (Philippians 3:5-7).
No promise of God has failed. It is not as though the word of God has failed (Romans 9:6). Not one word of all the good promises… had failed; all came to pass (Joshua 21:45). All the promises of God find their Yes in him (2 Corinthians 1:20).
The Gentile has nothing to boast of. Do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you (Romans 11:18).

Not given in this age

Whether “all Israel will be saved” means a future national turning. Romans 11:26 is read as a great future ingathering of Jewish people, as the elect remnant across history, or as the whole people of God. The replacement theology page lays the readings out.
Whether the land promise has a further national fulfillment. Joshua reports it kept (Joshua 21:43-45), Paul widens it to heir of the world (Romans 4:13), and believers differ over whether a territorial promise to the nation is still outstanding.
Whether the modern State of Israel fulfills prophecy. No verse names it. Some read its founding in 1948 as a stage of Ezekiel 37 or of Luke 21:24; others read those texts of the return from Babylon, the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, and the gathering of God’s people in Christ.
Whether Genesis 12:3 governs how nations treat a modern state. Christian Zionism reads I will bless those who bless you as a standing rule for nations today. Others read it, as Paul reads the verse’s last clause, as fulfilled in the gospel reaching the nations through Abraham’s offspring (Galatians 3:8, 16). It is not a test of fellowship.
When. Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? was the last question the disciples asked before the ascension, and the answer was it is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority (Acts 1:6-7).

Which Israel, and which promises

The first table sorts out the senses of Israel that the question runs together. The second takes Israel’s promises one at a time and says where each one stands. Where a cell is disputed among believers, it says so rather than choosing.

Which Israel?

Six senses of the word, and the only one Scripture never uses is the one most often meant on the radio.

Sense	Where Scripture uses it	Chosen for what	Are Gentile believers in it?
Jacob, the man	Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed (Genesis 32:28).	The father of the twelve tribes. The name begins as a gift to a man who had spent his life grasping.	No, and nobody is. He is one man.
The nation by descent	They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants… (Romans 9:4-5), written in the present tense.	A calling in history: to receive the covenants, be entrusted with the oracles of God (Romans 3:2), and bring the Messiah into the world. Still beloved for the sake of their forefathers (Romans 11:28).	No. It is ancestry and cannot be joined, and it never saved anyone by itself (Romans 2:28-29).
The believing remnant	Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel (Romans 9:6); a remnant, chosen by grace (Romans 11:5).	Salvation. Israel as God counts it: Mary, Peter, Paul, the apostles, every Jewish believer since.	They are not made Jews, but they are grafted in among the others to share the same root (Romans 11:17).
Christ himself	You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified (Isaiah 49:3); out of Egypt I called my son (Matthew 2:15).	Everything. He is the faithful Israel where the nation failed, and the offspring the promises were made to, who is Christ (Galatians 3:16).	Yes, by union with him: if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring (Galatians 3:29).
God’s people gathered in Christ	The commonwealth of Israel, which Gentiles were once outside (Ephesians 2:12) and are now citizens of (2:19). Possibly the Israel of God (Galatians 6:16), though that verse is disputed.	Salvation, under the new covenant that was first announced to the house of Israel and the house of Judah (Jeremiah 31:31).	Yes, as fellow heirs, members of the same body (Ephesians 3:6).
The modern State of Israel	No verse names it. It was founded in 1948.	Scripture does not say. Whether its founding fulfills prophecy is argued among believers in good standing.	The question does not apply: citizenship in a state and membership in God’s people are different kinds of thing.

The promises, one at a time

The answer to are the promises complete? is the two right-hand columns read together. Not one has failed, and not one is finished.

Promise	Made	Kept in Christ	Still to come
A great offspring	Genesis 12:2; 22:17	The nation grew as promised, and the offspring the promise pointed to is one… who is Christ (Galatians 3:16).	A great multitude that no one could number, from every nation (Revelation 7:9).
Blessing for the nations	Genesis 12:3; 22:18	Paul says Scripture preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham in this promise (Galatians 3:8). It was preached to you first (Acts 3:26), then to the Gentiles.	Still going on, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in (Romans 11:25).
The land	Genesis 15:18; 17:8	Not one word of all the good promises… had failed; all came to pass (Joshua 21:45). Then widened: Abraham is heir of the world (Romans 4:13).	A better country, that is, a heavenly one (Hebrews 11:16), for all the heirs. Whether a further national possession is also promised is disputed.
David’s throne	2 Samuel 7:13, 16	The Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David (Luke 1:32). James hears Amos’s tent of David being rebuilt as Gentiles come in (Acts 15:14-17).	Of his kingdom there will be no end (Luke 1:33). The reign is now; the sight of it is not yet.
The new covenant	Jeremiah 31:31-34	This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood (Luke 22:20), said to Jewish apostles and then opened to the nations.	This will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins (Romans 11:27): Paul still sees a future for Israel under it.
Regathered as one nation	Ezekiel 37:21-22	In part in the return from Babylon; in Christ, who died to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad (John 11:52).	Disputed. Some read 1948 as a stage of it; others read it wholly of Christ and his people. No verse settles which.
Israel’s own turning	Romans 11:12, 15, 26	Now in part: at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace (Romans 11:5).	How much more will their full inclusion mean! (11:12), life from the dead (11:15). Its scale and timing are the disputed middle.

What the text says

Paul describes the Gentiles’ poverty using Israel’s inventory Before he says what the Gentiles have gained, he lists what they lacked: separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world (Ephesians 2:12). Every item on that list is something Israel had. So salvation for a Gentile is not a separate arrangement off to one side. It is being brought into the inheritance Israel was given, and that is also why it cannot be a lesser share of it.
Near, not in a lesser court But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ (2:13), and then through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father (2:18). Both, one Spirit, the Father: the same door, the same room. The temple Paul knew had a court the Gentiles could not pass beyond, marked by a stone barrier with inscriptions warning them off on pain of death, and many commentators hear it behind the dividing wall of hostility (2:14). Paul was arrested on the charge of taking a Gentile past it (Acts 21:28-29), and he writes this letter from the prison that charge put him in, on behalf of you Gentiles (Ephesians 3:1).
One new man, and neither party promoted Christ’s aim was that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross (2:15-16). Not Gentiles admitted to the edge of Israel, and not Israel dissolved into the Gentiles, but something new that both are now members of. A two-tier church would put back the wall he died to take down.
Fellow citizens, household, temple So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on one foundation with Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, into one holy temple in the Lord (2:19-21). Paul piles up three pictures, a city, a family and a building, and in none of them is there a back room. Citizens are citizens, sons are sons, and a stone in the wall is not a lesser stone.
The mystery is the Gentiles’ equality When Paul says what the long-hidden mystery of Christ was (3:4), the answer is not that Gentiles could be saved at all, which the prophets had said plainly (Isaiah 49:6). It is the terms: the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel (3:6). Equal shares was the part nobody saw coming.
The apostles fought this exact question, and it went the other way The first-century argument was not whether Gentiles were second-class. It was whether they had to become Jews to be first-class, by circumcision and the law. Peter came back from Cornelius’s house asking who was I that I could stand in God’s way? (Acts 11:17). The council at Jerusalem heard him say God made no distinction between us and them, and that Jews too will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will (Acts 15:9, 11). And when Peter later drew back from the Gentiles’ table at Antioch, Paul opposed him to his face, because his conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel (Galatians 2:11-14). Treating Gentile believers as lesser is not a theological quirk. The New Testament treats it as a gospel issue.
The most qualified Jew alive counted it loss Paul had the whole résumé: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews. His verdict on all of it as a ground of standing with God: but whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ (Philippians 3:5-7). If the man with every ancestral advantage stood before God on the same ground as a converted pagan, then so does everyone.
There is a real advantage, and it is priority, not rank The page would be dishonest without this. What advantage has the Jew? … Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God (Romans 3:1-2). The gospel comes to the Jew first and also to the Greek (Romans 1:16), and Gentiles, having shared Israel’s spiritual blessings, ought also to be of service to them in material blessings (Romans 15:27). That is an order of arrival and a debt of gratitude. It is not a higher tier in the household: the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him (Romans 10:12).
Loved, and still needing the gospel Both halves are in the same chapter, and the whole trouble in this subject comes from keeping one and dropping the other. As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers (Romans 11:28). What that love looked like in Paul was anguish and prayer: I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh (Romans 9:3), and my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved (10:1).
What “love Israel” can and cannot be made to mean Love for the Jewish people is plainly commanded: they are neighbours, they are beloved of God, and Gentile Christians owe them a debt (Romans 15:27). The two texts usually quoted for more than that need reading carefully. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem! “May they be secure who love you!” (Psalm 122:6) is a pilgrim’s prayer for the city of the temple, and it is still a good prayer. I will bless those who bless you (Genesis 12:3) was spoken to Abraham, and Paul reads the promise that closes the same verse as the gospel reaching the nations through Abraham’s offspring, who is Christ (Galatians 3:8, 16). Whether it also binds how nations treat a modern state is a live disagreement among believers. Scripture commands love for a people; it does not hand anyone a foreign policy.
The patriarchs are waiting for us The last word on rank is in Hebrews. Abraham and the rest died in faith, not having received the things promised, and they still did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect (Hebrews 11:13, 39-40). The fathers of Israel are not finished without the Gentile believers. And the city at the end has the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel on its gates and the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb on its foundations (Revelation 21:12, 14): one city, and both lists built into its walls.

How others have answered

Named only where the words were written about this passage. Quoted phrases are theirs; the summary around them is ours.

John Calvin (Institutes, II.10.2) Calvin’s whole case for continuity rests on one sentence: the covenant made with all the patriarchs is so much like ours in substance and reality that the two are actually one and the same. Yet they differ in the mode of dispensation. If the covenant is one, there is no upper and lower membership in it. There is one salvation, delivered differently before and after Christ.
The Westminster Confession (1646), 7.6 The confession says the same thing as a definition: there are not therefore two covenants of grace, differing in substance, but one and the same, under various dispensations. This is the ground under the fixed column above. Two classes of believer would need two covenants, and the confession denies there are two.
The Westminster Larger Catechism (1648), Q191 The same divines did not conclude that God was finished with the Jewish people. In teaching what we ask for in Thy kingdom come, they have the church pray for the Jews called, the fulness of the Gentiles brought in. One covenant, and a real hope for Israel inside it: the Reformed tradition has always held both.
Charles Hodge (Commentary on Romans, 1835) and John Murray (The Epistle to the Romans, 1965) Two Reformed commentators a century apart, and both read Romans 11:25-26 as promising a future turning of the Jewish people as a whole to Christ, by the same gospel and the same faith as everyone else. They are worth naming because they show that a future for ethnic Israel and one people of God are not rival positions. Calvin read all Israel differently, as the whole people of God, and the difference has never been a dividing line in the Reformed churches.
Charles Spurgeon (“The Restoration and Conversion of the Jews,” 1864) Preaching on Ezekiel 37, Spurgeon expected the Jewish people both to turn to Christ and, in his reading, to be restored as a people. He held that alongside the doctrines of grace and never suggested a Gentile believer stood lower for it. The two were not in tension for him, because both were grace.
Dispensational teaching and Christian Zionism (from the Scofield Reference Bible, 1909) The source of the radio voice, and it should be described fairly. The dispensational tradition that the Scofield Bible carried into ordinary American churches reads the promises to Israel as belonging to the Jewish nation literally and still in force, and Christian Zionism reads I will bless those who bless you in that light, as a standing rule for how nations fare by how they treat the Jewish people. Behind it is a genuine and admirable wish that Christians never again stand by while Jews are persecuted. The question to put to it is Paul’s: he reads the same promise as the gospel reaching the nations through Christ (Galatians 3:8, 16), and does not use it as a rule for governments.

Where it lands

It lands on the one Israelite in whom all of this is true at once. You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified, God says to the Servant, and sends him both to bring Jacob back and to be a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth (Isaiah 49:3, 6). Christ is the chosen one. Everyone else is chosen in him, and nobody is in him by birth.

Which is why the question’s fear has nowhere to stand. There are no second-class citizens in God’s household because there are no first-class ones either: nobody was born into it. Paul says Christ came to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons (Galatians 4:5), and he is speaking there of Jews. Even Israel’s own privilege was an adoption (Romans 9:4). Every child in this house was taken in by grace, and the verse that follows is addressed to all of them alike: so you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God (Galatians 4:7).

So the honest posture has two sides, and it keeps both. Toward the Jewish people: love, gratitude, and prayer, because they are beloved for the fathers’ sake, because every Christian lives on promises that were first spoken to them, and because Paul wept that they would be saved. Toward yourself: no inferiority, because God made no distinction (Acts 15:9), and no pride either, because it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you (Romans 11:18).

Jesus drew the end of it in one sentence: many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 8:11). Not seated at a side table. At the table, with Abraham.

What the passage does not settle

Ephesians settles who belongs to the household and on what terms. It does not give a timetable for Israel’s future, and neither does anything else. Romans 11 promises a fullness and does not say what it will look like or when; the disciples asked directly and were told the times are the Father’s (Acts 1:6-7).

Nothing in Scripture names the modern State of Israel, so nothing in Scripture tells a Christian how to vote about it, what to think of any particular government of it, or whether its founding was the fulfillment of a prophecy. Christians who pray the same prayers for the Jewish people come down in different places on all of that, and a page that pretended the text had settled it would be using the text rather than reading it.

It also leaves open how much of their ancestral life Jewish believers keep inside the church. Paul could live as a Jew, in order to win Jews (1 Corinthians 9:20) and still refuse to make it a condition for anyone; the balance was argued in Acts 15 and has been argued since.

And one limit of the charts. Each row of the second table is drawn as though the promise sat neatly in one place, and several of them do not: the land and the regathering are exactly where believers who hold everything in the settled column still differ. Read those cells as a map of the disagreement, not a ruling on it.

Questions to sit with

For reading this with someone else, a family, a study, or a friend who asked in the first place.

Before reading this, which sense of Israel did you have in mind when you heard someone say “God’s chosen people”? Does sorting the senses change what you would say?
Paul lists what the Gentiles lacked in Ephesians 2:12, and every item on the list was Israel’s. What does it mean for you that your salvation is described as being brought into someone else’s inheritance?
The apostles’ argument in Acts 15 and Galatians 2 was whether Gentiles had to become Jews to be full members. Where do Christians today add a condition to membership that God did not add?
Paul’s love for Israel took the form of grief and prayer for their salvation (Romans 9:3; 10:1). What would it look like for your love for Jewish neighbours to take the same shape?
Hebrews says the patriarchs will not be made perfect apart from us (11:40). How does that change the picture of who is waiting on whom?