Does God still have a plan for Israel?

Question 10067.

Does God still have a plan for Israel? Yes, and I hold that with more confidence than almost anything else I teach about prophecy, because Paul devotes three chapters of Romans to the question and answers it in terms that leave very little room for manoeuvre.

The plan for Israel is not a side issue tucked away in obscure verses. It runs from Genesis 12 to Revelation 21, where the gates of the city carry the names of the twelve tribes. A God who had finished with Israel would have found a different piece of masonry to engrave.

Paul asks the question for us

Romans 9 opens with Paul in genuine anguish over his own people. Romans 11 opens with the question everyone was thinking: “I ask, then, has God rejected his people?” His answer is emphatic. “By no means! For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin” (Romans 11:1).

His first evidence is his own existence. There is a believing remnant, chosen by grace, exactly as there was in Elijah’s day when seven thousand had not bowed to Baal. Unbelief is widespread but it has never been total, and God has always kept a thread running through the nation.

Then Paul asks a second question: “did they stumble in order that they might fall?” and answers again, “By no means!” The stumbling has a purpose, which is salvation coming to the Gentiles, and that purpose in turn is designed to provoke Israel to jealousy. Even the setback serves the plan for Israel rather than ending it.

The promises were unconditional

God’s covenant with Abraham was ratified in Genesis 15 by a ceremony in which the parties would normally walk together between the divided animals. Abram was put into a deep sleep, and God alone passed through in the form of a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch. One party bound Himself; the other watched.

That is why the plan for Israel does not depend on Israel’s performance. The land grant of Genesis 15:18-21 has boundaries, the seed promise has a nation attached, and the blessing promise reaches all the families of the earth. Israel’s enjoyment of those blessings at any given moment could be forfeited by disobedience, but the promises themselves could not.

The Davidic covenant works the same way. “Your throne shall be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:16), and Gabriel repeats it to Mary, telling her that the Lord God will give Jesus “the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever.” That announcement came centuries after Israel’s exile, which rather settles whether the promise had lapsed.

The olive tree

Paul’s illustration in Romans 11 is a cultivated olive tree with natural branches broken off and wild branches grafted in. Gentile believers are the wild grafts, sharing in the root’s richness. It is a picture of inclusion, and it comes with a warning: “Do not be arrogant toward the branches” (Romans 11:18).

What is decisive for our question is what Paul says next. God is able to graft the natural branches back in, and doing so is described as more natural, not less, than the grafting of wild ones. You do not speak that way about a tree you have uprooted and burned.

The olive tree is not the Church replacing Israel. It is the place of covenant blessing, with the patriarchal root holding the whole thing up. Gentiles come in as guests who have been made family, which is a very different posture from that of new owners taking possession.

Paul also warns that God did not spare the natural branches and will not spare presumptuous grafts either. That is not a threat to the security of an individual believer; it is a warning to Gentile Christendom as a body, and looking at the state of the churches across Europe I would say the warning has not aged into irrelevance.

All Israel will be saved

Paul reaches his conclusion: “a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:25-26). Three things stand out. The hardening is partial. It is temporary, since it has an until attached. And it ends in salvation.

I take “all Israel” to mean the nation as a whole at that future moment, not every individual Jewish person who has ever lived. Zechariah describes it: God pours out a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, “and they shall look on me, on him whom they have pierced,” and there is national mourning followed by cleansing.

Then comes the line that closes the case: “For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29). If the calling of Israel could be revoked, the sentence is false. Paul places God’s reliability towards Israel as the ground of His reliability towards us, which is a startling piece of pastoral logic.

Paul also grounds the certainty in the patriarchs rather than in the present generation. “As regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers,” he writes, which means the security of the promise rests on God’s ancient commitment rather than on anything the nation is doing at the moment. That is the same footing on which every believer stands.

What the plan for Israel involves

Scripture sketches the shape of what is still ahead. A period of unparalleled distress described by Jeremiah as “a time of distress for Jacob” (Jeremiah 30:7), out of which he is saved. A national turning to the Messiah they once refused. And then a kingdom in which Jesus reigns from Jerusalem and Israel is at the head of the nations rather than the tail.

Ezekiel 36 and 37 give the mechanism: regathering to the land, then the giving of a new heart and a new spirit. The order there matters and I have written on it in my answer on whether modern Israel is prophetically significant. Bones first, breath afterwards.

The land promises are then fulfilled without further interruption, which is why Amos ends with a nation planted and “never again uprooted.” The plan for Israel terminates in permanence, and the Millennium is where much of it becomes visible, as I explain in my answer on the millennium.

None of this is a reward for national merit. Ezekiel says twice that God acts for the sake of His holy name rather than for Israel’s sake, which removes every trace of favouritism from the plan for Israel. The nation is preserved because God said He would preserve her, and for no other reason that Scripture is willing to give.

Israel and the Church are not the same thing

None of this makes the Church a footnote. The Church is the body of Jesus, indwelt by the Spirit, made up of Jew and Gentile on equal terms, and Paul calls it a mystery not made known in earlier generations. A mystery newly revealed is not the same entity as a nation known since Abraham.

Keeping them distinct is what allows both to keep their promises. If the Church absorbs Israel, then Israel’s promises must be spiritualised into something quite unlike what the prophets said. If Israel absorbs the Church, the newness of Ephesians 2 and 3 disappears. Held apart, both texts can be read as written.

The Hebrew word berith, covenant, is the hinge of the whole discussion. God binds Himself by oath, and He does not consult our sense of tidiness before keeping His word.

What this means for how we pray and speak

A settled conviction that God has a plan for Israel should make us pray for Jewish people rather than only theorise about them. Paul’s heart’s desire and prayer was that they might be saved, and he said he would be willing to be accursed himself for their sake. That is a long way from a chart on a wall.

It should also make us careful with our speech. Antisemitism has repeatedly found a hiding place in the Church, and every generation seems to need the warning afresh. If God has not finished with these people, no Christian has any business writing them off.

And it should make us humble about timing. The plan for Israel is certain; its schedule is hidden. Anyone who tells you they can date the next stage of it is selling something, and Jesus was blunt about that habit.

So, now what?

Read Romans 9 to 11 with fresh eyes and notice where Paul ends up. Not with a diagram, but flat on his face: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!” A right understanding of the plan for Israel produces worship rather than smugness.

Then take the comfort Paul intends. He argues from God’s faithfulness to Israel to God’s faithfulness to us, which means your security rests on the same immovable thing that holds up the promises to Abraham. If that is true, what exactly are you afraid of losing?

“For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.”

Romans 11:29, ESV