“Now it is not as though the word of God has failed, because not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Neither is it the case that all of Abraham’s children are his descendants. On the contrary, ‘your offspring will be traced   through Isaac.’ That is, it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but the children of the promise are considered to be the offspring. For this is the statement of the promise: ‘At this time I will come, and Sarah will have a son.’ And not only that, but Rebekah conceived children through one man, our father Isaac. For though her sons had not been born yet or done anything good or bad, so that God’s purpose according to election might stand—not from works but from the one who calls—she was told, ‘The older will serve the younger.’ As it is written: ‘I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau.’” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Who is Israel? Today, of course, Israel is a modern, Western, democratic nation sitting in the midst of a region that is otherwise largely premodern, intensely tribal, and decidedly democratic in its general outlook on the world. But is that what the New Testament authors had in mind when they spoke of Israel? Obviously not. But then what did they mean. We see a whole lot of promises made about Israel in the Scriptures. Who were those for? Who is the Israel of the Bible, and are they still around anymore? Paul unpacks some of that here in a passage that absolutely must factor into any Christian’s thinking about Israel today. Let’s explore what he has to say.

God made promises to Israel about their future. Israel’s rejection of Him through their rejection of Jesus and the Gospel of the kingdom, however, means the fulfillment of those promises appears to be in jeopardy. What to do about this is a thorny question. There are basically two options before us here.

On the one hand, God could have been wrong in what He affirmed. There are several ways He could have been wrong, but the bottom line is that He was wrong. Those things He said about Israel are not going to take place after all. Given the sheer number of ways God could have been wrong, this one could be framed so as to appear not totally without merit but for one thing: God is perfect in His knowledge and is thus always right. God can’t be wrong by nature. If He knows something, that something must be true because God only knows true things.

The other option is that God is right, but not in a way we understood at first until Paul revealed it to us here. This one has the rather significant point in its favor that God is always right. If we think God is not right in some way, the problem is not with God, but with our understanding of Him. If we understand something in a way that violates God’s character, our understanding is the problem, not God’s character. There are several stories in the Scriptures that fit in this category. I’ve preached through several of them in the past. Search for “Stories to Make You Squirm” down below if you are interested in some.

In this particular case, most of the Israelites in Paul’s day, and not a few modern believers, have a certain idea about what constitutes Israel. They imagine a genetic group. No, folks in Paul’s day didn’t think in those terms. They couldn’t have. But while they used different terms, they meant the same thing. They and often we today imagined Israel to be the physical descendants of Abraham. We are Abraham’s children was the line they would use. They used it with Stephen in Acts 6. They used it with Jesus in John 8. Because they were the genetic descendants of Abraham, they were heirs to the promises of God. Nothing else mattered.

What Paul points out here, though, is that this simply wasn’t the case. To think of “Israel” in those terms may have been customary, but it wasn’t consistent with the Scriptures. And because of this, God wasn’t wrong in the promises He made. His promises did not somehow fail simply because many of the genetic descendants of Abraham – that is, the people who thought of themselves as “Israel” – had rejected Jesus as Messiah. “Now it is not as though the word of God failed, because not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Neither is it the case that all of Abraham’s children are his descendants.” In other words, just because someone was the genetic descendant of Abraham, or Isaac, or even Jacob does not mean they are automatically heirs to the covenant of blessing God made with them.

Paul goes on to cite Scripture to prove his point. Quoting from Genesis 21, he says, “On the contrary, “your offspring will be traced through Isaac.’ That is, it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but the children of the promise are considered to be the offspring.” Abraham had more children than just Isaac, and he had all of those children with different women than Sarah, Ishmael being the most notable of this group. But the promise God made to Abraham to create a great nation from Abraham’s descendants through whom He would reveal Himself to the world was intended to happen only through Isaac. “For this is the statement of the promise: ‘At this time I will come, and Sarah will have a son.'” That’s from Genesis 18. So, Paul is using Scripture itself to prove that just because someone happens to be a genetic descendant of Abraham or even a member of the geopolitical distinction “Israel” does not mean he is automatically and heir to God’s promises.

What’s more, this selective nature of the promise doesn’t apply only to Abraham’s descendants. Isaac’s descendants are included here as well. “And not only that, but Rebekah conceived children through one man, our father Isaac.” She conceived through one man, but got pregnant with twins. And it was only one of the two boys that God chose to be the line through which this promise of blessing would continue. “For though her sons had not been born yet or done anything good or bad, so that God’s purpose according to election might stand – not from works but from the one who calls – she was told, ‘The older will serve the younger.’ As it is written: ‘I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau.'”

Genetics, as it turns out, had very little to do with God’s promises. They were rather all about His choosing, about His sovereignty. Yes, there was a genetic line being traced through all of these individuals, but God picked and chose the path it was going to take as He pleased. Now, His choosing wasn’t capricious. He knew precisely what He was doing. But though at times things went along a path that made sense to us, that doesn’t mean we perfectly understood all of it. That doesn’t mean we could somehow wrest control of it such that we would ever have the ability to declare who was “Israel” and who was not. That was always God’s prerogative.

We see this in other places like the lineage of Jesus in Matthew 1. Matthew traces the royal lineage of Jesus to demonstrate Him to be a son of David. Along the way of his list, though, Matthew specifically mentions four women. That was shocking enough on its own as women were typically not included in genealogical lists. But the identity of the women makes things even more shocking. One is Mary, Jesus’ mother. She’s not so shocking.

But the others were Tamar, whose story in Genesis 38 is as sordid as they come (she seduced her father-in-law after he refused to give her his third son as a husband after his first two sons died while married to her in order that she might get pregnant and have children who could one day support her). And, fitting with the theme here, she had twins, only one of whose descendants became parts of the promise God made to Abraham.

Tamar, though, was at least an Israelite. Rahab was from Jericho. She made a deal with the two Israelites spies Joshua sent to check out the land before Israel invaded. That is, she sold out her own people for a chance to take part in what God was doing because she recognized God for who He is. God rewarded her faithfulness by grafting her into the family tree He was building. As for the last woman, Bathsheba, we’re not sure of her heritage, but her husband was a Hittite, another foreign people, and she was made a part of Jesus’ lineage when she was essentially raped by King David.

So, what does all of this mean? It means that what we think of when we think about Israel today is almost assuredly not what God had in mind when He was making promises to Israel about their future. We think in terms of human lineage. God thought in terms of His sovereign choice and the faithfulness of those who followed Him. Anyone can be a part of God’s covenant promises if they are willing to live within the boundaries of those promises. God chooses some and doesn’t choose others based on His sovereign choice and whether they are willing to be faithful to His commands.

And, as Paul will make clear by the time we get to the end of this section of the letter, the best understanding of Israel as the people through whom God is continuing to work out His plans to reveal Himself to the world today is the church, not some finite geographic entity or even a particular genetic distinction. The church, Christians, followers of Jesus are the ones who have been grafted onto His family tree and are the heirs of His promises. We’ll get into that in more detail, though, when we get there.

For now, know this: Israel as a group that is the people through whom God is revealing Himself and His kingdom to the world is primarily a people of promise, not a genetic or geopolitical entity. When we talk about Israel at all, we need to do so very specifically, making clear who exactly it is we have in mind. There is not only one “Israel.” Failure to do so will result in needless confusion on a number of grounds.

Okay, but how is it fair that God choose some and not others? That’s what we’ll address with Paul tomorrow.