by Anthony F. Buzzard
I am challenged by the repeated and persistent mail I receive from a Michael Evans who wants me to contribute dollars (different amounts will bring various rewards, like a lapel pin, or a DVD or beautiful pewter plate). His point is that we all ought to be helping Jews return to the land. What I think he overlooks is the golden key verse in Galatians 3:29 that “if we are biblical Christians, we are reckoned as Abraham’s children (seed) and are thus heirs to the promises.” This verse is a backbone to NT theology and when neglected or rejected leads to the collapse of much of NT theology. Without this text firmly in place all sorts of chaos results. Some lost track of Galatians 3:29 when they misapplied “I will bless those who bless you” to the physical descendants of Abraham. But that is to misunderstand Galatians 3. The Christian concern is not with the politics of this age. Galatians 3:29 defines who for the moment are the true seed of Abraham. Jesus spent a lot of his time trying to persuade hostile Jews that unless they accepted him as Messiah they no longer counted as the true people of God. The time is coming, Hosea says, that Israel, now reckoned as “not My people” (Hos. 1: 9-10) will one day repent and be restored. But that has not happened yet.
I personally find verses like Matthew 19:28 and Galatians 3:29 absolutely thrilling as well as humbling. Imagine that! We, whoever we are in terms of national background, are now honored by the great God with the status of Abraham’s sons and daughters, because we have believed and obeyed the unique and final agent of God, the Lord Messiah Jesus (Luke 2:11). And if we are now constituted the children of Abraham then we are going to inherit the very promises made to Abraham and to Jesus. “The promise to Abraham,” we remember, was that “he would inherit the world” (Rom. 4:13). Sounds awfully like the almost entirely ignored saying of Jesus that the meek are going to inherit the earth (quoting about 6 passages in Ps. 37). And Matthew 19:28 spells out in the plainest terms the role of the Apostles in the future Kingdom on earth, when Jesus comes.
Dispensationalism which underlies most American “fundamentalist” churches has given away the promise of Matthew 5:5 to unconverted Jews and thus robbed true Christians of their inheritance and Abraham’s. The meek will inherit the land — not “go to heaven.” Unconverted Jews must accept the Messiah who has come, in order to inherit the land and be true children of Abraham.
