All Israel is Not All Israel

 

When you are discussing the nature of who God’s people really are, the contrast between the people of faith (true Israel) and the people of the flesh (not true Israel), you will have someone chip in, “What about Romans 11?” To which I like to ask, “What about it?” Many people who bring this passage up have not considered it in detail, and how it fits into Paul’s wider argument in both the chapter of Romans 11, the section of Romans 9-11, nor Paul’s wider writings.

I know I have addressed this topic before (you can read past posts here, here and here), but my devotions the other day from Isaiah 59 have prompted me to address this from another perspective. You may be aware that Romans 11 quotes Isaiah 59:20, this is the New King James version of the text,

“25 For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. 26 And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written:

“The Deliverer will come out of Zion,
And He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob;
27 For this is My covenant with them,
When I take away their sins” (Rom. 11:25-27).

Verse 26 quotes what Isaiah says in his own prophetic writings. Isaiah is looking forward to the day in which the sins of Israel will be taken away. We know that Jesus did on this on the cross, but we also know that this salvation points forward to a time when he will return to save his people from this fallen world (1 Pet.1:3-5). As I argued in previous pieces, especially this one here, God only temporarily hardened the Israelites so that they would demand the Messiah be killed, and this passage could be fulfilled. God’s calling and election cannot be revoked, therefore, the non-believing Jewish person still has the same offer of salvation under the same conditions as any non-believing Gentile. I am not going to go into detail about this again here. I simply want to show how Isaiah’s own words confirm this reading.

The NKJV breaks this passage into three parts.

Firstly, the recognition that God’s people have gone astray,

“1 Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened,
That it cannot save;
Nor His ear heavy,
That it cannot hear.
2 But your iniquities have separated you from your God;
And your sins have hidden His face from you,
So that He will not hear.
3 For your hands are defiled with blood,
And your fingers with iniquity;
Your lips have spoken lies,
Your tongue has muttered perversity.

4 No one calls for justice,
Nor does any plead for truth.
They trust in empty words and speak lies;
They conceive evil and bring forth iniquity.
5 They hatch vipers’ eggs and weave the spider’s web;
He who eats of their eggs dies,
And from that which is crushed a viper breaks out.

6 Their webs will not become garments,
Nor will they cover themselves with their works;
Their works are works of iniquity,
And the act of violence is in their hands.
7 Their feet run to evil,
And they make haste to shed innocent blood;
Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity;
Wasting and destruction are in their paths.
8 The way of peace they have not known,
And there is no justice in their ways;
They have made themselves crooked paths;
Whoever takes that way shall not know peace” (Isa. 59:1-9).

Isaiah begins this passage by outlining the sin problem. Just like any good gospel preacher would do. Note the tense in this passage, this is Isaiah looking at the wickedness of his people. He is describing a people who are caught in their sins and the result of their sins.

Next, Isaiah speaks from the perspective of an Israelite. He switches from “they” to “we”, this section reads more like a confession, as my NKJV identifies,

“9 Therefore justice is far from us,
Nor does righteousness overtake us;
We look for light, but there is darkness!
For brightness, but we walk in blackness!
10 We grope for the wall like the blind,
And we grope as if we had no eyes;
We stumble at noonday as at twilight;
We are as dead men in desolate places.
11 We all growl like bears,
And moan sadly like doves;
We look for justice, but there is none;
For salvation, but it is far from us.
12 For our transgressions are multiplied before You,
And our sins testify against us;
For our transgressions are with us,
And as for our iniquities, we know them:
13 In transgressing and lying against the Lord,
And departing from our God,
Speaking oppression and revolt,
Conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.
14 Justice is turned back,
And righteousness stands afar off;
For truth is fallen in the street,
And equity cannot enter.
15 So truth fails,
And he who departs from evil makes himself a prey” (Isa. 59:9-15).

This part of the passage says much the same thing, but because of the change in perspective it shows that the consequences of the sins of God’s people are causing them to cry out. They are suffering because of their rebellion. They know their guilt and they are confessing it.

In the final part of the passage we see God’s response to the rebellion of his people, and their being trapped in their sins,

“Then the Lord saw it, and it displeased Him
That there was no justice.
16 He saw that there was no man,
And wondered that there was no intercessor;
Therefore His own arm brought salvation for Him;
And His own righteousness, it sustained Him.
17 For He put on righteousness as a breastplate,
And a helmet of salvation on His head;
He put on the garments of vengeance for clothing,
And was clad with zeal as a cloak.
18 According to their deeds, accordingly He will repay,
Fury to His adversaries,
Recompense to His enemies;
The coastlands He will fully repay.
19 So shall they fear
The name of the Lord from the west,
And His glory from the rising of the sun;
When the enemy comes in like a flood,
The Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him.

20 “The Redeemer will come to Zion,
And to those who turn from transgression in Jacob,”
Says the Lord.

21 “As for Me,” says the Lord, “this is My covenant with them: My Spirit who is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth, shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your descendants, nor from the mouth of your descendants’ descendants,” says the Lord, “from this time and forevermore” (Isa. 59:15-21).

God looks at his people and sees them in their rebellion, he sees how their selfishness has turned into them oppressing the weak, he sees how there is no justice, no righteousness, and he decides that he himself needs to save them, so he does, “16 He saw that there was no man, And wondered that there was no intercessor; Therefore His own arm brought salvation for Him; And His own righteousness, it sustained Him.” The “arm” of the Lord is of course Jesus, as we know from Isaiah,

“1 Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? 2 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him. 3 He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him…

…12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, And He shall divide the spoil with the strong, Because He poured out His soul unto death, And He was numbered with the transgressors, And He bore the sin of many, And made intercession for the transgressors” (Isa. 53:1-3, 12).

Our Lord Jesus Christ is the arm of the Lord who made intercession for the transgressors.

Jesus rode out of Zion and took away the sins of his people, which is all who believe. And he will return one day out of heavenly Zion to bring judgement for his people, and all who trusted in him will be saved. He will punish evil as he notes in Isaiah 59:17-19. He will ride to victory his people, as Isaiah 59:20 says. And who are his people?

Well, he defines his people for us in verse 21,

“21 As for Me,” says the Lord, “this is My covenant with them: My Spirit who is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth, shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your descendants, nor from the mouth of your descendants’ descendants,” says the Lord, “from this time and forevermore.”

They are those who:

-        He has a covenant with,

-        who speak the word of God,

-        who pass the words of God unto their descendants,

-        and who will be his people forevermore.

This can only apply to believers. Isaiah 59:20 is not a promise that God has a plan to save the final generation of Jewish people living in a country called Israel. It is that he will ride to victory for his redeemed, though who are filled with the Spirit, which we know is all believers, “14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (Rom. 8:14). This is the Church, the community of believers.

The very next part of Isaiah also shows that the Gentiles are indeed in view,

“1 Arise, shine;
For your light has come!
And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.
2 For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth,
And deep darkness the people;
But the Lord will arise over you,
And His glory will be seen upon you.
3 The Gentiles shall come to your light,
And kings to the brightness of your rising” (Isa. 60:1-3).

Isaiah is clearly teaching about the work of salvation achieved by Jesus that goes out to all peoples, and that Jesus will again return to judge evil and vindicate his people. Hence, all Israel is simply all who believe. Saying that all Israel will be saved is the equivalent of saying that all believers will be saved.

Indeed, one of the reasons that Pharisees misunderstood who Jesus was, is because they believed the coming of the Messiah would bring their glory and the establishment of a Jewish Kingdom to rule the world. They missed the fact that there were two comings. One to deal with sin, one to take God’s fallen people from this sinful world. Isaiah 59:15-21 points to both these events. The New Testament helps us to see this with more clarity. Jesus took away our sins on the cross. He came out of Zion and achieved victory of our sins. He will one day ride again out of heavenly Zion and take people’s sins away completely.

Trying to force this into an end time revival of one ethnic group, when the vision is global, is doing great harm to this passage. It is fair to say it points to the cross and to the end of days, though. What Jesus did on the cross is a picture of how he is going to rescue us with the salvation ready to be revealed at final day, as I noted at the start.

Why limit this passage down to only apply to Jewish people, when it is taken from a much larger argument made by Isaiah that God will save all who trust in him from their sins, make them his people, and come back and rescue them? Thinking that Isaiah was referring to simply their nation, rather than to all peoples, is exactly the mistake the Pharisees made. Paul would not make that same mistake.