This teaching is a follow up to my previous one titled, “Will I be Blessed if I Bless Israel? (And Cursed if I Don’t?)” Please don’t read this teaching without first reading that one, as it lays an important foundation.

The overall feedback to that article has been mostly positive but, as I anticipated, there has been some pushback from dispensationalists. Many of those good folks don’t even know they are dispensationalists. I’m not saying that to make anyone feel bad. I, too, was once influenced by dispensationalism and did not realize it. So let’s start there.

Generally speaking, dispensationalism divides human history into seven dispensations in which God interacts with humanity in different ways. According to classic dispensationalism, we are currently in the Church Age, which is a parenthesis between two Jewish ages. They are the Age of Law (the Mosaic dispensation) and the future Millennial Kingdom (a restored age for national Israel). Dispensationalists gave us the idea of a “pre-tribulation rapture,” which marks the beginning of the next dispensation and God’s renewed plan for Jews. They also gave us the idea of the “two returns” of Jesus, separated from each other by a period of seven years.

Dispensationalism is a relatively new theology, emerging only in 1830 through the teaching of John Nelson Darby, one of the founders of the Plymouth Brethren movement. It gained massive traction in the United States via the Scofield Reference Bible, first published 1909, and later through books like The Late Great Planet Earth and the Left Behind series. It is now very influential in many evangelical, fundamentalist, and charismatic circles—particularly in North America—but it is still a minority view when looking at the full sweep of church history. It was not a view held by the apostles or early church fathers; nor has it ever been held by mainstream Protestants, Roman Catholics, or Eastern Orthodox churches.

Historically, Christians have embraced covenantal theology, which interprets redemptive history in light of God’s covenants, the first being His covenant with Adam. God promised him death if he ate the forbidden fruit (Gen. 2:15-16), thus implying a promise of eternal life if he didn’t. It was therefore a conditional covenant. We all know what happened when Adam failed to keep the single condition of his covenant with God.

Next was God’s covenant with Noah (Gen. 6:18), in which He promised to preserve him and his family from the coming judgment. The covenant was obviously contingent upon Noah building the ark, also making it a conditional covenant.

After the Flood, God made a covenant with every future descendant of Noah (which includes you and me). God promised to never flood the earth again (Gen. 8:22). That covenant is unconditional, praise God! It is, however, time-limited for only as long as “the earth remains” (Gen. 8:22). As Jesus told us, heaven and earth will one day pass away (Matt. 24:35). In any case, every time you see a rainbow, it is a reminder of that universal, unconditional, but time-limited, divine covenant (Gen. 9:8-17).

Next was God’s covenant with Abram/Abraham. Unlike the unconditional and time-limited Noahic Covenant, the Abrahamic covenant was conditional and eternal. It would potentially benefit not only Abram/Abraham, but “all the families of the earth” (Gen. 12:3), through Christ, one of Abraham’s descendants. The Abrahamic covenant will be the focus of this teaching.

I need to mention that, 430 years after God made His covenant with Abram/Abraham, He inaugurated the Mosaic covenant (Gal. 3:17). It was between Him and the descendants of Jacob/Israel only. It was intended to be temporary (Heb. 8-10, particularly 8:13), lasting only until the New Covenant, which was promised in the Old Covenant (Jer. 31:31–34), and which Jesus inaugurated at the Last Supper.

So we see that God’s covenants can be universal or particular, time-limited or eternal, and conditional or unconditional. That is why it is important to always know the terms of a covenant, lest wrong assumptions be made.

Perhaps the greatest distinction between dispensational and covenantal theology is the former is more Israel-centric, whereas the latter is more world-centric. To put it in simple terms, it is “God so loved Israel” versus “God so loved the world.”

If your pastor’s sermons are more focused on Israel than the thousands of unreached people groups in the world who are waiting to hear the gospel for the first time, he, and you, have been influenced by dispensationalism.

If you believe that Jesus is going to return twice in the space of seven years, the first at which the church will be raptured, you have been influenced by dispensationalism.

If you imagine that the future judgment of the sheep and goats to be a judgment concerning how you treated the modern nation of Israel, you have been influenced by extreme dispensationalism.

If you are mourning the approximate 1,200 deaths and 3,400 injuries of innocent people created in God’s image due to the barbaric events of October 7, 2023, but are not mourning the retaliatory approximate 70,000 deaths and 170,000 injuries of innocent people created in God’s image in Gaza, you have been influenced by dispensationalism. If you are inwardly saying right now, “Those figures regarding Gaza are inflated,” even if you are correct, your thoughts betray your dispensational bias. Is the life of an Israeli child more valuable than that a Gazan child?

When I listen to some dispensationalist Christians regarding the Israel/Palestinian conflict, I am reminded of a passage in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in which Huck fabricates a story to Aunt Sally of a steamboat boiler explosion, who then asks, “Good gracious! Anybody hurt?” Huck replied, “No mam. Killed a nigger.”

My observation is that dispensationalism is on the decline. Part of the reason is because Christians are waking up to the fact that God is not a racist. When Christians are perceived as being racist (as they are when they are dispensationalists), it doesn’t help our cause, nor does it glorify God.

My goal in this teaching, as always, is not to win an argument, but to help believers understand biblical truth, and in so doing, advance the kingdom of our Lord Jesus.

Am I a Second-Class Citizen?

It can be surprising how passionate some folks are on the subject of modern political Israel. It honestly seems that some think unregenerate Jewish people are more loved by God than everyone else—including His own beloved spiritual children who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. When I read, however, as a “Gentile Christian,” certain passages in the New Testament, I don’t get the impression that I’m a second-class citizen in God’s eyes. Actually, I get just the opposite impression. Here is one of those passages, written to Gentile believers like me, that comes to mind:

Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called “Uncircumcision” by the so-called “Circumcision” which is performed in the flesh by human hands [a reference to unbelieving Jews who, in Paul’s view, are not actually circumcised because their hearts remain hard to Christ]—remember that you [Gentiles] were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you [Gentiles] who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups [believing Gentiles and believing Jews] into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two [believing Gentiles and believing Jews] into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both [believing Gentiles and believing Jews] in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were far away [Gentiles], and peace to those who were near [Jews]; for through Him we both [Gentiles and Jews] have our access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit (Eph. 2:11-22).

Wow. It sounds to me as if believing Gentiles possess the identical standing with God as do believing Jews. So, as long as unbelieving Jews don’t have a higher status than believing Jews, I’m in good shape! To that end, did you realize that none of what Paul wrote in the passage above has any application to unbelieving Jews, except Paul’s labeling them “the so-called Circumcision”? That being so, why would any Christian think that unbelieving Jews have a higher status in God’s eyes because of their physical lineage than believing Gentile Christians? They do not. And that will become even more clear as we continue.

Here’s another life-changing passage penned by Paul—the “apostle to the Gentiles” (Rom. 11:13)—written to believing Gentiles:

And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise (Gal. 3:29, emphasis added).^[1]

How about that? As a believing Gentile who belongs to Christ, I’m a descendant of Abraham! That is an irrefutable biblical fact!

And that fact, among others, makes me wonder about the dispensationalist claim that descendants of Abraham’s grandson, Jacob/Israel, have an “unconditional divine right” to Canaan/Palestine by virtue of God’s (alleged) “unconditional covenant” with Abraham. Why then don’t all Gentile Christians, like me, who are also Abraham’s descendants, have the same “unconditional” right? Should I purchase a plane ticket to Israel so I can confiscate a piece of land currently owned by a Muslim or nominal Christian? Whether they will admit it or not, dispensationalists believe that Jewish descendants of Abraham have that right. Why not Gentile descendants of Abraham?

And here is even a greater inconsistency in dispensational theology: What about the tens of thousands of Arab Christians who, in 1948, were forced off of land that was owned by their families for generations? If any of those approximately 60,000 Arab Christians were genuine believers in Jesus, they were, according to Paul, all descendants of Abraham. Why don’t dispensationalists believe that those descendants of Abraham had a divine right to the land by virtue of God’s covenant with Abraham? (And what are the chances any of those descendants believed that the Israeli confiscation of their homes and land was due to God’s special love for the Christ-rejecting descendants of Jacob/Israel?)

Many Gentile Christians have been singing about the biblical fact that we are descendants of Abraham through Christ since they were children in Sunday School:

Father Abraham had many sons
And many sons had father Abraham
I am one of them, and so are you
So let’s just praise the Lord!

Should the final line of that Sunday School song be changed to, “So let’s go claim our land!”?

God’s Covenant with Abraham

Because it is irrefutable that God’s covenant with Israel through Moses tied the possession of Canaan’s land to Israel’s obedience, dispensationalists sometimes resort to claiming God made an unconditional covenant with Abraham to give his descendants the land. That, they say, explains why God has, since 1948, been giving land in Canaan/Palestine to unbelieving, often immoral, Christ-rejecting Jews, even at the expense of, not only Muslims, but also Christians.

If that were true, of course, it would mean the Abrahamic covenant contradicts the Mosaic covenant, which means that God contradicts Himself. That isn’t possible. God is not confused.

Beyond that, when we read God’s promises to Abraham concerning Canaan, it is clear they were not unconditional. Let’s survey those promises. There are at least seven relevant passages in Genesis where God communicated with Abram/Abraham about their covenant.

1.) Genesis 12:1-3 (which we considered in my previous article) describes God’s initial communication with Abram when he was 75 years old. God told him to leave Haran, journey “to the land which I will show you” and promised, “I will make you a great nation.”

In that first communication, God didn’t promise Abram any land. But He did promise him, “In you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” God intended to bless all the families of the earth through Abram. That sounds significant, even more so than anything else God told Abram about his future. Abram didn’t understand it then, but looking back, and by looking at the rest of the Bible, we are 100% certain God was referring to blessing all the families of the earth through Jesus, a future descendant of Abraham. From God’s first encounter with Abram, blessing all of earth’s families was on His mind.

2.) Abram obeyed God and journeyed to Canaan. There God appeared to him and gave him another promise, “To your descendants I will give this land (Gen. 12:7). It would have been easy for Abram to have wrongly assumed that God’s promise would be fulfilled sooner than it actually was. History tells that it wasn’t fulfilled for any of Abram’s descendants for about 470 years.

You may be surprised to learn that, as one of Abraham’s descendants through Christ, I’m looking forward to the fulfillment of that promise as it applies to me. I will one day live in the New Jerusalem, which I think is safe to assume will be generally located where Jerusalem has always been (although New Jerusalem will be huge by comparison).

I can only claim that future inheritance because I met the condition to be one of descendants of Abram/Abraham. That is, I believed/believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. So the promise God made to Abram that concerns me was conditional, not unconditional. That establishes the fact that at least part of the Abrahamic Covenant was conditional, so far as it concerns us believing Gentiles.

3.) Abram spent some time in Egypt because of famine in Canaan, but when he returned to Canaan, the Lord said to him:

Now lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land which you see, I will give it to you and to your descendants forever. I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth, so that if anyone can number the dust of the earth, then your descendants can also be numbered. Arise, walk about the land through its length and breadth; for I will give it to you (Gen. 13:14-17).

That’s another promise of the Promised Land, but one that is even better than the previous one. Not only would God give Canaan to Abram’s descendants (as previously promised), but He would give it to Abram himself. In his lifetime, however, which lasted another 100 years, Abram never possessed Canaan. The only land he ever owned there was a small field and cave, which he purchased in order to bury Sarai’s/Sarah’s body. But God didn’t give him that parcel. He bought it from those who owned it. Recall that Stephen reminded the Jewish Sanhedrin just before they stoned him:

Then he [Abram] left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. From there, after his father died, God had him move to this country in which you are now living. But He gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot of ground, and yet, even when he had no child, He promised that He would give it to him as a possession, and to his descendants after him” (Acts 7:4-5, emphasis added).

Clearly, God’s promise to Abram to possess Canaan is yet to be fulfilled—just as it will be for you and me, two of Abraham’s descendants who have the identical promise he did.

In His third repetition of the promises to Abram, God promised to give the land to him and his descendants “forever.” As I have just pointed out, Abram never possessed it. His descendants who eventually did possess it didn’t possess it forever. They lost possession by virtue of their disobedience. And they all died. So there is a yet-future fulfillment of God’s promise for Abram and his descendants.

Are you realizing that God’s “forever” promise to Abram and his descendants was a promise of eternal life? If I possess land forever but don’t live forever, what good is that?

God also revealed to Abram in this Genesis 13 passage that he would have a great multitude of descendants, “as the dust of the earth.” Although I’m sure Abram was smart enough to figure out that it would require millennia for his descendants to multiply that much, I suspect he never imagined they would include anyone other than his physical descendants. But when God told him about his future multitude of descendants, God was thinking about people like you and me who would become one with Christ and thus be counted as a descendant of Abraham. We’re a part of that multitude. Praise God!

The author of the book of Hebrews (I assume Paul) had some Spirit-given insight into all of this. He wrote:

By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise; for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God (Heb. 11:8-10, emphasis added).

So, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who all received the promise of the land never possessed the land. None even had a house in Canaan. They all lived in tents as “aliens in the land of promise, as in a foreign land.” Beyond that, as we will soon see, when the Lord appeared to Abram ten years after His first communication, Abram learned that neither he, nor his unborn heir, nor his grandchildren, nor many successive generations of his descendants would possess Canaan. For all of them, it would have to be in a future life. That must be why Paul wrote that Abram “was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God,” a reference to the New Jerusalem. God’s promise to Abram still hasn’t been fulfilled after 4,000 years. But it will be!

Paul continued in the book of Hebrews just three verses later:

All these (Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Jacob/Israel) died in faith, without receiving the [fulfillment of the] promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them (Heb. 11:13-16, emphasis added).

I’m sure you noticed Paul’s second allusion in this same passage to the New Jerusalem, the city God has prepared (and that we can read about in Isaiah 60-62 and Revelation 21-22). Again, according to Paul, the three patriarchs all realized they would possess the land of Canaan in a future, eternal life.

Abram Believes in the Lord

4.) About ten years after the Lord spoke to Abram the first time, He spoke to him again in a vision, saying, “Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; your reward shall be very great” (Gen. 15:1). Abram, however, was wondering, and perhaps doubting. He was now 85 and Sarai was 75. He said to God, “O Lord God, what will You give me, since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?…. Since You have given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir.”

God graciously assured him that a future biological son would be his heir, and then took him outside so he could look up at the night sky. His descendants, God said, would be as numerous as the stars. You and I were represented by two of the stars Abram saw that night! Hallelujah!

Then the Genesis narrative informs us that Abram “believed in the Lord and He reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6). Obviously, Abram already believed God existed before he looked up at the stars that night. He had heard the Lord speak and had obeyed His instructions. What became different about his faith that night as he looked up at the stars?

We might think that was the moment Abram believed God’s promise concerning his future descendants. However, note that the Genesis narrative does not say, “Abram believed God’s promise regarding his future descendants.” Rather, it says “Abram believed in the Lord.”

Although I wish it were clearer, when we consider the context of the entire Bible, we know that righteousness is reckoned to people when they “believe in the Lord.” When the Philippian jailer, for example, asked Paul what he needed to do to be saved, Paul told him, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). As I have stressed for so many years, those who believe in the Lord Jesus submit to Him. Those who don’t submit, don’t believe. Perhaps that was Abram’s moment.

In any case, Paul taught that Abram’s being reckoned righteous by faith—and before he was circumcised—proves that uncircumcised Gentiles (like Abram) can be reckoned as righteous by faith (see Romans 4). Specifically, Paul wrote:

Is this blessing then on the circumcised, or on the uncircumcised also? For we say, “Faith was credited to Abraham as righteousness.” How then was it credited? While he was circumcised, or uncircumcised? Not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised; and he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while uncircumcised, so that he might be the father of all who believe without being circumcised [believing Gentiles], that righteousness might be credited to them, and the father of circumcision to those who not only are of the circumcision, but who also follow in the steps of the faith [believing descendants of Jacob/Israel] of our father Abraham which he had while uncircumcised….

For this reason it [salvation] is by faith, in order that it [salvation] may be in accordance with grace, so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the Law [the descendants of Jacob/Israel, all under the Mosaic Law], but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham [believing Gentiles], who is the father of us all [believing Jews and believing Gentiles], as it is written, “A father of many nations have I made you” (Rom. 4:9-12, 16-17).

So Abraham is the father of believing Gentiles. That’s me! And I hope you!

The Cutting of the Abrahamic Covenant

We next read in Genesis 15 that God said to Abram, “I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it” (Gen. 15:7, emphasis added). That was the second time God promised Abram what to this day has not been fulfilled for him.

Then God instructed Abram to bring three animals and two birds, which he was to kill, cut in half (except for the birds), and lay each half opposite each other. It was a covenant ritual. Some period of time elapsed. Abram fell asleep, and “terror and great darkness fell upon him” (Gen. 15:12). Then God spoke to him:

Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years. But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age. Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete (Gen. 15:13-16).

At that point, Abram gained more clarity on God’s plan. He now knew with certainty that he would not possess Canaan in his lifetime, which turned out to last another 90 years. He also knew with certainty that his unborn heir would not possess Canaan in his lifetime, nor would any of his grandchildren. In fact, it would be at least 460 years before any of his descendants would possess the land of Canaan.

Why the long delay? Only one reason was given: “The iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete” (Gen. 15:16). That is, the moral decline among the Amorites, just one of at least ten tribal nations in the Promised Land, had not reached its inevitable moral low point that would require God’s judgment in the form of an Israelite invasion. Think about that. God was planning the invasion of the Promised Land at least 460 years in advance by the army of a nation that didn’t exist yet. That was certainly a lesson to Abram about God’s mercy, holiness, and judgment. Do you suppose Abram thought to himself, “I’m glad that God’s core character fluctuates, and that He is going to give me and my descendants the Promised Land unconditionally, unlike the Amorites who obviously hold it conditionally, so that we never have to fear God’s wrath if we displease Him!”?

Of course, when God freed the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob from Egyptian slavery, He made a covenant with them that irrefutably tied their possession of the Promised Land to their faith and obedience. The first generation of ransomed Israelites failed to enter the promised land because of their unbelief and disobedience. The alleged “unconditional” Abrahamic covenant didn’t override the conditionality of the Mosaic covenant. And, of course, the God who never changes didn’t change between the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants.

At the close of God’s covenant ceremony with Abram, we read:

It came about when the sun had set, that it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates” (Gen. 15:17-18).

The area described in that promise is, at bare minimum, ten times larger than modern Israel, and encompasses, not only all of modern Israel and the Palestinian territories, but all of Lebanon, significant portions of Syria, much of Jordan, fringes of Egypt, and small parts of northern Saudi Arabia and western Iraq. I’m waiting for dispensational Christians to start asking for donations to help arm the Israel militarily to invade all those nations in order to take “the land that belongs to them by divine right.” And why not? If the Abrahamic covenant described in Genesis 15 gives modern descendants of Abram’s grandson Jacob divine right to the current land defined by modern Israel’s borders, it gives them right to all the land described in Genesis 15.

And perhaps I, as one of Abraham’s descendants, should fly over to Saudi Arabia and kick some Saudis off the land that is mine by divine right! I wonder how that will go over?

5.) Fast forward another 14 years, to when Abram was 99 and Sarai was 89. (And Ishmael was 13.) The Lord again appeared to Abraham and repeated the old promises, some of which were now 24 years old. This time as you read, I hope you will look for what applies to you:

“I am God Almighty;
Walk before Me, and be blameless.
I will establish My covenant between Me and you,
And I will multiply you exceedingly.”
Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying,
“As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you,
And you will be the father of a multitude of nations.
No longer shall your name be called Abram,
But your name shall be Abraham;
For I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.

“I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings will come forth from you. I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you. I will give to you and to your descendants after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God (Gen. 17:1-8, emphasis added).

I love those words “everlasting covenant.” It was a covenant between God, Abraham, and Abraham’s descendants, which includes all Gentiles who believe in the Lord Jesus. Obviously, unless Abraham and his descendants would be living forever, an “everlasting covenant” would not have much relevancy.

I also hope you noticed God’s words to Abram, the believer, “Walk before Me, and be blameless.” It was not a suggestion. It was a command. God expects obedience.

Again, God promised Abraham and his descendants “all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession.” To this day, both Abraham and I are waiting for that promise to be fulfilled. Moreover, all of Abraham’s believing physical descendants who, hundreds of years after Abraham, actually possessed some part of the Promised Land during their lifetimes, are waiting for that promise to be fulfilled as it was promised: “for an everlasting possession.” It is a sure eternal inheritance waiting for all believing Jews and Gentiles.

It is beyond me how anyone can extrapolate from these promises in Genesis 17 that the modern physical descendants of Abraham, through his grandson Jacob, who have rejected their Messiah and who are not born again, now have a divine right, over both Muslims and Christians, to the land that Abraham and everyone in Christ, Jew and Gentile, will one day inherit forever. I can’t find that in Genesis 17 or anywhere in the Bible, both Old and New Testaments. Why would unbelieving physical descendants of Jacob/Israel have a divine right now to land that they will have no right to in eternity?

During the same divine appearance, God promised Abraham that Sarah would give birth to a son whom they should name Isaac, concerning whom God promised, “I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him” (Gen. 17:19). God also instituted the covenant mark of circumcision at that time, similarly stipulated hundreds of years later in the Mosaic Law. From this point on in the Abrahamic covenant, circumcision was required, so we’re certainly not talking about an “unconditional” covenant. Moreover, circumcision was symbolic of a repentant, transformed heart. The concept of a circumcised heart is found, not just in the New Testament, but also the Old:

So circumcise your heart, and stiffen your neck no longer (Deut. 10:16).

Moreover the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live (Deut. 30:6).

Circumcise yourselves to the Lord
And remove the foreskins of your heart,
Men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem,
Or else My wrath will go forth like fire
And burn with none to quench it,
Because of the evil of your deeds” (Jer. 4:4).

Paul put it in perspective for us 2,000 years later:

For indeed circumcision is of value if you practice the Law; but if you are a transgressor of the Law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. So if the uncircumcised man keeps the requirements of the Law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? And he who is physically uncircumcised, if he keeps the Law, will he not judge you who though having the letter of the Law and circumcision are a transgressor of the Law? For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God (Rom. 2:25-29, emphasis added).

Personally, I’m not going to debate Paul about that. And to Gentile believers in Colossae he wrote:

And in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead (Col. 2:11-12).

6.) Not long after the Lord’s appearance to Abraham when he was 99, He appeared to him again, visiting him at his tent, along with two angels. The Lord then told him that within a year, Sarah would give birth to a son. Then the Lord asked:

Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, since Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation, and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed? For I have chosen him, so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him (Gen. 18:17-19).

I want to point out two things from those two sentences. First, what made Abraham so important in God’s eyes so as not to have anything hidden from him? Primarily it was that “in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” Those words were the primary and redundant theme for 25 years of divine communication with Abraham, from start to finish. When theologians try to make the Abrahamic Covenant all about the descendants of Jacob/Israel (or worse, all about modern political Israel), they are completely missing the point. The story of Abraham is the beginning of the story of the redemption of all the families on the earth. That story continues through the entire Bible, and I could write a small book showing that. That great story of redemption ends in Revelation, where we read:

And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth…

After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands; and they cry out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb (Rev. 5:9-10; 7:9, emphasis added).

Those two passages in Revelation show us that God’s plan through Abraham and his seed will be fulfilled. Abraham’s spiritual descendants, both Jews and Gentiles from all of earth’s families, “will reign upon the earth.” It won’t just be the Promised Land that we will inherit, it will be the entire world. “The meek shall inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:5). Paul referred to Abraham as “heir of the world” (Rom. 4:13). The New Jerusalem is 1,500 miles wide by 1,500 miles long (Rev. 21:16). That’s about the distance from Philadelphia to Denver.

The second sentence of that passage is the final nail in the coffin of the idea that the Abrahamic Covenant was unconditional. God declared: “For I have chosen [Abraham], so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him” (Gen. 18:19, emphasis added). It can’t get any clearer than that. The covenant was conditional. A few years later, God tested Abraham by commanding him to sacrifice Isaac on an altar. When Abraham was about to follow through, the Lord stopped him and said:

By Myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son, indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their [or his] enemies. In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice” (Gen. 22:16-18, emphasis added).

And what was it that the Lord decided not to hide from the man with the conditional covenant? If we keep reading in Genesis, we soon see it was God’s intention to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, two wicked cities within the Promised Land that Abraham is still destined to inherit. As I asked similarly earlier, do you think that when Abraham saw the smoke of Sodom and Gomorrah’s destruction, he thought to himself, “I’m so glad God’s standards of righteousness are different for me, and will be different for all my future descendants, since we have an unconditional covenant”?

For Now

The Bible’s grand story of redemption doesn’t start with Jews or Israel. It started in the Garden of Eden, where God promised that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head (Gen. 3:15). Adam and Eve weren’t Jews. There would be no Jews for more than 2,000 years. There were 22 generations from Adam to Jacob/Israel. And there were no Jews on the earth until after the days of Judah, Jacob/Israel’s fourth son. The word “Jew” is derived from the word “Judah.” The first time we find the word is in 2 Kings 25:25 (in the NASB).

That redemption story continues with the calling of Abram, a man from Ur of the Chaldeans. The ruins of that ancient city can still be visited—in modern Iraq. Not Canaan. Not Israel. Abram wasn’t an Israelite. He wasn’t a Jew. He was a Gentile. The fact that he is the first person in the Bible who is called a “Hebrew” (Gen. 14:13) lends itself to that fact, as it is derived from a semitic word that means “to cross over, pass through, or traverse.” Abram crossed over from Mesopotamia (Ur of the Chaldeans) into Canaan. And he received, as an uncircumcised Gentile, a promise that all the families of the earth would be blessed through his seed. That seed was the incarnate Son of God, who most often referred to Himself as the “Son of Man” and who once, while commending the great faith of a Gentile said:

Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel. I say to you that many [Gentiles] will come from east and west, and recline at the table with [Gentiles] Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the sons of the kingdom [descendants of Jacob/Israel] will be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt. 8:10-12).

Patriarchs Isaac and Jacob were just as much Gentiles as Abraham. They each inherited the promise to carry the seed that would bless all the families of the earth (Gen. 26:2-5, 24; 28:13-15; 35:9-12), which are comprised of mostly Gentile families. We can, of course, refer to all of Jacob/Israel’s descendants as Israelites, but as I’ve already pointed out, neither Israel nor any of his descendants for more than 380 years after his birth inherited any land in Canaan.

For those who utilize the argument that Abraham’s modern physical descendants through Jacob/Israel have a right to Canaan/Palestine “because their ancestors were the original inhabitants,” I hope you realize now that they were not. Pre-dating them were at least ten tribal nations. By the way, are you returning your land in North America to the descendants of the Native Americans “because their ancestors were the original inhabitants?”

“OK, but God used the nation of Israel to dispossess those original inhabitants. God gave Israel that land.”

Indeed He did, but He warned them that if they ever started acting like the pagans whom they dispossessed, He would similarly expel them from the land (see Lev. 18:24-30; Deut. 8:19–20; 28-30). Eventually, they started acting like the pagans whom they dispossessed, and God expelled them from the land. Only a repentant remnant of those folks ever returned. This is Bible History 101.

There is much more that could be said. I will write one more article in this series in which we will consider the premise that Israel’s birth in 1948 and the subsequent return of Jews to Israel from all over the world is a sure fulfillment of the prophetic final return of Jews to their ancient homeland and a sign of God’s favor toward Israel, which we should imitate. We will also look at Romans 11, a favorite of dispensationalists.

^{[1] The Greek word translated “descendants” here in the NASB is sperma, which is why some translations say, “You are Abraham’s seed.”}

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