“‘Behold, days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,’ declares the LORD. ‘But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,’ declares the LORD, ‘I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, “Know the LORD,” for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,’ declares the LORD, ‘for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more'” (Jer 31:31-34).
We live in an age where Evangelical love and support for the Jewish people is no longer something we can assume, and certainly not something that can be taken for granted. The wave of woke antisemitism has made its way into the hearts of younger Evangelicals, the most vulnerable of whom are those convinced that the church is the new Israel. Sadly, one of God’s greatest promises to the Jewish people, the new covenant in Jeremiah 31:31-34, is often used as a proof text to argue that the church is the Israel to whom God fulfills all these promises. After all, don’t the NT authors apply the new covenant to the church?
…the very thought of God casting Israel aside was revolting to the Apostle Paul, as was Gentile pride over the broken branches.
The answer, of course, is a resounding, joy-filled, and God-praising “Yes!” They certainly do (see 1 Cor 11:23-26; 2 Cor 3:6). The full adoption of Gentiles as co-heirs of God’s promises (Rom 4:16-17; Gal 3:29; Eph 2:11-22; 3:6) and the miraculous creation of the church (Eph 1:13-14, 22; 3:10, 21; 5:23-25, 27, 29, 32; Col 1:18) is something worth celebrating for all eternity. Jewish and Gentile believers partaking together of the wine and matzah in remembrance of Messiah’s blood poured out for the making of the new covenant is far more than a ceremony; it is a miraculous meal reminding us of the middle wall of partition that was broken down through Yeshua’s sacrifice (Eph 2:14-15).
But celebrating the spiritual blessings provided through the new covenant does not mean that its eschatological relevance for the people of Israel is null and void. In fact, the very thought of God casting Israel aside was revolting to the Apostle Paul (Rom 3:1-4; 11:1, 11), as was Gentile pride over the broken branches (Rom 11:17-24). And in light of Paul’s deep grief for the Jewish people in Romans 9–11 (9:1-5; 10:1), and his pleas to Gentiles to remember their indebtedness (Rom 15:25-27), we see how anti-Christian it is when Christians such as Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson arrogantly weaponize NT passages ripped from their context against Israel and the Jewish people.
And if there is one passage that settles the matter with respect to the eschatological fulfillment of Jeremiah’s new covenant through the salvation of ethnic Israel, it is Romans 11:27. There, Paul cites Jeremiah 31:33 (the new covenant) as a promise that will only be fulfilled when those who are currently enemies of the gospel, yet beloved for the sake of the fathers (Rom 11:28), will finally be redeemed.
“For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery — so that you will not be wise in your own estimation — that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, … ‘THIS IS MY COVENANT WITH THEM, WHEN I TAKE AWAY THEIR SINS'” (Rom 11:25-26a, 27).
