#DailyDevotion There Is No Israel Outside Of Faith In Jesus Of Nazareth
Ephesians 3:1–12 For this reason I, Paul, whom Christ Jesus made a prisoner for you who are not Jews – 2surely you’ve heard how God gave me the responsibility of bringing His grace to you ’and how He revealed to me the hidden truth, as I have briefly written. When you read this, you can see I understand the hidden truth of Christ.5The people of other times weren’t told about it as the Spirit now has revealed it to His holy apostles and prophets, 6that in Christ Jesus the people who are not Jews have the same inheritance, belong to the same body, and have the same promise through the good news. 7I was made a servant of it by the gift of grace God gave me by the working of His power. 8To me, the least of all His holy people, He gave this grace: to bring the news of the unsearchable riches of Christ to the non-Jews 9and let everyone see clearly what God planned to do according to the truth hidden from the beginning in God, Who created everything, 10so that through the church God’s many-sided wisdom would now be shown to the rulers and authorities in heaven. 11 He planned it through the ages and then did it in Christ Jesus, our Lord. 12In Him, by believing in Him, we have confidence and can boldly come to God.
Dr. Gibbs in a class made note that the phrase “as I have briefly written” is not another letter but what Paul had already written the previous chapters. So you don’t have to go looking too far to find it. Indeed, most everything in this epistle is an expansion of chapter 1 verses 3-14. Now the hidden truth was not hidden somewhere where people couldn’t find it. It too was in plain sight in the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings. But it was hidden to our understanding before Christ came. What is that great mystery? That in Christ Jesus all nations have the same inheritance as the Jews, share the same body as Christ and have the same promise through the Good News of Jesus Christ.
Now this is big news. Unfortunately, many different Christian faiths and therefore Christians still don’t seem to get it. They still think of the Jews as a separate people, with separate promises and covenants than the Church. They are quite effectively Zionist in the wrong way. They want to separate the Jews from the Church. But this is not God’s plan for them. They seem to forget the early Church was predominantly Jewish. The Jewishness of that early Church influenced how the Church is today, though today, she is primarily made up of genetic Gentiles.
The great hidden truth revealed to us in the New Testament is Israel is only Israel in truth and Spirit in Jesus Christ. If you are not baptized into Christ you are not Israel. If your faith isn’t Jesus is the promised Messiah come into the world to redeem both Jew and Gentile and make them one holy people of God, a single royal priesthood before the Father of lights, then you are not yet Israel even if you can trace your genealogy all the way back to Jacob.
God has now revealed this plan to the rulers and authorities in the heavens his many sided wisdom which is beyond all our natural thinking but is glorified and made manifest when we have faith in Jesus. Everything in the Old and New Testament hangs on Jesus being the Messiah, the Christ of God. So Paul can say boldly and confidently, in Jesus Christ of Nazareth by believing in him, we have confidence and can come boldly to God our Father. For in Jesus we are Abraham’s children and children of God.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for joining us to the spiritual Israel who is Jesus Christ, through faith and baptism into him. Preserve us in this faith so we may enter your kingdom at the end of the age. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.