Note to Reader: About 12 years ago Dr. Jon Weatherly wrote an article for CHRISTIAN STANDARD on the same topic as this interview. It went semi-viral and can be viewed online. This is the second of two articles developed from an interview with Weatherly. The first article is also available on CHRISTIAN STANDARD’s internet site.
Weatherly currently serves as Associate Minister at Twin City Bible Church in Urbana, IL. He has also served as Professor of New Testament and Vice President for Academic Affairs at both Cincinnati Christian University and Johnson University. Weatherly completed his PhD in New Testament Exegesis at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.
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By Tyler McKenzie
Q: Is modern Israel a religious state composed primarily of devout and practicing Jews?
Like every nation and people group, modern Israel is a very mixed multitude. According to a recent survey, about 45% of the 7 million Israeli Jews identify as secular, about 33% as traditionally religious, and about 10% as ultra-Orthodox. Many observers would note there’s little difference between the typical resident of Tel Aviv and the typical resident of New York City in terms of religiosity or lifestyle.
So the point doesn’t get lost, let me note there are many Christians in Israel, mostly of Arab ethnicity but some of Jewish ethnicity as well. Estimates run around 2% of the total population, but that’s getting near 200,000 people. These people are our sisters and brothers, and they live with a deep consciousness of their calling to bring the peace of Christ to their land.
Q: Then how should we treat modern Israel and devout Jews today?
At one level this is easy. Whether we perceive someone as neighbor or enemy, Jesus calls us to love that person. We love everybody, no exceptions, because God loves everybody.
Love is not the same as endorsement, however. If someone is doing something destructive to self or others, love seeks to intervene, protect, and correct. That takes innumerable forms, depending on the situation and our resources. We may have very different opinions on what it looks like to love the modern nation of Israel today. We should examine those opinions closely, exercise humility about our own grasp of the situation, do what we can and learn to live within the limits of our power and knowledge.
For Jews today, devout and otherwise, with whom we have contact, we need again to act with love. This means respect, compassion, understanding, listening: just what we would want from someone who views God differently from us. Paul said the heritage of Israel was of great and permanent value (Romans 3:1–2). If we are Gentile Christians, we need to realize nearly all our biblical heroes are Israelites, including Jesus, and we need to remember the early church had an enormous number of Jewish believers in Jesus (Acts 21:20). Many of our Jewish neighbors and many Israeli Jews are descendants of Holocaust survivors, and all are descendants of those who suffered under antisemitic abuse over many centuries. And many experience antisemitism too frequently even now. We can surely summon an extra measure of compassion for members of a people who have suffered so long and horribly.
Loving people includes introducing them to Jesus. But let’s not jump immediately to the Romans Road in our conversations. The privilege to introduce a Jewish friend to the true seed of Abraham needs to be earned with a lot of sincere love in the foundation of the relationship.
Q: What about Romans 9-11, specifically 11:25?
Romans 9–11 is not necessarily answering the questions we ask it. In Romans Paul was addressing a church divided between Jewish and Gentile believers in Jesus, each blaming the other for problems, each wanting to have pride of place. Paul’s argument in Romans is entirely gospel centered: the Good News of Jesus is God’s power for salvation for all, Jews and Gentiles (Romans 1:16). Both groups are sinful, but in Christ God reverses all that, fulfilling his promise to Abraham and bringing new life to a world cursed by sin and death.
So Romans 9–11 is answering a specific objection the gospel raises: if only by faith in Jesus does anyone have membership in God’s people, does that mean God canceled his eternal covenant with Israel, since many Jews in Paul’s time did not have faith in Jesus? Paul responds by saying God’s promises to Israel are indeed unconditional, but they come to their focus in the blessing of the nations, fulfilled in Christ. Israel, Paul says, has always been a mixed multitude of faithful and unfaithful, as illustrated in its history. It continued to be a mixed multitude in Paul’s time, as many like Paul responded to the gospel but many others did not. The “remnant” of the faithful is the true Israel, and with the coming of Christ, that means those with faith in Christ. And through faith in Christ, God is adding to his covenant people, this faithful remnant, those who are not Israel by birth or observance, even as others who are Israel by birth or observance have been cut off. When the true king has come, faith in the true king defines God’s people, nothing else. The result Paul names is “all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:25), that is, the Israel of the promise, the promise of the blessing of the nations by the true seed (Romans 9:6–8), the children of Abraham by faith (Galatians 3:29; 6:16). So God has been faithful to his promises to Israel: Abraham has many “descendants,” the nations are blessed, the curse is being reversed.
I think it’s helpful to see all of Romans summed up in Romans 15:7–9: “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God’s truth, so that the promises made to the patriarchs might be confirmed and, moreover, that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.” There it is. God has kept and is keeping his promises through Christ for those who respond to Christ’s faithfulness in faith.
Q: I know you’re a NT scholar, not a political scientist, but if we aren’t supposed to always side with Israel in its conflicts, what sort of foreign policy would you advocate for then?
This is far more complicated than anyone, even an expert, can possible unravel. We will never come to a policy on modern Israel we will find fully satisfactory. If we are looking for an easy way to clear our conscience about conflict in the Middle East, we are bound to perpetual disappointment.
I am not a pacifist. I believe human evil is sufficiently terrible it must sometimes be restrained by force. For a nation to receive a deadly attack and not to respond is tragically to invite more death, not less.
But I believe human evil is so terrible that even when we respond justly to restrain evil, in our own evil we often overreact in fear and vindictiveness. Military power is a restraint on evil, but it is a grossly imperfect restraint. In a situation where Israeli civilians were wantonly attacked, a military response is morally justified, as recognized by international law. But where the military opponent is deliberately embedded among thousands of civilians, as Hamas is, a military response can exacerbate the situation as civilians are killed and maimed and starved in huge numbers. At this moment we have to ask whether this military response has mostly meant the horrible destruction of innocent life in pursuit of a goal no military can accomplish.
Perhaps this is a place to apply Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer: we need courage and wisdom, both to act in ways we can and to live within the limits of our finitude and our own persistent evil. That is not an easy route for leaders in the American State Department or the Defense Department to follow, but I am heartened in part knowing these concepts have taken root in the thinking of some in those offices.
Q: Last question … can you explain what the war between Israel and its neighbors tell us about the end of times and Christ’s return?
Jesus said no one but God the Father knows when he will return, not even Jesus himself (Matthew 24:36). So trying to guess on the basis of world events is basically telling Jesus we’re smart enough to figure out what even he didn’t know. That’s not exactly an act of submitting to Jesus’ Lordship, if you catch my drift.
When Jesus spoke about wars coming (Matthew 24:6), he didn’t say there would be more wars or worse wars. He was warning his followers the coming of God’s kingdom doesn’t mean an immediate end to the activity of evil in the world. In that very verse he said, “not yet.” Later he spoke of a coming war (Matthew 24:15–28), but that is clearly a specific, prophetic reference to the Roman siege and destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 68–70.
He then says his return is sometime after that siege, a time even he doesn’t know, so we can’t even comb his teaching or the Bible in general for clues. What we can know is what faithful servants do in their master’s seeming absence: serve faithfully. And we can know when the Lord returns, he returns for all his people, the living and the dead who are raised to life, to rule in a renewed creation full of God’s abundant life. Knowing that is better than knowing what events in the Middle East mean.
Tyler McKenzie serves as lead pastor at Northeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky.
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