The Church: The Body and Bride of Christ

 The church is distinguished from Israel in many ways. One example would be that it is called the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:14-27; Ephesians 12:4). The church is also called the Bride of Christ (Ephesians 5:22-33), whereas unfaithful Israel was sometimes called an adulterous wife (Jeremiah 16:32; Hosea 1:2). The church has not yet been married, but is a virgin bride preparing for her first wedding. However Israel was ―the wife of Yahweh.‖ Because of her spiritual adultery he has temporarily set her aside. Yet Hosea makes clear God will one day take his wife, Israel, back to himself. The common belief that Israel has been permanently set aside by God can easily be refuted from many Scriptures in both the Old and New Testaments (Hosea; Ezekiel chapters 36 through 48; Romans 11). It is vitally important for the followers of Jesus in our age to understand the difference between Israel and the Church. Israel as a nation enjoys covenant relationships with God–other nations do not have such covenants with God. God’s covenants with the Church do not include a plot of land, a temple, an earthly inheritance, etc. They are an entirely different set of promises.

Grafted in Temporarily – In Israel’s Place:

In Romans 11, Paul, “the Apostle to the Gentiles” explains to Gentiles that Israel has not been rejected by God, but, because of their hardness, they have suffered temporary spiritual blindness, and that Gentile believers have been grafted in, in the place of some of them. Eventually, believing Israel will be grafted back in (Romans 11:17-25). The description of Gentile believers as wild olive branches grafted into the true olive tree suggests that Gentiles need to become more Jewish in their thinking and life styles as they grow spiritually. When we meet our Messiah and Savior face to face we shall discover that he is Jewish and was raised in Jewish culture and taught the Hebrew Scriptures. He was a devout and observant Jewish believer. Visits to Israel and cultivated friendships with Jewish people are well worth the effort in freeing us from our own ghetto mentalities and the pagan, idolatrous roots from which we have been freed as Gentiles.

Spiritual Heirs of the Covenants:

In Ephesians, chapters 2 and 3, the Apostle Paul reminds his Gentile readers that before Christ, they were excluded from the covenants given to Israel, but now have been brought near through Christ’s blood. The barrier between Jews and Gentiles has been abolished. Both have been reconciled by the Cross, and both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, Gentile believers in Christ have become fellow citizens with Israel. In Romans 11, Paul shows that the Church has not replaced Israel. “I ask then: Did God reject his people? By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin” (Romans 11:1). The institution of the Church was not meant by God to replace the earlier institution of Israel as his “chosen people.” In the next verse (v.2), he stated plainly, “God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew.” And he used the well-known example of Elijah, when he thought he was the only believer, and the Lord told him that he had seven thousand other true believers. Thus, Paul argues that there were many true believers in Israel. “So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace” (Romans 11:5). After explaining that the others, who did not believe that Jesus was Messiah, had been hardened and blinded temporarily, he asks again, “Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery?” And then he answers emphatically, “Not at all! Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious” (Romans 11:11)

One New Man

The church plus Israel is the “one new man” that God is building. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, 16and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. – Ephesians 2:14-16 The late Ray Stedman, former pastor of Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, CA wrote, Running all through Scripture from Genesis to Revelation, and especially in Genesis and Revelation, is the great theme that God’s desire is that he may dwell amidst man. Man himself is to be the dwelling place of God. This is what our Lord and the Apostle Paul speak of when they speak of a new creation, a new man, which God is forming at this present hour. Just as there is an old man symbolized by Adam and all his descendants, so there is a new man, the true Adam, symbolized or figured in Jesus Christ and all his spiritual sons and daughters. That is the new creation. Just as the old creation, humanity itself, is made up of body, soul and spirit, so in the new heavens and the new earth there will be a new humanity to inhabit, develop and fulfill it, body, soul and spirit. This seems to be, then, the place where we can bring together the apparent conflicting destinies of Israel as a nation and the Church as The Bride of Christ. In our human bodies we have an outward physical part of our life, i.e., the body. That seems to be the place that Israel occupies in the new man, the new humanity. Israel’s destiny is earthly. It will reign on the earth. It will govern the earth. It will be involved with the blessing and the fruitfulness of the earth as Paul so beautifully describes in the 11th chapter of Romans. But linked with the body very closely in our humanity is the soul, our inner life, our minds, our emotions, our wills, this inner functioning of which we are so aware and which links us to so much of the universe of God in terms of feeling and thinking, etc. Now, that is the Church. The special dwelling place of God is in the soul of man, and the Church is called to fulfill that, linked together with Israel as the soul in our humanity is linked with the body. And the spirit, which is the third part of man necessary to his existence is, of course, God himself. God is a spirit, and in the new humanity, God fulfills that central control place. So, you have a whole new creation in a whole new world operating on totally different principles that probably are the exact reverse of the principles on which the world functions today. One of the great principles with which science has to deal is the so called second law of thermodynamics, the law of entropy, the idea that everything is running down, that no matter how good things are they do not eventually get better. They get worse. They fall apart. They phase out. They lose energy. That law is universal. In the new heavens and the new earth, it will be exactly the opposite. There things will start and you will not be able to stop them from developing. They get better and better, and richer and sweeter and fuller and more exciting. We are awed when we look at the vastness of the cosmos in which we now live, but everywhere we look we see the evidence of sin and decay, the futility that is present in the universe today. But according to the promises of Scripture, there is coming a new heaven and a new earth. This is why for believers the apostles and the prophets try to describe what lies beyond death, but they can only talk about what is not going to be there, no sorrow, no tears, no separations, no weakness, no fear, no war, no death, and just imply the opposite. This is the fulfillment of the dreams and hopes of mankind.10

Not to Antagonize Israel

Members of the Church must not feel superior to the Jewish people, since the time will come that Israel will return to the Lord. This too is part of the mystery once hidden, but now revealed: I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. – Romans 11:25 Now that we see how God looks at both Israel and the Church, we understand that the Church will have a definite period of existence until the End Times, when Israel will return to a right relationship with the Lord. The next chapter explains the various stages of Church history as they are revealed in the Book of Revelation.