Seven Miracles - Pt 27

So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all. Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. So from that day on they made plans to put him to death. (John 11:47-53 ESV).

The third essential truth for us to understand is that there is a future for the people of Israel as a redeemed ethnic nation and as part of the single, blood-bought body of Christ. This is very controversial, and I won’t take time to give a long defense. I have often preached about it when dealing with Romans 11 (those sermons are available from the web site at www.gracerestoration.org). I do mention it here so that you may have some foundation for the remainder of the insights we’ll look at through the last sign of John’s Gospel. In our reading John says that Caiaphas “prophesied” (v. 51), that is, God spoke, saying “that Jesus would die for the nation.” The “nation,” the “ethnos,” is not just individual Jews only, but eventually the nation as a whole. The death of Jesus will someday result in a collective turning of the Jewish people to himself, so that the world will know that Israel as a people, as a nation, have been turned to Christ, her Messiah, and become part of the Christian church. I know this is a bit controversial and provocative. You may have heard or read me as I have asserted that no one can be saved unless they become a Jew. When we understand that everyone must believe on Jesus the Messiah and so be united to him we also come to the truth that each of these believers becomes the offspring of Abraham and thus inherit the promises made to the world through Abraham. I hope you have also hear or read me say that the Jewish nation cannot be saved unless it becomes part of the Christian church. That is to say only in Jesus Christ is there salvation, and those who are in him are one body, the church (cf. Ephesians 5:23; Colossians 1:18). As I read the Old Testament and the book of Romans, I can’t escape the truth that God’s covenant with ethnic Israel is irrevocable and will not be satisfied in its fullness until some future generation of ethnic Israel as a whole is saved through Jesus Christ. Their stumbling brings salvation to the Gentiles, and the salvation of the Gentiles will eventually bring Israel to Messiah. God’s promises will all be kept!