Israel Is Our Apostate Brother

Introduction
In these incendiary days, it’s hard to get people to take their own positions seriously. And what I want to talk about is the virtue of natural affection, the Jews, and the nation of Israel. 

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of discussions surrounding the virtue of natural affection, love of family, community, and nation. The Greek word for this is “storge,” and the Bible uses its opposite twice to describe the depravity of man: “without natural affection” (Rom. 1:31, 2 Tim. 3:3). As Paul says, “But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel” (1 Tim. 5:8). In other words, there is a natural instinct to care for those nearest to you that even unbelievers ordinarily understand. 

This natural, instinctive love of families, parents, children, and siblings is part of the foundation for broader societal cohesion. Through covenant bonds in marriage, church, and nation, natural affection is oriented toward higher goods and loves like human friendship, as well as selfless love of enemies, and ultimately God Himself. 

Ruth the Moabitess famously expresses this natural affection bound by God’s covenant with Israel: “for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried” (Ruth 1:16-17). 

However, in some of these conversations, the discussion has turned strangely bitter and dark, or as some of us have taken to calling it “dank.”

Our Older Covenant Brother
If we are to take the virtue of “natural affection” seriously, it really must be part of our conversation surrounding our relationship to Israel and the Jews because the Bible teaches that the Jews are our apostate older brother. 

In the parable of the Prodigal Son, the story’s glorious ending is cut off in something of a cliff hanger with the stubborn refusal of the older brother to enter into the celebration. While there are any number of applications, one of the clear points of the parable is that the Gentiles are the younger prodigal brother who wasted God’s gifts in riotous, sinful living for centuries, but they are coming into the Messiah’s kingdom ahead of the Jews, who are offended by God’s mercy and grace. “And he was angry, and would not go in: therefore came his father out, and intreated him…” (Lk. 15:28). 

In the other parable with two sons, Jesus explicitly ties it to sinners and the Jewish leaders: one son says he will obey but then doesn’t; the other son says he will not obey but then changes his mind and obeys. And Jesus explains the parable, “Verily I say unto you, that the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him” (Mt. 21:31-32). 

Romans 11 explains this situation the same way: “As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sakes. For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance” (Rom. 11:28-29). The Jews are enemies concerning the gospel, but they are beloved because of the fathers – which fathers? Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And those fathers have now become our fathers in the covenant. 

Romans 11 says the Jews are natural branches that were cut out of the covenant vine. Believing Gentiles are wild branches that have been grafted into the vine. This image is describing something like adoption. God’s natural son, unbelieving Israel, is currently estranged and disinherited, and His adopted son, the Gentile Nations, have been welcomed home by faith in Jesus Christ. This really is amazing grace.

But Paul says there is no room for boasting against those branches that were cut out, since God can still remove fruitless, arrogant Gentile branches, and he says that those apostate branches are still “natural” branches. Don’t miss that word “natural.” And Paul underlines his point explaining that when Jews believe in Christ, they take to the vine far more easily: “For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?” (Rom. 11:24, my emphasis)

Putting this Together
So the Bible teaches that the Jews are our apostate older brother. Imagine your own older brother grows up in the faith and apostatizes. Apostacy means someone has fallen away or rejected a faith formerly embraced. In this case, we are referring to the covenant of God, which the Jews were members of until they rejected Jesus as the Messiah. 

Obviously, depending on any number of details, you may or may not get along with your estranged, apostate brother, but do you owe your apostate brother anything at all? Is your apostate brother just another random human being in the world? Or does the fact that you are biologically and naturally related still matter even if the relationship is severely strained? The question answers itself. 

Even unbelievers know the answer to that question.

To whatever extent it is possible to honor that natural, familial bond, a Christian ought to seek to do so. This may be as superficial as attending birthday parties, or sending anniversary cards, or civil family gatherings at holidays. Of course this also means certain careful distinctions. Just because you are brothers, doesn’t mean you go along with whatever he says or does. Sometimes it will be necessary to strongly disagree or rebuke or even resist, and there may be periods of silence or no contact at all. Jesus says that loyalty to Him will sometimes seem like hatred of family (Lk. 14:26). And yet, he is your brother for all that. If he were destitute, you would want to do anything you could to provide for him (1 Tim. 5:8). Your heart breaks for the broken fellowship. You pray for his restoration and salvation constantly, and you regularly think about how you might be used by God toward that end.

And so it is with Israel and the Jews. They are enemies for the sake of the gospel, but they are beloved for the sake of our fathers. And because of the virtue of natural affection, we owe them a kind of care that is different from all the other nations of the earth. They are lost; they are apostate apart from faith in Christ. And so like Paul, our hearts should break for them. They were Paul’s kinsmen according to the flesh, and he insists that they are our “kinsmen” according to the old covenant. 

Samuel Rutherford was no dispensationalist, but he understood the situation well, changing the image to that of an older sister: “I could stay out of heaven many years to see that victorious triumphing Lord act that prophesied part of His soul conquering love, in taking into His kingdom the greater Sister, the Jews… Oh, what joy and what glory would I judge it, if my heaven should be suspended till I might have left to run on foot to be a witness of that marriage-glory, and see Christ put on the glory of His last-married bride, and His last marriage love on earth; when He shall enlarge His love-bed, and set it upon the top of the mountains, and take in the Elder Sister, the Jews, and the fulness of the Gentiles!”

Conclusion
Of course there are Jews we must resist and rebuke, and there are no doubt Israeli policies that must likewise be rejected. A bunch of these apostate brothers have run pell-mell into all kinds of pagan and progressive wickedness, and many others are still trying to earn their righteousness by the law and standing like the older brother, fussing outside the party. And if we run the analogy out a little further, it seems that our Father got tired of our older brother’s insolence and kicked him off the family estate for about two thousand years. And now (apparently), since 1948, the Father has allowed him to move back on to the estate. It seems like a perfectly reasonable question to ask how well it can go for him while he is still at odds with our Father.

At the same time, to whatever extent he’s fighting off bad guys that want to destroy all of us, I don’t see any problem thanking him for that. And when some of them win Nobel Peace prizes for breakthroughs in medical science and technology, we ought to acknowledge that and honor them. When some of them work alongside us for the end of sexual confusions and perversions and celebrate natural marriage and the blessing of children, we can and should appreciate that.

But none of this means that Israel should be free to manipulate American domestic or foreign policies (to whatever extent that may or may not be happening). Natural affection means that Christian Americans should be committed to a kind of biblically framed America-first policy, just as a faithful Christian father cares for the needs of his own household first. A man who does not do this is disqualified from pastoral office: for how can a man rule in the church of God who does not rule his own household well (1 Tim. 3:5)? And how can we be very helpful to any other nations, if we do not have our own nation in order?

But just as an estranged brother still bears the family resemblance and even acts in some ways reminiscent of our family culture, out of love and honor for your parents, you would do anything you could to show care and kindness that doesn’t compromise the gospel or other duties, so too, we ought to think, pray, and act, toward our apostate older brother so that he might come home to our Father.