The Sojourner and the Olive Tree

Two claims often travel together. The first says, “The Torah was given to the Jews. It has nothing to do with believers from the nations.” The second goes further: “Israel rejected the Messiah, so God rejected Israel. The church has taken Israel’s place, and the Torah went out with the people it was given to.”

Both claims picture two tracks, one for Israel with the law and another for the church without it. It is a tidy picture.

The question is whether the Bible ever draws it.

For the Native and the Sojourner

The Torah answers the first claim itself. In the Passover chapter, right after the rule for a foreigner who wishes to keep the Passover, God said this:

Exodus 12:49 One Torah shall be for the native and for the sojourner who sojourns among you."

“One Torah.” There was not one Torah for Israel and a lighter one for the foreigner who joined them. Numbers 15 states the same principle, calls it “a statute (chuqqah חֻקָּה khook-kaw') forever throughout your generations,” and sums it up in these words: “as you are, so shall the sojourner be before the LORD.”

From the very beginning there were never two laws. There was one Torah, and a door into the community that lived by it.

Brought Near to What?

Paul describes that door to the believers in Ephesus, most of whom had been born pagans:

Ephesians 2:12-13 remember that you were at that kairos καιρός kahee-ros'(appointed-time) separate from Messiah, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the diatheke διαθήκη dee-ath-ay'-kay(covenants) of promise, having no elpis ἐλπίς el-pece'(hope) and without God in the world. But now in Messiah Yeshua you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Messiah.

Notice what they had been shut out of. Paul does not say “the church,” and he does not say “a new religion.” They had been “excluded from the commonwealth of Israel” and were “strangers to the diatheke(covenants) of promise.” Now, by the blood of Messiah, they “have been brought near.”

Brought near to what? To the commonwealth they had stood outside of. A few verses later Paul says it outright, as we saw in Chapter 11: “you are fellow citizens with the hagioi ἅγιοι hag'-ee-os(holy ones), and are of God’s household.” People who had been outside came in. They did not become a different people living under a different law.

The Graft

Paul has a picture for this, and it is a tree.

Romans 11:17-18 But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them and became a synkoinonos συγκοινωνός soong-koy-no-nos'(co-sharer, co-partaker) of the root and the richness of the olive tree, do not boast over the branches — but if you do boast, it is not you who bears the root, but the root bears you.

Anyone who has worked in an orchard knows how grafting is done. A cutting is taken from one tree, set into a cut in the stock of another, and the two are bound together. If the graft takes, the new branch begins to drink from the old roots. It flowers and bears fruit, but every drop of sap it lives on comes up from a root it did not grow.

Paul’s word for the grafted branch is synkoinonos (συγκοινωνός), a co-sharer, one who partakes together with others. The wild branch shares the same root and the same richness as the natural branches beside it. It does not become a separate tree, and it does not get a root system of its own with rules of its own. “It is not you who bears the root, but the root bears you.”

So when someone says that the Torah belongs to Israel, he is half right. Paul agrees that it is theirs:

Romans 9:4-5 who are Israelites, to whom belong the huiothesia(adoption, sonship) and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the nomos νόμος nom'-os(law) and the temple service and the promises, to whom belong the fathers, and from whom is Messiah according to the sarx σάρξ sarx(flesh) — He who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.

“The covenants and the giving of the nomos(law) and the temple service and the promises.” All of it belongs to Israel, yet the grafted branch draws from that same root. To say that the Torah is Israel’s does not mean it has nothing to do with the nations. It means that the nations, once grafted in, receive the same life from the same source.

Paul even gives the grafted branch a family name:

Galatians 3:29 And if you belong to Messiah, then you are Abraham's descendants, heirs according to promise.

They are Abraham’s descendants and heirs. They are not a second family set beside the first, but are counted in the first.

Not Replaced

What, then, of the second claim, that God has rejected Israel and the church has taken Israel’s place? Paul asked this very question, in these words, and answered it:

Romans 11:1-2 I say then — has God rejected His people? May it never be! For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew — or do you not know what the graphe γραφή graf-ay'(written-scripture) says in Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel?

“May it never be!” Later in the same chapter he writes:

Romans 11:25-29 For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of this mysterion μυστήριον moos-tay'-ree-on(mystery) — lest you be wise in your own estimation — that a partial hardening has come upon Israel until the pleroma πλήρωμα play'-ro-mah(fullness) of the nations has come in; and so all Israel will be saved, just as it is written: "The Deliverer will come from Zion; He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob; and this is My covenant with them, when I take away their sins." As regards the good news, they are enemies for your sake, but as regards the election, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers; for the charismata(grace-gifts) and the calling of God are ametameleta ἀμεταμέλητα am-et-am-el'-ay-tos(without-regret, soul-domain).

The closing word is ametameleta (ἀμεταμέλητα), without regret, beyond taking back; in Paul’s Greek it stands at the very front of the sentence. God does not revoke His gifts or His calling. There is a hardening, but it is partial, and it lasts “until.” There is no rejection.

Jeremiah had already tied this promise to something anyone can see every day:

Jeremiah 31:35-37 Thus said the LORD, who gives the sun for a light by day, the statutes (chuqqot חֻקָּה khook-kaw') of the moon and stars for a light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—the LORD of hosts (tzevaot צָבָא tsaw-baw') is His name: If these statutes (chuqqim חֹק khoke) depart from before Me, declares the LORD, then also the seed of Israel shall shabbat שַׁבָּת shab-bawth' from being a nation before Me all the days. Thus said the LORD: If the heavens above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, then also I will reject all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, declares the LORD.

As long as the sun rises and the moon keeps its course, Israel remains a nation before God. Anyone who looks up tonight will find the moon still there.

These words also stand in a telling place, right after Jeremiah 31:31-34, the promise of the new covenant, which we read in Chapter 12: “I will put My Torah within them, and on their heart I will write it.” The new covenant and the endurance of Israel are promised in the same chapter. The new covenant does not replace Israel, for it is made “with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.”

Where It All Ends

Yeshua’s last command to His disciples sent them to every nation and told them what to teach:

Matthew 28:19-20 Go therefore and make disciples of all the ethne(ethnic-groups, Gentiles), baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the hagio(holy) pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit), teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you all the days until the end of the age. Amen."

“All the ethne.” “All that I commanded you.” The nations were not given a shorter list.

The prophets saw the same direction. “Out of Zion shall go forth Torah,” said Isaiah, and the nations go up to learn it. Zechariah saw the nations going up year by year to keep the Feast of Booths. We read both passages in Chapter 11.

And at the end of all things, Yeshua made this promise to His apostles:

Matthew 19:28 And Yeshua said to them: "Truly I say to you, you who have followed Me — in the regeneration when the Son of Man will sit on the throne of His glory, you also shall sit upon twelve thrones, krino κρίνω kree'-no(judging) the twelve tribes of Israel.

The twelve tribes of Israel are still there to be judged. And when John saw the city that comes down from heaven, he read the names over its gates:

Revelation 21:12 Having a great and high wall, having twelve gates and at the gates twelve angels, and names inscribed — which are the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel.

Every person who ever walks into the New Jerusalem, from whatever nation, will pass through a gate bearing the name of a tribe of Israel. That is not the picture of a people that was replaced. It is the picture of one tree, one root, and one Torah, with a great many branches that were never there at the start.

Yet there is one more passage people turn to when all of this has been said. Paul says that a woman is free when her husband dies, and he says that we have died to the law. Does that not settle it? That passage, Romans 7, deserves a careful reading.