John R Mackay - The Jews in New Testament Prophecy

The whole New Testament is prophecy in the sense that the writers thereof were organs of the Holy Spirit. Whether, then, the writers narrated events that belonged to the remote past, or whether they expounded the significance of the Incarnation of the Son of God which had come to pass in their own day, or whether they predicted events that were destined to come to pass after they wrote, they spoke as the very mouth of God; in the largest sense of the term, they prophesied. But in popular speech, as sometimes in the Scriptures themselves, prophecy is taken in the sense of prediction, one of the several forms which prophecy, in the Biblical sense, may assume; and it is in that narrower and popular sense that we use the term prophecy here. For the present, indeed, it is proposed merely to draw attention to one single oracle of the New Testament which relates to the future of the Jews, and to what that future means for all mankind: ‘If the cutting away of them be the reconciliation of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead? (Rom. 11:15).

The Apostle Paul’s grief, because the Jews as a nation had not obtained the benefits of gratuitous justification through Jesus Christ, is, among mere men, unparalleled in the intensity. It fins expression in Romans 9:2, in which he goes the length of saying – I paraphrase his words – that he was on the point of wishing, if it were lawful or useful, which it was not, to suffer in the room and for the benefit of his kinsmen according to the flesh, if that could procure their eternal salvation. But he immediately goes on to point out that the Fall of the Jews, as a race, although grievous to himself, was a matter that was in entire harmony with the promise of salvation through the Messiah which had been given to Abraham and to his seed. The proof of this last averment is the subject-matter of chapters 9, 10, 11 of the Epistle to the Romans. Thus: in chapter 9 he shows in substance, as Calvin puts it, that ‘the promise was given to Abraham and his seed in such a manner, that the inheritance did not belong to every individual one of his seed without distinction; it hence follow that the defection of some does not prove that the covenant does not remain firm and valid.’ In chapter 10 he shows that the Old Testament Scriptures anticipated that, when Messiah actually came, the Jewish race as a whole should find in Him a stumbling-block, a rock of offence. In chapter 11 – and this is our present point – he reveals a thing made known to himself as a prophet, albeit it was a fresh revelation from God which merely made clearer the meaning of former revelations with reference to this very point, that in the latter days the Jews as a race should experience a sudden conversion to the faith of Jesus, the Son of God. He states this latter point, in the verse under consideration, in a manner fitted, even from the point of self-interest, to enlist the sympathies of non-Jewish Christians.

It does not seem open to question that the antecedent of the pronoun ‘them’, occurring twice in our verse, is the Jewish race, who, as a nation, had rejected the Christ of God; and that by ‘the world’ we should understand the non-Jewish races of mankind. Evidently connected with the unbelief of the Jewish nation respecting Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah is, as an occasion cause, the great benefit which has come, in virtue of a preached Gospel, to the Gentile world. When that unbelief is turned into faith, as it will one day inevitably be, with that faith will be connected an incomparably greater benefit to the non-Jewish races than which took its commencement in respect of us, sinners of the Gentiles, in the first century of our era. This is the thought.

How are we to conceive of the words of the Apostle here? What does ‘the reconciliation of the world’ mean? What does ‘life from the dead’ mean?

It seems to me that the Apostle is here stating an analogy. There are two pivotal events in the present and future experiences of the individual believer, be his nationality what it may, to wit, reconciliation, and resurrection from the dead at the last day. There is something analogous to that common eventual experience of all true believers in the predestined experience of the non-Jewish world, an experience which stands in direct relationship with two events in the history of the Jews, their fall, which dates from their rejection of Jesus of Nazareth, and their rise to faith in that same Jesus, which may take place at any moment in the future.

Let us briefly consider this parallelism. There is, to begin with, the reconciliation of the individual believer, a momentous event without doubt in the history of any soul. It is itself a passing from death to life, and in this sense may be virtually identified with Justification. And, beyond question, to the Apostle Paul Justification meant eternal salvation. It is based on that satisfaction to the law of God, broken by us, which the Lord Jesus effected by His incarnation and triumphant obedience unto death. But, at the same time, and not withstanding all that is wrapped up in reconciliation, the reconciled, as long as they are in this world, are largely sharers with Him who was a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. They are saved by hope, and, like Him, they have often much need, in order to their running their race with patience, that their eye should be upon the second member of those pivotal experiences of true believers, of which mention has been made – their glorious resurrection at the last day. In comparison with that felicity which is awaiting believers, their present spiritual enjoyments give little more than a hint, and, on that account, the Apostle John says that it does not, from our present experience, appear what that experience, when it comes, will mean.

With those two pivotal experiences of the true Christian the predestined experiences of the non-Jewish world, connected as they are, with the fall and rise of the Jews, have a close analogy. Yet only an analogy; and analogy is not identity. The world is, in Romans 11:15, said to have been reconciled to God, with the fall of the Jews as an occasioning cause. Yet not altogether reconciled in the full sense in which an individual soul, actually believing in Jesus, is reconciled unto God. But this reconciliation of the world has its analogy in what is so profoundly true of each individual who in the moment of faith passes from death to life. Not that the whole non-Jewish world is, in that profoundest sense, reconciled unto God. But (a) many of them are so reconciled, (b) God’s ambassadors are commissioned to go unto the whole world with a message of proffered reconciliation. Among earthly powers it is a sign that nations are in a state of war when ambassadors are recalled. It is a sign of restored peace when ambassadors resume their place at courts with which they were formerly connected. Similarly, the very fact that God sends His ambassadors now everywhere reveals the fact that in Him there is no fury. Of course, this takes place, to a certain extent, in reference to the Jews themselves, but as a whole they persist in scornful rejection of the embassage. In the case of the Gentiles, the general experience, so far as missionaries are concerned, has been otherwise than what we have to report with regard to the Jews, and, furthermore, up to the time that the Jews, as a nation, rejected the true Messiah, ambassadors were not, as now, unless in extraordinary cases, sent to Gentiles at all – the middle wall of partition had not then been cast down. Yet to an extent to which it has not been true in respect of the Jews, albeit that in their case, too, there has been a remnant in every age according to the election of grace – but to an extent to which it has not been true for the last (nearly) two thousand years in regard to the Jews, the Holy Spirit of God has, so far as the non-Jewish races are concerned, prevented (preceded) the preacher taking away the heart of stone and giving a good and honest heart, so that with the good seed of the kingdom falling into it, it has taken root and brought forth fruit to life eternal. In this wide sense of the term, we must reckon that the world, in contradistinction to the race of the Jews, has been reconciled unto God.

But Israel, according to the flesh, will not always be forgotten. It is not more certain that the sons of Jacob, who behaved so unnaturally towards Joseph, afterwards saw their own wickedness and folly, than it is certain that the Jews who, as a nation, rejected the true Messiah, when in the person of Jesus of Nazareth He came to them, will yet recognise their individual and national sin in their long-continued rejection of Jesus Christ, and will thereupon experience that the rest which they will find in Him is glorious. And this time of their reception may be quite at hand. When it takes place it will be ‘life from the dead’. To whom? Some say to the Jews themselves. Doubtless that is, so far, true; but the analogical structure of the passage makes us think that with the Jews are here meant to be included the Gentiles. It will just mean the glory of the latter days, when the glory of the Lord shall fill the whole earth. At the same time, if the point of view that is here adopted is correct, that life from the dead need not mean the literal resurrection of the body of any believer at the time spoken of. The argument is from analogy, not from identity. True Christians have already been experienced reconciliation in the profoundest sense, and the day is coming when they will experience life from the dead in a physical sense. But the world’s reconciliation is not quite identical with the reconciliation of the individual believer. Similarly, life from the dead for the Jewish and non-Jewish world will not be identical with the glory of the day of judgement for individual believers. But, as a spiritual blessing, this event connected, as by an occasional cause, with the reception of Israel according to the flesh, will be as much more above the blessings which mankind in general have had from the rejection of the Jews as the blessings of the last day are for the individual believer above those which became experientially his in the day in which he tasted that the Lord is gracious, and so passed from death unto life.

I am not here and now to discuss the quæstio vexata of the Second Coming, but it occurs to me to say (1) that Romans 11:15 does not encourage the interpretation which places the Second Advent before the conversion of the Jews; (2) that Peter in Acts 3:19, 20, 21 seems to place the Second Advent subsequent to the national conversion of Judah.

The conclusion of the matter is, that even self-interest, of a lawful, noble kind, suggests to us that we should make the spiritual interests of the Jews our own. We should long for, pray for, work for the conversion of the Jews. The best days that the earth is going to experience of spiritual blessings will not antecede their conversion. There is a duty upon Christians to plead with the Jews that they might be saved, for is it not through our mercy, that is, through the circumstance that we are in possession of the Gospel, that they will obtain mercy, and so be virtually themselves in possession of the Gospel? And, besides, the signs of the times seem to indicate that the day is not far off when missions to the Jews will prove the most fruitful of all missions.