The Daily Word of Righteousness

The True Israel, #4

Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall: (II Peter 1:10)

The Christian salvation is by promise, by faith, by election—never by the Law, by human works of righteousness, or by natural birth. God saves whom He will through the Lord Jesus Christ. God shows mercy to whomever He decides to show mercy.

Each of us is obligated to live as righteously as he can, being diligent to make his "calling and election sure." Even our desire and diligence to live righteously proceeds from Him who works all things according to His own pleasure, who works in us "both to will and to do of his good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13).

When God turns again to the nation of Israel, as will take place in the closing days of the present age, the principles of election, of obedience, of faith, of being grafted on Christ, of being born again, will apply in the same manner as they do today. Christ does not change.

And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: (Romans 11:26)

Every member of true Israel will be redeemed in the same manner, according to the same principles of election and faith. The members of true Israel always are redeemed according to the principles of the new covenant. The new covenant can be made only with the house of Israel, never with a Gentile. We must become part of the one house of Israel before we can partake of the new covenant.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: (Hebrews 8:10)

We Gentiles are an integral part of God's Israel. We are married to Christ; therefore we have become part of Israel.

When Asenath, the Egyptian, married Joseph she became an integral part of the nation of Israel. If she had not, Ephraim and Manasseh would have been part-Egyptian and part-Israelite. But Jacob claimed Ephraim and Manasseh as his own body and blood (Genesis 48:5). Asenath, and Ephraim and Manasseh, lost their identity as Egyptians.

Ephraim and Manasseh, born of an Egyptian mother, became an integral part of the twelve tribes of Israel.

The Body of Christ, the Christian Church, the Kingdom of God, the Wife of the Lamb, is true Israel. The Wife of the Lamb is the new Jerusalem, not the new Paris, or the new London, or the new New York. She is the new Jerusalem . The Wife of the Lamb is related nationally, politically, to Israel.

And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. (Galatians 3:29)

The Church of Christ is the "Israel," the "Zion" spoken of by the Spirit in the Hebrew Prophets (I Peter 1:12; Hebrews 12:22).

To be continued.