UNDYING LOVE & DISCIPLESHIP
The God-Israel Broken Relationship
…and how it feeds Christian humility and discipleship
Broken has never meant beyond retrieval. Fallen has never meant beyond restoration. Unless we are so bogged down in the here and now that we have truly lost the prophetic and apostolic habit of firmly hanging on to what comes next, to the still unfulfilled promises of God, and we have sunk into some sort of tragic myopia. We all agree the prophets and the apostles had a long-range view that obviously sustained them in their countless trials. But what exactly had won their gaze so much and so well that made them into the excellent disciple makers that they proved to be? These men were full of practical advice and not some age-dependent mystics or philosophers. So, what was their secret, their focal point that produced both character, wisdom, power and… undying love?
I believe they truly considered the relationship between God and Israel as the personal journal of God Himself and they were amazed at His character and faithfulness. The Tanakh tells the story of a turbulent love relationship but unlike any other literature we have here, all the genres blended into one book. We have, in the Torah, the prose narrative of the betrothal at Sinai, the saddening legal facts of the unfaithful bride in the annals of the Ketubbim and… the tear-inducing epistolary and poetic display of God’s deepest pain in the Neviim.
The prophets and the apostles had access to that pain, they embraced it as their own, they felt it, and contrary to any intuition it obviously sustained them. It is counterintuitive and paradoxical indeed that pain could sustain, and build-up character. Unless that pain is the expression of undying love… the only true sustenance.
Thus says the Lord:
Where is the bill of divorce
with which I dismissed your mother?
Or to which of my creditors have I sold you?
It was for your sins you were sold,
for your rebellions your mother was dismissed. [1]
Sure. They were sold indeed, they were dismissed and sent into Galut (exile), away from Haaretz (the Promised Land), but hey, where are the divorce papers? They are nowhere to be found.
And today the Lord has accepted your agreement:
you will be a people specially his own, as He promised you, you will keep all his commandments.[2]
In view of what we know today these words of Moses can only be construed as prophetic. I mean the “you will keep all His commandments” part. Look at the structure here. The being-His-special-people part is all set. YHWH promised that much, and He can deliver on His promises, right? Like, always and forever, right? It’s the keeping-all-His-promises part that truly sounds like a prophecy, obviously contingent on God delivering on His promise to always consider this nation a special nation and bring them to ultimate faithfulness. That tension is fully resolved in the books of the Prophets – they provide and disclose the how for the what. They describe how the Lord will bring them to keeping the commandments. All of them. Ok, how? Well, it has never been rocket science– by giving them a new heart.
All this outbids, in terms of drama, even the most elaborated pieces of XIX literature (c. tragic/romantic pieces of literature). A story of covenantal betrothal, and then betrayal, fury and jealousy, faithfulness, pain and… undying love. Nobody could say the drama of God and Israel is bigger than life because, well, it is real life, and life is always bigger than fiction.
“But,” the modern believer would ask, “what is the ‘take-away’ from all this?” Well, I am tempted to respond “none!” and force our so easily distracted minds back to a slow, all-penetrating reading of the Scriptures, the kind that could, on its own, fix our hectic thinking and slowness of heart. I wouldn’t call it a “take-away”, that’s a fast-food mentality, I would call it the “life-changing moral of the story.” But how are you sure there is a life-changing moral in all this for modern Christians? How do you know there is a discipling effect from this convoluted, at times exhausting and even repulsive love story? Because the apostle Paul says so. The apostle exhorts believers not to live for themselves but for their neighbor:
We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, “The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.” For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.
May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.[3]
“Nice,” you might say, “but how and why?”
For I tell you that Christ became a servant (slave) to the circumcised (Jews) to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy (to them).[4]
In the next five verses, we see four quotes to support the injunction and explain Christ’s motivation to become a slave to the Jews:
As it is written,
”Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles,
and sing to your name.”[5]
And again it is said,
“Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.”[6]
And again,
“Praise the LORD, all you Gentiles,
and let all the peoples extol him.”[7]
And again Isaiah says,
“The root of Jesse will come,
even he who arises to rule the Gentiles;
in him will the Gentiles hope.”[8]
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.[9]
When was the last time you heard someone exhort Christians to serve one another by pointing to the fact that Jesus Christ placed Himself at the service of the Jews, and then back up what they’ve said with four quotes from the Old Testament that speak of the mercy and faithfulness of God to the Jewish people? Do we appreciate the logic of the Apostle Paul and his choice of supporting examples and texts? At the very end of his long and so important letter, Paul exhorts the believers in Rome to lead a Christian life of mutual devotion, in which the stronger in faith place themselves at the service of the weaker and seek to help and strengthen them. He chooses to build his argument on the commitment of Christ to the Jews because of the promises made to their forefathers.
Again, when was the last time you have heard someone build up his case for Christian love and devotion to the Body on the basis of Christ’s unwavering faithfulness to the Jew? Like in “guys, be faithful and long-suffering to one another because Christ is forever long-suffering and faithful to the Jews”? Personally, I have never heard that being preached in the churches of my nation. A nation that has even saved 50,000 Jews in the Holocaust.
We all have to do better, for example, do discipleship the apostolic way. Like in Romans 15. The time gets shorter. We might be the generation to close the historical loop and return to the root. History tells us the Roman Church did not hear and grasp the logic of Paul. Shall we?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
When the Lord says He has loved Israel with an “everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31.3) do you understand the meaning of the word “everlasting”?
How could you avoid turning into a weary church-goer? How did Paul avoid weariness according to Romans 15?
Would you reconsider (this week? today?) some church relationship in light of God’s eternal love of Israel?
Nikolai is a translator, a teacher, and loves simple fellowship. He authored the book Eschatology in the Psalms, which is available for purchase online or for free on THE EMMAUS TABLE app.