Israel Needs Salvation

Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. (Romans 10:1)

Sometime last week, on this blog, I wrote that as we pray for Israel (and other nations), our greatest desire should be for their salvation. Whatever happens in the political and military realms, people are lost forever unless they come to know Yeshua the Messiah.

There are some who teach that as far as the Jewish people are concerned, this will not happen until we are all (or the vast majority) are back in the Land. They would refer to certain biblical references that give this impression. I am not going to take the time now to look at those references, but I will just comment that we need to be careful how we draw conclusions from the prophetic portions of Scripture. Not only is it difficult to accurately interpret these passages, unless they explicitly detail how they are to be applied, we are in danger of guessing God's will. Even if the Scriptures clearly state that the Jewish people will not experience salvation until we are back in the Land (which can't be the case, since I myself am a believer, not to mention the thousands of others like me) – but even if they did state that – those passages would not negate Yeshua's clear directive to bring the Gospel to all people including the Jewish people.

The writers of the New Testament (New Covenant) understood this. They, most of whom were Jewish themselves, loved their own people and longed for their welfare. They lived in a day, like ours, when a good portion of the Jewish people were living in the land, while the majority were living in the Diaspora. Note, however, that Paul's prayer, which I quoted above, is not that they would return to the Land, but for their salvation. As we read of how Paul lived out his calling, even though he knew that his role was to bring the good news of the Messiah's coming to the non-Jewish peoples, whenever he went to a new town, he would always go to the synagogue first. Even though his mission was to the Gentiles, he always sought out his own people, in order to bring the message of the Messiah to them.

With regard to the bringing of the Gospel to the Jewish people, there are some serious issues in our day that people such as Paul did not have to deal with, particularly centuries of Christian anti-Semitism. The bad relationship between Christians and Jews does need to be reckoned with. But however this is dealt with, the need of the Jewish people to hear about and receive Yeshua is the same now as it was in Paul's day. Any other conclusion is a direct contradiction of the Lord's commission to his people.