How can we describe the relationship between the Church and Israel? One model I have found helpful is to think of the Church as “Israel’s commonwealth.”
In Ephesians 2:12, Paul describes Gentiles who do not follow Yeshua as “aliens from the politeia of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise.” By contrast, Yeshua-believing Gentiles are “no longer strangers and aliens” but “citizens with the saints” (Eph 2:19). Reading the two verses together, it appears that Paul viewed Gentiles who followed Yeshua as citizens of the “politeia of Israel.”
But what exactly is meant by the Greek word politeia in this context? Given the LXX (Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) language and imagery in Ephesians 2, it is reasonable to assume that Paul has a biblical concept in mind. The term politeia modifies “Israel.” Gentiles outside the politeia are “aliens” and “strangers to the covenants of promise,” without “God” and “far off ” (a possible allusion to LXX Isa 57:19). Gentiles inside the politeia are “fellow citizens with the saints.” Against this backdrop, the expression “politeia of Israel” could be translated “citizenship of Israel” (NET), “community of Israel” (REB), “national life of Israel” (CJB), or “commonwealth of Israel” (ESV, NRSV).
If the Church is going to work with God on his ultimate plan for Israel and the nations, she needs to hear anew God’s voice concerning Israel’s everlasting election. This is not just acknowledging that God loves the Jewish people just like any other nation, or that God has a sentimental attachment to her for historical reasons. It will mean embracing Israel’s continuing status as God’s everlasting beloved.
Wesleyan theologian R. Kendall Soulen senses this need, and states it well:
God—by his election of the Jewish people—has entered into an economy of mutual blessing with the human family that also places the human family in an economy of mutual blessing with one another, as Jew and as Gentile. The church does not replace the Jewish people, nor does it erase the distinction between Gentile and Jew. Instead, it embodies a promissory way of being Jew and Gentile together that— according to Christian understanding— is a foretaste of the reign of God.
Does God have a game plan whereby he brings history to a consummation and brings Jews and Gentiles together? I believe so. I am convinced that God will bring Israel and the Church to distinct blessings through the same Messiah.
The Scriptures seem to indicate that Messianic Jews have a covenantal responsibility to observe Passover but that Gentile Christians do not (Exod 12:43–49; Matt 26:17–19; Acts 15; 21:17–26; 1 Cor 7:17–20). This said, the Gentile wing of the ekklesia early on saw value in celebrating a Gentile form of Passover that centuries later became known as Easter. I would like to make several comments about this early Christian tradition, which for lack of a better term I will call “Gentile Passover.”
Second-century Gentile churches followed two calendar traditions concerning Gentile Passover. It appears that almost all of the churches in Asia (where Paul devoted much of his ministry [1 Cor 16:8, 19; Acts 19:10, 26]), as well as churches in Asia Minor, Cilicia, Syria, and Mesopotamia, observed Gentile Passover in accordance with the Jewish festival calendar, on the fourteenth day of the first month, the month of Nissan (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.23.1; 5:24:1; Athanasius, Syn. 2; Epiphanius, Pan. 70.9.8-9; 10.3–5; Theodoret, Haer. Fab. Comp. 3.4). Far from being a minor schismatic group, Christians who celebrated Gentile Passover on Nissan 14 stretched across a vast geographic region. Many of these Gentile Christians celebrated with Jews, and the similarity of their observance to Jewish Passover probably varied from community to community.
By contrast, the churches in the West—in Italy, Greece (including Corinth), Spain, Britain, Gaul (which included the present-day area of France, Belgium, the south Netherlands, south-west Germany)— observed Gentile Passover on the Sunday following Nissan 14 (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.23.1; Vit. Const. 3.18). These churches retained the name Pascha (Passover), but they moved away from celebrating Passover on the same day as Jews, with Jews, and in the manner of Jews.
There are two classic models for describing the relationship between the ecclesia (church) and Israel. Supersessionism, a view advocated by many of the early church fathers, maintains that the ecclesia is the new spiritual Israel and replaces carnal Israel, the Jewish nation, as the people of God. For centuries, the negative justification for this displacement was that, by rejecting Yeshua, the Jewish people violated their covenant with God, which was conditioned on faithfulness. Texts in Scripture that refer to God’s promises to Israel and Israel’s eschatological role are, therefore, now to be interpreted allegorically in reference to the ecclesia. This ecclesiological perspective has been termed “punitive supersessionism.”
In recent years, a less negative justification for supersessionism has become widespread in New Testament studies: All the promises to the Jewish people are fulfilled exclusively in Israel’s representative, the Messiah Jesus, the quintessential Jew. As N. T. Wright states, “Paul explicitly and consciously transfers blessings from Israel according to the flesh to the Messiah, and thence to the church . . . Gal. 2–4 argues precisely that the worldwide believing church is the true family of Abraham, and that those who remain as ‘Israel according to the flesh’ are in fact the theological descendants of Hagar and Ishmael, with no title to the promises.” This outlook has been termed “economic supersessionism.”