Is Israel and the church the same thing? Does God still have a plan for Israel?

Secondly, that God's ways with Israel have only ended for a time. Later on, in a day still future, they will be resumed, and the glorious promises made to that favoured nation be literally fulfilled. Israel has been side-tracked, as it were, while the church occupies the rails. When the church has been transferred to heaven, Israel will again be brought out upon the main line of God's dealings.

267 All these things, and the way in which they will have their accomplishment, are revealed in detail in the Scriptures. Although the church and the people of Israel are each respectively the centres of the heavenly glory and of the earthly glory, in their connection with Christ, and although they cast on each other a mutual brightness of blessedness and joy, yet each of them has a sphere which is proper to itself, and in which all things are subordinate to it. With respect to the church, angels, principalities, and powers, with all that belongs to heaven - the domain of its glory; with respect to the people of Israel, the nations of the earth.

Rom. 11:25-32. But there is another reason more express: blindness in part is happened to Israel, but this is until the fullness of the Gentiles shall have come in; and so all Israel, instead of being rejected, shall be saved. It is the future national restoration and salvation of Israel. They shall be restored to their own olive, to their place in the line of God's testimony and promises on earth: for heavenly hopes do not enter into view here. Instead of being cast off, Israel, as such, are destined to enjoy all that was promised them. The Deliverer shall come out of Sion; and God will take away their sins. Plainly it is the Jews, the literal Jews, who are here meant; for they are distinguished from, and contrasted with, the Gentiles all through the chapter from verse 11, and very clearly in this verse 26. "The fullness of the Gentiles" means the complete number of such Gentiles as believe — all the Gentiles who share in the blessing during Israel's practical obdurateness. Israel are enemies on account of the Gentiles now as regards the gospel, but as regards election, beloved on account of the fathers. This is in no wise applicable to what people call the spiritual Israel, for they are friends as regards the gospel, and beloved of God the Father, not on account of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Understand Israel after the flesh, and all is simple: they have made good their enmity as regards the Gospel, and God will not fail to prove in due time that they are beloved on the fathers' account. For the gifts and calling of God are not subject to repentance: they are indefeasible. The election mentioned in Rom. 11:28 is that of the beloved people Israel. It must not be confounded with the election according to grace, whereby, in the interval of Israel's rejection, the called Jews and Gentiles are taken for heaven. The first is a national election, the second an individual election, which sets us in far superior blessing, since its object and result are to introduce us into heaven. In fact, the believing Jews, who abode on the olive-tree, share in these two elections.

The general doctrine of a remnant in Israel is clearly stated in the epistle to the Romans; an elect remnant spared, who, not continuing in unbelief, will be graffed in again, and that into their own olive tree; not into the Christian assembly, which was not their own olive tree - they had never been broken out of that, nor had the believing branches continued in it. There is an elect remnant of Israel which shall be brought to believe, and be graffed into their own olive tree, and become the nation - the "all Israel." There are many passages in the prophets, as Joel 2, Zechariah 9, to which it may suffice thus to refer.

But He is also our peace as between Jew and Gentile, for He has made both one, broken down the middle wall of partition between us, and abolished in His flesh the enmity, the law of commandments in ordinances, that He might form the two in Himself into one new man, making peace. It is not the Jew degraded to a Gentile level, nor the Gentile exalted to the level of the Jew, but both in Christ, not in the flesh at all, where only these distinctions exist. The Jew no longer a Jew, and the Gentile no longer a Gentile, but both formed into one new man, where peace must reign, for it takes two to quarrel.

There we have another fact, not only that they are made nigh to God but both made one — Jew and Gentile that now believe made one body, as is explained more fully afterwards, the middle wall of partition broken down, the enmity abolished in His flesh, "even the law of commandments contained in ordinances, for to make in himself of twain one new man." It is not merely a new life, but Christ and the church form one new man, a condition of things that had never before existed — " one new man, so making peace; and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: and came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh." Thus the Gentiles had been dispensationally afar off, the Jews were comparatively nigh; but now they were taken completely out of their old condition. It is not, you will observe, that the Gentiles who believed are raised up to the level of the privileges which the Jews used to possess, but that there is now "one new man," wherein is neither Jew nor Gentile. Both, consequently, quit their previous states for a new and most blessed position of oneness in Christ, which had never existed before save in the counsels of God.

God had raised a wall between the Jews and the Gentiles, which in Christ's death was broken down for believers, "to make in himself of twain one new man." Eph. 2:14. "There is neither Jew nor Greek . . . . for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." Gal. 3:28. This does not touch unbelieving Jews and Gentiles, who are kept separate in God's present and future dealings.

The contrariety of the state of Israel as regarded in these chapters, to what has been adduced from other parts of Scripture which relate to the restored prosperity of the nation, having now been shown, I return more immediately to the verse before us. Israel has stumbled, but not to his fall. On the contrary, the actual condition of the nation is a part of the dealings of Jehovah with them as His people. They had provoked Him to anger with that which was not God; and he would move them to jealousy with that which was not a people (Deut. 32:21). The present dispensation of Gentile grace stands thus in a direct relation to the eventual purposes of God with respect to Israel nationally. It intervenes, as a distinct manifestation of Divine grace and wisdom, between the rejection of the nation and its restitution in the day of the Lord. Nothing is more important, when considering the general subject of God's dispensational government, than to remember that no promise of God, once addressed specifically to an expressed object, can ever fail of its exact accomplishment. We have to bear in mind that the promises proceed out of the mouth of the same wise God, who displays the riches of His wisdom in the varied dispensations of His will to the praise of His own glory as the God of truth. Intermediate events, while they bring into fuller and richer display the glory of the Divine wisdom, instead of frustrating, will be found in the end to have conduced to the fulfilment of anterior promise. Now, as we have seen in the ninth chapter of this Epistle (ch. 9:4), there are promises which belong to Israel. They are made to them nationally, and until the time shall arrive for the fulfilment to the nation of God's choice of the promises expressly made to it, those promises remain in reserve.

THOUGH ISRAEL, as a nation, has been set aside for a time, they have not been cast away for ever. Some Gentiles in the conceit of their hearts thought so when Paul was writing, and not a few think so today. But God forbid that it should be so, for they are His people foreknown for a special object, and in that event His object would be defeated. The Apostle immediately cites his own case as proof. Mercy had been shown to him and he was an Israelite, a sample of that remnant which God was then calling, and a pledge of the ultimate restoration of his nation. God is still today calling a remnant just as one was preserved in the days of Elijah.

What about the promises made to the Jews, that is, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? That the Jews had broken the law, and were guilty, was plain enough - guilty beyond the Gentiles: their mouth was stopped. But God's mouth had spoken: what about His promises? "No difference" could not be said there; faithfulness could not be wanting on His part. This subject is now treated: how to reconcile the "no difference" doctrine, and special promises on God's part to the Jews. Chapter 9, beginning with the deepest expression of heart interest in God's people, of whom he was himself one, treats the question of Israel's hereditary claim, and the admission of the Gentiles to blessing. Chapter 10 tells how Israel lost the blessing, and the plain testimonies of the prophets as to it. Chapter 11 presents the question: is their present rejection final? and shows it is not, and that they will be re-established as a nation.