Ted Cruz Wants to Be Blessed, and You Should Too
In classic Bill Murray style, Israel and Iran exchanged pleasantries and explosive ordinance… again. And though even a flu season in Israel sends American Christians to the deeper regions of Ezekiel and a Zechariah, the best part about this conflict came when Sen. Ted Cruz got into a spat with Tucker Carlson during an interview, sending a good chunk of the rest of the country examining the Scriptures to see whether these things were so (Acts 17:11)
So regardless of whether you agree with President Donald Trump’s feeding the Ayatollah a healthy dose of B2 bombers or not is beside the point of this blog. We can discuss that elsewhere. But boy howdy, if two of the biggest voices on the planet are attempting to justify their foreign policy positions with the Bible, count me in.
The setup
“Growing up, in Sunday school,” Cruz told Carlson last week, “I was taught from the Bible, those who bless Israel will be blessed and those who curse Israel will be cursed. And from my perspective, I want to be on the blessing side of things.”
When pressed for clarity, Cruz stated that he didn’t necessarily mean the government but the nation of Israel, but he couldn’t recall book, chapter, and verse. That’s fair on one hand as I can’t remember every single referent for every single belief I hold, but when you’re talking about what seems to be core for Cruz and many dispensational Christians, it would help to have that fleshed out a bit more.
In the spirit of giving Cruz a nudge toward what he’s looking for, here’s what God tells Abraham while he was still Abram in Genesis 12:1-3:
“Go forth from your country,
And from your relatives
And from your father’s house,
To the land which I will show you;
And I will make you a great nation,
And I will bless you,
And make your name great;
And so you shall be a blessing;
And I will bless those who bless you,
And the one who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
Interestingly, God only tells Abram that he will bless/curse those who bless/curse Abram, not anyone else. However, as God is a covenantal God, that blessing has carried down to his children (Genesis 27:1-29; Numbers 24:1-9).
The question then becomes, who are Abraham’s children who should be blessed?
In with the Old
Immediately in that blessing, we get hints that Abraham’s blessing would be a global phenomenon. All of the families of the earth will be blessed, not just his lineage (Genesis 12:3). We get a further glimpse into that reality when a “mixed multitude” joined Israel in its Exodus from Egypt (Exodus 12:38). All signs point to those non-Hebrews joining Abraham’s descendents and assimilating.
But what pop dispensationalists often do is bifurcate the Old and New Testaments as entirely different programs. Neither set of ancient books give you that option.
For example, when Matthew 2:15 tells the story of Jesus and His family returning from Egypt after Herod’s death, the Gospel quotes Hosea 11:1 as having been fulfilled, which is directly about the old nation of Israel. When Christ teaches that He is the true vine in John 15:5, good, Bible-believing Jews would have understood His reference to the likes of Isaiah 5:1–7; Jereremiah 6:9; and Hosea 10:1, wherein God refers to Israel as a vine.
Ergo, in this sense, the Lord Jesus Christ is the true Israel.
Out with the New
Jesus has a barnburner of a conversation with unbelieving Jews in John 8. After noting that they are indeed descendents of Abraham (v36), their covenantal father is neither Abraham nor God, but the devil himself (v44). Instead, He switches the verbiage from plain old descendants to “children” of Abraham doing the deeds of Abraham, mainly believing (v39).
And the New Testament doesn’t stop there.
The true Jew is not the one who merely has his flesh circumcised, but one who has had his heart circumcised (Romans 2:28-29). The promise belongs to Abraham’s descendants of faith (Romans 4:16-17). And not all who are descended from Israel are covenantally Israel (Romans 9:6).
But let’s just rattle off a few more texts to hammer home the point.
“And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.” - Galatians 3:29
“For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And those who will walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.” - Galatians 6:15-16
“For we are the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.” - Philippians 3:3
"And He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith.” - Acts 15:9
And for good measure, let’s see what the earliest Christians had to say.
“Let us see if this people [the Christians] are the heirs, or if it is the former [the Jews]. Let us see if the covenant belongs to us or to them.” - Epistle of Barnabas (~AD 70-130)
“For the true spiritual Israel, and descendants of Judah, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham (who in uncircumcision was approved of and blessed by God on accounts of his faith, and called the father of many nations), are we who have been led to God through this crucified Christ.” - Justin Martyr (~AD 160)
“God… introduces Abraham to the kingdom of heaven, through Jesus Christ. He also introduces Abraham’s seed, that is, the church. For upon it were conferred the adoption and the inheritance promised to Abraham.” - Irenaeus (~AD 180)
While early Church history is not the final authority by any stretch, the universal belief merely echoes the entirety of the New Testament. The Church in Christ is the fulfillment of ethnic Israel, meaning that the current incarnation of the nation of Israel is covenantally and eschatologically insignificant. You can rest easy that whatever is happening over there isn’t the fulfillment of an obscure prophecy, just like the last conflict wasn’t and just like the next conflict won’t be.
And while you are free to support the current nation of Israel as a geopolitical ally to the United States, you are not theologically and biblically bound to smile and nod to whatever Benjamin Netanyahu feels like doing this week. You really can evaluate Israel’s policy on its own merits without fear of bringing down God’s curse on your head.
Why? Because you, Christian, are the true Israel - the Israel of faith in God and His Christ.
Of course, that doesn’t diminish the fact that we are for Jews in the same sense that we are for the Canadians, Rwandans, Kurds, and Syrians. We want them to become true Jews in the Romans 2 sense, the kind that have placed their faith in Christ.
This is by no means exhaustive. If enough of you want me to keep going, I’ll be happy to elaborate.