Rejected? Never!

In the Book of Romans, Paul reminds the believers in Roman that God has NOT rejected His people, Israel. Ironically, however, many translators simply cannot get that into their heads — that Israel was not and is not rejected by God. As Paul wrote: “God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.” (Romans 11:2) Yet, in the NRSVUE of the Bible the added heading of Chapter 2 of Romans reads: “Israel’s Rejection Is Not Final.” Such was inserted in contradiction to what Paul said about the matter. Even though Paul flatly stated that God had not rejected Israel, someone, or ones, felt the need to infer to the reader that God had rejected His people, Israel, but that rejection would be only for a time. Not only does the NRSVUE of the Bible imply such foolishness, the Christian Standard Bible (CSB), the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB), the New English Translation (NET), and other translations insist on noting God had in fact rejected Israel — but with some including the caveat that it is only for a “time.”

This is an example of what we who cannot read the original text of the Scriptures are up against. We must rely on the interpretations of those who can. And there is always the danger of miss-translation and/or interpretation And worse yet, there is the very real doctrinal biases that some bring to their “interpretations.” One, of course, is this matter of Israel being rejected by God (not!)

For centuries, and among many “denominations” today, Replacement Theology has been a doctrine the Church of Roman has touted as gospel. (Notice I said the Church of Rome, and not the Church of Christ. Rome from its beginnings has declined to take a backseat to anyone or anything. The Church of Rome is just that, a Roman-centric entity with a very checkered background to say the least.) Such a doctrine that the gentile church has replaced a rejected Israel as the Apple of God’s Eye has enabled centuries of antisemitism and a Eurocentric mis-interpretation of the New Testament. Reading Scripture, New Testament or Old, from any perspective other than from a knowledgeable Jewish/Israel perspective, both culturally and historically, will inevitably lead to mis-interpretation, confusion, and the many doctrinal inconsistencies we have today across Christianity. 

And this is not to say that the churches of the Reformation are any different than the Church of Rome (or King Henry VIII’s Church of England for that matter.) All these daughter-churches, although separating themselves from what they believed to be an apostate church, took with them many beliefs and practices perpetrated by that apostate church. And thus, most have become just littler, gentler, and somewhat more “biblically appearing” versions of the original.  

To be true, reading Scripture takes effort, a deliberate effort to block out all the inconsistencies we have been taught to believe the Scriptures say, and to let the Scriptures themselves, with the aid of the promised Holy Spirit, speak to us as they would. But, once again, to understand the Scriptures in their context, one is well served to understand the history, customs, idioms, social and religious practices, and beliefs of those peoples who wrote the Scriptures and who were written about. As the old saying goes: “You can’t tell the players without a (accurate) scorecard”