What Does It Mean That the Israelites Are God’s Chosen People?
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Throughout the Bible, the word, “chosen” is used when God or people choose a person, group of peoples, or a course of action. In Deuteronomy 7:6, we learn God chose Israel for something. “For you are a holy people to Yahweh your God; Yahweh your God has chosen you to be a people for His own treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.” How did they become chosen by God?
Are the Israelites (the Jews) God’s Chosen People?
Within the Pentateuch, the concept of God's selection of Israel originates from His covenant with Abraham, in which He pledged to make Abraham a great nation and to bless all families of the earth through him (Genesis 12:1-3). When we regard the biblical account of Israel’s history, we see, as writer Clarence L. Haynes Jr. reminds us, “God did not choose a nation; He chose a man.” It was God’s blessing that made one man into a great nation. Just as God made the first covenant with Adam to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth (Genesis 1:28), He chose to extend that promise into the second covenant in the Bible, the Abrahamic Covenant.
To further explore the topic, we should define a fully God-initiated and unilateral agreement from God to man. In plain language, when God makes promises through a covenant, He fulfills them, and the fulfillment is based on His faithfulness. Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary describes the persons and details of a covenant instituted by God: “Persons are recipients, not contributors; they are not expected to offer elements to the bond; they are called to accept it as offered, to keep it as demanded, and to receive the results that God, by oath, assures will not be withheld.”
In Exodus 19:5-6, God set His conditions for the results of His covenant with Israel. He said, “’So now then, if you will indeed listen to My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My treasured possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel.”
The Israelites had to listen to God and keep His covenant. If they did, they would be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. To keep His covenant means God commands us to persist in our love for Him — and that love is to stimulate our service to Him in all we do (Deuteronomy 7:9; 6:4-5; cf. Mark 12:28-34).
Including the Gentiles
But the Israelites didn’t listen; they didn’t keep His covenant, and so God, with His worldwide mission of filling the earth with His glory through His chosen people, expanded His grace to the Gentiles. Look at what Jesus said to His disciples in John 15:16, “You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would abide, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.”
The nation of Israel rejected their Messiah, but God used Abraham and his descendants as a conduit to bring the gospel to all people. God built a nation from one man. In the beginning, God created one man and commanded him to be fruitful and multiply. Adam wasn’t a Jew, and neither was Abraham when God called him and struck His covenant with him.
Because of Adam’s sin, however, God’s redemptive plan extended through the Jews to the Messiah, Jesus — the sinless Second Adam. God is the covenanter. He could have chosen anyone, but He chose Abraham according to His merit and not Abraham’s.
God’s choice of Abraham and his progeny protected the Israelites because He promised the Savior would come through Adam’s good seed. The good seed included Abraham and proceeded through King David and on to Jesus Christ. The key to the whole issue is God’s faithfulness to His original covenant with Adam, who had no ethnicity except as a son of God.
Are Christians Chosen?
The Israelites did nothing to merit God’s favor as a chosen people. So too, Christians do nothing outside the grace of God for Him to choose us for salvation (Ephesians 2:5).
What God chooses is always good and according to His perfect will. Romans 9:6-8 tells us, “But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; nor are they all children because they are Abraham’s seed, but: ‘through Isaac Your seed will be named.’ That is, the children of the flesh are not the children of God, but the children of the promise are considered as seed.”
The question Christians must consider has to do with Israel. Hosea 11:1-12 spells out for us how Israel wasn’t true to its identity as God’s chosen ones, and He threw them out of the land. But later in Hosea 11, Hosea writes God’s anger would subside, and He would deliver a transformed Israel that would be who God called her to be.
This hope prophesied by Hosea lasted through to the New Testament and was fulfilled in God’s only begotten Son — Jesus Christ. Matthew 2:13-15 shows us Jesus is the fulfillment of Hosea 11. Jesus is God’s Chosen One — the true Israel of God (Luke 9:35). He passed every test that Israel failed. He is fully worthy of His identity as God’s Son because He is God, and because of His accomplishments as a man (John 17:4), for He is fully God and fully man (Philippians 2:6-7).
It’s important for Christians to understand we too are chosen. “As you come to Him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:4-5).
Here's more good news for Christians. Because we are in Christ (Galatians 3:14, 26, 28), we are also the true Israel of God. In Christ, we share in the privileges and relationship He has as God's true Son. As adopted children (Romans 8:16-17) and those grafted into Him (Romans 11:11-24), we, the church, inherit all of God’s promises given to Old Covenant Israel.
From the first Adam to the Second and Last Adam (Jesus Christ), God protected His people for His name’s sake to bring redemption to all men. His entire redemptive plan is witnessed throughout history and has been fulfilled in Christ. And it will be consummated when He calls His church home and has vanquished the last enemy, death (1 Corinthians 15:26).
Are the Israelites Now Excluded as Chosen Ones?
Pastor Michael Horton writes, “Once the New Covenant arrived in the person of Christ, the old covenant became obsolete (Hebrews 8:13). Having served its function of leading Israel to Christ, the sacred status once applied to the nation and its land is now applied to the body of Christ, consisting of Jewish and Gentile believers together.”
Galatians 3:28-29 serves as an exclamation point to that truth, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to promise.”
The Lord Jesus is exclusive in that salvation (saved from God’s wrath) comes only to those who come to Him in repentance and faith and surrender to Him as Savior and Lord. Jesus is inclusive in that any person, no matter their ethnic background, is welcomed into the kingdom when (and I’ll repeat what I said above) he surrenders in repentance and faith to Jesus as Savior and Lord.
The Apostle Peter was most likely speaking to a mixed audience of Jewish and Gentile believers when he proclaimed, “But you are a chosen family, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).
How wonderful that the dwelling place of God will be with us (Revelation 21:3), and one day we will join in singing a new song exalting Christ, who “purchased for God with [His] blood people from every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9). Hallelujah! What a Savior!
Photo credit: ©Getty Images/Paul Souders
