Adopted

I had a discussion with a friend last week who was telling me how he finally could see that we as believers are connected to Israel because Jesus (Yeshua) is the Messiah of Israel and we are His children. I don't know how many years I have been trying to articulate that idea to my friends who think I am a little crazy. I thought about the concept so many people have where they think "the church" and "Israel" are two entities that can never mix or else they believe that the former has replaced the latter. Both viewpoints are in error according to Scriputre.

I, as a Gentile believer, am a child of God the Father, who was the One who made covenants with Noah, Abraham, and the children of Israel on Mount Sinai. Therefore, if I have been adopted into the family of God (see the writings of Paul), and can call God my Father and am made a co-heir with Messiah, I am in the same family as believing Israel.

As I thought about this more, I came up with the following illustration from my own life. I have two sisters adopted from South Korea. They are part of a very Finnish family. There is no difference in how my parents treat them compared to how they treat me or my biologic brother. They have all the rights and privileges of being in our family, same name, same inheritence, etc. They would not say they are of Finnish ethnicity, but they would say that they feel very Finnish (and for good reason). However, no one could say that they don't belong to our family. Likewise, I would not say that I am Jewish, but I am grafted into the same olive tree through Messiah (see Romans 11).