Ironically enough, before the nation of Israel came along and it was popular to speak of the political Israel as being the same as the ethnic and racial Israel of the Bible, Jews used this argument against Christianity.
I have studied the chief passages of Scripture, that constitute the grounds upon which the Jews argue against us; as where God said to Abraham: “I will make my covenant between me and thee, and with thy seed after thee, in their generations, for an everlasting covenant,” etc. Here the Jews brag, as the papists do upon the passage: “Thou art Peter.” [Martin Luther, *Table Talk
, No. 810]
No one is calling God a liar, because that is not what God said.
Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make
a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah -
not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. [Jer 31:31-33; emphasis mine]
St. Paul refers to this passage in his epistle to the Hebrews, saying “if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second” (Heb 8:7), therefore God “has made the first obsolete…now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away” (Heb 8:13). There’s no argument made here that a new covenant is being attached onto the old one - Paul is quite clearly arguing that the old one has left us.
But now let’s review the covenant made to Abraham, which you referred to:
And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you. [Gen 17:17]
Christ was born a descendant of Abraham (Matt 1:1-16; Luke 3:23-34), in many ways fulfilling the prophecy to Abraham that “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12:3). Yet we know that Christ was rejected by a large number of Jews, for St. John writes:
He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. [John 1:11-13]
He came to His own (the Jewish people, God’s chosen people), but His own did not receive Him. However, those who do receive Him - which includes Jews and Gentiles (remember by the time John wrote His gospel the Church was mixed between the two) were given the right to become children of God.
In his letter to the Galatians, St. Paul writes:
Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as of many, but as of one, “And to your Seed," who is Christ. [Gal 3:16]
Adding later on:
For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. [Gal 3:26-29; emphasis mine]
Christians are Abraham’s seed (in fact the original Greek for “seed” is where we get the word “sperm”), because the Church of God is the new Israel. We are the new nation given the vineyard from the wicked growers to bear the fruits thereof (Matt 21:41-44).
Now let us ponder on the words of Christ Himself regarding salvation:
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." [John 14:6]
“But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven.” [Matthew 10:33]
Only Christ is the Truth, the Life and the Way, and those who deny Him before men will be denied before the Father. What does Judaism as a whole do? It denies the divinity of Christ, and does not believe Him to be the Truth, the Life and the Way. Therefore, we must preach to the Jews as the early apostles did, and bring them to Christ, so that they may be brothers with us in a true covenant, and not a covenant of old that has worn away and become obsolete.
You quote right, Jesus is the seed. The Salvation from the Jews is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Who you know too is a Jew. The old covenant was not made invalid and done away with just because a new group of people are now chosen, because the recipients of the covenant for both remains the SAME.
If I tell you, write on this paper our contract between you and me. And I tell you a year later, now write on this paper our new contract between you and me. Does it mean the old contract is invalid? I gave you a new one possibly because the old one had something incomplete. BUT it is still between you and me.
The covenant between God and Abraham and his descendants is for perpetuity - This is an ETERNAL promise. The key lies in who are the descendants who are recognised AS JEWS. And this can be found in the book of Romans.
- Romans 2:28 For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, and [true] circumcision is not something visible in the flesh.
It is very clear that the covenant has always been with the Jews. The classification of which now depends on God
muslimsopenyoureyes.blogspot.com
PS. Do you not know that Jesus even referred to gentiles/pagans/non-jews as dogs?
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or because there were no widespread Jewish communities throughout the Roman empire away from Judea and the Temple with the necessary adaptations:shrug: Nope, not only are the Jews no longer the Jews, Judaism stopped being Judaism and became something totally different in all its aspects.