⁶ But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; ⁷ nor are they all children because they are Abraham’s descendants, but: “through Isaac your descendants will be named.” ⁸ That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants.

Naturally, the question arises, if the Jews are God’s people, then something must have gone wrong, because as a people group they have strayed quite badly through their history. One doesn’t need to look very far in the Old Testament historical record to find immorality, injustice, murder, lust and even idolatry of the worst sorts. What went wrong? Doesn’t having a special relationship with God make a difference in people’s lives and set them apart as acting different than the world that has descended into the spiral of sin and rebellion against God?

First, when dealing with confusing things, one must determine the anchor points for thinking and reasoning. What do we know to be true? Paul begins with the assumption that God’s Word does not fail; we can count on it as being true, the starting point of all theological reasoning. The Jews’ inability to live as adopted children, and even at the time of Paul’s writing, their resistance to the Gospel message of grace, has nothing to do with any deficiency in the message. God had sent His messengers throughout Israel’s history, in the form of prophets. And we saw earlier in Romans that all, including Jews, have sinned and come short of the glory of God. But were there any who believed God’s message through the Law and the prophets?

Yes, there were, but not all of the descendants of Abraham believed; in fact, most did not. From the get-go, the promises were not for all of Abraham’s descendants, but only for those who would come through his son Isaac. Although Paul doesn’t state it here, God further narrowed it down to descendants through Isaac’s son Jacob (whom God renamed Israel). The point is that God had already established that His promises and blessings were for a subset of Abraham’s descendants. The question, then, is this: does God further narrow the field of recipients of His blessings? The answer is “yes.”

The point is that God’s people are not those who simply are physical descendants of Abraham, who inherit his physical DNA. No, God’s adopted children are those who are related by His promise and inherit spiritual DNA. It is a spiritual ethnicity, not a physical or cultural ethnicity that is in focus.

Lord, help me understand Your Word and Your ongoing relationship with Israel.