This is always the question to which we return. Who is the seed of Abraham to whom the promises are made? Who is the ‘covenant child’ that has every right to claim covenant blessings because of his relationship to Abraham? Perhaps the best way to understand this is to start with the nation of Israel. Fortunately, we have a clear textual answer for this question as it concerns the nation of Israel.

Let us take a close look at Romans 9:6, 7. This is a key passage that will help us see that the physical nation of Israel, despite all of its unique privileges and promises, was never under an “everlasting covenant of grace.” They were indeed a special nation, but, none the less, they were not a spiritual nation. There were spiritual individuals, but the nation by and large was unregenerate. As a nation, they were exactly what we have designated them: a ‘special natural’ seed of Abraham even though lost or unsaved. They were special and different from all of the other physical seeds of Abraham, but they were just as non-special and non-different when compared with Abraham’s spiritual seed. It is this fact that Paul drives home so emphatically in Romans 9. The following is a key text:

Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel: Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called (Rom. 9:6, 7).

Regardless of what promises were made to ‘Israel’ in the Old Covenant, we must learn how to apply the principle “not all Israel is Israel” to all of God’s dealings with the nation made up of Jacob’s twelve sons. All of Abraham’s seed are not considered his ‘children,’ or true seed that inherits the promise. This is true no matter what theological view we hold, and it is just as true in the NT Scriptures as in the OT Scriptures. Let us look carefully at Paul’s argument in Romans 9.

Romans 8 is the greatest chapter in the Bible on assurance and security. It declares the certainty of ultimate salvation for every person chosen and called by God into a saving relationship. The closing verses are a Hallelujah chorus with one theme. It is as if Paul is saying, “Nothing in heaven or earth can destroy or harm a soul who is in a saving covenantal relationship with God!” The obvious objection to all that Paul declared in Romans 8 is ‘the casting off’ of the nation of Israel. Did not God break his covenant with his chosen people when he cast them off and turned to the Gentiles?

Romans 9–11 deals with this question in the light of God’s eternal purposes as seen in the OT Scriptures and in history. Paul shows that God was not in any sense unfaithful to his covenant promises. God never has, nor ever will, fail to keep every covenant he has made. “However,” Paul declares, “God has never promised any spiritual blessing to anyone on the basis of fleshly birth.” This is the heart of the whole issue! Paul’s words apply to every Jewish child born into the nation of Israel, and his words also apply to every child born of Christian parents today. If this principle is grasped and then consistently applied, there will never be any more talk about ‘a covenant nation’ (physical Israel) or ‘covenant children’ (physical children of believers).

Every single promise of God that brings a spiritual blessing to any individual requires that individual to personally believe the promise. Israel never inherited the promised blessing because they “sought it not by faith” (Rom. 9:32). In other words, they rejected the gospel message that Abraham, their forefather, had savingly believed.

The heart of Romans 9–11 declares the absolute necessity of personal faith in order to receive any promised blessing from God. This is always true in every dispensation and under every covenant; and it is true for every person whether he is a Jew or Gentile; whether he was born of believing parents or unbelieving parents. Abraham’s true seed are all, without a single exception, born-again believers! We must not speak of anyone being an heir to any spiritual promise made to Abraham and hi seed unless we see repentance and faith in that person.^[1]

At the bottom line, Paul in saying that “not all Israel is Israel” simply means the difference between people with special privileges and people that actually possess grace. Every Israelite enjoyed great privileges because of his physical birth (Rom. 3:1–3), but no Israelite (nor anyone else) ever possessed any special spiritual status or received any spiritual blessings apart from personal repentance and faith. God never promised an Israelite a single spiritual blessing just because he was an Israelite. Physical birth never put them, or anyone else, in a special or separate spiritual category before God. Israel definitely was in a separate physical category as God’s chosen nation, and she had special spiritual opportunities, but she was not in a special spiritual position before God. God did not deny his promise or fail to keep his covenant when he cast off the Jewish nation. He did not break or dishonor his ‘special covenant’ relationship with Israel simply because that covenant and relationship were purely conditional and Israel never met the terms.

The apostle does not leave the matter in the abstract. He gives a concrete illustration of exactly what he means. His real point in the illustration is that the ‘Israel within Israel’ is a matter of sovereign election (Rom. 9:11) and effectual calling (Rom. 9:24), and has nothing at all to do with physical lineage. We must see this fact clearly and hold on to it tightly! It is a biblical key that unlocks many passages of Scripture. Neither Dispensationalism nor Covenant Theology applies this truth to their particular system of theology in a consistent manner.

It is important to note that Paul does not demonstrate and prove the doctrine of election by comparing a ‘covenant child’ (seed of Abraham) and a ‘non-covenant’ child (Gentile), but he compares two ‘covenant’ children. And they are not just two ordinary covenant children; they are the twin grandsons of Abraham himself as well as the true sons of believing Isaac. If ever there were two blue-blooded covenant children, they would be the twin grandsons of the man to whom the covenant was given in the first place. Paul uses Abraham’s twin grandsons in his illustration in order to demonstrate beyond any question that inheriting God’s true promises has nothing to do with being a so called covenant child, nor with being signed and sealed with covenant signs—even the God-ordained covenant sign of circumcision which was placed on Abraham, his son Issac, and his twin grandsons.

And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac, (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob [the younger ‘covenant child’] have I loved, but Esau [the older ‘covenant child’] have I hated (Rom. 9:10–13). In this illustration, Paul is telling us exactly what he means by “not all Israel is Israel.” Nothing that God ever promised or covenanted to the nation of Israel guaranteed, in any sense whatever, that they, or their children, would receive spiritual blessings. They had privileges, but they did not have the certainty of the blessings. They had spiritual opportunities, but they were not by birth in a special spiritual category. Esau had every single privilege that Jacob had. In fact, he had more (he was the oldest son and had the birthright), but Esau was not part of the ‘seed of Abraham to whom the promises were made’ even though he was a true physical child of Abraham. Esau received “the sign of the covenant” but he was not a true covenant child. God did not establish his covenant with Esau, even though the covenant promise was confirmed to both his believing father (Isaac) and his believing grandfather (Abraham). If Esau is really a covenant child in any sense whatsoever, then Scripture clearly teaches that God hates some covenant children (Rom. 9:13)!

If we really grasp Paul’s basic argument in Romans 9–11, we have the answer to many apparent problems that neither the system of Dispensationalism nor the system of Covenant Theology can solve. In these chapters, Paul is illustrating the basic principle that runs through all of Scripture, namely, that God’s grace is totally unconditional, and nothing, including all of the privileges listed in Romans 9:4–5, guarantees any individual a spiritual blessing. A Jew could not plead, on the basis of his physical birth and circumcision, any more from God than Esau could plead on the ground of his birth and circumcision. No priest or prophet could guarantee a Jewish parent that God had promised, in the covenant of circumcision, any more to him or his child than had been promised to Isaac as a believing father, or to Esau his circumcised son. Unless a Christian parent today has a different promise from the one given to Abraham himself, then the same is still true today in reference to that parent’s children.

A Christian parent cannot appeal to the covenant made with Abraham and his seed and claim any more for his so-called covenant child than Isaac, as a believing parent, could claim for his covenant child Esau. If ever a believing parent could claim that both of his children were part of Abraham’s seed and under the covenant, it was Abraham’s own son, Isaac!

The very designation ‘covenant child’ is as unbiblical and useless a designation as ‘covenant nation’ now that Calvary and Pentecost have established all those ‘born of God’ as the true New Covenant people of God (Heb. 8:6–11). There is no such thing as a covenant nation today in any physical sense. One cannot substitute the spiritual Body of Christ for the physical nation of Israel. Calvary and Pentecost established the New Covenant people of God as a totally new spiritual entity (Eph. 2:11–22). As we shall see later, the true ‘nation of God’ is the Church.

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