Truth Unites - Are We "Commanded" to Support Israel? Engaging Ted Cruz' Comments

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

Gavin Ortlund addresses comments from Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson regarding whether Christians should support Israel. My video on fulfilled prophecy: https://youtu.be/NKzUtFiIQwA?si=8DY5akqPBpH1GtwqMy video on just war theory: https://youtu.be/i-mQJl7riro?si=5FhjMXO3FRIoVl7XTruth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

Recently, Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz had a conversation, and it brought up a massive fault line of difference among contemporary Christians, especially American evangelicals, and that is the relationship of the Bible to American foreign policy. So you still haven't asked why, but I'm going to tell you why. Okay. And the reason is twofold. Number one, as a Christian, growing up in Sunday school, I was taught from the Bible. Those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed. and from my perspective, I want to be on the blessing side of thing. Of those who bless the government of Israel?

Those who bless Israel is what it says. It doesn't say the government of. It says the nation of Israel. So that's in the Bible. As a Christian, I believe that. Where is that? I can find it to you. I don't have the scripture off the tip of mine.

You pull out the phone and use the Google. It's in Genesis. So you're quoting a Bible phrase. You don't have context for it and you don't know where in the Bible it is, but that's like your theology? I'm confused. What does that even mean? Tucker. I'm a Christian. I want to know what you're talking about.

Where does my support for Israel come from? Number one, because biblically we're commanded to support Israel. Now, my interest in this topic is not so much taking sides politically, but theological clarity. The verb commanded came up there in that clip and several times later in the conversation as well. Are contemporary Christians commanded to support the modern state of Israel? And if so, what does that look like exactly? Well, I want to interact with this. I'm not trying to pick on Ted Cruz here. God bless him. His comments are representative of a set of theological assumptions that many modern Christians have, but I think we need to examine. Number one, the identification between Israel as God's covenant people in the Bible with the modern nation state of Israel founded in 1948. Number two, the application of biblical promises like Genesis 12, 3, a verse we'll get into a lot, directly to American foreign policy. today. And number three, the association of certain current events in the world and nationally with end times prophecies in the Bible, often interpreted within a framework that we call

dispensationalism, which we'll describe. Now, many sincere and wonderful Christians hold these views, but they are historically eccentric. And without wanting to poke anybody in the eye here, I need to say, I'll say this strongly to say, some of the beliefs, that are simply taken for granted as the Christian view today. Not only are not the Christian view throughout church history, but simply did not exist at all anywhere throughout church history until very recently. And so in my ongoing project of wanting to give my life to serve and resource and strengthen evangelicalism, I want to speak to this area because I think we need to wrestle more with what the scripture teaches. Before diving in to the theology, let me clarify that I am

personally sympathetic to the idea that the United States should support Israel as an ally that is currently facing incredible evil. And I'm deeply concerned about the rise of anti-Semitism in the world today, which is such a dark and evil phenomenon. More on that at the end. Now, what should that support look like exactly? I'm not 100% sure. Geopolitics is not my area of expertise. I know enough to know it's complicated. I don't want to speak out of my area. So the details of that, I've got lots of questions I want to keep learning. My concern is not misusing theology in making a summons to all contemporary Christians for whatever we end up advocating for specifically.

Our foreign policy should be informed by biblical principles of justice and wisdom and compassion, not by an overly literal reading of certain biblical passages that are actually being plucked out of the biblical narrative as it's unfolding throughout the scripture. I'll explain that and try to work through that. Let me just, this will be a short video, though. I'll just state the main point up front, clearly, hoping this is pastoral for people to think about trying to serve people. The New Testament identifies everyone who trusts in Jesus as the true Israel, as a member of the true Israel, as a child of Abraham. Let me document this. Galatians 3, Paul quotes from the Old Testament, you can see the underlined portion on the screen here. and says that the recipients of this blessing are those who trust in Jesus.

Now, the passage that Paul is citing here is Genesis 12, 3, which is what Ted Cruz was drawing from, and you can see on the screen. This is from the calling of Abram, later called Abraham, and it's referring to his descendants with whom God makes a special covenant. Now, right off the bat, you can see what I underlined here in Genesis 123, the climactic part of this promise. In you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. the election of this one particular nation, Israel, was to the end of blessing all the nations of the earth. Right from the beginning, God's concern and interest with Israel had this universal horizon of interest. The promise of Genesis 12.3 is then reiterated all throughout the Old Testament.

Genesis 26 with Jacob and Genesis 28, sorry, 26, Isaac 28, Jacob, those are the other patriarchs. You can see those on screen. and this just picks up steam. It's fascinating to study how the Old Testament is developing. You'll find this promise in the mouths of non-Israelites like Balam in the book of numbers. It's constantly referenced in the Psalms and prophets and so forth. I'll put up an example from Psalm 105 there. And as this promise, as the story unfolds, this promise becomes interwoven with a whole range of other promises that God gives to His covenant people. The development of Old Testament eschatology, meaning last things, is fast.

fascinating, so much so that I've built a whole video, arguing for Christianity from the fulfillment of that story in Jesus. Also, I'll link that in the video description. The Bible is a coherent story, and it's thrilling to see the coherence. But the point for us here is that the New Testament teaches that all of those promises that are given to Israel find their fulfillment in Christ. All the promises of God are, yes, in Christ, Gentiles who believe in Jesus, are grafted into the people to whom these covenant promises are given, and they become their recipients. Like Paul says in Galatians, those who are of faith in Jesus are the children of Abraham. They receive the Abrahamic blessing, and that is the gospel message, reconciliation to God,

forgiveness of sins through Christ, with all that that entails. To picture that, let's use the image of an olive tree, which Paul uses in Romans 9 through 11. This is the most important passage in the New Testament, arguably for this question of the nature of Israel. Because what is emerging in the first century is this crisis that the Jewish people have not accepted their own Messiah, and yet Gentiles are flooding into the church. And so you have this question of how these two groups are going to relate to each other. Do the Gentiles have to be circumcised, for example? The first church council in Acts 15 is saying no to that. But this is the question that Paul is addressing here in Romans 9 through 11. what is, how do we make sense of this? And the first thing he says is that not all who are

descended from Israel belong to Israel and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring. In other words, what Paul is saying is merely being a physical descendant of Abraham isn't enough to guarantee that you receive the promises given to his descendants. You're not within the scope of covenant blessing merely by being a biological descendant. you have to embrace the one for whom Abraham was chosen in the first place, and that's the Messiah Jesus. The metaphor here is an olive tree. I'll put up this passage from Romans 11, and I'll put up, well, you know, you can read through here and see the idea is branches are broken off so that other branches, the wild olive chute, can be grafted in and have nourishment from the root. And let me put up

a picture of what this can look like. This is called grafting. It's kind of amazing you can do this. you can join a branch from one tree to another tree, and it gets grafted in. And this is the metaphor Paul is using here in Romans 11 to describe the Gentiles being grafted in to God's covenant people. By the way, that's not replacement per se, so much as addition. You know, you don't have one tree that you're chucking away, and now you've got a new tree to replace that. You've got one singular tree, and this is the simple point that I want to belabor for the sake of this video is that there are not two different trees here, one for the church, one for Israel. There is one tree. God has one coherent, unfolding plan of salvation that the Bible is narrating. And what that means is that because the

people of God are not defined today by ethnicity, but by faith in Jesus, everyone who has faith in Christ and is baptized in the name of the Trinity, whether they are Jewish, Palestinian, American, Chinese, Brazilian, or whatever, are the people of Abraham who inherit all of God's covenant promises to Israel. If you are united to the Messiah of Israel, you thereby inherit all the promises of Israel. That's Paul's language here in Galatians 3 as well. The blessing of Abraham is accessed through faith in Christ. Therefore, we must be clear that the entity being given a promise in Genesis 123 is on psychologically distinct from the modern nation state of Israel. One is a theocracy where you might have gotten stoned for certain crimes, for example. The other is a democratic republic with a diverse

population of Jews, Muslims, Christians, atheists, and so forth. Now, again, I want to belabor this point. None of this means that we shouldn't be deeply concerned about the modern state of Israel. God bless Israel. I pray for Israel, you know. It just means that this isn't the same thing being referenced in the Bible in verses like Genesis 12, 3, such that all contemporary Christians are now commanded to support particular foreign policy. Now, people sometimes argue that the formation of the modern state of Israel, 1948, is the fulfillment of particular biblical prophecies. But without getting too into the weeds on this, I'm just going to make one observation, and that's the theological framework that's involved in that judgment simply never existed in church history.

Dispensationalism is a modern innovation, starting in the 19th century in the main, and then really getting traction in the 20th century with the Schofield Reference Bible, for example, in the main. I know people dispute some of the details, but in the big picture, this theological view simply didn't exist in the Church fathers, in the medieval church, among the reformers, among the Puritans, in the early modern era. It simply never is how Christians have read the relationship between Israel and the church. it is a modern innovation. And again, that doesn't mean we should be against the modern nation of Israel, but our reasons for foreign policy should be based upon justice and compassion and wisdom,

not end-time speculation that has no historical precedent. Much more to say about that, many more details. But let me just finish with a kind of pastoral word right now because I really feel the darkness. I am heavy-hearted these days about the evil in the world. We're living in such unstable times. It kind of feels like to me, I don't know if this makes sense to anyone else. It kind of feels like certain things that became more settled after World War II for the duration of the second half of the 20th century, and we're good, are being sort of unsettled and upended and made more wobbly right now here in the beginning of the 21st century. I mentioned earlier the rise of anti-Semitism, which seems on the rise. I regard anti-Semitism as demonic. And so it feels

like demons at work. Just the brutality and chaos of the world right now. I think we all feel this. There are wars breaking out. We see families being torn apart because of immigration policy. We see such fear and anger. Of course, we see rioting and so forth. And without wanting to make a hyper-specific judgment about these things are getting into the controversial aspects of them, I think we can all recognize there is tremendous evil at work in the world right now. And people are looking for hope. And one thing that is just helpful to remember with this is, is underneath all these theological questions, there's a deeper need for putting our hope in the right place. And that's really what drives a video like this from a pastoral angle is I deeply

want Christians to place their hope in the true hope. And there are so many ways we can go arrive from that. Earlier this year, I tweeted, sometimes the injustice and unfairness of the world is hard to bear. In these moments, it helps to remember that the return of Christ will straighten all that is crooked. We can live by faith that truth and goodness will ultimately win. I won't share the particular thing I was struggling with that led to that, but we all go through this where it honestly feels like evil is going to win. You feel like a tiny little hobbit, and Sauron is so strong, and you think we're never going to, you know, there's no way that this evil can be defeated. And a lot of us feel that way these days. And it's just such an incredibly,

I find I have to come back to this every single day. You know, for those of us who follow Jesus, To remember, we have a hope that cannot be taken away by anything that happens in this world. Current events, either global or national, personal crises that we might go through. The ultimate hope we have is something that nothing can stop, and that's the return of Christ, which will straighten everything that is crooked and restore perfect shalom to the world and bring salvation to those who wait for him. And just knowing that helps us stay sane amidst the chaos, but also it is so wonderful to focus on that because we have opportunities to share that message right now. Over the last few years,

I've just felt this increasing resolve to just lean over and dive in and just giving my life to whatever I can do to spread the cause of the gospel. I mean, I always wanted that, but it's just accelerated over the last few years. That's why I'm on YouTube. It's why I'm trying to meet needs and so forth. Pray for a fresh work of God in these important days. And the good thing about living in times of upheaval is that people are looking for hope. And so we have real opportunities to tell people that heaven is real. Heaven is literally a place. Well, I say literally.

I have a video on heaven. Watch that. Eternal life and the resurrection of the body are a real thing. Peace within your heart is real. Forgiveness that washes you white as snow is real. Hope is real. God is real. It's all there found in Christ.

And I just want to shout that message as loudly as I can and keep, you know. The point is, in the upheaval. Let's focus on that and share about that with people. That's a pastoral point. It doesn't address all the theology here. Thanks for watching. Let me know what you think about this one in the comments. And if you're interested, you know, with wars going on right now, a lot of us are alarmed, what's going to happen. I have a video on just war theory that might be useful. I find it helps tremendously to go back to church history and draw from the wisdom of the ages as we look at the world today. And my tribe of Christianity, evangelicalism,

that's a weak point for us, if we're honest enough to admit that. So we've got to work at that. So that's what I'm trying to do in a lot of my videos. I hope that video could serve you. I hope this video will be received in the pastoral frame in which I intended. Thanks for watching everybody.