What does the New Testament teach about the land of Israel? Answer: absolutely nothing. There are no references to the importance of the land or of Jerusalem as a 'holy city'. Some would say that this is simply an argument from silence and that there are sufficient promises in the Old Testament to establish the land as belonging to the Jewish people without the need for New Testament confirmation. However, not only is there silence about the land but the whole tenor of the New Testament message and revelation of God's saving purpose amongst His people points in a different direction.
To a Samaritan, despised by the Jews, Jesus makes special places of worship (including Jerusalem) a redundant concept (John 4:21). When marvelling at the faith of a Gentile centurion, Jesus applied to the gathering in of Gentile peoples from all over the world the Old Testament promises of the bringing of God's people from the east and west into the promised blessings alongside Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Matt. 8:11).
The promise of the restoration of David's tabernacle is applied by James, the leader of the Jerusalem church, to the reception of the gospel by the Gentiles. This confirmed they are full participants in the people of God without needing to fulfil the outward requirements of the law (Acts 15:15-19). The promised future blessing of fruitfulness for an Israel coming out of exile is applied by Paul to the new people of God, both Jew and Gentile, who receive the Messiah and the promises of faith (Gal. 4:27).
The Old Testament form of worship, including the whole sacrificial system in the temple, is merely a shadow and thus declared obsolete. In the same book, written to scattered Jewish Christians, the writer declared triumphantly, 'You have come to mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God' (Heb. 12:22) without any hint that they should also await an earthly Zion. So far as the specific promises of the land itself are concerned, the New Testament enlarges them to the whole world! Abraham is described as heir, not of a small strip of land but the world (Rom. 4:13)! The meek shall inherit the earth (Matt. 5:5).
This is the glory of the mystery of God's ways revealed in the New Testament. God had chosen Abraham and his descendants, the people of Israel, to be God's special people as the bearers of His blessing to all the nations of the earth. Israel had failed to carry this blessing. (One prophet even ran away revolted at the prospect of Nineveh repenting and being blessed!) But Old Testament prophecy looked forward to the coming of a Messiah who would fulfil all the promises to Israel.
The Messiah himself and His dreadful death on a cross became the means by which 'all men' (spoken in the context of Greeks seeking Jesus) would be drawn to Him. This Messiah was vindicated primarily by His resurrection from the dead but also by the early fulfilment of His prophecy that the temple would be destroyed.
The mystery of God's ways revealed to the apostles and prophets, and emphasised by Paul in his letter to the Romans, the Galatians and in particular the Ephesians, was that now the only basis for salvation and being part of the people of God was through faith in this Messiah. The result was that there is now 'one new man in Christ', composed of both Jews and Gentiles, eventually from all the nations of the world, incorporated into the people of God and heirs together of all the promises to Israel. Like Isaac, we are all children of promise (Gal. 4:28). The Gentiles who believe are heirs together with believing Israel (eg Rom. 2:28-29, 3:30) and thus receive the promise through Christ.
As N T Wright puts it, 'The land no longer functioned as the key symbol of the geographical identity of the people of God, and that for obvious reasons: if the new community consisted of Jew, Greek, Barbarian alike, there was no sense in which one piece of territory could possess more significance than another. At no point in this early period do we find Christians eager to define or defend a "holy land". Jesus and the church together are the new temple; the world I suggest is the new land.' (NT Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, SPCK, 1992).
