Yet one day it will be us that is dead, and not others. And on days like today, when the young, beautiful, gifted and good meet an early death, we should not draw comfort from this, or even let it pass us by, but we should reflect on it. And of course, we should also reflect on the hope for those of us who have, in the words of Hebrews 12, set our hearts, minds and bodies to run the race of the gospel with the endurance Christ gives us. 

A Race Cut Short
Like so many recreational runners around the world – not to mention the elites – I felt numb this morning reading of the death of marathon world record holder, Kelvin Kiptum. I still can’t believe it.
We all went onto social media, and read the reports and shared our grief. The tweets on X, the Facebook shares, the sports pages, the online forum LetsRun.
When you’re struggling to get your marathon under three hours, it’s insane to think about the pace required to take another hour off that again. And that’s what Kiptum had been planning to do, with his expected April tilt at sub-two hours on the fast Rotterdam course.
The Kenyan superstar died after crashing his car whilst driving late at night in his home country. His coach died with him. And all of this just five days after his 2023 Chicago marathon time of 2:00:35 was ratified by World Athletics, and announced by none other than that superstar from a previous age, the head of World Athletics, Lord Sebastian Coe himself.
Kiptum was 24. He had run three marathons – won them all and had announced himself as the next big thing, after the GOAT – Eliud Kipchoge. His three marathons are three of the seven fastest times in history.
Both he and Kipchoge were both provisionally chosen for the Kenyan Olympics team for Paris later this year. But alas, that Gold/Silver showdown is not to be.
No doubt there will be a moment’s silence at the start of the race, as the beautiful, gifted and good of the road pay their acknowledgements to someone who was destined to be a superstar. He was cut short of the finish line in life.
Often marathoners feel it is tragic if they pull out of a marathon during the race due to injury or illness or not getting to their goal pace at the right time. But this puts all of that into perspective.
Our Destiny
But of course, even raising the idea of our destiny brings in the sobering truth that there is no way to determine that for ourselves. Whatever we say about us, or whatever anyone else says about us, our destiny – because it’s in the future – is out of our hands.
Kiptum trained for insane distances each week – far more than other conventional athletes. Even more than Kipchoge. The worst that could be said about his 200-250km weeks was that he would burnt out early or get badly injured. He was reaching for the sun, and the heat would melt his Icarus-liked winged feet. He would break before he got old.
We didn’t predict that he would die before he got old.
But in a sense, whatever we think our destiny is in the short term – greatness in sport, or achievement or adventure or pleasure, our destiny is death. Like Kiptum we are all destined to die.
The Bible tells us that it is destined for humans to die once and then face judgement (Hebrews 9:27), the grave takes us all. And it takes us so often by surprise.
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Despite reiterating, in case after case, that the Constitution demands government neutrality toward religion, the Court has stubbornly failed to clear away an undergrowth of older precedents that arguably suggest the opposite. Bureaucrats and judges alike cling to these outdated precedents, using them to mask their confusion, ignorance, or outright animus toward religious believers and institutions.

Religious-liberty cases have come to feature prominently on the Supreme Court’s docket. In the past five years alone, the Court has rejected Covid-19 restrictions on religious worship, disallowed the exclusion of Catholic Charities from Philadelphia’s foster care system, reaffirmed that courts may not second-guess religious schools’ employment decisions, invalidated (twice) the exclusion of religious schools from public-benefit programs, and held that Colorado unconstitutionally discriminated against a baker who refused to cater same-sex weddings. And, apparently, the Court is just getting started. This term, it is considering several important religious-liberty cases, and it recently agreed to consider another next term.
Many of the Court’s recent religious-liberty decisions sound a similar theme: namely, that the First Amendment requires government neutrality toward religion—that it prohibits the government from disfavoring religious believers or institutions, from silencing religious speech, and from suppressing religious conduct. So why do government actors persist in doing these things, necessitating the Court’s repeated corrective action?
Part of the fault lies with the Supreme Court itself. Despite reiterating, in case after case, that the Constitution demands government neutrality toward religion, the Court has stubbornly failed to clear away an undergrowth of older precedents that arguably suggest the opposite. Bureaucrats and judges alike cling to these outdated precedents, using them to mask their confusion, ignorance, or outright animus toward religious believers and institutions.
This term, the Court has given itself three opportunities to put a stop to all this by definitively rejecting older, erroneous interpretations of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause that can be read to countenance religious discrimination. The first, Carson v. Makin, argued in December, challenges Maine’s exclusion of faith-based schools from a tuition-assistance program for high school students living in rural school districts. Carson asks the Court to reaffirm what it has already twice made clear: the First Amendment forbids states from excluding religious schools from public-benefit programs, including private school-choice programs. Despite this, Maine points to language in prior decisions that it argues create loopholes permitting it to discriminate against religious schools and the students who wish to attend them. Rather than ignoring, narrowing, or distinguishing these decisions, the Court should explicitly overrule them and close the loopholes, thus eliminating the confusion that itself has created—and clearing the path for the expansion of parental choice in the U.S.
Though Carson is arguably the most important religious-liberty case this term, two others sound a similar theme. Today, the Supreme Court will hear argument in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, a case challenging a high school’s termination of a football coach for praying on the field after games. The school claims that it had no choice but to fire Coach Joseph Kennedy when he refused to stop praying, pointing to prior precedents that sow confusion and discrimination to justify its action. Specifically at issue in Kennedy is the so-called endorsement test, a doctrine that the Supreme Court invented to distinguish between constitutionally protected private religious expression and constitutionally prohibited government religious expression.
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Written by Rev. Fred Klett |
Wednesday, May 31, 2023
Through Jesus, Israel has been expanded in a glorious way, not replaced. Fulfillment of the promise to Abraham has come and will go forward until its completion when Messiah returns. Jesus must reign until all his enemies are placed under his feet. He will conquer all nations, including the Jewish nation, with the gospel.

Much fuss has been made in our Jewish evangelism circles regarding “replacement” theology, the idea that the church has “replaced” the Jewish people in the plan of God. Some have even accused all who think New Covenant believers are “Spiritual Israel” as being guilty of this “replacement theology,” that is, of replacing the Jewish people with the church. Charges have been made that this idea of “Spiritual Israel” leads to anti-semitism.
Ironically my first exposure to the idea of all believers being spiritually Israel came about through involvement in “Messianic Judaism”! Way back in 1975 I attended a seminar by Manny Brotman, president of the “Messianic Jewish Movement International” on “How to Share the Messiah.” In the seminar notes I read: “When a Gentile asks the Messiah into his heart and life, he is accepting the Jewish Messiah, the Jewish Bible, and the Jewish blood of atonement and could be considered a proselyte to biblical Judaism and a child of Abraham by faith!” Isn’t this essentially a statement of the “Spiritual Israel” idea?
Getting the Big Picture
We must submit our thinking to the scriptures and derive even our method of interpreting of the Bible from the Bible itself! We must learn how the text interprets itself! Many have not done this. We can’t base our understanding of doctrine on “spiritual” intuition or emotional arguments. We must strive, asking wisdom from the Spirit, to interpret the word of God correctly, and this certainly means we submit to the approach used by the apostles the Messiah appointed to represent Him. And we must understand how the whole Bible fits together and derive our doctrine of Israel within that framework.
God has had one purpose and plan for mankind ever since the Fall: to restore a people for Himself from fallen humanity through Messiah Jesus. Because of the Fall of Adam we have all come under the curse of God, or as the Puritans put it “through Adam’s Fall sinned we all.” The Jewish people, and ultimately the Jewish Messiah, brought to the world the Abrahamic promise of blessing to redeem us from the curse of the Fall. Jesus brought the blessings of Abraham “first to the Jew” and then expanded the blessing “also to the Gentile” (see Galatians 3:14 and Romans 1:16). There are not two sets of Covenant promises and Covenant obligations, one for Jewish believers and one for Gentile believers, there is one New Covenant people and one faith (Eph. 2:16 and 4:5).
God has had but one program from the beginning: salvation through Jesus. God purposed to restore blessing once again to a cursed world. The core of the Abrahamic promise was to bring a restoration of blessing to all peoples through the seed of Abraham. This seed is ultimately the King of Israel, the Messiah. Psalm 72:17 tells us this by applying the very words of the Abrahamic promise to the Son of David: “May his name endure forever…all nations will be blessed through him, and they will call him blessed.”
National and ethnic Israel can only find true meaning within the larger context of the renewal of all things through the Messiah. God’s purposes are one. God created the Jewish people to bring Messiah to the world. You cannot divorce any of the promises to Israel from the “big picture” of redemption from the Fall through Messiah.
God has not withdrawn His promises to the Jewish people. Rather, Paul clearly tells us, “no matter how many promises God has made, they are “yes” in Messiah” (2 Cor. 1:20). The New Covenant promise of eternal life through faith in Jesus is greater than any other blessing of God ever given. Indeed this is the fulfillment of the blessing promised to Abraham. The curse of death and separation from God is overturned through Messiah. Paul clearly says “He redeemed us in order that THE BLESSING PROMISED TO ABRAHAM MIGHT COME TO THE GENTILES through Messiah Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit” (Galatians 3:14). Only through Jesus can people truly come to the blessings of Abraham, life in the Spirit.
Whether we are Jews by birth or Gentiles, we who trust Messiah Jesus have one common faith. As Paul put it “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called—one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all.” (Eph. 4:4-6)
Some Jews who are for Jesus call their movement “Messianic Judaism.” A few of these Jewish believers distinguish “Messianic Judaism” from “Christianity.” I believe it would be better theology to distinguish between a culturally Jewish expression of New Covenant Judaism and a culturally Gentile expression of New Covenant Judaism. Our New Covenant faith is the true, Biblical Judaism.
Gentiles who come to believe in the Jewish Messiah convert to Biblical Judaism! Our New Covenant faith is the fulfillment of the Old Covenant faith. Christianity is New Covenant Judaism, the true religion of the Jewish people—even if most Jewish people don’t know it yet! The concept of “Spiritual Israel” is a Biblical doctrine. It doesn’t mean “replacement.”..it means EXPANSION! God has joined Gentiles to the true faith of Israel—He has expanded the nation spiritually!
Kingdom Blessings Depend Upon Following the King
To be a member of a kingdom means to swear allegiance to its king. Jesus is the King of Israel and those who follow him are members of his kingdom. Consider the implications of these passages:
John the Baptizer, said: “For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham” (Luke 3:8).
The Scriptures teach that all those who believe are Jesus’ brothers (Romans 8:29 and Hebrews 2:10-11). Jesus said “whoever who does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:35). Jesus said he had other sheep, not of that flock (10:16). All believers are Jesus’ family and the sheep of His flock.
Paul says Gentile believers are grafted in to the tree of Israel, become Abraham’s children by faith, become heirs to the blessing of Abraham and are citizens of Israel (Romans 4:16-18; 11:17-21; Galatians 3:14; and Ephesians 2:19).
So, we see that every believer is a brother of Jesus, a child of Abraham, part of the flock of the Shepherd of Israel, grafted into the tree of Israel, an heir to the promise given to Abraham, and a citizen of the commonwealth of Israel! How wonderful to have become, spiritually, part of Israel!
The New Covenant
We are all covenant breakers before God. God made a covenant with Adam and we have all followed in the footsteps of our first father. What was said of Israel is also true of us “They like Adam have transgressed the covenant.” (1) We can only be saved from the curse of the first covenant of Works made with Adam if God provides a Covenant of Grace for us. This is what is in focus in the covenant made with Abraham.(2) The blessings promised to the nations refers to the reversal of the curse we came under through Adam. The New Covenant(3) brings to fruition the promise of blessing for the nations made to Abraham.(4) Without the New Covenant all are in Adam and under the curse. Yet, the New Covenant is made with the house of Israel and the House of Judah!(5) Gentiles must join themselves to the Holy Nation in order to be a part of this covenant. Yet amazingly I have been told by an opponent of the “Spiritual Israel” doctrine that Gentile believers do not have the New Covenant! He told me that since the covenant was made with Israel only Jewish people have it! Oy Vey! Do you see where the denial of the doctrine of “Spiritual Israel” logically leads?
Can it really be doubted that all believers are spiritually Israel? The scriptures tell us that Gentile believers are spiritual members of the Jewish family of faith along with the remnant of Jewish believers, even if most of the natural family members have temporarily left the household of faith by rejecting the New Covenant. By adoption Gentiles come into a relationship with the Jewish people and so should have a concern for the estranged members of their own faith family, just as they should be concerned for the spiritual return of children of Christian parents who have departed from the faith.
How can anyone reasonably deny that through the great salvation provided through the Jewish Messiah, Gentile believers have become spiritually Israel? This is the truth Jesus taught and this is the doctrine Paul taught—pretty good theological company to find oneself in!
A Key Passage: Romans 11
Though all believers are spiritually Israel, if we truly understand Romans 11 there should be no question about the fact that God still has a claim on the Jewish people. The natural children of Abraham are still in some way chosen because of the patriarchs, even in unbelief. He will restore the Jewish people to faith one day. Romans 11:28 clearly tells us “As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account, but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs.” Consider these comments by leading Covenantal theologians:
John Calvin
“I extend the word Israel to all the people of God, according to this meaning, -When the Gentiles shall come in, the Jews also shall return from their defection to the obedience of faith; and thus shall be completed the salvation of the whole Israel of God, which must be gathered from both; and yet in such a way that the Jews shall obtain the first place, being as it were the first born in God’s family.
…as Jews are the firstborn, what the Prophet declares must be fulfilled, especially in them: for that scripture calls all the people of God Israelites, it is to be ascribed to the pre-eminence of that nation, who God had preferred to all other nations…God distinctly claims for himself a certain seed, so that his redemption may be effectual in his elect and peculiar nation…God was not unmindful of the covenant which he had made with their fathers, and by which he testified that according to his eternal purpose he loved that nation: and this he confirms by this remarkable declaration, -that the grace of the divine calling cannot be made void. (6)”
Charles Hodge
“The second great event, which, according to the common faith of the Church, is to precede the second advent of Christ, is the national conversion of the Jews….that there is to be such a national conversion may be argued…from the original call and destination of that people. God called Abraham and promised that through him, and in his seed, all the nations of the earth should be blessed…A presumptive argument is drawn from the strange preservation of the Jews through so many centuries as a distinct people.
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