II. Church and Nation II. 1. The Old Testament people of Isreal were the prototype of the peoples of God--the New Testament Church of Christ. The redemptive feat of Christ the Savior brought the Church into being as the new humanity, the spiritual posterity of the forefather Abraham. By His Blood Christ has redeemed us to God out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation (Rev. 5:9). The Church by her very nature is universal and therefore supranational. In the Church there is no distinction between Jew and Greek (Rom. 10:12). Just as God is not the God of the Jews alone but also of the Gentiles (Rom 3:29), so the Church does not divide people on either national or class grounds: in her there is neither Greek or Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all (Col 3:11). In the contemporary world, the notion of nation is used in two meanings, as an ethnic community and the aggregate citizens of a particular country. Relationships between church and nation should be viewed in the context of both meanings of this word. In the OT, the terms am and goy are used to denote a people. In the Hebrew Bible, each term is given a quite concrete meaning, the former denoting Gods chosen people of Isreal, the latter in its plural form goyim , the Gentiles. In the Greek Bible ( Septuagint), the first term is rendered by the term Laos (people) or demos (a nation as a political entity), while the second by the term ethos (nation, and in the plural ethne, meaning heathen). Gods chosen people of Isreal are opposed to other nations throughout the OT books associated in one way or another with the history of Isreal. The people of Isreal
Posted on: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 01:16:08 +0000
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