Christians can claim promises made to Israel, but only through Christ. Galatians 3:29 says if you belong to Christ, you are Abraham’s seed, heir according to the promise. The promise was never yours to take on your own — it’s yours in Him, or it isn’t yours at all.
What Promises Did God Make to Israel?
God gave Israel a bundle of specific promises. A land. A nation. A king on David’s throne forever. Blessing on their obedience, and the honest warning of discipline if they turned away.
These weren’t vague spiritual ideas. They were addressed to a real people, at a real point in history, tied to a real covenant God made with Abraham and later with Moses and David.
That’s exactly why this question matters. If those promises were spoken to a specific nation under a specific covenant, on what basis does anyone outside that nation get to stand on them?
What Does It Mean That All God’s Promises Are Yes in Christ?
Paul answers that question directly.
For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us. (2 Corinthians 1:20)
“Yea” here just means yes. Every promise God ever spoke — to Israel, to Abraham, to anyone — gets its yes in Christ. Not beside Him. Not around Him. In Him.
That’s the hinge the whole question turns on, and it’s the same hinge for knowing which promises are yours anywhere else in Scripture.
You don’t get access to a promise made to Israel by admiring Israel, studying Israel, or feeling a kinship with Israel. You get it the same way Israel was always meant to get it — through the Messiah those promises were pointing to the whole time.
What Does It Mean to Be Grafted Into Israel?
Paul uses a picture in Romans 11 to make this concrete — an olive tree.
For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert graffed contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be graffed into their own olive tree? (Romans 11:24)
“Graffed” means grafted — a branch cut from one tree and joined into another so it lives off that tree’s root. I used to think being grafted in meant I’d taken over Israel’s job somehow. It doesn’t. It means I’m feeding off a root that was never mine to begin with, and only mine now because I’ve been joined to it.
A grafted branch doesn’t own the tree. It draws life from it. That’s the position — not owner of the promise, but one who’s been joined to the place the promise lives.
Who Is the Israel of God in Galatians 6:16?
Paul closes out Galatians with a blessing on “the Israel of God” — a phrase people have argued over for centuries. Some take it as ethnic Israel. Some take it as every believer, Jew and Gentile alike, walking by the same rule.
Whichever way you land on that phrase, Paul tells you exactly what rule he means just two verses earlier.
But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. (Galatians 6:14)
That’s the rule.
Not circumcision, not bloodline, not claiming a promise because it sounds good.
Glorying in the cross — that’s the only ground anyone, Jew or Gentile, ever had to stand on when reaching for something God once spoke to Israel.
