The Jews are not the covenant people of God.
If we confuse covenant identity with ethnic identity, we will misread the entire arc of redemptive history.
God’s covenant people are not grounded in ancestry, but in faith in Christ.
God's covenant people are not defined by birthright, but by rebirth.
The beneficiaries of the covenant promises are not physical but spiritual.
Once that is clear, we can begin to see how Gentiles are covenantally included in Israel—not through Jewish bloodlines, but through the blood of Christ.
Not understanding this is exactly the error of the Pharisees. They misunderstood that the promises given to the nation were only effectual for the remnant within Israel—to those who were the true children of Abraham—who shared Abraham’s faith, not merely his bloodline.
The pharisees confused physical descent with covenant desent, assuming that being Abraham’s offspring by the flesh guaranteed them covenant election with God.
But Jesus corrects this misunderstanding directly. In Matthew 3:9, He says, “And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.”
In Galatians 3:7-8Paul literally says, “Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.”
Paul is telling us that God’s covenant people are not made up of the physical descendants of Abraham but of the spiritual descendants of Abraham.
Therefore, God’s covenant was never ultimately about a physical nation—it was about a spiritual nation that began within a physical nation.
They were spiritual promises delivered within a physical and ethnic framework. The nation of Israel was the cradle—but not the boundary.
Christ and His body the church are the true Israel and true covenant people of God.