Actually, no. I am not dealing with how men are saved from the penalty of their sins, which is the second death in the lake of fire. I am dealing with dispensational divisions and how God is bringing to pass his will for mankind in spite of unbelief and opposition from man and Satan. God has presented himself as absolutely holy and has demanded that man be as holy as he is in order to have fellowship with him and to be accepted of him. God is the judge of all men, even the man Christ Jesus. God has determined that Jesus Christ is the only man who has achieved this perfection and therefore he has accepted his sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, Jews and gentiles, and whatever other divisions there are in world history, and has promised that he will impute the perfect righteousness of his son to the account of anyone who from the heart will repent of their sins and trust the promise of God through Jesus his perfect Son, whose blood washes their sins away.
That perfect righteousness is in the form of a member of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit, who indwelt the body of Jesus Christ from his conception, and still does, and always will. It was he, living in the body of Jesus Christ, who empowered him to perfection in the flesh. Jesus Christ is the only man who possessed the Spirit of God from his physical birth, and all other men must be "born again" in order for this transaction to take place. God, the judge, must "justify" the man who makes an appeal for this pardon of his death sentence through Jesus Christ as his substitute who died for him, because he is not only the judge, judging the heart, but he is also the administrator of the gift of the Spirit of Christ, who is eternal life, and the agency of the new birth as a son of God in all who believe.
God has not changed ever in the principle of his justification. It has always been by faith in what he has promised. Faith is defined as the confidence of man in the faithfulness of God to keep and deliver on his promise, and that confidence is manifest in obedience to the will and desire of God, no questions asked. This is the manner in which others can see the heart felt conviction that God is real and that his holiness is of greatest importance in the family of God.
While the nation of Israel, formed through the seed of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, were the special people of God whom he himself raised up to teach the other nations about himself by his interaction with them, they were not children of God because of it. They were children of Abraham and they made great boast about that. They were children of the flesh. They were given his laws and those laws, if kept perfectly, would have proven that they were righteous. But they had just the opposite effect, they proved them unrighteous and in need of a savior. That was the purpose of God. Through them he brought this savior into the world and displayed him in public to the world as he paid the penalty for the sins of the whole world, including the children of Abraham, in his own body on the cross.
This is the only gospel that saves men from the penalty of their sins, which is the second death in the lake of fire. It does not matter who you are or where you live or who your earthly parents are. This is the only way to God and the only way to be born again and to be reconciled to God, the judge of all men. One must believe with confidence from the heart that Jesus Christ died for all men and that God will receive all men who come in his name, JUST BECAUSE HE SAID HE WOULD! He will not save anyone who will not come to him by faith.
I wanted to get this straight so there will be no doubt of what I believe about salvation. But whatever I believe, it does not negate a single promise that God has made to different peoples and nations. He has made many promises to Israel concerning the land and their status as an eternal nation with 12 tribes. Obviously he has not kept those promises in this last two thousand years while he is forming the church of Jesus Christ, which includes both converts of Israel, Jews, and converts from all the other nations of the world, Gentiles. This does not mean he will not keep his national promises to them, or even that he cannot keep them, it just means that he will keep them when he has completed his formation of the church, which is his body and his bride in the same way that Eve was taken from the body of Adam and formed into his bride and the two, when married, became one flesh, according to God.
In case no one has ever read about it, there is a marriage of the Lamb prophesied by the men of God who wrote his word under his inspiration, coming sometime out there in the future. That will not happen in this age. There is much water to flow under the bridge in this world before that is fulfilled.
The scriptures do make wonderful sense but they are written from God's point of view. One must learn to think like he thinks in order to understand the deep things of God, and he must have the Spirit of God to teach him.
