Chapter Eight: One People or Two (1 of 2)

The foundational distinction in the dispensational system—the distinction on which everything else depends—is between Israel and the church. Two peoples of God, two destinies, two programs. Israel has earthly promises, earthly land, an earthly kingdom coming in the millennium. The church has heavenly promises, a heavenly destination, and a parenthetical role in history that will be completed when the rapture removes it from the field. This distinction requires that the church not be the heir of the covenant promises made to Abraham. Those promises are for ethnic Israel, to be fulfilled in the future. The church participates in a different set of blessings—spiritual blessings, not the land promises, not the kingdom promises of the Old Testament.

The argument does not begin with Paul. Before the cross, before Pentecost, before the church exists as a category anyone in the room could name, Jesus described the design. “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them too, and they will listen to my voice, so that there will be one flock and one shepherd” (John 10:16). He is speaking to Jews. The fold is Israel. The other sheep are Gentiles—a reading Scofield’s note confirms explicitly, identifying them as “not of the Jewish fold, but Gentiles.” That identification is correct, and the note stops there. The final clause receives no annotation at all. One flock. Not two flocks running on parallel tracks. Not a Jewish flock and a Gentile flock maintained in separate programs toward different destinations. One. This is not a future millennial arrangement Jesus is describing. It is the design—stated by the Shepherd himself, before the cross, before any of the categories the dispensational grid would later impose on the text.

Paul is not introducing a new thesis. He is explaining what the Shepherd already declared.

In Romans 9–11, Paul is wrestling with the question of whether God has abandoned his promises to Israel. His answer is no—but his understanding of Israel, of the promises, and of their fulfillment does not map onto the dispensational grid. “For not all those who are descended from Israel are truly Israel” (Romans 9:6). The children of promise, not the children of flesh, are counted as offspring. Gentile believers have been grafted into the olive tree of Israel. Jewish unbelievers have been cut off from it. The tree is one. The root is the covenant God made with Abraham. The branches include both those who believe from Israel and those who believe from the nations. The dispensational system needs the church and Israel to be separate organisms. Paul describes one organism into which both are being incorporated through faith.

Open the Scofield Reference Bible to Romans 11 and the note at the olive tree passage states it plainly: “That the Christian now inherits the distinctive Jewish promises is not taught in Scripture. The Christian…partakes of the spiritual blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant…but Israel as a nation always has its own place, and is yet to have its greatest exaltation as the earthly people of God.” The note appears on the same page where Paul uses the olive tree to argue for one tree, one root, one covenant people constituted by faith. The note is not evasion. It is containment delivered before the reader finishes the argument. Scofield reads the olive tree and knows what Paul is doing. His response divides what the root produces: the Christian receives the spiritual blessings; Israel retains the land promises; one root, two classes of inheritors. Paul does not describe two classes. He describes one—the branches currently connected to the root. Inheritance flows from connection, not from prior ethnic standing. The reader who has received the containment framework in the margin will apply it before Paul completes the case.

One specific phrase in Romans 11:25 deserves attention: “A partial hardening has happened to Israel until the full number of the Gentiles has come in.” Dispensationalists read that “until” as a pause button—evidence that God’s program for Israel has been suspended and will resume when the Gentile count is complete. But Paul’s “until” is not a pause-and-resume mechanism. It describes how mercy moves. Israel’s stumbling opens the door for the Gentiles. The Gentiles’ inclusion provokes Israel’s jealousy. Both movements are happening at once, in one continuous plan, toward the same destination. “For God has consigned all people to disobedience so that he may show mercy to them all” (Romans 11:32). There is no separate clock for Israel and a separate clock for the church. There is one God working out one purpose through both.

Galatians 3:28–29 is clearer still. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female—for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to the promise.” Paul does not say Gentile believers are the spiritual heirs of Abraham in a secondary sense, distinct from the primary physical heirs who will receive the land promises in the millennium. He says you belong to Christ, therefore you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to the promise. Paul reads the Abrahamic promise in Galatians 3:8 this way explicitly: Scripture proclaimed the gospel to Abraham ahead of time, saying, “all the nations will be blessed in you.” That promise is being fulfilled in the church.