(I gave the following lecture at the Middle East Consultation of the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Mansourieh, Lebanon, Sept 21, 2026. Almost the same material appeared on the ABTS faculty blog: https://abtslebanon.org/2026/09/17/the-apostle-paul-and-the-promised-land/)

As many of us know, it can be stressful and confusing to live in Lebanon with the ongoing fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. The situation is full of many complex realities which I will not pretend to address today. Instead, I want to deal, hopefully in a responsible way, with one issue that lies underneath a lot of what’s happening in Lebanon and the region: How should believers interpret the Bible with respect to the promised land?

First, a little background: The promise and gift of the land are central in the Old Testament. It was not simply territory but the place where the people Israel would live as God’s covenant people in his presence. God rescued Israel out of slavery and into the land so that they might live under his rule, worship him, and be a blessing and light among the nations.

But how should believers interpret the promise of the land after Jesus’ death and resurrection, once the church expands to include the gentiles, and the New Testament has been written?

Let me admit that such questions of interpretation are complicated, and at the risk of oversimplification, I’ll describe the issue in terms of two main options:

First option: Should we take Old Testament promises regarding the land as they are, reading them in a literal, plain-sense way, as many believers do? And many who have this perspective also tend to move directly from the Old Testament to territorial claims for the modern state of Israel.

Or, the second option, as we will explore in this session: Should we interpret the promise of the land christologically, through Christ, and as being fulfilled in Christ? This approach is different and leads to different results and priorities. And I want to propose that the writers of the New Testament seem to think in this second way. And they set an example for us to interpret the promise of the land like this.

To be clear, these options are not about taking Jesus Christ seriously or not; believers with very different perspectives on this issue are serious Christians. I’m asking: Should we as believers accept the Old Testament’s promises about the land at face value — in a literal way — or do we take them in the way that the New Testament seems to take them?

Let’s begin by recognizing that almost all Christians today are not of Jewish background and therefore would not be naturally reading what we call the Old Testament apart from faith in Jesus Christ. We receive the Old Testament as God’s word to us because of our faith in Jesus Christ. He is our connection to the Old Testament.

For those who wrote the New Testament to teach early Christians, the reality that gentile believers’ connection with the Old Testament is only through Jesus Christ has profound effects when it comes to interpreting the Old Testament’s promises.

In this session, instead of presenting a survey of evidence from the New Testament as whole, I will focus on Paul the apostle. This will allow us to be brief while still going deep in the thought of a key New Testament writer. And it will help us avoid merely quoting Bible verses here and there as superficial proof texts.

Paul claimed, “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ” (2 Cor. 1:20 NIV). This statement sums up Paul’s approach: he understood that God’s promises in the Old Testament get faithfully fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

What could Paul have meant by this statement in 2 Corinthians? He gives us clues. Though Jesus and his first disciples were Jews, Paul was mainly writing to gentile believers living in ancient Corinth when he wrote those words. He says later in 2 Corinthians 7:1 that “we” (gentile Christians like the Corinthians) now “have these promises”. There, Paul is identifying these believers in Jesus Christ as the (new) temple of God (2 Cor 6:16; see Zech 2:10-11 and Is 56:3-8 for Paul’s possible basis). But the claim is broader than that. In 1 Cor 10:1 he also calls the ancestors in the Old Testament “our fathers”. So, Paul teaches gentile believers that, through Christ, they have become heirs of Israel’s scriptures and God’s promises.

But it’s not as though Paul concludes that the land of promise belongs to Christians.

In fact, despite the presence of 13 letters in the New Testament bearing Paul’s name, we find him making no mention of the promise of the land. This silence is very loud.

And it’s important to ask why is Paul so quiet about the land of promise?

Some say Paul doesn’t mention the promised land because he assumes the Old Testament already says what needs to be said. That’s highly unlikely, because Paul gives us clues that he re-interprets the plain-sense meaning of the Old Testament’s promise of the land.

Paul says in Romans 4:13 that God promised “Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world (kosmos)”.

The Old Testament teaches that God gave Abraham the land of Israel and that his descendants would inherit that land. But Paul inserts “kosmos” where we would expect “land”! (See Ex 32:13)

This signals why Paul demonstrates little concern for the land of Israel. (SLIDE) Paul’s belief about the promise has turned from a particular piece of land to the whole world, in line with the part of the promise saying that God would bless the nations (gentiles) through Abraham (Gen 12:3; 18:18; 22:18).

Thus, we find evidence in Paul’s letters that he’s trying to make his way to Rome, the center of the known world at that time, for the sake of spreading the gospel from there. Paul’s letters, and the New Testament as a whole, tend to decenter the land of Israel, even while affirming that the Christian faith is rooted in ancient Israel and the Old Testament.

And in Romans 15:5-12, Paul grounds his call to take the gospel to the gentiles in a wide variety of Israel’s scriptures – Deuteronomy, the Psalms, and Isaiah. The universal mission to the gentiles arises from the Old Testament. So we see Paul’s reading of Israel’s scriptures through Christ is layered, multidimensional; he takes some elements rather straightforwardly, such as prophecies about the gentiles, though other aspects he interprets in a more spiritual or figurative way.

Paul’s letter to the Galatians affirms God’s promise to Abraham but features Paul re-interpreting the promise to Abraham’s “offspring” as singular, identifying the one offspring as Christ in Gal 3:16. Paul makes no mention of the land, but instead “the promise of the Spirit” (3:14 NIV). We who put faith in Jesus receive the Holy Spirit and “sonship”; we become God’s children and heirs (3:26). So, Paul uses inheritance language for his gentile Christian readers, telling them they are children of Abraham, children and heirs of the promise through faith in Jesus Christ (3:29).

Paul affirms something similar in Romans 8 when he states that believers are joint heirs with Christ (verse 17). And instead of mentioning the land, he maintains that all of creation will be liberated (8:19-23). Again, we see Paul’s move from the Old Testament’s promise of a particular piece of land to a vision for the whole world (see Is 65:17 for Paul’s possible basis).

Yet Paul also shows deep concern for his fellow Jews. Romans 9 to 11 is a famously complex passage where Paul affirms God’s faithfulness to the Jews. Paul even says God’s calling and gifts to them are irrevocable (11:29). That’s probably the saying which Christian Zionists rely on the most in Paul’s letters, though the land itself is notably not mentioned in Romans 9 to 11. This long passage helps us realize that it is not that Paul believes the increasingly gentile church of his time has displaced the people of Israel. He says it is not that God’s promises to Israel have failed or been voided.

The reality is not displacement but continuity of the promise and exponential enlargement into one people (in Christ). Paul sees Jew and gentile worshiping God together as one Israel throughout the world (Rom 10:18), like one great olive tree into which new branches (gentile believers) have been grafted (11:12, 15; 11:17-23). Paul also leaves us with a mystery because he says, “all Israel will be saved” (11:26). There’s debate about whether this verse (11:26) means the whole community of Jews and Gentiles together who have faith in Jesus, or solely ethnic Israel as an entity. Paul does not provide the details for how or when this salvation will happen, but he recognizes this event as part of God’s faithfulness to the Jews. Paul also maintains in the larger context that it is all who call upon the Lord Jesus who will be saved (10:9, 13; 11:23).

Let me acknowledge that Paul also honors the impoverished Jewish Christians of Jerusalem as he seeks in multiple letters to raise money toward their relief and welfare (1 Cor 16:1-4; 2 Cor 8-9; Rom 15:25-27; Gal 2:10). This is a curious reality, because there was poverty among believers in other places, as Paul testifies for instance in Macedonia 2 Cor 8:2-4, where the donors themselves were impoverished. Why does Paul give a preference to the saints of Jerusalem? While Paul’s theology does not prioritize the land of Israel or Jerusalem, the Jewish followers of Jesus who are part of the mother church in Jerusalem still occupy his heart. This gift for the saints in Jerusalem is a way for Paul to work at unity between the mostly Gentile churches elsewhere and the Jewish followers of Jesus in Jerusalem. For Paul it may also symbolize fulfillment of the prophecies about the wealth of the gentiles coming to Zion, but here it is all happening for the church and within the church.

Now, if we had time to explain Paul’s position on the promised land further, we would explore the church as the body of Christ and the location of God’s presence on earth, apparently in place of the temple and the land (Rom 12:5; 1 Cor 3:16; 12:27; Eph 3:6; 4:12). Paul identifies the bodies of believers (mostly gentile in Paul’s context) as the new place of God’s dwelling through the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:15, 19). It is a similar way of thinking that leads Jesus in John’s Gospel to say to a Samaritan woman, “The hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father” (John 4:21). Why is that? Because the coming of Jesus and his death and resurrection relativize and greatly decrease the importance of Jerusalem and Israel’s land. We find no evidence in Paul’s letters that these physical spaces are still the location of God’s presence.

The New Testament, while rooting its teaching in the Old Testament, gives little (or no) long-term priority to a particular piece of land for God’s people. Instead, the New Testament directs believers’ eyes toward the whole world. The promise of the land is not denied; it is expanded to include the rest of the world, where the gospel message and Christ’s presence must go (Rom 15:19-23; 2 Cor 5:19; Gal 3:8).

My goal here was not to pretend to address all that might shape Christians’ different views of supporting the modern state of Israel. And many other issues are relevant when interpreting the promised land, including: What does accountability mean in relation to the land? What are the biblical boundaries of the land? Who is Israel? And, How does the rest of the New Testament, beyond Paul’s letters, handle the promise of the land?

My goal has been smaller. I’ve tried to raise questions and plant seeds so that believers will pause and realize the evidence from Paul directs us toward a different understanding of the promise than that promoted by those who take the approach of a literal fulfilment of the promise of the land. The writers of the New Testament read the Old Testament’s promise about the land through their experience of the risen Christ. This leads them to teach a different way of receiving the Old Testament’s promise. We see a move from the land to the whole world. And the place of God’s presence becomes the believers themselves.

As we interpret the promises about the land found in the Old Testament, I invite fellow believers to consider guidance from Paul and other writers of the New Testament. In the least, perhaps the line of thought shared today can help believers who take the promises of the land literally to understand one important reason why many brothers and sisters don’t hold the same view or have the same priority.

A responsible Christian approach to the modern state of Israel needs to consider how the New Testament interprets the promises about the land which appear in the Old Testament. Doing so may help us avoid transferring biblical promises automatically and uncritically into political claims about the modern state of Israel. Avoiding this can ultimately lead to policies and a region that’s more just, and may even make the gospel message more credible.

Thank you for the chance to share with you.