Correctly Understanding Romans 11 & Ephesians 2 (Supplementary)

Being grafted into the Commonwealth of Israel (Rom. 11; Eph. 2) does not make a Gentile person ethnically or spiritually Jewish any more than being a part of the Commonwealth of Great Britain makes an indigenous Cree person (Canadian native) a Briton (tribal, ethnic, of Britain).

Being grafted into the Commonwealth of Israel (Rom. 11; Eph. 2) does not make a Gentile person ethnically or spiritually Jewish any more than being a part of the Commonwealth of Great Britain makes an indigenous Cree person (Canadian native) a Briton (tribal, ethnic, of Britain). When using an ethnic noun to describe a person's spiritual being we must by definition be speaking of a person of that specific ethnicity. A spiritual Jew is also an ethnic Jew, no matter how hard he tries he cannot become a spiritual Briton, or Cree, or Navajo, and vice versa. In the context of Scripture the phrase "Israel of God" (Gal. 6:16) refers to ethnic Jews who have received the King Messiah Yeshua. It does not refer to Gentiles, not in any way.

To put it in plan terms, if I as a Jew were to call myself a "Spiritual Navajo", I would be guilty of denying God's creative purpose for me and my God given ethnic identity, while at the same time appropriating (stealing) the creative purpose and ethnic identity of my Navajo brother. Spiritual redemption in Messiah does not equate to spiritual ethnicity. In fact, to some degree the phrase "spiritual ethnicity" is an oxymoron that uses false equivalence to promote a myth.

Those grafted into the Commonwealth of Israel feed from the faith root of the natural olive tree (ethnic Jews/Israelites) but do not fruit the same variety of fruit as the natural tree.

As a manager of a garden centre for a number of years (prior to becoming a Spiritual Leader) I noted that the multi-graft olive trees we sold fruited the fruit of their original (wild) plants where they had been grafted to the natural (base stock) plant. In short, a burgundy-brown coloured (Kalamata) olive from a wild tree grafted to the green olive (Castelvetrano) of the natural tree, nonetheless fruited burgundy-brown year after year, likewise a black olive (Bella di Cerignola) from another wild olive tree, and so on (we sold trees of up to four grafts of wild olives attached to the root stock of the base plant). After all, what is the point of a multi-graft olive tree that bears only the fruit of the natural tree?

With regard to the teaching of Romans 11/Ephesians 2, spiritually and ethnically speaking, being grafted in by faith through Yeshua the King Messiah to the root source (that which feeds the tree) does not mean a loss of ethnicity (culture, uniqueness, identity, flavour, colour), nor does it mean appropriation of the mother tree’s ethnicity (culture, uniqueness, identity, flavour, colour). It simply means that we feed from the same source (YHVH) via the tree root (Avraham, Isaac & Jacob) and are reliant on the continued existence of the natural tree (Israel).

Learn this lesson well Gentile brothers and sisters: God did not make a mistake when He made you of a different ethnicity to that of Israel (Jewish people). Nor does He require you to become Jews. Freedom is in Messiah alone, all else is idolatrous nonsense. Be the Messiah essential you, expressing all that is godly within your own ethnic cultural identity in Yeshua.

​Copyright 2021 Yaakov Brown