Are there separate plans of salvation for Israel and the Church?
I have seen Romans 11:25-27 referenced to support the modern Dispensational teaching that there is a separate plan of salvation for Israel and for the Church, that after the church is raptured, the final seven years of Daniel's "70 weeks" will resume, after which all of Israel will come to faith in the Messiah that they rejected when Jesus appeared the first time.
Here is the verse:
Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written,“The Deliverer will come from Zion,
he will banish ungodliness from Jacob”;
“and this will be my covenant with them
when I take away their sins.”
(ESV) Romans 11:25-27
This passage is immediately followed by what appears to be confirmation:
As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.(ESV) Romans 11:28-32
So, how can that be reconciled with scriptural teaching that the Church is Spiritual Israel, and that the new covenant has fulfilled the old covenant?
Let's look at some of the scriptures regarding God's continual keeping of a faithful remnant.
Even before Moses gave the Law, Joseph confirmed that God had preserved a remnant through the famine.
And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors.(ESV) Genesis 45:7
When Elijah flees Jezebel and speaks with God from his hiding place in a cave, God reassures Elijah that there will be a remnant.
Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”(ESV) 1 Kings 19:18
Later, as Isaiah is prophesying concerning Judah's wickedness, he affirms that there is still a remnant.
If the Lord of hostshad not left us a few survivors,
we should have been like Sodom,
and become like Gomorrah.
(ESV) Isaiah 1:9
In the New Testament, Paul explains that there is still a remnant, referencing back to the exchange in 1 Kings 19:10-18.
God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel? “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.” But what is God's reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened
(ESV) Romans 11:2-7
So while Israel as a whole rejected the Messiah, there was a remnant in the disciples that founded the church.
Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them. For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?(ESV) Romans 11:13-15
But what about the promises God made to Israel? For starters, let's look at the giving of the Law by Moses at the end of their 40 years of wandering before entering the Promised Land.
You have declared today that the Lord is your God, and that you will walk in his ways, and keep his statutes and his commandments and his rules, and will obey his voice. And the Lord has declared today that you are a people for his treasured possession, as he has promised you, and that you are to keep all his commandments, and that he will set you in praise and in fame and in honor high above all nations that he has made, and that you shall be a people holy to the Lord your God, as he promised.”(ESV) Deuteronomy 26:17-19
So, Israel was commanded to keep all of God's commandments. A little later in the same passage, we see that command restated as a condition.
The Lord will establish you as a people holy to himself, as he has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in his ways.(ESV) Deuteronomy 28:9
Fast forward again to Isaiah's prophecy against Judah, where he restates the conditions under which the Jews would prosper in the land in contrast to what would happen in rebellion.
If you are willing and obedient,
you shall eat the good of the land;
but if you refuse and rebel,
you shall be eaten by the sword;
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
(ESV) Isaiah 1:19-20
Isaiah continues a few verses later, again promising redemption to those who repent while excluding those who rebel.
Zion shall be redeemed by justice,and those in her who repent, by righteousness.
But rebels and sinners shall be broken together,
and those who forsake the Lord shall be consumed.
(ESV) Isaiah 1:27-28
Nehemiah similarly reaffirmed that the promises to Israel were conditional on faithfulness.
Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples, but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen, to make my name dwell there.’(ESV) Nehemiah 1:8-9
Shortly after the Temple and the city walls were rebuilt at the end of the Babylonian, Malachi called the priests and the people to repent, and God made it clear that his "treasured possession" contains only those who "feared the Lord."
Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. The Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name. “They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him. Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.(ESV) Malachi 3:16-18
When God promises to fulfill his promise to Israel and Judah unconditionally, he makes it clear that the promise involves bringing the Messiah through the line of David.
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell securely. And this is the name by which it will be called: The Lord is our righteousness.’(ESV) Jeremiah 33:14-18
There is only one plan of salvation, and that applies to anyone that is made right with God through faith in Jesus and thus a member of His Church, the Bride of Christ. If you ever hear a Dispensationalist say they are merely adhering to 2 Timothy 2:15 by "rightly dividing the word of truth" as stated in the KJV, by dividing the words into what applies to Israel from what applies to the Church, they are misunderstanding that expression. Newer translations correctly translate that into modern English as "rightly handling the word of truth" (ESV) or "correctly understanding the word of truth" (NIV), which is what the expression "rightly dividing" meant in 1611 when the KJV was released.
Jesus clearly taught in John 15 that He is the Vine and we are the branches. Paul built upon this when he pointed out in Romans 11 that some Jews were broken off while some gentiles were grafted in. The Church is the believing remnant to whom the promises of salvation apply.
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