There are few sentences a pastor can say that draw a warmer “amen” than “We stand with Israel.” And there are few sentences more easily twisted into something we never meant.
So let me say plainly where I stand, and where our church stands, before I say anything else. We love the Jewish people. We love the Jewish nation. Every month our church gives thousands of dollars to organizations that minister to Jewish people around the world, and we personally support churches in the land of Israel. This is not the voice of a critic standing on the outside throwing stones. This is the voice of a friend who has skin in the game.
And precisely because I am a friend, I have to tell the truth about something that has gone sideways in a lot of Christian thinking. When we say “we stand with Israel,” many people hear, and some people deliberately want us to hear, “we endorse everything the Israeli government does.” Those are not the same statement. They have never been the same statement. And confusing them is doing real damage, both to our witness and to the very people we claim to love.
So here is the conviction I want to make a biblical case for: A blessing is not a blank check. You can wholeheartedly support Israel’s right to exist, her right to defend herself, and the Jewish people’s place in God’s heart, without baptizing every decision of any sitting government as the will of God.
What Genesis 12 Actually Promises
Most of us anchor our love for Israel in one of the oldest promises in Scripture. God says to Abram in Genesis 12, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3).
That promise is real, it is binding, and it still matters. But notice what it actually is. It is a covenant God made with Abraham about his seed and the redemptive purpose flowing through that seed. The New Testament tells us where that purpose was always heading: “The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed… meaning one person, who is Christ” (Galatians 3:16). The blessing of Abraham was never primarily about borders, cabinets, or coalitions. It was about a redemptive line that would bring the Messiah and, through Him, salvation to every nation on earth.
That promise is older than the modern state of Israel by nearly four thousand years. It is older than the Knesset, older than any prime minister, older than any political party. To take a covenant about God’s eternal redemptive plan through Abraham’s offspring and turn it into a foreign-policy endorsement of a twenty-first-century administration is not careful reading. It is a leap the text never asked us to make.
To “bless” the children of Abraham is a posture of the heart toward God’s covenant people. It is honor, love, prayer, partnership, and a longing for their good. It is not, and was never meant to be, a vow to approve every act of every government that happens to govern them.
Three Things We Keep Confusing
Most of the trouble comes from collapsing three different things into one. Healthy Christians hold them apart.
There is the Jewish people — a people God set His love upon, who gave us the patriarchs, the prophets, the Scriptures, and according to the flesh, the Messiah Himself. Our bond to them is not political. It is covenantal. We are bound to the Jewish people by a covenant God made, not by a coalition we joined.
There is the land — the physical place tied to God’s promises, where believers, both Jewish and Arab, live and worship today.
And there is the government — a human institution, run by fallible people, making contested decisions, exactly like every other government on the planet, including our own.
When we love the people, defend the land’s right to peace and security, and yet reserve the freedom to disagree with a government’s particular policies, we are not being inconsistent. We are being biblical. The prophets did this constantly. Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah loved Israel with their whole hearts and still thundered against the injustices of her kings. Nathan loved David and still walked into the palace and said, “You are the man.” In Scripture, loving a nation and confronting its leaders were never opposites. They were often the same act of love.
A Word About Where I Stand
Before I say a single honest word about any government, let me tell you exactly where I come from, because it matters.
I was born in Iran. But I have lived in America since I was eight years old, and the truth is I am more American than anything else. America is my home. And I carry no illusions about the regime that rules Iran today. I long to see it fall. I share Israel’s goal of seeing that tyranny toppled, and I dream of the day freedom finally comes to the Iranian people — and yes, of one day planting a thriving church on Iranian soil.
So understand what that means. When I speak honestly about the Israeli government, I am not speaking as someone who sympathizes with Israel’s enemies. On the enemy that threatens Israel most — the regime in Tehran — Israel and I want the very same thing. I am not analyzing this government as an adversary looking for cracks. I am doing it as a friend who shares its deepest strategic hopes, and who is therefore free to be honest about the rest. That is exactly the freedom this whole article is fighting for: you can stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel on the things that matter most and still keep your eyes open about the things that don’t.
Real Love Tells the Truth
Here is something we have to recover: uncritical support is not the highest form of love. It is often the lowest.
“Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful” (Proverbs 27:6). Flattery feels supportive. It is actually a form of betrayal, because it tells people what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear. A friend who can never disagree is not a friend; he is a flatterer waiting to be used.
And being used is exactly the danger. Let me say this carefully but honestly. The current Israeli leadership understands something many American Christians do not: that evangelicals are one of the most reliable bases of support Israel has in the United States. That relationship is cultivated skillfully and deliberately. At the same time, that same government governs in coalition with ultra-Orthodox and religious-nationalist factions whose posture toward Christians in the land ranges from cold to openly hostile.
This is not speculation. Year after year, watchdog groups in Jerusalem document a rising pattern of harassment against Christians and church property — clergy spat upon in the streets, churches vandalized, worshippers obstructed at their own holy sites. The numbers have climbed, not fallen. So we end up in a strange and painful place: Christians in America are asked to give political cover to a government, while Christians in Israel quietly absorb the hostility of the very factions that government depends on to stay in power.
If we cannot see that tension, we are not standing with Israel. We are being managed. And a church that can be managed by flattery has already surrendered its prophetic voice.
The Highest Blessing We Can Give
Here is where I want to lift our eyes higher than politics, because this is the heart of the whole matter.
The greatest blessing we can ever give the Jewish people is not a vote, a donation, or a flag in the sanctuary. It is the gospel of their own Messiah.
Listen to Paul, a Jew of Jews, writing about his own people: “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race” (Romans 9:2-3). And again: “My heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved” (Romans 10:1). Paul’s love for Israel did not stop at their safety. It reached all the way to their salvation.
He gives us the picture of the olive tree in Romans 11 — the natural branches and the wild branches grafted in — and then he warns us Gentile believers directly: “Do not be arrogant toward the branches” (Romans 11:18). We were grafted into a story that started with them. “The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29). God has not finished with the Jewish people, and neither should we.
That is the deepest reason we love Israel. Not geopolitics. Not prophecy charts. Not party loyalty. We love Israel because salvation came through them, and because we ache for them to meet the One who came from them. “To the Jew first” (Romans 1:16) is not a slogan. It is a strategy of love.
And here is the hard part: a Christianity that reduces “blessing Israel” to a political reflex can actually crowd out this deeper calling. If our support never rises above the level of a government’s approval rating, we have traded the gospel for an alliance, and we have given the Jewish people far less than God commands us to give.
Don’t Forget the Church in the Land
There is a body of Christ living in Israel right now — Messianic Jewish believers and Arab Christians worshipping the same Lord we worship. They are our family. And too often they are forgotten in our enthusiasm.
You cannot say you love Israel and ignore the believers being harassed within Israel. That is a contradiction the New Testament will not let us hold. When one part of the body suffers, every part suffers with it (1 Corinthians 12:26). If we are going to invest our hearts in that land, the persecuted church in that land has the first claim on our attention, not the last.
Our Kingdom Is Not of This World
Finally, we have to remember where our hope actually rests. When Jesus stood before Pilate, He said, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). Paul reminds us, “Our citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20). We do not anchor our ultimate hope in any earthly capital — not in Washington, not in Tehran, and not in Jerusalem.
This is freeing. It means we can support Israel without idolizing Israel. It means our love does not depend on a government earning it, and our honesty does not depend on a government deserving it. We are not partisans of a regime. We are servants of a King whose kingdom outlasts every administration on earth.
So Here Is How We Bless Israel
Let me bring it all the way home, because I want to give you language you can actually use.
We stand wholeheartedly for Israel’s right to exist. For her right to defend her people and her borders. For the security and dignity of the Jewish nation. For the salvation of the Jewish people. On these things we do not flinch, apologize, or negotiate.
And we stand discerningly when it comes to the particular policies of any government — Israeli, American, or otherwise. We reserve the right that the prophets always reserved: to love a people and still speak honestly about their leaders. That is not betrayal. That is friendship of the costly kind.
We refuse to be manipulated into thinking love means silence. We refuse to be shamed into thinking honesty means hostility. And we refuse, above all, to let politics rob the Jewish people of the one thing they need most from us — a church that loves them enough to keep pointing them to their Messiah.
Bless Israel. The Scripture commands it, and we will do it with everything in us.
But know what you are blessing. A blessing is not a blank check. And the truest friend Israel has is not the one who claps for everything, but the one who loves so deeply that he will tell the truth, pray without ceasing, and never stop longing for that great day when all Israel beholds the face of the One they pierced — and calls Him Lord.
Ron Eivaz Blog 