By contrast, during today’s Gentile age of “the dispensation of the grace of God,” there are NO “lost sheep of the house of Israel” There are only ‘lost souls’ of all races needing to find the redemption that is In Christ and … those who have ‘believed’ into union with Christ. Because of the power of the Cross-work of Jesus Christ for the sins of the whole world, there’s not a single ‘lost’ person among the ‘believing” members of “the Body of Christ.”

The only way for anyone to be lost today is if they do NOT Know and Believe Paul’s good news of “the gospel of the grace of God,” which saves any genuine believer to the uttermost.

Plainly, if you are not saved, then you are not a member of the one “Body of Christ.”

“But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are ‘LOST’:” (2 Corinthians 4:3 (KJV)

If you are a believer, trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior…

• then you are Not Lost but a member of “the Body of Christ.”

• If you are a believing member of “the Body of Christ,” you are not a ‘sheep’ of any kind.
• The “lost sheep” were a specific people in the Bible, the people of ‘the Nation Israel.’

Jesus, as Israel’s “Shepherd.” was to be received by Israel as their Messiah… but, He as God, Messiah and King of Israel was rejected 3 times, the 3^rd time in Act 7, as seen below.

1. Israel that had already Rejected Father God in the Old Testament by killing the prophets He sent them. (1Thes. 2:15)
2. Then they killed “the Son of God” whom The Father had sent Israel. (Acts 2:36)
3. Finally, they killed the Holy Spirit’s Messenger to Israel speaking through Stephen (Act 7:58). As Jesus said, the rejection of the Holy Spirit could “not be forgiven” (cf. Matt. 12:32).

As a result, the Nation Israel ‘struck out’ as in baseball. Today Israel is “fallen,” “cast away,” “blinded” and set aside, as seen in the verses below.

“I say then, Have they [Israel] stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their FALL salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy.” (Romans 11:11)

“For if the Casting Away of Them [Israel] be the reconciling of the world [all mankind who will believe], what shall the [ultimate]receiving of them be, but life from the dead?” (Romans 11:15)

“For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery [secret], lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that ‘blindness’ in part [meaning ‘temporarily’] is happened to Israel, UNTIL The Fulness Of The Gentiles Be Come In [at the Rapture of the Gentile body of Christ.]” (Romans 11:25)

Today Israel remains “fallen,” “cast away,” “blinded” and set aside during today’s Gentile age of “the grace of God” so long as it lasts … which will be UNTIL the Rapture of “the body of Christ”; thus, ending this Gentile age of the pure “grace of God.”

“For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, UNTIL the fulness of the Gentiles be come in [at the Rapture]” (Romans 11:25)

Thankfully, individual Jews today can be saved as any Gentile is saved, “by grace through faith” in the Cross-work of Christ. Previously God’s call was to Israel only as His elevated people, but they have fallen. Paul tells us today, during this age of the church, called “the body of Christ,” lost people of ALL races – meaning both Jews and Gentiles… can now be saved without that former racial distinction. Thus, Paul wrote this of all men here below.

“There is neither Jew nor Greek [Gk. ethnos, gentiles of all races], there is neither bond [slave] nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one In Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28 (KJV)

In contrast to “sheep,” we as members of Christ’s Gentile church that Paul calls “the body of Christ” are referred to as soldiers, ambassadors, race runners, warriors, and builders. All of us ‘grace believers’ are sent out to build, win, fight, and represent Christ according to God’s instructions provided to us through Paul’s thirteen epistles, for Paul is “the [one] Apostle to the Gentiles.” (Rom. 11:13). To us, Paul is the Moses of “the body of Christ.” We note this contrast when we study Paul’s epistles.

• The “lost sheep of the House of Israel” wait for their “shepherd’ to return for them to receive their promises.
  • But Israel will never be who God made them to be on the earth … until they are led into the Millennial Kingdom by Christ as their Shepherd.
• But, we of “His body” are not as “sheep” and we today do not need a “shepherd,”
   nor do we need to have Christ ‘bodily present’ with us … in order for us to be who God has already made us. For we ‘know’ by faith that we are Already Saved and that His resurrected “Spirit of life” forever lives within us as our new, sustaining, and Eternal Life.
  • Those Kingdom believers of Israel who “endure to the end” in “faith” and died, or those later who were martyred during the Tribulation period will receive the eternal life in the 1^st resurrection cf. (Rev. 20:6) at Christ’s 2^nd coming.
  • Those kingdom believers who endure faithful and are alive at His 2^nd coming will be led into the Millennial Kingdom.
• Today, we as believers are Christ’s “body and members in particular” (1Cor. 12:27), to whom Jesus Christ is “the Head.” We are members in “His Body” ALREADY, … who through faith wait for the Rapture.
  • Christ, Israel’s Messiah, having been rejected by Israel three times, today remains in ‘royal exile’ from Israel “seated at the right hand of the Father” in heaven. He will not return until the end of the Tribulation period when Israel will say, “blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” (Matt. 23:39)

Sadly, those of the many religious organizations of Christendom today ignorantly see themselves as ‘sheep.’ As such. they see themselves as the helpless victims of persecution and affliction awaiting the ‘Shepherd.’

• But actually, when today’s members of “His body,” the church, know and adopt their true identity as members of Christ’s ‘justified’ and living “body” on earth, they become “more than conquerors” in all things through faith in Christ (see Rom. 8:34-39 below).

Because the resurrected “Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” was literally Dispensed Into our Human “spirit of man” (1Cor 6:17) to be ‘one with us’ forever, we’ve already been supplied with His limitless life… so whether we suffer, live, or die physically, we endure by faith with His peace, having confidence because:

“³² He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? ³³ Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. ³⁴… It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us [settling our sin-debt].

³⁵ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

³⁶ As it is written, For thy [the Lord’s] sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as [if] sheep for the slaughter. ³⁷ Nay, IN All These Things We Are More Than Conquerors Through Him That Loved Us.

³⁸ For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, ³⁹  Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:32-39)