I'll suggest that "Israel" is the man first named Jacob, whom God renamed Israel, his descendants, and adoptees. I'll note that those of Israel who convert to Christ, are no longer of Israel, because we are all born again, our fatherhood has been changed
Christ our True God is commonly misquoted and misunderstood on this point. What our Lord was seeking to criticize herein was the Pharisaical tendency towards pride and an authoritarian attitude among religious leaders, especially the Rabbinical authorities and the Sanhedrin, rather than a complete prohibition between forming paternal or teaching relationships between fellow humans. After all, the importance of our relationship with our own human father is used by our Lord elsewhere as a metaphor, and furthermore, we see the Holy Apostle Paul refer to human paternal relationships, for instance, referring to Onesimus and Timothy as his sons in Philemon 1:10 and 1 Timothy 1:2, and, more importantly, in 1 Corinthians 4:15, we see the Apostle refer to himself as the sole spiritual father of the Corinthians while also stating that they have many teachers of the faith (“For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet
have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.”)
Likewise, subsequent to this incident, there were occasions when Jesus Christ permitted the disciples and others to refer to him as Rabbi, which means “master” or “teacher”, and additionally, in Acts 13:11, several apostles are enumerated as teachers of the Church in Antioch (where we are first called Christians) and in Ephesians 4:11 , the Holy Apostle Paul enumerates teachers as one of the essential offices of the church. And in Acts 11:24, the Apostle Barnabas is referred to as good, and likewise in the Gospel According to Luke, which like Acts, was written after our Lord had said “call no man good”, St. Joseph of Arimathea is called a good and upright man, and likewise Saints Zechariah and Elizabeth are called “righteous in the sight of God.”
So clearly either St. Paul the Apostle and St. Luke the Evangelist sinned grievously and repeatedly, violating a direct rhetorical commandment, or else, if we look at the context of that verse rather than reading it eisegetically, in isolation, it becomes clear that it is one of several instances in which our Lord condemns the self-righteousness and inflated egos of the Pharisees and their traditions, another being Mark 7:13, which were being written down by the Scribes and would eventually be compiled into the Mishnah, which would be the subject of the vast commentary of Rabinnical Law called the Talmud, and which would form the basis for codes of Jewish Law, such as the Sulchan Aruch, and a similiar codification by Maimonides, which would have the effect of displacing the Torah itself as a quick reference as to what the Law said, given that the traditions of the Pharisees often greatly exceeded what was actually required in the Torah, or in some cases, appear to contradict it, in the name of making it impossible to violate the Torah by creating a fence around it (for example, the fringes, or tzitzit are supposed to be dyed blue and white, but only Karaite Jews (who reject the Mishnah and the Talmud and the office of Rabbi) do this, because among the Rabinnical Jews, they believe the recipe for blue dye is lost, and that any deviation from the exact color of blue intended in the scripture would be sinful, and therefore the only acceptable course is to dye the tzitzit in the white color.
But these verses are of course widely misapplied, for example, in order to abuse the Roman Catholic Church, and the Anglican Communion (which is the largest Protestant denomination in the world, and one of the most important in terms of the work it does in evangelism, charity and education), and the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Assyrian Church of the East, all denominations in which presbyters and certain bishops are referred to as “Father.”
Likewise, the pericope of the wealthy young man that you cited is also frequently abused by anti-Trinitarian heretics who reject the Nicene Creed and deny that Jesus Christ is God Incarnate, the only begotten Son and Word of God, of one essence with the Father, who became man, uniting our humanity with His divinity without change, confusion, separation or division, and revealing to us the Father in His incarnation. It is also likewise abused by those who deny the deity and personhood of God the Holy Spirit. Indeed, to modern day Arians like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, this verse must seem like a Swiss army knife with which they can in one breadth deny the doctrines of the Deity of Christ, the Holy Trinity
and discredit the Roman Catholic Church (and in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the Eastern Orthodox Church) that their cult spends so much time attacking, so as to deflect criticism away from itself pre-emptively and create a reason for people to want to convert to it, since evidently the Witnesses know so much more about the Bible, but really, they are using the verse eisegetically, without regards to what the rest of the New Testament, or Scripture as a whole, has to say.*
Now, to be clear, I am not accusing you of engaging in such a desultory misuse of the verse, but I do nonetheless feel you have it quite wrong, because, simply put, God the Father is God the Father, whether one accepts him or not. Those who do not accept him but hate him inadvertently make the devil their spiritual father, as our Lord points out, but those who do accept him have spiritual fathers who represent Him and teach us.
In addition, the view that you espouse is further contradicted by St. Paul in Galatians 6:16, and in Romans 9:6-7, and elsewhere in the New Testament - it is made quite clear that Israel continued as the Church, although this fact does not justify any discrimination against the Jewish people.
Indeed I would like to say, for the record, that since the terrorist attacks on the State of Israel, which is a legitimate nation state, last year, I have been appalled by the shocking increase in anti-Semitism, which has risen to a level not seen in the West since the revelation of the true horrors of the Holocaust at the end of WWII, and thus, like my friend
@tampasteve , I stand with Israel, that is to say, the State of Israel, in that the terrorist attrocities they have been subjected to and are responding to are akin to those that the US has been subjected to and is responding to.
