"Therefore, remember that, at one time, you Gentiles in the flesh, called the 'uncircumcision' by what is called the 'circumcision,' which is made in the flesh by hands - remember that you were, at that time, separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that He might create in Himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And He came and preached peace to you were far off and peace to those who were near. For through Him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father" (Ephesians 2:11-18).
The hallmark of classical dispensationalism is its radical discontinuity between Israel and the church. The former is said to have been saved by obeying the Mosaic law, while the latter is saved by grace. Scofield supposed that Jesus intended to be made king of Israel at His first coming, but was surprised, instead, by His rejection by the Jews. As a result, He made an impromptu, unplanned parenthesis for the church, until such time as He takes the church away and renews the works program for Israel. Most dispensationalists today have rejected that rigid program of to-and-fro methods of salvation.
They reject it with good cause.
As we see in Paul's writing quoted above, the program of Jesus was never to establish two systems of salvation, but rather to bring in the Gentiles, excluded under the Mosaic program, into His only method of justification, which is by grace through faith. By this plan, He created not two distinct peoples of God, but rather united two cultures, one blessed and the other previously excluded, into one people, saved by the atoning death of Christ on the cross, applied to all by grace through faith alone.
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