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"Who is Israel?"

The New Testament church is one ("unity") with Israel of the Old Testament.

Gentiles have always been adopted into the family of Abraham by faith in Abraham's Son. Gentile believers are made a part of (grafted into) Israel, and thus they inherit the promises given to Abraham alongside Jewish believers from both Testaments. There is neither separation nor replacement. Instead, the two have become one.

"For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile -- the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call upon Him." [Romans 10:11]

"The Church" is the Bride of Christ. He will marry this Bride at his return. Christ does not have two Brides.

"The Church" is the Body of Christ, of which He is the Head. Christ does not have two bodies.

Jesus was saying something very very profound in John 15: 1-8 and Acts 4:13 --- especially for the Hebrew mind.

When Jesus said "I am the vine", those who listened thought of the old Testament and these words, [Psalm 80:8-11]:

Psa 80:8 Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt: thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it.

Psa 80:9 Thou preparedst [room] before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land.

Psa 80:10 The hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof [were like] the goodly cedars.

Psa 80:11 She sent out her boughs unto the sea, and her branches unto the river.

[Isa 5:1-2, 7]:

Isa 5:1 Now will I sing to my wellbeloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My wellbeloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill:

Isa 5:2 And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.

Isa 5:7 For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts [is] the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.

[Jer. 2:2, 21]:

Jer 2:2 Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the LORD; I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land [that was] not sown.

Jer 2:21 Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?

[Ezek. 19:10-14]:

Eze 19:10 Thy mother [is] like a vine in thy blood, planted by the waters: she was fruitful and full of branches by reason of many waters.

Eze 19:11 And she had strong rods for the sceptres of them that bare rule, and her stature was exalted among the thick branches, and she appeared in her height with the multitude of her branches.

Eze 19:12 But she was plucked up in fury, she was cast down to the ground, and the east wind dried up her fruit: her strong rods were broken and withered; the fire consumed them.

Eze 19:13 And now she [is] planted in the wilderness, in a dry and thirsty ground.

Eze 19:14 And fire is gone out of a rod of her branches, [which] hath devoured her fruit, so that she hath no strong rod [to be] a sceptre to rule. This [is] a lamentation, and shall be for a lamentation.

[Hosea 10: 1a]:

Hsa 10:1 Israel [is] an empty vine, he bringeth forth fruit unto himself ..

When Jesus said, "I am the true vine, his Jewish hearers thought of those verses. During the Maccabean period, the coinage of God's people had a vine on it as a symbol of Isreal.

When Jesus said, "I am the vine", he was saying, "I am the essence of Isreal."

He was saying, "I am the prototype of which Isreal is the type."

He was saying, "I am the personification of everything God's people were ever meant to be."

He was saying, "I am the reality of all that God has ever proposed to do in the entire history of the human race."