Replacement Theology:
What It Is and Why It Matters for Christians
Romans 11:1-34
Wayne J. Edwards, Pastor
That wicked, evil, iniquitous lie that is, at least partially responsible for the prejudice against and the hatred of the Jewish people over the years is called “Replacement Theology.”
- Those who hold to this theological error believe that because the Jews refused to believe that Jesus was the God-sent Messiah, God “un-chose” them as the people through whom He would reveal Himself and His plan of redemption to the world and replaced them with the Christian Church, and, therefore, the inheritors of the promises God made to Abraham and his seed.
- According to this view, while He has and will continue to save individual Jews who confess Jesus as their Savior and Lord, God has no present or future place for national or ethnic Israel in His plan of redemption.
- Those who believe in Replacement Theology do not think the land which the Jews claim as theirs today is the land of Canaan as described in Genesis 17:7-8, i.e., God’s promises to Abraham and his seed were spiritual, not literal or physical.
The first theologian to be associated with this misinterpretation of Scripture was Justin Martyr, a Greek Philosopher and apologist in the 1st-century Church.
- In 150 – 160 AD, Martyr argued that the Old Covenant God made with the Jews was replaced with the New Covenant He made with those who believed in and received Jesus Christ as the Messiah.
- Therefore, the term “Israel” no longer meant the nation of Jews but rather the “spiritual community” of all believers.
- Other church fathers who agreed with this lie included Irenaeus, Augustine, Chrysostom, and later, Martin Luther, who said the Jews were responsible for Jesus’ death and should be persecuted.
Hitler was raised in a Christian home and attended a Christian Church. However, the church he attended saturated his mind with Replacement Theology, and his tragic distortion of the Bible led to the greatest genocide ever committed – the Holocaust.
- However, the majority of Christians remained silent during those days – they looked away while six million human beings were systematically murdered just because of their ethnicity.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and theologian who gave his life in defense of the Jews, said: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
- Father Edward H. Flannery wrote: “The sin of antisemitism contains many sins, but in the end, it is a denial of Christian faith, a failure of Christian hope, and a malady of Christian love.”
- In Romans 1-8, the Apostle Paul reviewed Israel’s sin of disbelief in Jesus as the God-sent Messiah, but in Romans 9-11, he made it clear that even though Israel failed to receive Jesus as their Messiah, God’s gifts and calling upon the nation of Israel were “irrevocable.”
- Paul was not only talking about the “elect,” that remnant of Abraham’s seed, but also about ethnic or national Israel.
- God’s purpose for Israel’s fall was to open God’s gift of salvation to the Gentiles, but according to Romans 11:11-12, Israel’s fall was not permanent.
- God gave the gospel to Gentiles to stir Irael’s jealousy, to provoke them to see what their forefathers forfeited by their unbelief. To, in effect, lead them to repentance, and soon, their fall will result in their fullness as a remnant of Isaac’s seed will be saved.
- God’s plan of salvation includes both Jews and Gentiles, and that salvation is open to all who will believe in Jesus Christ and receive Him as their Savior and Lord.
- Israel’s present blindness to the gospel will only last until the end of the Church Age – “Until the fullness of the Gentiles,” and then that remnant of Isaac’s seed will be saved when they see Jesus.
The flaws in the teaching of Replacement Theology:
- God nullified His covenant with Abraham and replaced it with a new covenant with the Church.
- No, according to Jeremiah 31:31, God made the new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
- Israel rejected Jesus as their Savior, so God devised a new plan whereby they might be saved.
- No, Israel’s rejection of Jesus was always a part of God’s calculated plan, for their rejection of the gospel opened up the gospel to the Gentile world.
- God totally and forever cast His people aside.
- No, as Paul said in Romans 11:29, the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable, and, by the way, Paul was Jewish and even from the tribe of Benjamin, so the Lord had not abandoned him.
- God’s promise to Israel that the land was theirs as an everlasting possession was not referring to linear time but rather to the end of the age.
- This flaw misinterprets the term “everlasting” (or, in some translations, “forever”) regarding the land promise.
Why is Replacement Theology so Dangerous?
- It encourages Christians to participate in antisemitism – the idea that the Jewish people are not equal to other races of people.
- It blinds Christians to the signs of the times – those who hold this view do not see the massive return of the Jews to their homeland as having any theological meaning or prophetic significance.
- It has tarnished the image of the Jews among Christians – since they rejected God and God has now rejected them, Christians have the right to reject them as well.
- It has tarnished the image of Jesus in the eyes of the Jews – instead of provoking them to jealousy, many Jews have rejected the thought of Jesus in contemporary Christianity as their Messiah.
Today, while the majority of Jews live in unbelief, the land of Israel is a place of incredible beauty – the desert blooms like a rose.
- The good news is that the majority of Jews are back in their land, and very soon, the whole world will see what God promised to Abraham thousands of years ago will come true for the Jews because they are still God’s chosen people.
