This the­ol­ogy has been held by var­i­ous churches right from the early cen­turies. It says that God changed his mind and now all promises and bless­ings made to Israel go to the Church. Israel totally lost God’s favour and they have no place in God’s future plan as a nation, except as part of the Church.

This the­ol­ogy, how­ever, totally ignores the nature of covenants. Covenants are never nul­li­fied, but extended, renewed as long as the par­ties exist. Thus, the covenant God made with Israel is still valid. Even the writer of Hebrews argues:

Heb 7:21 “Those who for­merly became priests took their office with­out an oath, but this one was addressed with an oath, “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest for ever.’” 22 This makes Jesus the surety of a bet­ter covenant. 23 The for­mer priests were many in num­ber, because they were pre­vented by death from con­tin­u­ing in office; 24 but he holds his priest­hood per­ma­nently, because he con­tin­ues for ever.”

You see, here covenants are com­pared. One is the new covenant the other is the mosaic one. The new covenant is said to be bet­ter, which means the other is also good. The author explains it further:

Heb 8:4 “Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts accord­ing to the law. 5 They serve a copy and shadow of the heav­enly sanc­tu­ary; for when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, say­ing, “See that you make every­thing accord­ing to the pat­tern which was shown you on the moun­tain.” 6 But as it is, Christ has obtained a min­istry which is as much more excel­lent than the old as the covenant he medi­ates is bet­ter, since it is enacted on bet­ter promises. 7 For if that first covenant had been fault­less, there would have been no occa­sion for a sec­ond. 8 For he finds fault with them when he says: “The days will come, says the Lord, when I will estab­lish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; 9 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; for they did not con­tinue in my covenant, and so I paid no heed to them, says the Lord.”

The fault referred to above was with the peo­ple (“he finds fault with them”), not with the covenant. The covenant had good promises and bless­ings. The law of God is holy and good, as Paul him­self said (Rom 7:12), and James (cor­rectly Jacob) him­self calls it “the per­fect law of lib­erty” (James 1:25), thus the prob­lem was not with the law, but with the peo­ple. God gave them the law and told them to put it into their hearts. Many of them failed to do so. In the new covenant it is God who puts his laws into the hearts of the people.

Of course, the law had bless­ings and curses, and, accord­ing to Paul, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law (Gal 3:13), which does not mean the law is curse, but that it brought curse upon the disobedient.

Thus, the new covenant is bet­ter than the mosaic covenant, but the new doesn’t replace the old, it builds on it, it renews it, it improves upon it, just as the mosaic covenant did with the covenant God made with Abra­ham, Isaac and Jacob. In the old the law was given on tablets of stone and the peo­ple had to make effort to put it into their hearts, in the new God puts his law into the hearts of the people.

If you like, the mosaic covenant is the first, the new covenant is the sec­ond phase of the very same thing. It is like an improved ver­sion of MS Win­dows with bet­ter sta­bil­ity and secu­rity, and no Blue Screen of Death. You notice that accord­ing to the prophecy of Jere­miah the new covenant’s recip­i­ents are “the house of Israel” and “the house of Judah”, and accord­ing to Paul Gen­tiles are only par­tak­ers of the new covenant.

Eph 2:11 “There­fore remem­ber that at one time you Gen­tiles in the flesh, called the uncir­cum­ci­sion by what is called the cir­cum­ci­sion [i.e. the Jews], which is made in the flesh by hands — 12 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. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. 14 For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has bro­ken down the divid­ing wall of hostility…”

Thus, it is not the Gen­tiles who are the recip­i­ents of this covenant, but the Jews, and we are only brought near the com­mon­wealth of Israel.

The author of Hebrews then continues:

Heb 8:13 “In speak­ing of a new covenant he treats the first as obso­lete. And what is becom­ing obso­lete and grow­ing old is ready to van­ish away.”

When you have an old com­puter that worked reli­ably all its life­time, and you buy a new one, the first becomes obso­lete. It can still deliver what it did at the time you bought it, but the new one is bet­ter with more power and bet­ter fea­tures. And as you move your work to the new com­puter, the old is ready to van­ish away. It is no longer needed.

The same way in the first cen­tury it was hoped that Israel would accept the new covenant, and as they came into the new covenant rela­tion­ship the old covenant rela­tion­ship would van­ish away as no one would remain under it. Since it didn’t hap­pen, the mosaic covenant is still as valid for those who are under it as it was when given.

The book of Hebrews strikes a blow not only to the so-called Replace­ment The­ol­ogy, but also to exclu­sivism that teaches that only those who believe in Jesus are saved. Per­haps we need to look at what the NT actu­ally teaches about it. The key to under­stand­ing cor­rectly the rel­e­vant bib­li­cal pas­sages are hid­den in the Tanakh.

Go, find it.

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