I am almost finished writing on ‘Jew, Israel and Gentile’ where I seek to work through those key chapters, Romans 9-11. Maybe by the end of the week I will finish and then some editing the week that follows. I have in four previous posts included the first parts of the writing (if you missed them just enter ‘Israel’ into the search box and they should show up. I will publish them all as a pdf when I finalise the writing. Here is the fifth part for those who wish to follow along.
The coming of Messiah in order to fulfil the promises to Abraham (Genesis 12 onwards) and to heal the sickness that creation endures (as outlined specifically in Genesis 1-11) is not simply a situation of the past progressing. We read the Scriptures historically and we read them with Jesus being their fulfillment; he fulfills what has been previously written. And yet there is something more that takes place. The resurrection of Jesus changes ‘time’. Not a change to the physical time, but one that changes expectations. An event (the resurrection) that was hoped would occur at the fullness of time had now occurred in time, we could say ahead of schedule. Death and resurrection might be separated by three days but they were part of one event, with the resurrection ushering in a new era, even what is termed ‘new creation’. Something of the future arrived with the resurrection of Jesus. The end is not something we wait for, but the end (in the Person of Jesus) is something we welcome. Hence when we turn to the New Testament there are surprises and twists with regard to fulfilment(s).
Paul sums it up with his words in 2 Corinthians 1:20,
For in him every one of God’s promises is a “Yes.” For this reason it is through him that we say the “Amen,” to the glory of God.
All promises that God has made are guaranteed and fulfilled in Christ. Centring everything on Christ means the fulfilment at times might look different (the fulfillment is ‘beyond’ what was expected. Progressive revelation is from the lesser to the greater, never the other way round) to what was expected and we have to take care about simply taking an Old Testament promise and seeking to project forward. The eschatological fulfilment is more vital, and this seems to be why Paul says that Abraham was promised the ‘world’ (kosmos) not the ‘land’ (ge). (We have to do the same with the various laws. We neither abrogate them all except for the ones that are affirmed in the NT, nor do we hold them all except for the ones that have explicitly been cancelled! The tendency is to take one or the other approach. Continuity and discontinuity is involved and all Scripture has to pass through the Jesus filter.)
The church replaces Israel?
There is a theology termed supersessionism where the church is said to supersede / replace Israel. This can be expressed in a very simple way or nuanced better with Jesus faithfully fulfilling Israel’s calling and that those who are in Christ are where the purposes of God are centred. The contrary perspective is that which Dispensationalism expresses – that there are two different paths to salvation: one for Israel and one for those who have come to faith in Jesus. I once heard a Messianic Jew say, ‘In the New Testament the early believers were clear that Jews needed Jesus, they were just not sure about the Gentiles. Now two millennia later we have reversed that approach where we are sure that Gentiles need saving but we are not sure about the Jews!’ This is certainly true of those who hold to two paths for salvation.
We can look at the tussle that occurred in the early chapters of Acts. They are clear that there was ‘no other name’ by which people could be saved (Acts 4:12). Peter’s audience were Jews in Jerusalem and he said that they could not appeal to the patriarchs (‘other names’) as being their guarantee of salvation; then when Gentiles began to respond to Jesus the question was how were they to relate to the law. Gentiles who converted to Judaism took on board the Torah and its instructions – so what response was required of Gentiles who expressed faith in Jesus, the Messiah of Israel? Part of the offence in the new Messianic movement was that Gentiles were given full inclusion without submitting to the law.
(And we must not think of Judaism as being a religion of works; the law acted as a boundary marker and was viewed as God’s gracious gift to the people. Conversely we must not consider that the entry for the Gentiles was one of cheap grace (Torah-free is not lawlessness). Paul was committed to bring about ‘the obedience of faith among all the gentiles for the sake of his name’ (Rom. 1:5).)
The second of the two proposals that I wrote about in the previous paragraph (of two separate paths) is something I reject and the former view I wish to nuance somewhat.
The heading I have given as a question (‘The church replaces Israel’) in itself raises some questions. Always the danger of using the word ‘church’ is that almost inevitably we have injected into the word a predetermined meaning or concept. If, however, we transliterate the Greek underlying word (ekklesia) we can see that the question is indeed a strange one. Israel was termed the ekklesia! (The common word used in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures when describing Israel as the community in response to God, hence Moses was said to be with the ekklesia in the wilderness (Acts 7:38).) It is bizarre to ask the question ‘does the ekklesia replace the ekklesia’!
We have to dig deeper. So let’s try and expand this some. As discussed earlier in this paper, fundamental to Israel’s identity was that of faith – faith triumphed over ethnicity. Israel was always smaller than the ethnic boundary and yet always bigger than that ethnic boundary as faith drew a bigger circumference.
If Gentiles became Torah-obedient they were included as part of Israel; this emphasis continued among certain Jewish followers of Jesus, hence the disagreements within the early Jesus-movement. The controversy that ensued was settled when it was decided that Gentile followers of Jesus were not required to be obedient to Torah.