I Would Believe in Replacement Theology, Except… Part 1
- Ron Cantor
- Mar 31
- 6 min read
Updated: Apr 7
I walked into my house this morning at 4 AM. My time in Berlin was very rich but exhausting. I ended up teaching for roughly 9 hours over 3 ½ days. Yesterday was particularly fun because the second church service was for Ukrainian immigrants—and the building was packed. When we lived in Odessa, Ukraine, we lived on the most famous street in the city. Everyone in Ukraine knows about the walking street, Deribaskayiv Street. When I shared that, there was an immediate connection. There was a rich anointing on the meeting in general. I taught on the responsibility of the Church towards Israel and I’m going to share this message with you over the next few Messianic Mondays.
Replacement theology is the deceptive line of thinking that says God has broken his covenant with Israel in favor of the Church. Of course, nobody who is an adherent would say that God is breaking his promises. However, if God has replaced Israel with the Church, then indeed, he has broken his promise to Abraham, which was confirmed through the prophets.
“Only if the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth below be searched out will I reject all the descendants of Israel because of all they have done,” declares the Lord” (Jer 31:37).
Jeremiah’s point is that God will not reject Israel. The previous verses say that only if the sun, moon, and stars stop working will God reject Israel. Because it’s impossible for God to lie, he can't reject Israel.
Without Israel…
The Church would do well to remember that without Israel, there is no salvation. Jesus came through the Jewish people. The Bible was mostly written by Jews. Stalwarts like Anna and Simeon (and thousands like them) prayed for God to send the Messiah. Indeed, there was a mystery that they did not understand. Often, when Paul uses the word mystery, it is connected to Israel and the Church (see Rom 11:25, Eph 3:3, 4, 6, 9, Col 1:26–27).
Even the apostles did not understand this mystery for about 10 years. They exclusively preached to Jewish people. They did not know that Gentiles could believe in Jesus without first becoming Jewish. Even though Jesus sent them into the nations (Matt 28:18-20, Acts 1:8), they stayed in Judea, Samaria, and Galilee.
Turning Point for the Nations
In Acts 10, Peter has a strange vision where he’s told to eat unclean animals. He had never eaten non-kosher food. To be clear, this was not a vision about food but about the fact that Gentiles could get in on the action. How do we know that? Peter did not come down from the rooftop and eat a pork chop; instead, he went to Cornelius's house in Caesarea. Understand, Peter had never been in the home of a Gentile (Acts 10:28). It was forbidden because of the clean/unclean laws. This is why God made it abundantly clear that what he was doing was kosher:
1. Three times he has a vision of eating unclean animals.
2. The Holy Spirit tells him to go with the three men.
3. The three men testify that an angel sent them to invite Peter to Cornelius’s house.
4. While preaching at Cornelius’s house, the Holy Spirit falls on the gathered Gentiles and they begin to speak in tongues.
Can We Baptize Gentiles?
Next, Peter says something quite funny: “Surely no one can refuse the water for these [Gentiles] to be baptized?” (Acts 10:47 NASB). Indeed, today, it would not be controversial to baptize a Gentile. However, if a Jewish person wants to confess faith in Yeshua and go into the waters of immersion, that will cause quite a stir… it certainly did in my house 40 years ago. But back in the day of Peter, only Jewish people were immersed in water for salvation. This was a massive breakthrough. It was the first revelation of the “mystery … that the Gentiles who believe are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Messiah Yeshua” with Israel!
Be Logical
This led to a big controversy within the Messianic body. You have to understand something—the logical conclusion would be that if Gentiles want to become believers in the Jewish Messiah, they would have to convert to Judaism. That’s why Paul called it a mystery that they did not have to.
Think about it: Jesus is Jewish. His mother is Jewish. His stepfather is Jewish. He grew up in Galilee and was born in Bethlehem, just outside Jerusalem. All of his followers are Jewish, and when a non-Jewish woman asked for a miracle, he rebuked her saying that he only came to the lost sheep of the House of Israel (Matt. 15:21-28)! 1 He dies in Jerusalem and rises from the dead there as well. His final conversation with his disciples is on the Mount of Olives. The Spirit of God is poured out on the city of Jerusalem in the Temple courts (that is where I believe they were meeting, not in the Upper Room on that day). He dies on Passover and rises on the day of the First Fruit offering (Lev 23:11). The Spirit is poured out on the Jewish Feast of Weeks (Shavuot). It seems pretty Jewish!
So, the Jewish believers in Acts 15, who argued that Gentiles must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses, are making a logical argument. Peter’s argument is based on divine revelation. Paul testifies how God is moving on the Gentiles. In the end, it is decided by the Holy Spirit (Acts 15:28) that the Gentiles do not have to convert to Judaism.
Together With, Not Instead Of!
However, this led to a massive expansion of the kingdom of God among the Gentiles. Eventually, the Gentiles so outnumbered the Jews that they began to develop a theology that is now referred to as Replacement Theology. They must have missed: “So then, you are no longer foreigners and strangers. On the contrary, you are fellow-citizens with God’s people and members of God’s family (Eph 2:19).” In context, “God’s people” refers to ethnic Israel, Paul says they join with Israel, not replace Israel.
About 100 years later, the apologist Justin Martyr wrote this:
“For the true spiritual Israel … are we who have been led to God through this crucified Christ...” He taught that the Church is the rightful heir of the covenant promises to Israel. The Church Father Jerome, famous for translating the Bible into Latin (the Vulgate), writes in his commentary on Isaiah, “Up to the coming of the Lord, the synagogue flourished; but when that light rose up for the nations, it was extinguished.” That’s pretty clear! In all his commentaries on the prophets, Jerome applies Israel’s Old Testament promises to the Church. In his tome City of God, Augustine talked about the Jews, while under God’s judgment, serving a purpose by showing that the prophecies about Jesus are authentic.
“In this way, by their own Scriptures which they read with blind eyes, bearing witness for us, they testify that we have not forged the prophecies about Christ. … Thus, though they [the Jews] hate us, they also serve us in reading these prophecies, so that they might be witnesses to the truth of our claim.” (Book 18, Chapter 46)
Church Father Origen echoes Justin, believing that “the old economy is surpassed in the new,” meaning supersessionism; the Church has replaced Israel.
“We may thus assert in utter confidence that the Jews will not return to their earlier situation, for they have committed the most abominable of crimes, in forming this conspiracy against the Savior of the human race . . . hence the city where Jesus suffered was necessarily destroyed, the Jewish nation was driven from its country, and another people was called by God to the blessed election.” 2
The Church Fathers universally embraced this doctrine. But it did not start in the second century; its roots go back to the first Roman congregation. That’s where we’ll pick up next week.
[1] If you read the passage, it is clear that Jesus is testing her faith by explaining a theological principle that the Messiah came for Israel. But he honors her faith and healed her daughter. [2] “Anti-Semitism of the ‘Church Fathers’,” Yashanet, http://www.yashanet.com/library/fathers.htm.
Replacement theology usually also goes hand in hand with the heresy that all who are Christened are members of the "the Israel of God" (Galatians 6:16). But even regarding the Jews Paul wrote: "not all who are of Israel are Israel" (Romans 9:6). In the same way not all who are Christened are chosen. The Church became the custodian of the elect when the synagogue rejected believers in Jeshua. In other words, it took over the role of the nation of Israel as the earthly home for God's chosen people (Matthew 21:43). That does not invalidate any of God's promises to Israel, many of which still need to be fulfilled.