The NT often takes Israelite Exclusive language and applies that to the Church, to gentile Christians. I will be going over they key texts that argue that point.
Romans 1:16 “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.” .. Paul makes a clear distinction between Jew and Gentile, there is a distinction but that does not in any manner suggest that there is a spiritual difference of purpose. This is a cultural difference.
Romans 2:25-29 “25 Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised. 26 So then, if those who are not circumcised keep the law’s requirements, will they not be regarded as though they were circumcised? 27 The one who is not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you who, even though you have the[a] written code and circumcision, are a lawbreaker. 28 A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. 29 No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person’s praise is not from other people, but from God.” … Paul is saying circumcision of course holds value, circumcision was a requirement for Jews but it only has value if you obey the law. So the logic for Paul is basically that if you obey the law in circumcision but break the law elsewhere, that is problematic. He goes on to argue that if you’re breaking the law you are un doing your circumcision. V26 Paul just flips it, if you’re uncircumcised and obey you’re circumcised. Here Paul envisions a different way of keeping the law, that is obeying the Messiah. Christ is the end of the law. That’s how this is possible for the uncircumcised to obey the law and keep it. V28 a Jew is one inwardly, circumcision was the most fundamental law of the Torah as that was one of the first commandments God have Abraham at the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 17. But to Paul circumcision, post Christ, is a spiritual thing not physical. Here Paul is pointing to this spiritual reality that happens under Christ.
Romans 3:1 “ What advantage, then, is there in being a Jew, or what value is there in circumcision?” .. The idea here is that Paul knows the readers, or original audience will ask this question. But to Paul there is value in being a Jew, they were entrusted with the oracles of God. This idea goes back to Genesis 11&12, Babel and Abrahams covenant. So Paul is saying that the Jewish family is important because God used them to bring about the Messiah. But this has nothing to do with their salvation. Just has to do with the original promises made.
Romans 3:27-28 27 Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. Because of what law? The law that requires works? No, because of the law that requires faith. 28 For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. … Here Paul shows that Jew and Gentile are justified the same way, there is no distinction. This echoes on the Romans 2:11 idea and Acts 10:34 that God does not show favoritism or partiality. Jew and Gentile are both justified by the same means, faith in the messiah.
Romans 4:9-12 9 Is this blessedness only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We have been saying that Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness. 10 Under what circumstances was it credited? Was it after he was circumcised, or before? It was not after, but before! 11 And he received circumcision as a sign, a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So then, he is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to them. 12 And he is then also the father of the circumcised who not only are circumcised but who also follow in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised. … Paul brings up the Abraham story. Calling Abraham the father of all those who believe. So if this verse, and all of Galatians 3, show gentiles as the seed of Abraham, what does that mean? This shows us no difference between Israel and the Church, its one identity rooted in Christ alone.
I had to add things of circumcision to this post because what circumcision means to Jewish culture, you are not a Jew if you are not circumcised. Its very important to their culture now and was back then, but as we saw what Paul had to say on this topic post cross. That is no longer the case, all that matters now is if you believe as Christ the Messiah.
Finally, and personally I think this is the most compelling scripture for this case other than Galatians 3. In Romans 9 Paul takes a promise that was made to Israel and applies it to the Church. In Hosea 2 there is a prophecy given where God is going to call wayward Israel back to himself, this promise is made distinctively to Israel, but in Romans 9:25-26 Paul applies this prophecy to Gentile believers. That is important because dispensationalism and Zionist will say Israel’s promises will only be made to Israel because the belief that they have some unique purpose or plan. But Paul shows that is not the case. We see this idea more clear in Galatians 6:16 “16 And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.” . Paul again clearly equates the Church, the believers who walk by “this rule” which is the rule of new creation, not boasting in the works of the law, but rather being a new creation in Jesus Christ. And then he calls those, who are amongst the new creation in Jesus Christ “Israel” after all, if we know the audience of Galatians, it is Gentiles.
I do not want readers of this article to think I am arguing in favor of “replacement theology”. There is no such thing as the church does not replace Israel. God wants all to be saved, including those who currently reside in the Nation of Israel. But no more than the people who reside in the nations that oppose them as our father “Shows no partiality” (Romans 2:11) and he wants all to be saved. The idea is that in Christ, God did exactly what scripture said he would do, all people of Christ together, through faith in Christ as Christ was THE faithful Israelite. If we are not in Christ we are not in the family, therefore outside of the promises of God. It’s “fulfillment theology”
Outside Scholarly Sources
In all of this, then, it is not a case of abolishing and ‘replacing’ the realities of Israel and the Old Testament, but of taking them up into a greater reality in the Messiah. Christ does not deprive the believing Jew of anything that belonged to Israel as God’s people; nor does he give to the believing Gentile anything less than the full covenantal blessing and promise that was Israel’s. On the contrary, we share together in all of it and more – in him, and for ever [sic]” (“A Christian Approach to Old Testament Prophecy Concerning Israel,” in Jerusalem Past and Present in the Purposes of God, edited by P. W. L. Walker [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992], 19).
as the butterfly surpasses the caterpillar from which it emerges, so the Church as the New Israel surpasses the Old Israel. The butterfly does not exactly replace the caterpillar. It is the caterpillar in a new phase of existence. In the same way, to speak of the Church replacing Israel is to forget that the Church is Israel in a newly reformed and expanded phase of existence. In a word, terminology like replacement theology or supersessionism disguises the biblical fact that the Church is really the continuation of
Israel” (MacArthur’s Millennial Manifesto: A Friendly Response [Owensboro, KY: RBAP, 2008], 7).
The Church, therefore, is the “true Israel” comprised of both believing Jews and believing Gentiles in whom the promises will be fulfilled. Or, to put it in other terms, the Church does not replace Israel but takes up and perpetuates in itself the believing remnant within the nation as a whole. The “true Israel” of God, which in the OT was comprised of all ethnic Jews who were circumcised in heart, finds its NT expression in the Church, now comprised of all believing ethnic Jews and all believing ethnic Gentiles. Or, to use Paul’s imagery from Romans 11, the one Olive Tree = True Israel = the Church in which are both natural (Jewish) branches and unnatural (Gentile) branches, but in all cases “believing branches” – Sam Storms “The Israel of God”
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