Understanding Israel and The New Covenant (August 2002)

Recently, a colleague wrote and asked, "What exactly is the New Covenant? Why do you use the term "replacement theology" in relation to the way some understand the New Covenant?"

Here's my response, may God use it to stir up a hunger to know Him better:

You know Mike, there’s a lot of misunderstanding about that term “New Covenant”. The idea of a covenant is an agreement offered by someone to allow new privileges to another. In a way, it is like an “access agreement” to a piece of property. Sometimes the access is given with conditions, other
times it allows someone to pass through my property any time of day or night, provided they use the path I give them, to enter their property behind.

The “New Covenant” was an access agreement to God. The term came from the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah, who promised that God was going to offer some renewed opportunity for the Jewish people to know Him in a better and more intimate way. The misunderstanding came when people forgot that God promised this to and for the Jewish people. They started to interpret the New Covenant as what Jesus said in the Upper Room, “this is the New Covenant in my blood”. They somehow forgot the room was full of Jewish men, and made it a strictly church thing. From there, they went on to try and show that God made this new agreement by bulldozing the old agreement and replacing the Jewish people with the Church. This has become a common teaching in many places, but it simply doesn’t match what the Bible says.

In the Bible, the setting for the New Covenant promise was a discouraging time, as Jeremiah the prophet explained that judgment was coming to Judah, and they were about to be taken into captivity by the Babylonians. The kings of the nation had defected from God, and the people were only occasionally called back to God by prophetic voices, each warning of coming doom if the nation did not yield their hearts. The “New Covenant” promise was given to encourage the people that God was not finished with them yet, but rather wanted to offer to them a new and exciting walk with Him on a new level when their punishment was completed.

Let’s look more carefully at what God promised. In Jeremiah 30, a series of encouraging promises opened with the promise to return from the captivity back to the land of Israel and Judah (30:3). The restoration of the King to the throne (30:9) was guaranteed, as was God’s watchful eye on His people
while they were in foreign lands awaiting their return (30:11). God even promised a renewal of His promise to be their God (30:22). By chapter 31, the prophet shares God’s heart for Israel. He reminds them that “God has loved with an everlasting love” (31:3) and they need not be concerned with being “cast aside”, as sure as they are cast out, they will return and rebuild the land (31:4).

In the midst of these encouragements, God specified exactly what He had in mind for their return and reconstruction to the land of their fathers. He promised to “sow the land” with their children and grandchildren and restore their places (31:17-28). He explained that when the restoration came, the
people would finally be ready to admit they are personally responsible for each sinful practice and need a changed heart to walk with God (31:29-30). “When that individual repentance becomes their message”, God said, “I will offer a renewed covenant with them.” (31:31).

God described the work inside the people as “writing the law on their hearts” (31:33-34) and promised they would ALL know Him! (31:34). He promised this specifically to the children of Israel by name more than a dozen times (Jeremiah 30:3,4,10; 31:1,2,4,7,9,10,12,27 and many others!) He
promised that the relationship would exist as long as He was God of the universe (31:35-37). He also specified the promise physically applied to the city of Jerusalem (31:38-40). This was a “renewal” of the previous covenants of God, not something that departed from the past. The “newness” was that
God was going to offer it is a new way, and it was going to change hearts from within! The promises were so important that God reiterated them in the next chapter in the same pattern:

1. I will re-gather the nation from among the places they were taken into (32:37) and bring them back to Israel (32:37b), and give them a safe haven there (37b).
2. I will reassert my places as their God, and they will follow Me (32:38).
3. I will re-unite them and their children as a people (32:39)
4. I will make another everlasting covenant with them (32:40) and bring to
bear My purposes wholly on them (32:41).

Isaiah offered this same pattern years earlier (cp. Isaiah 59:18-21).

So what is wrong with the way the New Covenant has been taught? Well, for one thing, it was a covenant for and with the people of Israel, not INSTEAD of them. Second, no covenant in Scripture ever bulldozed off the previous ones that God made. Each one built on another! When God made a promise to Abraham to make of him a great nation, He did not take away His promise to “never destroy the earth again” in the Noah promise. He made an agreement, and no later agreement rewrote the earlier ones.

That is why BOTH the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures say that God has NOT finished with Israel. “As long as I am God” Jeremiah reminded us (31:35ff), “I will keep this relationship with Israel”. It seems that some just change “Israel” to “church” and keep right on reading. If that were
true and God could simply cross out one group and add another, what would His eternal agreement really mean?

The Apostle Paul was a Jew. He grew up as one that followed after the Jewish way, and when He found Jesus to be the Messiah and Lord, he never stopped understanding that Jews were still Jews, and that God would keep His covenants to them. He reminded the Romans (11:1ff), “I am an Israelite.. God has NOT cast away His people”. The rest of that chapter is clear that God will fulfill the promises to the sons of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob. It is not some allegory (as some teachers suggest). If you read it, it is clear Paul is talking about people who are PHYSICALLY of the sons of Abraham.

Because of these Biblical teachings, I don’t believe that Jesus was offering salvation in the Upper Room to the world. I think He was telling a Jewish group of men the MEANS of HOW God was providing the long awaited renewal of His covenant promises to the Jewish people. The MEANS was “by His blood”, meaning through His death. Jesus was telling the men, “The New Covenant is
coming to our people through my body and blood that will be sacrificed on the tree at Golgotha.”

The disciples understood it that way, and Peter preached it that way at the first big revival campaign at Pentecost (Acts 3:10-26). Peter told them the death of Jesus was to renew the covenants of God to Israel. This was not a church meeting - it was a Jewish Temple meeting.

Am I saying the New Covenant was NOT to include non-Jews? Does that mean people who are not born Jews cannot be saved by trusting in the sacrifice blood of Jesus? NO! The fact is that God introduced an “addendum” to the New Covenant that offered something mysterious and special, something no Hebrew prophet ever dreamed of! God offered a time at the beginning of the New
Covenant to allow non-Jews to enter into the same benefit in order to make Jewish people jealous, and draw them back to a desire to know the God of Abraham! Paul knew that God would again open the eyes of Israel and save them in the future (Rom. 11:27-29), and that God would NEVER cast them away!

The point is that the original agreement was with the Jewish people to draw them into a renewed relationship to their God. As a non-Jew, I have a temporary benefit to be allowed to join the benefits of this agreement for a time, until God returns to the program of restoring the children of Israel. He has NOT set Israel aside, THEY have ignored HIM for a time. The days will come when they will be jealous of the living relationship believers have with God, and they will desire to have it as well. When that happens, God will complete the gathering of the people back to the land of their fathers, and put a new heart within them as they yield their hearts to Him.

If we remove the Jewish people from the promise and substitute them for the church, as many have done, then God never completed His promises to that people. In fact, Paul assured the Gentile believers at Rome that God is ever trustworthy because He never cast off Israel. That was the purpose of the section in Romans 9-11. They could trust God to keep His agreements, for God always keeps His promises! The New Covenant will be completed when the people of Israel are back in their ancient homeland, and believe in the God of their fathers while trusting in the “once for all” sacrifice of Messiah Jesus. In the meantime, we have the opportunity to offer this same salvation to people of every nation, until the time is fulfilled on God’s calendar, and He turns His attention to completing His covenant with Israel. The hour is late, may we be found faithful!

Blessings!
Randy