Letters to the Church

The promises of God find their fulfillment in Jesus Christ. “ IN HIM ,” they all become “ yea ” and “ amen .” The things that were once “ hidden ” are revealed in the life, words, death, resurrection, and exaltation of the Son of God, the one in whom all the shadows and types prefigured in the Hebrew Bible become real. All God’s “ mysteries ” are laid bare before all men in the Nazarene.

A charge commonly heard in popular preaching is “replacement theology.” It is usually hurled against anyone who claims a promise from the Hebrew Bible made originally to Israel now finds its fulfillment in the church. But the accusation misses the point. The New Testament teaches neither “replacement theology” nor the idea that God has two distinct covenants and peoples, each with a separate eternal destiny.

The eighth chapter of the  Letter to the Hebrews  highlights the incomparable benefits believers now receive under the New Covenant inaugurated by the sacrificial death of Jesus. If the fulfillment of the promises of God arrived in him – his death and resurrection - to return now to the incomplete revelations of the past “ spoken in the prophets ” would mean embracing the glimpses and “ shadows ” of the “ coming good things ” rather than the substance and abiding reality that God has provided in His “ Son .”