“And so all Israel will be saved.” – Romans 11:26a (NLT)
Replacement theology has to go. There is no room in the Kingdom for it. Paul makes it very clear to us that Israel will be saved, so why do we insist that God has finished with them? As Paul says in the opening of this chapter, “I ask, then, has God rejected His own people, the nation of Israel? Of course not! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham and a member of the tribe of Benjamin” (Romans 11:1). And remember from chapter 9 that those considered to be Abraham’s children are those who are the children of the promise (descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – see Romans 9:6-9).
So here’s what has happened. We, modern day, American Christians, have become proud and arrogant. We have settled into our comfort and our riches. We have believed the lie that we are the new “Israel” and that we are now the “children of Abraham.” No wonder things like the Holocaust were done under the guise of “Christianity.” We have forgotten where it is that we come from. For without the children of promise, without Israel, the people of God, there would be no freedom for us, the Gentiles. Without the root, we would still be a wild olive tree, separated from God for eternity. “But you must not brag about being grafted in to replace the branches that were broken off. You are just a branch, not the root” (Romans 11:18). “For if God did not spare the original branches, He won’t spare you either” (Romans 11:21).
“Notice how God is both kind and severe. He is severe toward those who disobeyed, but kind to you if you continue to trust in His kindness. But if you stop trusting, you also will be cut off.” – Romans 11:22
And this is where we find ourselves. We have a lot of people who sit inside the walls of the church claiming to be a “Christian,” yet they lack trust in God. They may have trusted Him at one point in their lives, but somewhere along the line they lost trust. Which means that they were cut off. That word “if” is a word of contingency. Our remaining grafted into the Tree is contingent upon our continued faith and trust in the Grafter. To lose trust (faith) means we have become a dead branch. And all dead branches get cut off and thrown into the fire.
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