Re: matthew 18
Refreshed, even though I may agree with some of what "replacement theology" teaches, I just don't see that term "replacement" as fitting what I believe at all.
I don't believe the church replaced national Israel in God's plan whatsoever. I believe from the very beginning, God's plan was to save those in Christ by faith and that this one body of people in Christ have no distinction, whether Jew or Gentile.
Spot on vekky. I stand to be corrected, but as far as I'm aware, the word 'replacement' does not appear anywhere in the NT in that context. The closest I can find in sentiment is Heb. 8:13:
In speaking of “a new covenant,” he has made the first one obsolete. And what is obsolete and growing old will soon disappear.
I'm convinced this is another example of our doctrinal opponents using a pejorative term as a smear tactic to discredit a Scripturally sound teaching. To be effective, the term need only approximate to what we actually believe. But it represents an almost complete misapprehesion (deliberate or otherwise) of the true relationship between the OT and the NT, between the old covenant and the new covenant. Just like that other well known misnomer (Amillennialism), it's a clever ploy, and amounts to little more than setting up a straw man in order to provide an easy target for demolition.
The actual relationship between the covenants is fully set out in Rom 9-11, Gal. 3-4, Eph. 2:11-3:13, and Heb. 8-11. Anybody who wants to challenge us on this topic had better first acquaint themselves with these passages. That's 10 chapters of solid teaching folks. How to summarize them in a single sentence? Israel was never intended to be an end in itself, but a means to an end - nothing less than the redemption of the world.
So it's not so much 'replacement' as it is fulfilment, development, enlargement, enhancement, enrichment, expansion, 'mission creep', inclusion, etc. While most of these terms may also not be in the Bible, they are much more accurate descriptions of the true relationship between Israel and the Church than is suggested by the term 'replacement'.
@ refreshed - And since it does not accurately represent what I believe, why are you still trying to pin it on me?
@ vekky - What is it you think I'm supposed to believe about the sabbath? I'm not sure I understood that part of your reply to refreshed.