The Case For A Preterist Supersessionism (Part 1)
Watch this blog on this week’s episode of The PRODCAST.
Supersessionism is one of those words that starts more arguments than it settles. Many Christians have heard it, fewer can define it, and even fewer have traced its implications through the warp and woof of biblical theology. Yet if you get this doctrine clear in your mind, it will bring enormous clarity to how you read the Bible, how you understand the New Testament, and especially how you think about eschatology—the study of last things.
So what are we talking about?
Supersessionism is the view that Israel—the biological descendants of Jacob who dwelt in the land of Canaan under tribal allotments in the Mosaic Covenant—is no longer the chosen people of God in any unique, covenantal sense. It teaches that ethnic Jews, as such, do not possess a special ongoing covenant status before God. That means, if you hold this view (which I do), you believe that modern-day Jews stand before God in the same condition as every other human who is apart from Christ—dead in sin—and that apart from repentance and faith in Jesus, they will not be saved. They do not have a unique covenant standing or a guaranteed covenant future. Like the rest of humanity, they must kiss the Son lest they perish in the way. Far from breeding arrogance or hostility toward Jewish people, this truth should drive us to long for their salvation in Christ, just as we long for the salvation of every nation under heaven.
That is supersessionism in a nutshell. But I am not arguing for a vague, generic, or caricatured version of it. I am contending for a specific, historic, biblical, Reformed, covenantal, Christ-centered, preterist kind of supersessionism—the kind the apostles preached, the early church assumed, and the New Testament demands.
This view teaches that every privilege, promise, and covenantal blessing once wrapped around ethnic Israel has now been fulfilled, expanded, and secured in Jesus Christ; and that only those united to Him—Jew or Gentile—are the people of God. The Old Covenant is fulfilled and finished. The land promise has been enlarged to encompass the whole world. The priesthood, sacrifices, and temple have reached their goal in Christ. The church is the one new man in Him. And the ingrafting of Israel that Paul describes in Romans 11 is not a future geopolitical reversal, but a first-century reality that unfolded during the transition from the Old Covenant to the New.
Because this argument is big, we are going to take our time with it. This is not a drive-by hot take; it is a four-part, carefully structured demolition of every future-Israel theology that competes with the finished work of Christ. Here is the roadmap:
Part 1 — The Covenantal Case for Preterist Supersessionism: Christ as the true Israel, the church as the people of God, the land enlarged, the Old Covenant fulfilled.
Part 2 — The Prophetic and Historical Case: How the prophets foresaw this, how the apostles applied it, and how AD 70 sealed it forever.
Part 3 — Romans 11 and Preterist Supersessionism: The big one—the text everyone retreats to. We will walk through it phrase by phrase and show, definitively, that the ingrafting happened in the first century.
Part 4 — Objections Answered: Political Zionism, modern Israel, accusations of anti-Semitism, premillennialism, and the remaining challenges.
By the time we are done, the dust will settle, the fog will lift, and the New Testament will stand in front of you as it truly is—clear, unified, covenantal, and relentlessly Christ-centered.
With the roadmap in place, we turn now to Part 1
CHRIST IS ISRAEL CONCENTRATED AND THE COVENANTS CONSUMMATED.
If you want to understand the biblical case for supersessionism, you must settle one truth before all others: Christ is not a figure standing next to Israel. Christ is Israel in His own person. He is not an add-on to the Old Covenant story; He is the point the entire Old Covenant was straining toward. When He steps onto the stage, He does not continue Israel’s story as one chapter among many. He brings the entire storyline to its intended climax.
This is why the opening chapters of the New Testament do not present Jesus as a detached Messiah floating above Israel’s history. They present Him retracing Israel’s steps, succeeding where Israel failed, and fulfilling everything Israel was meant to be. That is not accidental. Matthew quotes Hosea—“Out of Egypt I called My Son”—not because he is careless with prophecy but because he is showing you the identity shift that will define the entire New Testament. Israel was called God’s son in the Old Covenant; Jesus is the true Son in the New. Israel went through the waters; Jesus goes through the waters. Israel was tested in the wilderness and fell; Jesus is tested in the wilderness and conquers. Israel succumbed to idolatry, unbelief, and covenant treachery; Jesus stands as the faithful Israelite who embodies God’s Law in flawless obedience.
This matters because biblical identity flows from covenant representation. If Christ represents Israel flawlessly, then Christ stands as Israel’s fulfillment, and Israel’s entire covenantal structure now rests on Him. That is why the New Testament does not hesitate to apply Israel’s titles, institutions, and promises to Christ. He is the true Temple, because the dwelling place of God is no longer located in stone but in the incarnate Son who tabernacles among us. He is the true Priest, because no Levite could accomplish what the Son of God accomplishes when He enters the heavenly sanctuary with His own blood. He is the true Sacrifice, because every animal slain in the Old Covenant was a placeholder waiting for the Lamb who would actually take away sin. He is the true Passover, the true Firstfruits, the true Seed of Abraham, the true Davidic King. In every direction you look, the New Testament points to Christ as the concrete reality behind every Old Covenant shadow.
This is not poetic language. It is covenantal transition. When the substance arrives, the shadows are not insulted; they are completed. When the King sits on the throne, the tutors and guardians step aside. Hebrews makes this point with brutal clarity. The Old Covenant becomes “obsolete” not because it was bad, but because Christ has fulfilled what it promised. A covenant designed to point forward cannot remain authoritative when the One it pointed to has come. The entire structure of Israel’s life—priesthood, temple, sacrifices, festivals, land—served as scaffolding for the arrival of the Messiah. Once He arrives, the scaffolding does not compete with the building; it comes down because its purpose is finished.
This is why supersessionism is unavoidable. If Christ is the fulfillment of the covenants, then the covenants cannot remain the same. If Christ completes Israel’s story, then Israel’s story cannot continue on a separate track. And if the Old Covenant is brought to its ordained conclusion in Christ, then the people of the covenant must now be defined in Him, not by bloodline, geography, or Mosaic ordinance. The New Covenant is not the Old Covenant version two. It is the Old Covenant matured, completed, and reconstituted in the crucified and risen Lord.
Once you grasp this, everything else becomes clear. The apostles are not redefining Israel in a clever way. They are simply following the logic of Christ’s identity. If He is the true Israel, then union with Him—not descent from Abraham—defines the people of God. If He is the true Temple, then worship is no longer centered in Jerusalem. If He is the true Priest, then the Levitical order is finished. If He is the true Sacrifice, then the sacrificial system has reached its end. Christ does not compete with the Old Covenant; He completes it. And that completion necessarily brings transformation.
This is the foundation of the entire doctrine. If Christ stands at the center, the Old Covenant era cannot continue. If He is the true Israel, the people of God cannot be defined apart from Him. Everything else we say about supersessionism flows naturally from this point.
We begin with Christ because the apostles begin with Christ. And once you see what they see, the rest of the argument unfolds with force and clarity.
GOD’S PEOPLE ARE DEFINED CHRISTOLOGICALLY, NOT ETHNICALLY.
If Christ is the true Israel, then the next step is both unavoidable and inescapable: the people of God are determined by union with Him, not by bloodline, genealogy, or ethnic descent. The New Testament does not whisper this; it drives this point like a stake through the heart of Old Covenant boundary markers. The dividing wall is not lowered. It is demolished. And the definition of “God’s people” is rebuilt entirely around Christ.
Paul makes this as plain as any doctrine in Scripture. Rome was a divided church, torn between Jewish confidence in ancestral privilege and Gentile confidence in their newfound place in the covenant. Paul refuses to flatter either group. He tells the Jews that their physical descent does not guarantee covenant standing, and he tells the Gentiles that their inclusion is not a replacement but a grafting into the one existing tree. When he says that a true Jew is one inwardly, whose circumcision is of the heart by the Spirit, he is not making an inspirational statement about piety. He is driving a theological wedge between the Old Covenant and the New. He is telling you that ethnic markers no longer define covenant identity. Christ does.
This is why he tells the Roman church that not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel. That sentence alone overturns the entire modern system that tries to preserve ethnic Israel as a separate covenant people. Paul is not concerned with biological Israel; he is concerned with covenant Israel. And covenant Israel is defined by promise, not flesh; faith, not genealogy; union with Christ, not descent from Jacob. Once you grasp that, the idea of a dual-people or dual-covenant structure collapses under its own weight.
The same clarity appears in Ephesians. The Jews and Gentiles who once viewed each other with suspicion, superiority, and mutual exclusion are told something shocking: Christ has made them one. He has taken two groups that defined themselves in opposition to each other and forged them into a single new man. This is not a cooperative alliance or a temporary truce. It is a covenantal reconstitution. There is one body, one household, one temple, and one access to the Father by the same Spirit. If the Old Covenant created distinctions, the New Covenant buries them. And it buries them under the cornerstone of Christ.
Peter reinforces this when he applies Israel’s titles directly to the church. He does not hesitate. He does not apologize. He does not add qualifications. The church is a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession. Those titles belonged to Israel in the Old Covenant. They now belong to the church, composed of Jew and Gentile alike. This is not theological poetry; it is covenantal fact. The people who once were not God’s people now are, because they are in Christ, the true Israel. And if they are in Christ, then every privilege, promise, and identity marker associated with Israel belongs to them.
At this point the tension should be clear. If the people of God are defined by Christ, then any attempt to preserve an ethnic identity with special covenantal status after the coming of Christ is an attempt to rebuild what God has torn down. The New Testament does not bless that project. It condemns it. The idea that the Jews retain a separate covenant peoplehood alongside the church is a direct denial of what Christ accomplished in His body. It is an attempt to resurrect the dividing wall that the cross shattered. It is, in Paul’s language, a regression into the flesh.
This is why supersessionism is not a theological option; it is the inevitable consequence of taking the New Testament seriously. The apostles refuse to define God’s people the way the Old Covenant once did. Bloodlines cannot bring you in. Circumcision cannot bring you in. Ancestry cannot bring you in. Only Christ does. Ethnic identity does not guarantee you a place. Union with Christ does. And if you are in Christ, the apostolic witness says you are Abraham’s offspring and heirs according to promise, whether your bloodline traces back to Jacob or to a pagan nation three thousand miles away.
This is the New Covenant reality. The people of God are no longer marked by their connection to Abraham’s flesh. They are marked by their connection to Abraham’s Seed. This does not diminish Israel; it fulfills Israel. It does not erase the promises; it delivers the promises. It does not destroy the tree; it builds the tree into its full, global, Christ-centered glory.
And when this truth settles in, the entire debate changes. The question is no longer, “What is Israel’s future?” The question becomes, “Who is Christ, and who belongs to Him?” That is the dividing line, and that is the question the New Testament answers with unwavering clarity.
THE LAND PROMISE IS TRANSFIGURED TO THE WORLD.
If Christ is the true Israel and the people of God are defined by union with Him, then the next question rises like a storm front on the horizon: What becomes of the land? Every Old Covenant promise was tied to soil, borders, territory, geography, inheritance. The land was not a minor detail. It was the core of Israel’s identity. So what happens to that land promise in the New Covenant? Does it remain in its old form? Does it expand? Does it tighten back onto a modern strip of Middle Eastern real estate?
The New Testament answers that question with a level of clarity that many Christians today refuse to acknowledge. The land promise does not shrink; it explodes. It does not retreat back to Canaan; it expands to the entire earth. The promise to Abraham was never ultimately about a sliver of land on the Mediterranean. Paul says that Abraham was promised “the world.” That is not allegory. That is not spiritual sleight of hand. That is the apostolic interpretation of Genesis. The land was always a down payment, a model, a miniature of what God intended for the whole creation under the reign of the Messiah.
This is why Jesus does not say the meek will inherit Judea. He says the meek will inherit the earth. He takes Psalm 37, a land-inheritance psalm, and universalizes it without hesitation. He does not say the promise is canceled. He says the promise is enlarged. The land was never the finish line. It was the training ground, the shadow, the map that pointed beyond itself.
The prophets confirm this. Isaiah speaks of a time when the nations stream to Zion, not to seize its soil, but to receive its instruction. Micah describes the mountain of the Lord rising above all other mountains, not as a literal geological event, but as the exaltation of God’s kingdom over every kingdom on earth. The geography of the Old Covenant becomes the theology of the New: the land becomes the world under the rule of Christ.
This is why the New Testament does not once instruct Christians to look back to territorial promises, rebuild Old Covenant borders, or expect a national reconstitution of Israel in the flesh. Instead, it gives them a far greater vision. It speaks of a new heavens and a new earth, a global New Jerusalem, a kingdom that stretches from shore to shore, and a Messiah whose dominion outgrows every boundary imagined in the Old Covenant. The land promise does not collapse; it matures.
And here is where the tension crystallizes. Modern Christians who insist that Israel must regain or retain the land in order for God’s promises to be valid are making the same mistake the Pharisees made: shrinking the kingdom of God back down to tribal size. They want the world’s Redeemer to preside over a real estate deal. They want the cosmic King to be a regional landlord. They want the One who inherited the nations to be reduced to the square mileage of the Sinai covenant.
The New Testament refuses to let that happen. Christ is not the King of one nation. He is the King of kings. He is not the inheritor of one plot of land. He is the heir of the world. And because the church is united to Him, the church inherits what He inherits. This is why Revelation ends not with a fenced-off ethnic homeland but with a city descending from heaven that fills a renewed creation. The promise that began with Abraham standing on Canaan’s soil ends with the entire cosmos reclaimed, restored, and ruled by Christ and His people.
The land promise has not been revoked. It has been fulfilled beyond recognition to anyone who is still staring at a map of Israel. The seed of Abraham rules the earth, not a strip of it. And the people of Abraham—those who belong to Christ—inherit the whole creation, not a fenced-in inheritance that belonged to a temporary covenant.
This is the New Covenant vision. The land becomes the world. The borders become global. The inheritance becomes cosmic. And every attempt to drag the promise back to its Old Covenant scale is a refusal to accept the victory of Christ.
The question is not whether Israel gets her land back. The question is whether Christ gets the world He was promised. And the New Testament declares, without apology or hesitation, that He does.
CIRCUMCISION, PRIESTHOOD, AND SACRIFICES ARE FULFILLED
If the land promise must be understood through the finished work of Christ, then the next question presses in with equal weight: What becomes of the Old Covenant institutions that marked Israel off from the nations? Circumcision, priesthood, temple rites, sacrifices—these were not accessories. They were the backbone of Old Covenant identity. Without them, Israel had no covenantal life. But the New Testament does not preserve these institutions. It does not renovate them. It does not run them alongside the new order. It brings them to an end by fulfilling them in Christ.
There is no ambiguity here. Scripture does not give us two priesthoods operating side by side, two forms of circumcision with equal standing, two sacrificial systems—one ancient and one future—competing for covenant legitimacy. The New Testament shuts that door immediately. Circumcision is now “made without hands,” not in the flesh but in the heart, by the Spirit. That alone should settle the matter. If circumcision is no longer defined by the knife but by union with Christ, then the entire Old Covenant system that guarded Israel’s boundaries is finished. There is no parallel track for the ethnic children of Abraham. There is no covenantal advantage left in the flesh.
The priesthood follows the same pattern. The book of Hebrews does not say that Christ adds to the Levitical order. It says His priesthood replaces it. A change of priesthood means a change of covenant. Not an update. Not an expansion. A change. Once Christ stands as the final High Priest, the Levitical order is not simply retired; it becomes impossible. You cannot have two priesthoods mediating two covenants at the same time. You cannot have the shadow and the substance ministering side by side. If Christ represents His people before the Father, then no other priesthood can stand.
The same is true for sacrifices. Scripture does not permit us to imagine a future temple that will resume animal offerings. The moment Christ offered Himself, every sacrifice that came before was exposed as temporary. And every sacrifice that could ever come after would be a denial of His finished work. Hebrews says that plainly. If you resurrect the sacrificial system, you are not honoring Christ; you are insulting Him. You are saying His blood was insufficient, His offering incomplete, His cross not enough.
This is where modern Christians who cling to future temple imagery must be confronted. The idea that God will reinstate Old Covenant sacrifices in the last days is not a harmless speculation. It is a categorically anti-gospel proposal. It is the theological equivalent of building an altar on top of Calvary and pretending the curtain was never torn. It is an attempt to rehang the veil Christ tore with His own death. No Christian who understands the New Testament can affirm that without stepping outside apostolic theology.
Circumcision replaced by heart-renewal. Priesthood replaced by Christ. Sacrifices replaced by the once-for-all offering of the Son. Temple replaced by the risen Christ and His indwelt people. These are not symbolic gestures. They are covenantal realities. The entire Old Covenant machinery was designed to keep Israel alive until the Messiah came. Once He came, those structures were finished.
And here is the tension that lies beneath the surface of the entire debate. If God Himself has dismantled circumcision, priesthood, temple, and sacrifice, then the system that once defined ethnic Israel’s unique covenant identity has been taken apart by God’s own hand. There is no going back. Any attempt to preserve ethnic Israel as a covenant people after the coming of Christ must ignore the fact that the very institutions that once made Israel distinct have been fulfilled and removed. Without those institutions, the Old Covenant cannot exist. And if the Old Covenant cannot exist, then neither can an Old Covenant people.
This is not replacement. This is completion. Israel does not lose her identity. Her identity is taken up, purified, magnified, and secured forever in Christ. The covenant signs that once pointed forward are now absorbed into Him. The covenant structures that once maintained the nation now serve a greater kingdom. And the covenant people that once existed in the flesh are now gathered from every nation into one body through union with the true Israelite—the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is why supersessionism is not a fringe doctrine. It is not a harsh doctrine. It is the only doctrine that honors Christ’s finished work. If the Old Covenant signs remain, His work is unfinished. If the Old Covenant priesthood remains, His mediation is insufficient. If the Old Covenant sacrifices remain, His blood does not cleanse. And if the Old Covenant people remain with covenant status apart from Him, His kingdom is divided.
Christ does not share His covenant with the shadows. He fulfills them, ends them, and reigns over the new creation they anticipated.
CONCLUSION
As we bring this first part to a close, I want you to feel the weight of what Scripture has shown us. None of this is innovative. None of it is theological risk-taking. None of it belongs to the fringe. This is the straightforward, apostolic, Christ-centered reading of the Bible that the church held for centuries before modern systems muddied the waters. Christ fulfills Israel’s story. Christ completes Israel’s covenants. Christ transforms Israel’s boundaries. Christ inherits Israel’s promises. And Christ defines Israel’s people.
Once you see that, the entire Old Covenant order comes into focus—not as something God will resurrect, but as something God has already brought to its appointed end in His Son. The shadows served their purpose. The scaffolding held the structure long enough for the cornerstone to be set. And when He came, the whole project matured. Israel’s identity did not disappear; it was lifted into Christ, extended to the nations, and rebuilt on a foundation that can never crack or crumble.
That is why supersessionism is not a side doctrine or a debate for specialists. It is the theological backbone of the New Testament. It explains the Great Commission. It explains Pentecost. It explains the unity of the church. It explains why the New Covenant cannot coexist with the old. And it explains why any attempt to preserve ethnic Israel as a separate covenant people—now or in the future—is simply incompatible with the gospel the apostles preached.
But we are not finished. In fact, what we have done today is only half the case. We have laid the biblical foundation: Christ as the true Israel, the church as the covenant people, the land expanded to the world, the institutions fulfilled and ended. Yet there is still more to see. We must look at the prophetic expectation, the apostolic warnings, the historical judgments, and the theological implications that carry this doctrine to its full conclusion.
So join me next time as we take up Part 2: The Prophetic, Historical, and Theological Case for Supersessionism—where we will examine how the prophets foresaw this transformation, how the apostles interpret it, how AD 70 seals it, and why the gospel itself leaves no room for any other view.
Until then, keep your Bible open, keep your mind engaged, and keep Christ at the center. Because once He stands at the center, everything else in Scripture falls into place.
