Replacement Theology or Fufillment Theology?

Say you are a caretaker of a grand old house – a manor owned by a king, who has not visited it in years and years and years.  It’s a beautiful house, you love it just as much as the king who built it all those years ago.  But you get notice that the man himself  is coming to live in this house, and suddenly you realize – wow. This house is not ready to receive such an esteemed guest!  The carpets are shabby, the drapes worn.  There are stains and dirt everywhere.  Cobwebs hang from the ceiling.  There aren’t enough rooms to hold the King and his household.    The manor needs preparation.   Because the King is coming very soon!

So, you, by order of the king, hire contractors.  You hire interior decorators.  You scrub, you clean, you purge and purify.  You paint the walls anew, you pound, you knock down, you build.   And while the house is in the busy “getting ready” phase – you have a way of being which is prepatory.  You get up early and work.  You eat on the go,  you wear gloves to keep your hands clean from the labor.  You cover the furniture to protect it from the dust of the remodel. You coordinate who can be in the house when, to prevent overlap.  There are a million little details to coordinate, as you go through this process. Some things have to go, because they are old and broken.  Some things have to be built, to accommodate His Majesty and his family.

When the King arrives to live in the manor house – it certainly looks different. It is new and beautiful. It is large, with room for everyone! The covers are off the furniture, the walls are repainted, everything is in place, as it should be.  There are no drop cloths.  There are no nails and hammers.  That all has been put away, because the preparations are complete.    You, the servant, are no longer in your grubby work clothes.  You are clean, showered, dressed to the nines.  This is not because the orders to renovate the house weren’t NEEDED.  It’s because the renovations are DONE.  And we now have a new thing, which is actually the OLD thing, but fully prepared to receive it’s owner.  The house is still the house, even if it looks different, because the OWNER of the house never changed.  He did not build a new house somewhere else.  The old house is not REPLACED.    

Do we resent the old ways of doing things?  NO. They were needed to do the work that needed done.  Do we recognize the old for what is has always been, the King’s home?  Absolutely.   This new house is the same house, because it is HIS house.  All those old ways of doing things were necessary, because they were preparation for the KING.  But now the King is here, and he is staying forever in his home. 

Romans j11:17-18
¹⁷ But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the rich root^[f] of the olive tree, ¹⁸ do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you

Matthew 5:17

The Law and the Prophets

¹⁷ “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.