“We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that [whether Jewish nor Gentile] a person is not justified by the works of the law [i.e., conversion, circumcision, etc.] but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we [the Jewish believers] also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified. But if, in our endeavour to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners [by eating and fellowshipping with Gentiles], is Christ then a servant of sin? [In other words, does becoming a believer mean we forsake Torah? Is eating and fellowshipping with Gentiles really a sin against Torah?] Certainly not! For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. –Galatians 2:15-18
That is to say to Peter, “If you of all people, Peter, rebuild a sharp division between Jew and Gentile by removing yourself from table fellowship with Gentiles, you are rebuilding the barrier that you originally tore down. If you refuse to eat and worship with them, you rebuild the barrier that you originally tore down. You yourself were the first of the apostles to tear that separation down. If now you are putting it back up, then you are admitting that you were wrong in the first place, and you are proving yourself to have been living in sin and transgression.”
-from D. Thomas Lancaster’s book
The Holy Epistle to the Galatians
I received an advance copy of Lancaster’s book from First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) yesterday and have since been eagerly devouring it. I’m not ready to write my full review, but Sermon 8: The Antioch Incident (the book is a compilation of 26 sermons, with each sermon organized as a chapter, given by Lancaster at Beth Immanuel Fellowship in 2008) brought up some interesting questions, and perhaps even a few answers.
For those of you who may not know, FFOZ is an educational ministry which produces informational materials, including books, audio lectures, and such, to both Jewish and non-Jewish believers in Jesus (Yeshua) in Messianic Judaism (MJ), although they have a wider audience in more traditional Christian (and perhaps more traditional Jewish) circles. One of the ongoing discussions in different branches of MJ is the relationship between Jewish and non-Jewish believers and the relationship those two groups have to the commandments of the Torah.
Without going into a lot of detail, some advocate for Gentiles in MJ to be obligated to the same 613 commandments that observant Jews are taught to obey, while others believe that Gentiles are only obligated to a small subset of those commandments (see Acts 15). The latter group believes that Gentiles who state that they are obligated to the full “yoke of Torah” obliterate Jewish covenant distinctiveness and “blend” Jews and Gentiles in Jesus into one, featureless mass. How Jewish and Gentile believers are supposed to interact given “distinctiveness boundaries”, including in matters of table fellowship, common observance of the Shabbat and the Festivals, has at times become hotly debated.
In reading Lancaster’s “Galatians”, we find this is not a new issue.
Lancaster (and FFOZ) support maintaining distinctions between Jewish Messianics and the Gentiles in MJ and Lancaster states:
We are one body, many parts. The foot is not the eye; the eye is not the foot. Oneness is not sameness. We can be one in the body but not have the same function or calling. Oneness is not sameness. There is one faith, one baptism, and one body, but that body has many parts.
Lancaster is obviously referencing 1 Corinthians 12:12-31, but what is typically interpreted as a commentary on the struggles between different members of the Christian body sorting out the diversity of their spiritual gifts, Lancaster applies to the distinctions between Jewish and Gentile believers in Christ. I think his application is valid since it holds water in the Galatians context as Paul presents his argument, but that may come as a bit of a surprise if you do not believe that Jewish observance to the covenant of Moses was upheld by the early Jewish apostles for Jews and not for non-Jewish Christians. In other words, you may have a problem with Lancaster’s conclusions if you were taught that the law was done away with for Jews as well as for non-Jewish believers.
My primary interest in this subject, and in Lancaster’s book as a whole, is not from the perspective of Messianic Judaism. At this stage of my spiritual journey, I see myself as a Christian,married to a (non-believing) Jewish wife, who in immersing myself in Jewish Talmudic, mystic, and storytelling sources and traditions in order to better understand Christ who lived, died, and was resurrected a Jew and who taught, spoke, lived, and breathed in a completely Jewish manner and lifestyle. I don’t think you can understand who Jesus is unless you understand not only the Judaism of his day, but Judaism and Torah as they wind their way back to the beginning of Creation and forward to the current age.
This is the lens by which I look at the book and the pen by which I chronicle my thoughts, feelings, and the cries of my spirit.
I have friends who are Jewish believers in Christ and who are fully observant Jews, while I am a Gentile Christian. How are we to interact? Can we eat together? Can we pray together? In what manner may I observe the Shabbat, Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot? How may I fast and pray on Yom Kippur (and does this offend Jesus who died to remove my sins once and for all)?
These are the questions that underlie “The Antioch Incident” and the entire “Galatians” book. These are the questions that, if you don’t consider them important to you now as a Christian or believing Jew, you definitely will when the Messiah comes.
So what are the answers? I believe I know them and I try to live them out as best I can. Paul worked with great effort as the apostle to the Gentiles to create and support communities where believing Jews and non-Jews freely interacted. Here is how Peter responded to Paul:
After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: “Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? –Acts 15:7-10
Paul struggled with James, the Jerusalem Council, and other believing Jews as to whether or not Gentiles, once they came to faith in the Jewish Messiah, should be circumcised and convert to Judaism. Indeed, history records that some did, but Paul, who received his “Gospel” from the Messiah and Heaven and not from men, understood that it wasn’t necessary. Jesus is the gateway for the people of the world to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven and yet remain non-Jewish. All who are in the Messiah are One and God’s Name is One, but the members of the Messiah’s body, though one in baptism and spirit, are diverse in type and function. Just as my wife and I are different (being female and male, Jew and Christian) and yet “one flesh”, Jews and Gentiles in the Messiah are two and yet one.
I look forward to continuing this book and will post my full review when I finish.
Blessings.
Addendum: The full book review is now available.
Morning Meditations 
Thanks for your thoughts. I do however think that you will misunderstand all of scripture if you come at it with a “Christian” lens. A Christian belongs to a church (not the true body of believers) with a ‘new’ set of promises, ‘new’ commands and a future ‘new’ kingdom, containing only Christians, not Messianic believers. Christians are torah-less (lawless), they are those that are trying to convince torah-keepers to come to a torah-less “Christ” and put away the law. True believers are in fact, grafted into Israel, are Israel and should act like Israel. The renewed covenant is between YHVH and His peopel, Israel. We need to get the church (i.e. Christians) out of our theology.
Greetings, John.
I think you’ve misunderstood the lens I’m trying to describe, I’m talking about looking through Jewish Talmudic, mystic, and storytelling sources and traditions in order to better understand Christ (to quote from what I said above), not a traditional Christian viewpoint which often includes replacement theology. You’ll probably get a better idea of where I’m coming from if you read a few of my other blog posts. I feel fairly sure that what I’ve written illustrates that I don’t have a typical Christian perspective on the Bible, Jesus, or God, although I hope to communicate what I do see to whoever takes the time to visit here.
I’m something of an “oddball” in that I am not currently affilated with a Messianic Jewish or Christian congregation, though I did worship in an MJ/OL group for many years up until recently. I came to realize that One Law was not particularly supported in the Bible and I could no longer teach and fellowship in an environment where I disagreed with the fundamental principles of the group (there are a number of other reasons for my disengagement as well, but they would take too long to explain). Watching my wife’s exploration of her Judaism as she has become more observant, has helped me realize that Gentiles were not intended to imitate Jews in every detail of Torah. However, I also realized that the Talmud and Chasidic writings speak very clearly about the Messiah, much more so than the commentaries offered by modern and history Christian writers. That’s where I’m focusing my attention for the present.
So then you’re saying there is a difference between Jew and Gentile? Galatians 3:28, Romans 10:12. Did YHVH create two laws for different purposes? As punishment for the Jews and grace for the gentiles? Christians are a made up group of people, that have been freed from Torah and they belong to a made up body of believers – the church. They are not the true believers in the 1st century. You can “christianize” Christmas but it’s still a pagan, false holiday. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. Know what I’m saying?
You can “christianize” Christmas but it’s still a pagan, false holiday. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. Know what I’m saying?
I don’t celebrate Christmas, John, but I don’t criticize those people who choose to do so.
When Paul says that there’s no difference between Jews and Gentiles, he means no difference in terms of God’s love and our ability to draw near to Him, not that we’re identical in every way. Paul also said “neither male nor female” (Galatians 3:28), but that doesn’t mean there is only one gender instead of two and no distinctive differences between men and women. I means that in terms of God’s love and our access to God, men and women are on equal footing.
If Gentile disciples of the Jewish Messiah were absolutely identical in every way to the Jewish disciples of the Jewish Messiah, what’s the point of a Jew being a Jew? The One Law premise effectively eliminates any significance about the covenant relationship a Jew has to God, elliminating the Mosaic covenant uniqueness for Jews in the same way as the Christian church does. The church also says that there is no difference between Jew and Gentile believer because of Jesus (Yeshua), in their view, has eliminated the Law. The only difference between the One Law position and the opinion of the church is that the former applies the Law to everyone indescriminately, and the latter applies the Law to no one, saying it was deleted.
I spent over a year questioning the One Law assumptions I once held and eventually created and taught a class at my former congregation to test those assumptions. A summary of the results are posted the congregation’s blog. The blog post resulted in a rather passionate dialog in the comments section, but the class did conclude, within the scope of its investigation, that Jesus didn’t teach the Gentiles to obey all of the 613 commandments. I wrote a small follow-up piece to those conclusions using a commentary written by a Chabad Rabbi as an example (and as I am no longer affilated with that congregation, if you choose to comment at that blog, I will not be able to reply – you can direct any responsive comments to me here).
I encourage you to click on the links I just provided and read the information (rather than me “reinventing the wheel” so to speak, and recreating my summary in the current comment) for all the details. I’m sure that we’re eventually going to “agree to disagree” on this matter, but based on my personal exploration of the topic and with the help of both local and “virtual” resources, I can’t see the scriptural justification supporting Gentile believers being obligated to the exact same Torah commandments as the Jewish believers. If that were the case, there literally would be “no Jew or Gentile” (emphasis on “no Jew”) and rather than Gentiles being grafted in (Romans 11), we’d be diluting and finally replacing the root; Israel. That’s what the church teaches, that’s what One Law effectively teaches and based on my findings, I can no longer agree with that conclusion.
Good Shabbos.
I appreciate your response. I agree we will not find common ground on his matter. I read some of your reasoning for your view point. You are not two-house and therefore I believe that you have an identity issue. YHVH has a bride called Israel and a Torah for them. Yahshua did not come with a different message than His Father. His Words from His Father were the only way that the first century believers knew that Yahshua was Who He said He was. The Father and the Son are of the same mind and have the same message. It’s the message God has been telling man since the beginning. If Yahshua came with a revised or shortened form of Torah, then He would have been identified as a false-Messiah.
We are not following Jewish commands or converting to Judaism. The commands and moedim are God’s. We aren’t doing God a ‘favor’ when we follow His commands. He requires it. How are we made righteous – Deut 6:24, 25; 1 John 2:29, 3:24? How do we show our love for God and for our neighbor – 1 John 5:2,3? I believe, unfortunately that many in the “Messianic Movement” are still picking and choosing what commands they wish to follow. They will go to great lengths, like the church, to exclude themselves from following certain commands. In your final list of commands gentiles are to follow, you have, “not to take away from the commandments of the Torah.” Yet that is what you do. Also, your references to “Jesus” and “Christ” and your self described Christian title are evidence of your desire to hold on to teachings that are clearly pagan and man-made. If you had not been inundated with these false ideas throughout your lifetime, the you would not care to lean on them as you do. Those things are not set apart to YHVH. I’m sure with your many writings, meetings and blogs you have heard this all before, which is good reason to understand that as a leader/teacher, you have a great responsibility. You are leading people to obey some, but not all God’s commands. Imagine the Kingdom with two laws instead of One Torah.
Shabbat Shalom.
You are not two-house and therefore I believe that you have an identity issue.
This is true. Of the various “flavors” of MJ, two-house makes the least amount of sense to me. In essense, it’s saying that any non-Jew who is attracted to Judaism and the Torah *must* be of Jewish descent. It denies any possibility that a non-Jew could be attacted to the beauty of the Torah for any other reason.
As far as my identity goes, I feel I know who I am reasonably well. I’ll try to explain my position one more time and then quit. We could have this discussion forever and probably still not change each other’s opinions. Please keep in mind though, that at one point, I did believe in the One Law position.
Here’s an analogy to illustrate my understanding of two different, though overlapping, “Torah responsibilities” for Jews and Gentile believers.
All citizens of the U.S.A. have the same rights and responsibilities as documented in the Constitution. If both you and I are U.S. citizens, that means we have identical rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, etc. You cannot have more rights and responsibilites than I can based on U.S. citizenship. We are equal, even though we are different people, living in different parts of the country, with different jobs, different friends, different interests and (probably) different lifestyles.
Now there are certain sub-groups within the group of U.S. citizens that have additional rights and responsibilities above and beyond what citizenship provides. I’ll take police officers as an example. In *addition to* all the rights and responsibilities U.S. citizenship provides a police officer, a police officer, even if he or she is off duty or even on vacation, if they see a crime being committed, they are *obligated* to report it, attempt to stop the crime in progress, and protect the safety of the public. They also have rights to carry firearms and under certain circumstances, question people, detain people, arrest people, and put people in physical restraints. No person who is not a police officer has those rights and responsibilities.
Now lets say that U.S. citizens in general are everyone who believes in God and the Jewish Messiah. Our status as believers gives us certain rights and responsibilities relative to God and to human beings (doing charity, visiting the sick, and so forth). In this scenario, let’s say Jews are “police officers” (not in the specifics of the analogy such as carrying guns and arresting people, of course) in that they have *rights and responsibilities above and beyond what a typical citizen has*.
Even among Jews, there are different statuses that apply additional rights and responsibilities. Some of the Torah only applies to men and some only to women. Some Torah only applies to Levites, some only to Priests, and some only to the High Priest.
None of this means God gave two laws, one for the Jew and one for the Gentile believer (or different laws for different “classes of Jews). It means that within the body of faith, there are certain groups that have a greater level of obligation than the group in general. Again, to address my “identity issue”, I know I am a “citizen” but not a “police officer”. I know that my wife, because she’s Jewish, is both a “citizen” and a “police officer”.
That’s the best I can do to illustrate my point. If you’re interested in my continuing commentaries on Lancaster’s book, you can read some of my other posts such as Knowing. Before I write my full review of the book, I’ll probably create one or two more “mini-reviews” on certain specific points Lancaster makes, within a larger context of Torah commentary.