I consider myself a Christian in the sense that I am a disciple of Jesus Christ but more specifically, I am a student of Messianic Judaism because I believe that discipline represents a perspective on the Bible, the Good News of Messiah, the New Covenant, and Israel that is scripturally sound and that describes the Bible as the single, unified expression of God’s desires, intent, and plan, first for Israel, and then, by Israel’s light, for the rest of the world.
And yet, to do that, I have learned to accept a few things that other people, that is, Christians, don’t like. I accept that the New Covenant was made exclusively with the House of Israel and the House of Judah (Jeremiah 31:31) and not with humanity in general. Further, I accept that when God, through the prophet, says “the House of Israel and the House of Judah,” He is referring specifically to the physical descendents of the Israelites who stood before God at Mt Sinai and accepted the covenant relationship between God and Israel (Exodus 20) in perpetuity (Jeremiah 31:35-36), who are today the Jewish people, and that the eternal inheritance of the Jews is the nation of Israel, which we have with us now.
I accept that the Gentiles are to be attracted to Israel as a light (Deuteronomy 4:5-8, Isaiah 49:6) with the strongest light being King Messiah, Son of David (John 8:12) as God’s emissary, agent, and deliverer of the promises God has made, causing the New Covenant age to be inaugurated with his death and resurrection, that the Jews might believe God will deliver on His promises to them, and that the Gentiles might be grafted into the blessings of those promises, taking the fringes of a Jewish man and going with him, for God is with him (Zechariah 8:23).
I’ve heard it said that the Jewish man in question is not just any Jewish person, but specifically is Messiah. That we from the nations approach God and His holiness by attaching ourselves to Israel through Messiah and going up with him to Jerusalem, to the House of Prayer for all the peoples (Isaiah 56:7).
So what’s wrong with all of that? Apparently, plenty.
From a Christian’s point of view, which includes some in the Hebrew Roots movement who say they disdain the Church, God made a covenant with Israel at Sinai that had effect and potency until the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Then everything changed. The Jewish people no longer were automatically included in the Sinai covenant (although the Abrahamic covenant remained in force) and in order to re-enter a covenant relationship with God, they had to enter into the New Covenant, represented by a brand new entity wholly divorced from Judaism called “the Church”.
From Christianity’s point of view, this means Jewish people remain Jewish but must surrender Judaism and convert to Christianity, along with the Gentiles, and live, for all intents and purposes, a Gentile Christian lifestyle free of “the Law” and solely under grace (as if the two are mutually exclusive). There must be absolutely no distinction between Jew and Gentile in the Church.
From a Hebrew Roots perspective, this means Jewish people remain Jewish and continue practicing Judaism, but the “one new man” entity they must join requires that all Gentile disciples are totally and completely the same as their Jewish counterparts, and must observe the identical set of Torah commandments as the Jew. There must be absolutely no distinction between Jew and Gentile in Hebrew Roots congregations, many of which inaccurately call themselves “Messianic Judaism.”
But the Messianic Judaism I study and adhere to has a different perspective, one that recognizes a specific distinctiveness between Jews and Gentiles within the ekklesia of Messiah, such that each group in the body serves different, although sometimes overlapping functions.
I accept, for instance, that it would be inappropriate for me to claim an obligation to don tzitzit and lay tefillin when praying, to keep kosher in the manner of the Jews, to observe, in the present age, a Shabbat, and to say that it would be a sin if I did not perform any of those mitzvot.
That isn’t to say, especially being married to a Jewish wife, that I’m forbidden to keep kosher or observe the Shabbat (though at present, I only keep “kosher-style” and both my wife and I have elected to work on the Shabbat — may the day come when our observance is more faithful). I even know Gentile Messianics who choose to don tzitzit and lay tefillin privately in prayer, but who do not declare that they are obligated to do so.
I also accept that the New Covenant was made only with the Jewish people and that my only access is through faith in Messiah, not because of any inherit worth I have ethnically or nationally as a non-Jew.
My understanding of the Jewish covenant relationship with God is that it extends continually from Exodus 20 forward in time and into the modern age. While Jesus inaugurated the New Covenant with his death and resurrection, getting the ball rolling, so to speak, it won’t reach any sort of fruition until his second coming, when he destroys all of Israel’s enemies, making the Gentile survivors vassal nations under Israel’s sovereignty, and establishing a unprecedented world-wide reign of peace. Then the Jewish people will be restored to their Land, to Israel, and the Gentiles who are called by His Name will come alongside Israel and serve her King, for he is our King, and worship God on the Temple Mount.
No new body is created in Acts 2, it’s an extension of the all of the previous covenants God made with Israel including the New Covenant, and the precursor to the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel and to the nations. A subset of all the Jewish people in existing in the first century accepted the Good News of Messiah, and they represent an unbroken stream that goes all the way back to the Exodus and even to Abraham. And the Jewish people who did not accept the Good News remain under the Sinai covenant and in God’s love and compassion, and as God declares in the New Covenant:
“I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
–Jeremiah 31:33-34
One day, God will forgive Israel’s sins, and the Jewish people will make teshuvah and return.
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. Behold, your house is being left to you desolate! For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’”
–Matthew 23:37-39
Israel will one day say “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord” and on that day, the Gentiles will join with Israel at feast of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Matthew 8:11).
Does that make me and all the non-Jewish disciples of Messiah who study Messianic Judaism into second-class citizens in the Kingdom of God? To be honest, there are days when I think so. I suppose it’s my innate attraction to Jewish worship and scholarship that periodically has me longing to be able to join a minyan or to be called to the bema for an aliyah (not that I speak or read Hebrew). I sometimes see Jews in Messianic synagogues worshiping and praying the prayers and wish I could be a part of them. Sometimes I feel I should leave any sort of affiliation to Messianic Judaism behind and just keep my peace silently, communing only with God, because I feel I can never truly be part of Jewish people in Jewish community.
But I don’t fit in at church either, so that cannot be my sole connection to fellowship. Also, I must admit that any issues I may have feeling any disconnection with Messianic Judaism are my personal issues and hardly the fault of Jewish needs or requirements in community, since after all, the “chosenness” of Israel is a decision of God, not of man, and I must obey God before the will of any human being, even (especially) my own will (Acts 5:29).
That is why I call myself a “Messianic Gentile” and choose to study within a Messianic Jewish framework. That is why it is OK, even if I am a “second-class citizen” (which I’m actually not), because my citizenship is in the Kingdom of God, among the ekklesia, both ancient and modern, in the tradition of every Gentile who has ever come alongside Israel because we have heard God is with them, from the days of Moses to the days of the apostle Paul.
And Korach, the son of Yitzhor, the son of K’hos, the son of Levi, took …
–Numbers 16:1
Rashi explains that the key reason for Korach’s rebellion against Moshe was that he was envious of another relative who received honor while he didn’t.
If I were to allow envy of the obligations and privileges of the Jewish people in the Messianic community to affect me, I would be as Rashi characterized Korach and his band: rebellious. May it never be.
Rabbi Pliskin’s Torah commentaries speak more to me about my own state as a Gentile studying and learning within a Jewish context, being attached to but not the same as the Jewish co-participants in the body of Messiah. In Part Two of this series, I’ll discuss more of my perspective using R. Pliskin’s missives as a foundation.
For more on the Korach rebellion, which was last week’s Torah portion, read “The Importance of Unity” at ProjectGenesis.org.
I wrote these blogs, first of all, to speak of and expand upon some of the concepts behind a recent commentary on Torah Portion Shelach published online by First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ). Actually, that was the motivation for the first blog post. I wrote the second in response to some online misinterpretation of my intent and motives, but that only made things worse.
It seems I need to restate my beliefs about the New Covenant and the place of the nations in relation to Israel. That won’t be easy to contain in a single blog post, since the information is vast. It took me eleven or twelve blog posts to work through my original investigation and D. Thomas Lancaster covered the New Covenant material in five sermons on four CDs in his What About the New Covenant series.
Here’s the “Reader’s Digest” version:
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” (emph. mine)
–Jeremiah 31:31-34 (NASB)
The direct objects of the New Covenant are the House of Judah and the House of Israel, the descendants of the object of the Sinai Covenant, the Israelites. The nations are not mentioned in the New Covenant language so they (we) are not directly connected. Then how are we involved at all? Consider the Abrahamic Covenant:
Genesis 12:1-3 – God promises to make Abraham into great nation, bless those who bless him and curse those who curse him, and all peoples on earth would be blessed through Abraham.
Genesis 15:18–21 – God promises to give Abraham’s descendants all the land from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates, and this area is later referred to as the Promised Land or the Land of Israel.
Genesis 17:2–9 – God promises to make Abraham a father of many nations and of many descendants and the land of Canaan as well as other parts of Middle East will go to his descendants.
Genesis 17:9-14 – God declares that circumcision is to be the sign of the covenant for Abraham and all his male descendants and that this will be an eternal covenant.
Notice that only portions of the first and third condition have anything to do with any other people besides Abraham’s descendants through Isaac and Jacob. The first condition promises that “all peoples on earth” will be blessed through Abraham, and the third condition states that Abraham would be a father of many nations. Of course that last part speaks to the wives of Abraham and the children he had with them after Sarah died, so that condition doesn’t really figure into how all of earth’s people will be blessed.
Brethren, I speak in terms of human relations: even though it is only a man’s covenant, yet when it has been ratified, no one sets it aside or adds conditions to it. Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as referring to many, but rather to one, “And to your seed,” that is, Christ.
–Galatians 3:15-16 (NASB)
We have to go to the apostolic scriptures and Paul’s epistle to the Galatians to understand how to interpret Genesis 12:1-3, but we see that the blessing to the nations comes through Messiah. He is the “mechanism” by which we Gentiles may be “grafted in” to the promises, not making us Jewish converts without a bris, but beneficiaries of the blessings such that we too can approach God as sons and not strangers (Ephesians 1:4-5).
Some things have been said about me ignoring that Israel is to be a light to the nations (Isaiah 49:6). The idea is that the Gentiles were to be attracted to that light (Deuteronomy 4:6) and then be prompted to join the nation, assimilating into the tribes and clans and becoming one with Israel.
I refer you back to FFOZ’s One Law and the Gentiles article for the details about what it was to be a “Ger” both in the days of Moses and in the time of the apostles.
Well over a year ago, I wrote Building My Model, which was my prior attempt at summarizing Gentile inclusion in the New Covenant. I reduced everything down to five points:
God creates a provision in his covenant with Abraham that allows the Gentiles to be blessed through Messiah (Abraham 12:1-3).
The New Covenant (Jer. 31, Ezek. 36) renews, affirms, and amplifies all of the previous covenants God made with the people of Israel and the people of Judah which, by definition, includes the Abrahamic covenant.
Messiah alludes that the (new) covenant is poured out in his blood (death), (see Mark 14:22-24, Luke 22:19-20) for all people.
Paul interprets the Abrahamic covenant provision referring to Gentiles as Messiah being our connection to God (see Galatians 3:15-16).
Paul describes the process of Gentiles being made co-heirs to the Messianic promises through Messiah as a mystery (Ephesians 3:1-13).
There are multiple portions of the Prophets that mention Gentiles, the Temple being a house of prayer for all peoples, Gentiles holding fast to observing the Shabbat and the Festivals, and ten men of the nations taking hold of the fringes of a Jewish man’s clothing to go with him and to be near to God.
All of those passages speak to Gentile involvement alongside Israel in being devoted to God in the future Messianic Age, but in sending the Messiah the first time, God sent a message and a gift, a foreknowledge and guarantee of the coming Kingdom and confirmation that God will fulfill all of the New Covenant promises.
The coming of the first Gentiles into relationship with God by receiving the Spirit (Acts 10) just as the Jews did (Acts 2) is one of the signs of that promise and guarantee. The prophesies of Joel (Joel 2:28) must have come to Peter’s mind as he saw Cornelius and his household receive the Spirit, and when Paul, as Messiah’s emissary to the Gentiles, brought vast numbers of former goyishe idol worshipers to the God of Israel through faith in Yeshua, it must have seemed as if the Messianic Age was close to fruition, and that the New Covenant times were about to burst into completion.
That hasn’t happened yet, but we are in the midst of that process. The fact that Gentiles continue to be drawn to Messiah by the Spirit and to desire to learn about the Jesus of the Jewish scriptures is clearly a sign. Of course, we Gentiles are involved in the New Covenant, but only through Israel for the Master said “salvation comes from the Jews,” (John 4:22).
I’ve tried to compress a great deal of information about a very complex topic into one short article and I hope I’ve been successful. For a more complete picture of my understanding of the New Covenant, go through my eleven part series, starting with part one: The Jesus Covenant: The Foundation, and then click through the subsequent parts until you get to the end. Afterward, you should also read Gifts of the Spirit Poured Out on all Flesh which filled in one last piece of my investigative puzzle.
I hope this puts a few frenzied souls to rest. I also want to remind everyone reading my blog that my opinions are solely my own. I may quote from First Fruits of Zion and similar resources, but that doesn’t mean I work for them or am their “mouthpiece.” I also quote from Aish.com and Chabad.org but that doesn’t make me an Orthodox Jew or Chabadnik. Like any researcher, I utilize different sources to support my commentaries. You can bug organizations like the UMJC if you want, but I am not affiliated with them in any way so my comments should not be taken as representing them. Nor do they (or any other organization) have the ability to censor or repudiate me.
Now will people please calm down? It’s OK to disagree, but any level of adult emotional maturity should enable a person to have differences of opinion with others without personalizing conflict. Otherwise, all we’re doing is engaging in “spitting contest” and I hardly think that sort of behavior is for the sake of Heaven.
“The world doesn’t care how many times you fall down, as long as it’s one fewer than the number of times you get back up.”
This is the actual time of the “footsteps of Mashiach.” (the final age prior to Mashiach’s advent) It is therefore imperative for every Jew to seek his fellow’s welfare – whether old or young – to inspire the other to teshuva (return), so that he will not fall out – G-d forbid – of the community of Israel who will shortly be privileged, with G-d’s help, to experience complete redemption.
“Today’s Day”
Monday – Sivan 18 – 5703
Compiled by the Lubavitcher Rebbe; Translated by Yitschak Meir Kagan Chabad.org
Previously, I wrote about how privileged Gentiles associated with the Messianic Jewish movement (and in theory, all Gentile Christians) are to be able to support and encourage increased Torah observance among the Jewish people united in Messiah, in order to bring nearer the coming (return) of the King. Although the small commentary above states that it is important for every Jew to seek his fellow’s welfare, I believe we can extend that sentiment to all of mankind.
There are two interrelated principles here. The first is for all disciples of Jesus to seek the welfare of any other person, as it is written, “love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18, Mark 12:31). The second is like it in that we non-Jews should seek out the welfare of the Jewish people and the nation of Israel, as it is written, “And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed” (Genesis 12:3).
As I also said, within the unity of the body of Messiah, we are all one and yet we are all distinct. Just as men and women are distinct, so are Jew and Gentile, for Paul in his various epistles, never stopped distinguishing between the Jew and the Greek (Gentile). Therefore, we have no excuse to fail to make such distinctions as well.
And yet, both within the larger body of the Christian Church and certain subsets of what is called Hebrew Roots, it is considered unfashionable and even offensive to continue to make such distinctions. However, if we fail to do so, either by eliminating the primacy of national Israel and replacing it with the Church, or forcibly inserting Gentiles into the nation of Israel, we violate God’s unique calling to the Jewish people to remain a set apart people before Him forever.
Thus says the Lord,
Who gives the sun for light by day
And the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night,
Who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar;
The Lord of hosts is His name:
“If this fixed order departs
From before Me,” declares the Lord,
“Then the offspring of Israel also will cease
From being a nation before Me forever.”
–Jeremiah 31:35-36 (NASB)
For the New Covenant was made with the house of Judah and the house of Israel, not the people of the nations, and it is only by coming alongside Israel rather than replacing her or co-opting her unique relationship with God, that we can enjoy blessings of the covenants God made with the Jewish people.
To deny this on any level is to bring a curse upon yourself, but to bless and uphold the nation of Israel and the distinct nature and character of the Jewish people is to bring blessings upon yourself from God, who selected Israel for His own.
The early sages, who were like angels (may their merit protect us) have already determined that the healing of the soul is like the healing of the body:
The crucial first step is to identify the location of the illness, whether it is caused by the crassness, grossness and corruption of his physical body or by a failing in his soul-powers, the person being inclined to undersirable traits like arrogance or falsehood and the like. Or, the source of the malady may be habit – inadequate rearing or unwholesome environment having brought on bad habits.
“Today’s Day”
Shabbat – Sivan 16 – 5703
Compiled by the Lubavitcher Rebbe; Translated by Yitschak Meir Kagan Chabad.org
This relates to another quote I cited before:
A person who worries about how others view him will have no rest. Regardless of what he does or does not do he will always be anxious about receiving the approval of others. Such a person makes his self-esteem dependent on the whims of others. It is a mistake to give others so much control over you. Keep your focus on doing what is right and proper.
-Rabbi Zelig Pliskin
Rabbi Zelig Pliskin
Given the current context, applying R. Pliskin’s words to me, I see that those who disagree with my words are not in control of who I am. Those who disagree with the uniqueness, sanctity, and distinctiveness of the Jewish people; the nation of Israel before God, cannot affect the nature and character of the chosen people, even as they either seek to eliminate Israel in God’s plan or dilute Israel by inserting masses of Gentiles into her midst without continuing to uphold her distinction.
But R. Pliskin’s words can also be applied to those who oppose Israel in that these people and groups may see their self-esteem and self-assigned identity as being worthwhile only if Israel is diminished either by elimination from God’s plan, or by needing to be included and even fused with Israel, not allowing Israel to exist apart from Gentile inclusion.
To the Christians, including some groups within Hebrew Roots, it is important and even vital to realize that our distinctiveness apart from Israel does not diminish us. Quite the opposite. Our vital role in supporting Israel and heralding the return of Israel depends on our distinctiveness.
If a Gentile “keeps the Torah” in some manner or fashion, that may benefit the individual involved but it does nothing to summon the Messiah’s return. If, on the other hand, the Gentile were to support and encourage Jews in Messiah, including those in the Church referred to as “Hebrew Christians” in observing the mitzvot, then we are fulfilling our purpose and passion and performing a mitzvah “only Gentile disciples of Messiah may accomplish”.
As a young boy, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak (the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe) would go with his father on walks through the woods. One time, as they talked, the boy absent-mindedly plucked a leaf off a tree and began to shred it between his fingers. His father saw what his son was doing, but he went on talking. He spoke about the Baal Shem Tov, who taught how every leaf that blows in the wind—moving to the right and then to the left, how and when it falls and where it falls to—every motion for the duration of its existence is under the detailed supervision of the Almighty.
That concern the Creator has for each thing, his father explained, is the divine spark that sustains its existence. Everything is with Divine purpose, everything is of concern to the ultimate goal of the entire cosmos.
”Now,” the father gently chided, “look how you mistreated so absent-mindedly the Almighty’s creation.”
”He formed it with purpose and gave it a Divine spark! It has its own self and its own life! Now tell me, how is the ‘I am’ of the leaf any less than your own ‘I am’?”
-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Purpose of a Leaf”
Based on the letters and talks of the Rebbe, Rabbi M.M. Schneerson Chabad.org
Everything was created by God with a unique purpose, even a humble leaf, and must be treated with respect. How is the Jewish ‘I am’ any less than the Gentile (Christian) ‘I am’?
Exodus 20 commands Israel not to covet the things that belong to a neighbor such as his house, his wife, his servants, or his animals. Far be it from me to add to or subtract from the Bible, but my personal “midrash” on coveting includes the “commandment” not to covet thy neighbor’s mitzvot. Just as Korach and his followers coveted the position and mitzvot associated with Moses, the Prophet of God, and Aaron, the High Priest and was judged in error by God, so we too will be judged as in error by coveting positions, roles, and mitzvot we do not merit because we are not Jewish.
And He began speaking a parable to the invited guests when He noticed how they had been picking out the places of honor at the table, saying to them, “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for someone more distinguished than you may have been invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this man,’ and then in disgrace you proceed to occupy the last place. But when you are invited, go and recline at the last place, so that when the one who has invited you comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will have honor in the sight of all who are at the table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
–Luke 14:7-11 (NASB)
It is not shameful or diminishing to seek humility in the presence of God and in our daily lives. In fact, as we see from scripture, it is ultimately honoring, though we should not seek honor for ourselves, for in taking our proper place furthest away from the head of the table, how might the host of the banquet choose to honor us by placing us in a much better seat. But that selection of a better seat is not for us to make, it is for him, for Messiah, Son of David. For even he, though he deserves great honor and glory, chose to be humbled.
“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”
–Mark 10:45 (NASB)
The Master said that all those who choose to glorify themselves in this world already have their reward, but those who choose to humble themselves now will have great reward in the coming Kingdom:
“Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.
“So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be honored by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving will be in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.
“When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.
–Matthew 6:1-6 (NASB)
Serve God in all humility, placing the needs of others before your own. Realize that Paul always went to the Jew first, for the Good News of Messiah is the Gospel of Israel and only afterward the good news also to the nations.
If you seek to take what is not yours, when Messiah comes, will he not seek justice and remove from you that which you have usurped? Better to pursue nothing for yourself, and when Messiah comes, let him gift each of us with whatever we may merit according to his grace, kindness, and wisdom. Consider the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30):
For to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away.
–Matthew 25:29 (NASB)
Also, the Master taught:
So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
–Matthew 6:34 (NASB)
To God be great honor and glory, and to Moshiach our King, let him be raised high above us. Let us walk in the dust of his feet (Nahum 1:3) and be satisfied with our lot.
Ben Zoma would say: Who is wise? One who learns from every man. As is stated (Psalms 119:99): “From all my teachers I have grown wise, for Your testimonials are my meditation.”
Who is strong? One who overpowers his inclinations. As is stated (Proverbs 16:32), “Better one who is slow to anger than one with might, one who rules his spirit than the captor of a city.”
Who is rich? One who is satisfied with his lot. As is stated (Psalms 128:2): “If you eat of toil of your hands, fortunate are you, and good is to you”; “fortunate are you” in this world, “and good is to you” in the World to Come.
Who is honorable? One who honors his fellows. As is stated (I Samuel 2:30): “For to those who honor me, I accord honor; those who scorn me shall be demeaned.”
-Pirkei Avot 4:1
May we make teshuvah and repent of our failings before God, then pursue the path of Messiah as he and he alone has set it before each of us. Amen and Amen.
Addendum: Sadly, this blog post did nothing to resolve conflicts and in fact seems to have added fuel to the fire. Thus, I’m forced to write a “part three” to this series. Please see Briefly Revisiting Gentiles and the New Covenant for details.
There is to be one law and one ordinance for you and for the alien who sojourns with you.
–Numbers 15:16
The Torah says there is to be only one law for both Jews and aliens sojourning with the Jewish people. On the surface, this appears to be a simple statement, but when we dig deeper into biblical studies and interpretations, it becomes a complicated issue.
Be careful not to become involved in quarrels with your friends. Arguments will only create distance between you and others.
The most effective approach to avoid needless arguments is to master the ability to remain silent. You don’t have to say everything you think of saying. At times there is an actual need to clarify a specific point and it’s appropriate to speak up. But a large percentage of arguments come from making comments that don’t need to be made.
When I read the commentary at FFOZ about “One Law and the Gentiles”, I immediately wanted to jump on it as yet another classic example of the ongoing debate within various branches of Messianic Judaism, Hebrew Roots, and Evangelical Christianity. Then I thought about how such debates can be damaging and when I should ignore such temptations. Then again, I’ve also learned that sometimes you have to speak up for what you believe is right.
The trick is to find the right topic and the right timing. That isn’t always easy and in fact, there are times when no matter how well you craft your message, it’s going to provoke a hostile if not violent response:
“And when the blood of Your witness Stephen was being shed, I also was standing by approving, and watching out for the coats of those who were slaying him.’ And He said to me, ‘Go! For I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’”
They listened to him up to this statement, and then they raised their voices and said, “Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he should not be allowed to live!”
–Acts 22:20-22 (NASB)
Of course, this is a pretty extreme example. Most of our online debates, arguments, and trolling don’t come anywhere near actual riot conditions. On the other hand, why do we fight at all?
A couple of weeks ago I spoke to several pastors and asked them, “How many of you have received a nasty email in the last six months?” Every single person in the room raised their hand—including me.
Let me be clear; I believe the majority of people are civil and respectful in their online dialogue. However, there remains a vocal minority who insist on remaining unpleasant both in tone and word. And these unkind words come from many who self-identify as Christians, who somehow believe that malice is an acceptable form of communication.
Which raises a question: Why do so many Christians persist in being mean?
-Pastor Michael Hidalgo
“When Did Christians Get So Mean?” June 9, 2014 Relevant Magazine
Pastor Hidalgo went on to say:
Many of us have the luxury of not having to look beyond the small world we create for ourselves. We attend churches, listen to talk radio and watch news programs that only serve to affirm our previously held beliefs. We have fallen asleep in the insulated comfort of accepted, collective thinking. We live among those who think like us, look like us, talk like us, and we assure ourselves we are right and others are wrong.
It may do us well to break out of these enclaves we create for ourselves.
I worship in an “enclave” where my “previously held beliefs” are not at all affirmed, so I can’t expect to be insulated within a comfortable cocoon as the Pastor suggests most Christians may be. In fact, I’ve tried to nudge some of my fellow-Christians out of that cocoon, and while they haven’t “gotten mean” or anything like it, some didn’t really understand that there could a life for a believer outside of their own highly-specific context, especially a valid and sustainable Christian life.
More’s the pity.
I think that’s what triggers a lot of the “yelling” online, because the blogosphere isn’t a cocoon, it’s the wild, wild west, where anything can and usually does happen, and any opinion can be expressed with impunity.
But an opinion may or may not be “truth”:
We forget that every venomous word we speak or write to others is an assault on the heart of a man or a woman made in the image and likeness of the Almighty.
Some, no doubt, believe they need to stand up for truth. A few believe standing up for truth demands they attack those who seek to distort the truth. But this is not the case. If the truth is spoken without grace it is not true at all. It turns out we can be right about a lot of things, but if we do not have love we are dead wrong.
So on the one hand, we must stand up for truth, but on the other hand, the way we do it is very important, for even if we are actually “right” about what “truth” is once in a while, if he have to do a hatchet job on another human being to defend that truth, then we’ve defended truth at the cost of denigrating a person created in God’s image.
Pastor Hidalgo suggests that our first response to another person with whom we disagree is to listen. That’s not easy to do when, particularly on the web, upon detecting something “wrong,” we’ve been conditioned to stop receiving information and to start sending it in abundance. We’ve been taught that we have free speech rights and that we possess the truth, and we have not only the right but the responsibility to shove that truth down everyone else’s throat until they choke on it.
Then we’ve won.
Hooray.
But why are we really supposed to share the truth of the Bible? To sanctify the Name of God, to spread His Name throughout all the earth, to illuminate people with the Good News of Messiah.
But as I said, Paul found out on an endless number of occasions, that no matter how you listen and how well you craft your message, there will always be times when you and your message will be rejected, and there will always be people who are so convinced of the truth and rightness of their own message, that they cannot possibly give you a fair hearing. In fact, the minute you start saying anything contrary to their version of truth, they’ll start bombarding you with their own, and eventually when they realize you’re never going to change your mind and agree with them, they’ll boot you out and start “badmouthing” you to all their (virtual) “friends”.
Well, that’s the classic scenario anyway. It doesn’t describe all of the possible responses to disagreements in the world of religious blogging, so please don’t start taking all this personally. I’m probably not even thinking about you at all.
This is obviously a continuation of what I’ve been writing about for the past week or so. What is the answer to surviving not only a community of faith in the local church but the extended world of faith on the Internet? I’m sure there must be an answer. Pastor Hidalgo summarizes that answer with a single word: “grace.” I think in the ideal, that’s probably the right answer, but most of us aren’t “ideal”. That’s why this life is a journey of struggle, exploration, and experience, not just reading the Bible and being programmed to be Christ’s perfect little disciple.
The Bible isn’t a record of how people got “perfect” once they heard about God, it’s a chronicle of how God was and is gracious with a whole planet full of damaged, imperfect, grumpy human beings across thousands upon thousands of years of history. God has promised us a better way to be human beings, but dangles “perfection” in front of us like a carrot, with the guarantee of a good meal only if we faithfully hang on long enough:
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
–Jeremiah 31:31-34 (NASB)
This stuff hasn’t happened yet, no matter how much some Christians believe it has (or wish it had). We are imperfect people living in an imperfect world. We want to “know God” perfectly and to have His Word written on our hearts (and not just in our Bibles), but the finger of God has only just started moving, and it’s having to chisel through lots of stone in order to get at the heart that’s supposed to be tender flesh.
The problem is, we don’t want to be tender, we want to be stony. Tenderness can be hurt but rocks are pretty tough. We like being tough. We like being right. We like making the other poor, dumb fool be wrong. It makes us feel better about ourselves.
No, I’m not saying you shouldn’t take a stand. I take a stand often enough, both here on this blog and at church in Sunday school. But it matters how you take your stand. If expressing truth, however you understand it, involves insulting or embarrassing another person, you’re probably doing it wrong. I know. I’ve gotten it wrong often enough, including quite recently.
I actually agree with FFOZ’s commentary on One Law and how Torah does and doesn’t apply to Gentile believers. I even agree that the FFOZ author wrote the article in a measured and respectful manner. I know that regardless of all that, the message will cause “all the wheels to fall off the cart,” so to speak, for a number of folks who have a very different opinion on the matter, and for some of them, their self-esteem and self-image are tightly dependent on believing their opinion is universally correct.
But that’s how most of us operate. We personalize disagreement and conflict rather than realizing God hasn’t called us to be the best bloggers in the religious world. He’s called us to be the best representatives of His Good News to the world, religious and otherwise. How do we do that? By arguing? By being right all the time? Most of us are wrong most of the time.
Truth is knowing when to speak and when to be silent. Truth is knowing when to talk and when to listen. Truth is the ability to hang on at the right times and to know when to let go.
Professor Henry Jones (Sean Connery): Junior, give me your other hand! I can’t hold on!
Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford): I can get it. I can almost reach it, Dad…
Professor Henry Jones: Indiana. Indiana… let it go.
Professor Henry Jones: Elsa never really believed in the grail. She thought she’d found a prize.
Professor Jones’ quest to discover the resting place of the Holy Grail ended up in the loss of the grail, yet he didn’t consider it a loss at all. What he found wasn’t a treasured object, a valued prize, or even immortality (by drinking water from the grail). He found illumination from God.
Yes, this is fiction and there was never such a thing as the “Holy Grail” but besides being a good adventure story, there’s a lesson in values here.
Kazim (Kevork Malikyan): [to Indy] Ask yourself, why do you seek the Cup of Christ? Is it for His glory, or for yours?
That should be a question we all ask ourselves before we speak up in Sunday school class, or put our fingers on the keyboard to either write a blog or respond to someone else’s.
Rabbi Avraham Mordechai of Gur explained that the nature of a person with humility is not to be stubborn about his own opinions and wishes. He is compliant and will easily give in to the opinions and wishes of others. The other spies were all very distinguished and important men. Moshe feared that Yehoshua might concede to their opinions and be swayed by them even though he felt differently. Therefore, Moshe especially prayed for Yehoshua not to be negatively influenced by the others.
Rabbi Zelig Pliskin
When a question of Torah ideals is involved, one must not budge. That is when it is appropriate to resist. When dealing with basic principles, remain steadfast and do not allow others to sway you. One needs wisdom to know the difference between situations when it is proper to give in to others and when it is not. For this we need the Almighty’s assistance.
Addendum: Yesterday, I read a commentary about Pastor John MacArthur’s parenting advice to a Christian parent of a gay child. In tomorrow’s “morning meditation,” I respond.
Obviously, there are implications for the modern Church, but also I see how ancient and modern Judaism is significantly impacted, as are the Messianic Jewish and Hebrew Roots movements. I’ll take each one in turn.
Christianity
Based on what Zetterholm concluded regarding the forced separation of Gentiles and Jews in the Jesus-believing communities which resulted in Gentiles forming their (our) own brand new religion called “Christianity,” we can see that we weren’t kicked out of Jesus-believing Judaism. We rebelled like a petulant teenager and walked out the door. Certainly if Saint Ignatius of Antioch can make a statement such as, “[i]t is monstrous to talk of Jesus Christ and to practise Judaism” (Magn. 10:3 quoted by Zetterholm on pg 203), we aren’t talking about a “no-fault divorce.” The “Church Fathers” went out of their way to “demonize” Judaism and separate any “valid” worship of Jesus Christ from anything related at all to the Jews.
We noted above that Ignatius in Phld. 6:2 connected Judaism with the activities of “the prince of this world,” and that he in Magn. 8:1 probably used popular prejudice against the Jews in describing Judaism as being based on myths and fables.
It is well known that, in the decades after the death of Ignatius, Christian literature abounds in developing anti-Semitic themes.
-Zetterholm, pg 210
It is likely, as Schoedel states, that the identification of Christ as the word from silence refers to the supposed inability of the Jews to understand their own religious tradition: the appearance of Christ from silence brings the divine hidden purpose to light. The radical “Christianization” of the prophets is one indication of how profound this inability is, and how extensive the hostility is between Judaism and Christianity.
-ibid, pg 220
I know I’ve quoted these passages from Zetterholm’s book previously, but they’re important for context. As the history of the Church attests, these attitudes weren’t isolated to the first few centuries of the Common Era, they’ve echoed down the corridors of time from Ignatius of Antioch to the modern Christian Church with predictable results on Jews and Judaism. True, we no longer torture Jewish people in order to force them to convert or exile them from our nations, but we aren’t always “safe,” either.
Sarah (not her real name) is a young Jewish woman, an academic, raised in Orthodox Jewish life, who came to believe in Yeshua in a remarkable manner some years ago. Having been greatly sheltered in her upbringing, and knowing nothing about either Protestants or Messianic Jews, she wanted to serve Yeshua in an academic setting. She therefore joined the Dominicans, a teaching order of the Roman Catholic Church. She reasoned that they would allow her to teach freely in her field. In this she was right: as an excellent teacher, she was allowed to freely teach. She also assumed, on the basis of her limited knowledge of the early Yeshua movement, that she would be allowed to live as a Jew while she served Yeshua amongst the Dominicans. In this, she was wrong. Her superiors were at first amused at her adherence to Jewish life, then annoyed, and then intolerant. She was thrown out for her unacceptable adherence to Jewish life. This is a true story, and really, nothing new. It should not have surprised Sarah, but it did. And it shouldn’t surprise the rest of us either.
-Rabbi Dr. Stuart Dauerrman
“Signals: The Interfaithfulness Newsletter”
from May 12, 2014
Saint Dominic
I know Evangelicals are going to point out that Dominicans (Roman Catholics) were responsible for rejecting Sarah’s Jewish observance, but imagine how a Jewish believer would be received in a Protestant church if she were to continue significant Jewish observance such as kashut and Shabbat.
You might not think it would be an issue, but consider. Should “Sarah” show up at your church for a communal meal, how would you feel if she passed up the ham and took a salad instead? What if she kept an even more strict form of kosher and wouldn’t eat unless the meal had been prepared in a kosher kitchen (which church kitchens and Christian homes would not possess)? How would you feel if “Sarah” visited your home for a Bible study on Friday afternoon but after sunset, chose to walk back to her home and even refused a ride from you because it was Shabbat? You might be amused for a while but I suspect, like the Dominicans in the tale above, amusement would give way to annoyance and finally, intolerance. We haven’t come so far from the writings and attributes of Ignatius after all.
The Church has much to repent of.
Note: For those who feel I’m being overly hard on the Christian Church, especially the modern community of Christ, please continue to read. I’ll address this matter further at the end of today’s blog post.
Judaism
It is likely, as Schoedel states, that the identification of Christ as the word from silence refers to the supposed inability of the Jews to understand their own religious tradition: the appearance of Christ from silence brings the divine hidden purpose to light. The radical “Christianization” of the prophets is one indication of how profound this inability is, and how extensive the hostility is between Judaism and Christianity.
-Zetterholm, pg 220
Dovetailing on my previous statement, the modern Church still gives religious and even secular Jews reason to question their (our) motivation for any form of approach to them. My experience tells me that most often, Jews are politely cautious when a Christian enters Jewish religious or social space or conversely, invites them into our space. We speak of “interfaith relationships” or “interfaith events” but there really is no such thing as a “Judeo-Christian” shared experience. The minute those two concepts entered the world, they existed in opposition to one another.
Why should Jews trust Christians? Why shouldn’t organizations such as Jews for Judaism believe there is a (perceived) threat represented by the Christian Church, including organizations like Jews for Jesus? I’m not saying Jews for Jesus is a bad organization and that the Church is necessarily an active threat against Jewish faith and practice, but the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. If you want to know how the Church is going to act toward Jews in the future, look at Church history.
I’m saying that Jewish people have a reason to be dubious about Christianity and that all began nearly two-thousand years ago. Sadly, Jews and Christians really do have a shared history but it’s not a positive one.
The Church has much to repent of.
Note: This doesn’t mean that Judaism in all its expressions is perfect or hasn’t made it’s mistakes, but rarely is Judaism in a position as an extreme minority in our world to “throw its weight around,” so to speak. Through the vast majority of the history of the Jewish people, they’ve been much too busy just trying to survive.
Hebrew Roots
This is an “umbrella category” designed to cover just about any Gentile Christian organization, small group, or fellowship that specifically identifies itself as seeking the “Hebrew roots” of the Christian faith and who adopt an altered theology, doctrine, and practice based on some sort of “Hebraic” perspective on the Bible.
It’s probably unfair of me to treat Hebrew Roots as a single entity given what I’ve just said, since it is comprised of so many divergent groups and attitudes, but then, that’s pretty much true of Christianity and Judaism as well.
One of the (more or less) commonalities within Hebrew Roots is the belief that Hebrew/Jewish practices are also incumbent upon any Gentile who is a believer in Jesus. This usually includes some sort of practice based on modern synagogue worship including praying with a siddur, donning of a tallit gadol (for men, usually), wearing a kippah (again, usually for men), and other acts that superficially create the impression that these Hebrew Roots practitioners may be Jewish.
We saw in Zetterholm’s book that Gentiles participating in the ancient Jewish synagogue of “the Way,” were sometimes mistaken as Jews due to their association with Jews and likely many of their practices and lifestyle behaviors, so it’s possible to extrapolate that situation into modern Hebrew Roots. But there’s a problem. In ancient times, Gentiles adopted some Jewish practices and behaviors because they were operating within a Jewish religious and social context and were being mentored by Jewish teachers and synagogue leaders. Hebrew Roots operates in total separation from Jewish community and often is denigrating of much of Rabbinic Judaism.
Hebrew Roots tends to believe they practice a form of “Biblical Judaism” as opposed to “Rabbinic Judaism,” and as a result, they reject many of the practices and conceptualizations that are associated with modern or historic Judaism. In this, they somewhat mirror the original Church Fathers who separated their own practice from Jewish authority and community, creating a self-sustaining entity that by necessity, operated in opposition to the normative Judaisms of its day.
Like many Evangelicals, many Hebrew Roots groups have sort of “love/hate” relationship with modern Judaism, mainly because of Rabbinic Judaism’s insistence that they have the right to make internally binding rulings and the ability to govern their own communities.
Note: Hebrew Roots has a lot of different expressions, some of which are truly serving God, helping others, and teaching the good news of Messiah. I worshipped with one such group for many years and my companions were Godly and humble people. But Hebrew Roots is kind of like the “wild west,” where anything can happen and where anyone with a kippah and a theological ax to grind can dub themselves a “Messianic Rabbi” and draw a following. Be cautious.
Messianic Judaism
Like the other groups I’ve discussed above, there is no single, monolithic organization called “Messianic Judaism”. All Messianic Jewish groups have certain things in common, but the details of their theology, doctrine, and practice are variable.
One thing all Messianic Jewish groups (at least in the U.S.) have in common is the majority of their members are not Jewish. The ancient Antiochian Synagogue of the Way, while “owned and operated” by a Jewish leadership and Jewish teachers, was also inclusive of Gentiles, though there’s no way to determine the ratio of Jews to Gentiles in their midst.
Messianic Judaism, for this reason, faces some or even most of the same challenges as did the apostle Paul’s mixed Jewish/Gentile Jesus-believing communities, principally the issue of integration. As my previous blog posts on Antioch, Zetterholm, and Nanos attest, the issue of integration was of paramount importance and at the same time, hotly contested (see Galatians 2 for example).
That the Gentile Jesus-believers were included in the New Covenant blessings and part of the soteriological system of Judaism was not in question, especially to Paul, but the nature of their role and participation in a Jewish community and religious stream was still problematic. The Acts 15 ruling aside, we don’t really know how day-to-day life in the Messianic synagogue among Jewish and Gentile co-participants was negotiated.
That’s a question Messianic Judaism is trying to answer today as well.
We see from Zetterholm that, given the right social and political pressures, this could all blow up in their (our) faces (again). It’s one of the arguments in support of a concept Rabbi Mark Kinzer introduced called Bilateral Ecclesiology. Zetterholm seems to believe that James the Just, the brother of Messiah and leader of the Council of Apostles and Elders in Jerusalem supported an ancient version of Bilateral Ecclesiology, the establishment and maintenance of separate communities of Jews and Gentiles in Messiah.
Ironically, that’s exactly what happened historically, but with disastrous results.
But that’s unfair and untrue. That’s not exactly what happened. Kinzer’s Bilateral Ecclesiology (and presumably James’) assumes that the separate Jewish and Gentile communities exist in a complementary fashion, sharing a common theology and doctrine (but not identical practice), maintaining a cordial but distant relationship with one another, while supporting the right of each group to maintain their own identity within an exclusive space. History has shown that the relationship between ancient Christianity and Messianic Judaism was anything but complementary and cordial, although distance was created, maintained, and expanded, usually due to animosity.
We noted above that Ignatius in Phld. 6:2 connected Judaism with the activities of “the prince of this world,” and that he in Magn. 8:1 probably used popular prejudice against the Jews in describing Judaism as being based on myths and fables.
It is well known that, in the decades after the death of Ignatius, Christian literature abounds in developing anti-Semitic themes.
-Zetterholm, pg 210
Zetterholm believes Paul opposed James’ view on separate Jewish and Gentile space in Messiah and that he believed in a shared community of Jewish and Gentile Jesus-believers. That said, shared space and social community doesn’t equal shared identity, role, and responsibility and that’s the rub. Did Paul have a clear vision of exactly how Jews and Gentiles were to exist in community with each other in all the details?
The Didache might be one possible answer to that question since one suggested origin for this teaching is with the apostles or those close to the apostles. The Didache may have started out as an oral teaching that accompanied the spread of the “Jerusalem letter” (Acts 15) among the diaspora Gentiles in community with Jesus-believing Jews.
Note: As I’ve mentioned above, Messianic Judaism includes a variety of different approaches to how a Jew may be a disciple of the Jewish Messiah and continue to be an observant Jew. In the days of Peter and Paul, this was a given. No one wondered how this was possible, it was simply understood. The problem was how to integrate Gentiles. That’s the problem today as well, and responses run the gamut from Jews-only Messianic groups to full social inclusion of Jews and Gentiles in the synagogue. I think of Messianic Judaism as a work in progress. Also, keep in mind that many Hebrew Roots groups call themselves “Messianic Judaism,” however once in, the distinction is obvious.
Conclusion
So here we are. The Church, if possessing any belief that it somehow has replaced the Jewish people and national Israel in the covenant promises, continues to have much to answer (to God) for. The Church has much to answer for if it continues to oppose Jews who have faith in Messiah and continue to observe the mitzvot of the Torah of Moses. Thankfully, an increasing number of churches are accepting Jesus-believing Jews who are Torah observant Jews, but we have a long way to go.
Hebrew Roots, while a noble effort to attempt to recapture what Jesus-believing Gentiles lost with the ascension of Gentile Christianity and the (ultimate) collapse of Jewish Jesus-faith, often chooses to throw the baby out with the bath water, so to speak. In trying to recapture and apprehend ancient Hebraic practices and implement them in the modern era, they many times utilize modern Rabbinic worship practices while rejecting historic and modern Rabbinic Jewish rulings and even fail to acknowledge the Jewish community’s right to self-govern and self-define. Gentile Christians seeking the Hebrew Roots of the faith might find a better model in those who have become known as Messianic Gentiles, but there are still many challenges involved when traveling that path, as I can personally attest.
Messianic Judaism continues to struggle forward toward not only its own identity, but the identity of the Gentiles in its midst and as the Apostolic record and Zetterholm’s research indicates, Messianic Judaism is characterized, in part, by the communal inclusion of the Gentiles. Perhaps they would have eventually developed a “bilateralness” in relationship with each other, but that doesn’t seem to have been what Paul was trying to create.
I offer no solutions to any of this, but if you think you have any, I invite you to comment. We may never know what would have happened if Paul’s vision of the mixed Jewish/Gentile ekklesia had been realized, but given our current situation, we’re obligated to take the next step forward, whatever that might be.
Notes on the Church
I know I’ve laid the lion share of the responsibility for the Jewish/Gentile split within the body of Jesus-believers at the feet of the then new religion called “Christianity.” Further, I continue to assign responsibility to the modern Church for its long history of abuses against Jewish people and Judaism. Am I being unfair? I suppose you could say so.
And yet, next Sunday at the church I attend, the Bible class being held after services will be teaching on Acts 21:15-26 and the class study notes pay special attention to the following verse:
You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed, and they are all zealous for the Law… (emph. mine)
–Acts 21:20 (NASB)
To me, this speaks of the thousands of Jesus-believing Jews in Jerusalem who all gave glory to God and were zealous for the Torah of Moses. But my teacher quotes John MacArthur in saying:
“Nowhere in the New Testament are the Jewish believers condemned for observing them (the so-called “ceremonial” aspects of the law). Paul nowhere taught Jewish Christians to abandon their Jewish heritage. God Himself was tolerant during this period of transition, knowing how difficult it was for them to break with their past.”
It never occurs to MacArthur, or to any of the Evangelical church Pastors or their lay staff, or to the congregations of all those churches, that the reason they don’t see God being critical of Jewish Jesus-believers performing the Torah mitzvot wasn’t “tolerance.” It was because God expected Jewish Torah observance as a matter of covenant obedience. It wasn’t an aberration or some quaint set of customs that Jewish people had a tough time letting go of, it was their very lifeblood, the linkage between God and the Jewish people, more so than ever with the realization that the Messiah was the inauguration of the living fulfillment of all of God’s promises to Israel.
Even in the most Israel-friendly, Jewish people loving churches, this attitude still remains, in spite of a great deal of scholarly evidence to the contrary. This is what the Church yet has to repent of and so far, they don’t even see the problem.
More’s the pity.
If “Sarah” were to show up in my Bible class next Sunday and give her interpretation of Acts 21:20, how would she be received? I don’t know how far to push in class over the troubling interpretation of this single bit of scripture (and it’s wider implications), but how can I remain silent in the face of everything I’ve just written?
Addendum: And then there are rather disturbing current trends in Christianity, such as the one presented at the Rosh Pina Project about who is expected to speak at Bristol Baptist College.
This chapter will present a suggestion as to how the theologically motivated social division between Jesus-believing Jews and Jesus-believing Gentiles, combined with socio-political circumstances, brought about a separation between the communities. It will be argued that this process, which eventually resulted in the emanation of a new religion, was the result of a conscious strategy that can be compared to other expressions of collective action, such as tax rebellions, political uprisings, revolutions or, in short, social movements.
This is the fourth but not quite the last installment in my investigation (see my ending comment below) of the schism between (Messianic) Judaism and Gentile Christianity based on the “Antioch Incident” (Galatians 2:11-21) and the general development of the “Synagogue of the Way,” which was characterized by a mixed Jewish/Gentile population of equal co-participants, in mid-first century CE Syrian Antioch.
The title of my (almost) final missive in this series seems whimsical and on one level, that’s intentional, but it also reflects the intensity of the relationship between Jewish and Gentile Jesus-believers in the Antiochian synagogue, both in intimate fidelity and in the excruciating agony of separation. Anyone who has experienced a “difficult” divorce or who has seen another couple go through one realizes that as much as the couple loved each other in the beginning, that is the same level of anger and even hate they experience at the end of their marriage.
But why the “divorce?”
Evangelical Christianity (and most likely all forms of the Christian faith) assume that Christianity naturally, intentionally evolved from (Messianic) Judaism. Popular Evangelical Preachers such as John MacArthur believe that Judaism as a religious practice was intended by God to be temporary and to be replaced by the Christian Church. Any indication that Paul or the other Jewish apostles and disciples continued in any of the Jewish practices is considered to represent a “transitional period,” where the last generation of Jewish Jesus-believers in Judaism gave way to the following generation of Jewish and Gentile Christians, all liberated from “the Law” and basking in the free gift of salvation by the grace of Jesus Christ.
Zetterholm approaches the issue from a completely different direction, one that takes into account socio-political motivations, more like the Boston Tea Party objecting to “taxation without representation” than a Divinely planned shift in theology that “jumps the track” from Judaism to Christianity.
Can we treat the relationship between the early Jesus-believing Jews and Gentiles as a human and social dynamic and conflict and still retain the involvement of God in human history? On the one hand, it seems almost “sacrilegious” to do so. On the other hand, none of the people in the Bible are mere pawns of God used in a game to illustrate grand principles and theologies so much as they are living human beings struggling to understand who they are in relation to each other and God. I think we can afford Paul, Peter, James and everyone else involved in Antioch the dignity of being treated as real people instead of “Bible characters.”
What we are considering is what sort of conflicts would have naturally led to such a Jewish/Gentile split in the Messianic community in Antioch and the other diaspora communities of the Way. One such conflict suggested by Zetterholm (pp 178-9) is legal. While Judaism was considered a legal religion in the Roman empire, did the empire consider Gentile involvement in Judaism, not as proselytes or even God-fearers, but as Gentile co-participants who were required to remain Gentile as a valid association?
Another issue to consider is that, as Judaism became less favorable in the eyes of the Empire and began to encounter persecution, what was the impact of Gentiles being swept along in the anti-Jewish fervor as were the Jews, or conversely, treated differently and maybe more positively than the Jews within the same Jewish space?
The war against Rome ended in catastrophe and with the fall of the temple in 70 CE it was essentially over.
The end of the war had, of course, drastic and immediate political consequences. The most important for the present analysis was the institution of the poll tax fiscus Judaicus, which was founded shortly after the end of the war by Vaspasian.
-Zetterholm, pg 185
In some ways, this tax very much identified one as a Jew since it was only imposed on Jewish populations. On the other hand, can we say the tax was also imposed on those who were Gentiles in the synagogue or those who “appeared” to be Jews due to their practices and affiliation with Jewish community, or were the Gentiles in the Jesus-believing synagogue (and Gentile God-fearers in all synagogues) spared because they were not ethnically Jewish?
Either way, and we can’t be certain which one was more likely to have occurred, we can see the potential for conflict. Should the former be true, the Gentiles might well resent it since after all, they not only aren’t Jewish but based on Paul’s letter the Galatians, they are at least highly discouraged if not absolutely forbidden to formally convert to Judaism via the proselyte rite. Why should they pay a tax if they weren’t ethnically Jewish?
On the other hand, if the Gentiles in Jewish community were not taxed because they were Gentiles (which only seems fair), would the Jews in the same synagogue resent them for their lack of solidarity with their teachers and mentors, the very people of which Jesus said “salvation comes from the Jews” (John 4:22)?
Zetterholm states (pp 188-9) that this period (and lots of subsequent historical periods) saw a general rise in anti-Semitism which likely spilled over onto the Gentiles who, by virtue of their association in the synagogue community, looked like Jews. This would have included Gentile God-fearers in the various diaspora synagogues and God-fearers, as previously stated, were thought to be polytheistic and continued to participate in the various pagan cults in Greek society for social and business (and perhaps personal) purposes. What of the recent “converts” of Gentiles from paganism to Jesus-faith? Could a surge in anti-Jewish sentiments result in them falling away or “cheating” by continuing to or reverting to pagan practices to “take the heat off” them?
M. Goodman, however, has argued that, in the period before the fiscus Judaicus was imposed, there existed a certain confusion about who was Jewish and who was Gentile, and that the fiscus Judacus promoted the development of a more stringent Jewish identity.
-ibid, pg 192
However…
…there was every reason to assume that the Jewish community knew exactly who was Jewish and who was not.
-ibid
So from an outsider’s point of view (Roman/Greek), it might be hard to tell sometimes who was Jewish and who wasn’t within the Jewish community, but of course, inside the community itself, everyone knew. The community of Messiah knew that they had a responsibility to separate itself from pagan society for the sake of God, but within that community, barriers were growing. In my previous missive on this topic, I presented the point of view of Nanos that Paul considered the Gentile Jesus-believers as equal co-participants in synagogue life, even to the level of community meals, as well as those who also received the covenant blessings of atonement and redemption in the same matter as the Jews.
And God, who knows the heart, testified to them giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also did to us; and He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith.
–Acts 15:8-9 (NASB)
However, thanks to outside pressure being brought to bear against all diaspora Jewish communities, that seems to have changed, at least potentially.
As a member of the Pauline Jewish community in Antioch, a Gentile was part of the soteriological system of Judaism to a degree never experienced before. Through Christ, Gentiles were incorporated into a covenantal system that provided salvation without prior conversion to Judaism. Non-conversion to Judaism was a necessary condition.
-ibid, pg 194
Magnus Zetterholm
While that seems like terrifically good news, it comes with a cost. According to Zetterholm, the halachah regarding Gentile involvement in the Jesus-believing synagogue was likely more strict upon the Gentiles than it was on Gentile God-fearers in other synagogues. While strict Torah observance in the manner of the Jews was not imposed, the Acts 15 legal edict applied to the Jesus-believing Gentiles went above and beyond the Noahide requirements observed by God-fearing Gentiles, so Gentiles in Messiah would be forbidden to participate in any other societal religious obligation by worshiping in the pagan temples.
Gentile Jesus-believers weren’t an island. Although the requirements of the Messianic community were to separate from the pagan nations (mirroring the “chosenness” of all Jewish communities vis a vis the nations of the world), they still would have had pagan family members, friends, business partners and associates, and so forth, who would or could be making life difficult for them.
There is also the issue of Gentile status within the Jesus-believing Jewish religious stream. As previously pointed out, there may have been a strong disagreement between Paul and James regarding the equality or inequality of Gentiles in the Way, with James representing the extreme opposite position of Paul by advocating for separate religious/social communities for Jews and Gentiles. Also, Zetterholm believes it was possible that, subsequent to the Antioch incident and Peter’s pulling away from the Gentiles, the non-Jews may have been “demoted” in terms of social status (but not necessarily ultimate soteriological destiny) to that of God-fearers.
…that Romans 13:1-7 refers to the subordination of the Jesus-believing Gentiles to the synagogue authorities and not, as usually assumed, to the civic Roman authorities. If he is correct, this was certainly motivated by theological considerations, but at the same time, Paul shows here awareness of the religious/political implications of theology that prevents Gentiles from participation in the official cult.
-ibid, pg 195
Also…
The Jesus-believing Gentiles were certainly considered to be embraced by the final salvation, through Christ, as Gentiles, but outside the covenant. This led not only to a theological distinction, but also to a social separation between Jesus-believing Jews and Jesus-believing Gentiles. The Jesus-believing Gentiles became reduced to the status of Jesus-believing God-fearers.
-ibid
The actual comprehension of the status of Jesus-believing Gentiles in Jewish community and in terms of “final salvation” is contingent upon a correct understanding of how Gentiles were (and are) involved and included in the blessings of the New Covenant, and coming to a correct understanding isn’t easy to do. Those details are beyond the scope of the current discussion, (See D.T. Lancaster’s What About the New Covenant lecture series, produced by First Fruits of Zion [FFOZ]).
I don’t necessarily believe that the Gentiles were reduced to a lesser status in the Messianic synagogue in Antioch or the diaspora based on the Galatians 2 encounter. Paul vehemently opposed Peter’s action and the other Jews who sided with his hypocrisy, and since the vast majority of diaspora Jesus-believing communities were established by and (presumably) answerable to Paul, it would seem like Paul’s authority and perspective would be “calling the shots.”
Mark Nanos
That said, if Nanos is indeed correct, then Paul’s perspective supported Gentile subordination to Jewish synagogue authority. Of course any member of a synagogue, Jewish or Gentile, would be expected to submit to the authority of the synagogue leaders, but the implication is that Gentiles may have had a “one down” role in terms of their Jesus-believing Jewish counterparts. Also, Nanos believes that the Roman synagogue(s) hosting Jesus-believing Gentiles contained Jews who were Jesus-believers and those who were not, adding additional pressure and a feeling of dissonance. It’s one thing to submit to Jesus-believing Jewish authorities, but why defer to authorities who denied the Lordship of Messiah Yeshua?
Thus, while Paul supported the Gentiles as equal co-participants in synagogue social interactions as well as the final salvation based on receiving New Covenant blessings, with Gentiles not having full membership in the Old or New Covenants as made by God with “the house of Isarel and the house of Judah” (Jeremiah 31:27), he likely considered it part of their “normal” legal status (see Acts 15) to subordinate in some sense, to Jewish authority in the Jewish community and religious setting, or as George Orwell famously wrote in his novel Animal Farm, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
Jesus-believing Jews never imagined questioning their own relationship with God through the covenants and their participation socially, religiously, and in every other way in community and final salvation was assumed. Jesus-faith was simply the logical, natural extension of everything that had come before. Of course with the death and resurrection of Messiah, the New Covenant promises were inaugurated and though not yet fully realized, this was the good news the Jewish people and the nation of Israel was waiting for.
Gentiles, on the other hand, while also assumed to be included, both due to the revelations given Paul by Messiah and by the testimony of the Prophets of old, the mechanism by which this was to be accomplished wasn’t entirely clear (see all of the incidents of Jewish opposition to Paul’s message in the New Testament) and the exact role and status of Jesus-believing Gentiles in Jewish community always seems somewhat “up in the air.”
So on the one hand, Gentile involvement in Jewish community made Gentiles vulnerable to Greek and Roman anti-Semitism which could include financial burdens as well as physical violence because they were either mistaken for Jews or were seen as “collaborators” with the Jewish “enemy.” On the other hand, Gentiles in Jewish community, if they felt at all devalued or of a lesser social or even covenant status than the Jesus-believing Jews, could have felt resentment against their Jewish mentors and even against Jews in general. Either way (or both), the Gentiles may have increasingly felt as if they were stuck in the middle with no way out, unless they apostasized and left Jesus-faith. The opposite act of fully converting to Judaism was, as I said above, strongly discouraged if not forbidden, at least by Paul.
…if one embraced a theology that made Gentile identity a necessary condition for salvation, but at the same time required a Jewish definition in order for it to be maintained…
-ibid, pg 201
Zetterholm puts all this together and draws the conclusion that the Jesus-believing Gentiles, seeking a “rational” resolution to this increasing tension, decided they would…
…have to disassociate themselves from Jesus-believing Jewish community in order to acknowledge their true Gentile identity…
-ibid, pg 202
And from this follows…
that the parting of the ways in Antioch was primarily a separation — not between “Judaism” and “Christianity” — but between Jewish and Gentile adherents to the Jesus movement.
-ibid
This gives rise to the thought that in the late first century to the early second century, there were wholly separate communities of Gentiles and Jews who were both Jesus-believing, but each community possessed a very different theology and dogma relative to their belief and practice, positions that would be opposed to one another, setting each community ultimately against each other. That’s about as “bilateral” as you can get.
Ignatius of Antioch is one of the first authors within the Jesus movement who writes from a perspective clearly outside Judaism. In Ignatius’ world, the separation between Judaism and Christianity had to some extent already taken place. This is not to say that the separation process was completed, but, in the symbolic world of the bishop in Antioch, Christianity was, or at least should be, a non-Jewish movement.
-ibid, pg 202
It’s generally believed that Ignatius lived from 35 CE to 107 CE (See “Ignatius” in The Westminster Dictionary of Church History, ed. Jerald Brauer [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971]) and that he was a disciple of the Apostle John (See “The Martyrdom of Ignatius” and “Synaxarium: The Martyrdom of St. Ignatius, Patriarch of Antioch”), which is a shocking revelation. How could a disciple of Christ’s beloved John turn his back on everything he had been taught, virtually spitting in his Master’s face? It would be like Titus or Timothy betraying Paul or Peter betraying Jesus (oh, wait). How sharper than a serpent’s tooth (see Shakespeare’s “King Lear”).
A mere eighty or ninety years after the death and resurrection of Christ, we see Ignatius all but throwing stones at the empty tomb and mocking the Messiah’s devotion to Israel, the Temple, and his dear “lost sheep of Israel,” the Jews.
Zetterholm quotes Ignatius (pg 203) from Magn. 10:3 stating that:
“[i]t is monstrous to talk of Jesus Christ and to practise Judaism.”
This created quite a problem among the Jesus-believing Gentiles (pg 205) according to Zetterholm, with some (many) defecting from Jewish to Gentile Jesus-believing communities while others remaining within Jewish community. For their own protection, both from the newly minted Gentile Christians and from participation in the official pagan cult, the Gentiles in Jewish community actively pretended to be Jewish and took on behavioral roles as Jews, donning a Jewish “disguise” as it were, with…
…no intention of leaving messianic Judaism for a Gentile religion stripped of almost every Jewish influence except the idea of Messiah and the Holy Scriptures of the Jews.
ibid, pp 205-6
Zetterholm identifies two major sources of conflict at this point in history (pg 207):
One in connection with separation from Jesus-believing Jewish community.
The other connected to the role of being a challenger and the efforts to get back into the polity, but on equal terms with the other members of the polity.
At the heart of the conflict was:
…the Gentile adherents’ frustration at being reduced to Gentile god-fearers and being trapped in the religious/political system without any possibility of expressing their true religious identity, that is, as covenantal partners, triggered the social movement of separation.
-ibid
This is where the “Honey, I want a divorce” part comes to full bloom. The Jesus-believing Gentiles not only separated from Jesus-believing Jewish community to form their (our) own communities, but they actively turned on their former hosts and benefactors, “demonizing” the Jewish people and Judaism, giving birth to the ugly “twins” of Christian supersessionism and Christian anti-Semitism that we continue to see in some churches today.
We noted above that Ignatius in Phld. 6:2 connected Judaism with the activities of “the prince of this world,” and that he in Magn. 8:1 probably used popular prejudice against the Jews in describing Judaism as being based on myths and fables.
It is well known that, in the decades after the death of Ignatius, Christian literature abounds in developing anti-Semitic themes.
-ibid, pg 210
Zetterholm provides evidence (pp 211-224) that Ignatius either used a proto-Mattean document or the actual gospel of Matthew against the Jesus-believing Jews and Jews in general, citing Matthew’s clear in group/out group” perspective (pg 212) as we find in Matthew 7:21-23 and13:47-52, also leveraging the (apparent) disdain Jesus had with the Pharisees to magnify Gentile Christian rejection of all Jews (Jesus-believing and non-believing Jews alike).
One theme that is specially developed in much Christian Adversus Iudaeos literature is that the Jews had misunderstood their own Holy Scriptures and as a result, had lost the right to them.
-ibid 220
And if that isn’t enough to make your blood boil…
It is likely, as Schoedel states, that the identification of Christ as the word from silence refers to the supposed inability of the Jews to understand their own religious tradition: the appearance of Christ from silence brings the divine hidden purpose to light. The radical “Christianization” of the prophets is one indication of how profound this inability is, and how extensive the hostility is between Judaism and Christianity.
-ibid
This is where we get the astounding departure in interpretation between normative Judaism and Christianity in our world today, based, as I’ve said, on a two-thousand year old mistake, except Zetterholm says it wasn’t a mistake and it wasn’t a misunderstanding. The schism was a calculated and deliberate set of acts designed to manufacture a new religion for the Jesus-believing Gentiles called “Christianity.” This new religion, by absolute necessity, was to be all but completely detached from its mother faith of Judaism and further, must establish itself as the “true Israel” of God, forcing an abandonment of the Jewish people, Judaism, and Israel by her own Creator in favor of the “Law-free” Gentiles.
As I said above, for a time, you would have had a world where separate Jesus-believing Christian Gentile and Jesus-believing Jewish communities would have operated in the same historical and geographical space. While Zetterholm feels some Hellenized Jews may have chosen to defect to Gentile Christianity, these would have been the Jews who, as were mentioned previously would have left ethnic and religious Judaism anyway.
There were likely Gentiles who hung on in the Jewish communities but as the decades passed, subsequent generations would have left Jewish community for either Gentile paganism or Gentile Christianity. Finally, the community of Jewish believers in Messiah would have dissolved as well if, for no other reason, than to avoid even the faintest association with the Gentile Christians who now actively disdained, despised, and “demonized” all Jews everywhere.
Since this blog post is exceptionally long, I’ll save the conclusion and implications of Zetterholm’s book on the modern Christian Church as well as the Messianic Judaism and Hebrew Roots movements for a later time.
"When you awake in the morning, learn something to inspire you and mediate upon it, then plunge forward full of light with which to illuminate the darkness." -Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
From a Hebrew Roots perspective, this means Jewish people remain Jewish and continue practicing Judaism, but the “one new man” entity they must join requires that all Gentile disciples are totally and completely the same as their Jewish counterparts, and must observe the identical set of Torah commandments as the Jew. There must be absolutely no distinction between Jew and Gentile in Hebrew Roots congregations, many of which inaccurately call themselves “Messianic Judaism.”
My understanding of the Jewish covenant relationship with God is that it extends continually from Exodus 20 forward in time and into the modern age. While Jesus inaugurated the New Covenant with his death and resurrection, getting the ball rolling, so to speak, it won’t reach any sort of fruition until his second coming, when he destroys all of Israel’s enemies, making the Gentile survivors vassal nations under Israel’s sovereignty, and establishing a unprecedented world-wide reign of peace. Then the Jewish people will be restored to their Land, to Israel, and the Gentiles who are called by His Name will come alongside Israel and serve her King, for he is our King, and worship God on the Temple Mount.
Does that make me and all the non-Jewish disciples of Messiah who study Messianic Judaism into second-class citizens in the Kingdom of God? To be honest, there are days when I think so. I suppose it’s my innate attraction to Jewish worship and scholarship that periodically has me longing to be able to join a minyan or to be called to the bema for an aliyah (not that I speak or read Hebrew). I sometimes see Jews in Messianic synagogues worshiping and praying the prayers and wish I could be a part of them. Sometimes I feel I should leave any sort of affiliation to Messianic Judaism behind and just keep my peace silently, communing only with God, because I feel I can never truly be part of Jewish people in Jewish community.
Morning Meditations 