Is Christianity a Jewish religion?

April 18, 2011 by Admin

I’m Jewish. I am also a believer in Jesus Christ. I wasn’t raised “Jewish” and my parents were “saved” in their early 30′s and they weren’t raised “Jewish” either. My husband and I have moved to a new state and are looking for a church to attend, and recently attended a Messiaic congregation and I never felt the difference between the two of us more than that afternoon. I never felt more at home there than I ever have at church, although the format was different, and he had never felt more out of his element. That led to a discussion that caused disagreement creating a big question: if the Bible was written by Jews (mostly, maybe not Dr. Luke), and God chose the Jews, and Jesus while on earth was a Jew, is Christianity a Jewish religion? If it is, then why is there so little Jewishness in the church today like meeting on Sunday instead of Saturday? I have my thoughts on those questions, and my husband has his, and I would love to know from more perspectives/angles because as strongly as I feel about my opinion, I would rather discover the truth.

This is my faith hurdle. —Mandy

April

So as co-heirs, adopted sons all we do is “remain gentile” and inherit the blessing?

I don’t have to convert to Judaism to observe Passover. I don’t have to become a Jew in order to not eat pork, or have my son circumsized. I don’t classify myself as a Jew because I follow the commandments of God, I consider myself a Torah-observant christian – and yes – co-heir to the promise because I recognize having being grafted in to the commonwealth of Israel not only am I now eligible to the blessings of God but I am also privy to the rules/regulations set forth within. Again, not that I have to, I get to. I choose to.

You are right, as part of the Nations you don’t have to do anything. Salvation is yours by faith. But while I’m here, I know there is blessing and prosperity to be had by applying the principles of God to my life. Observing the Feast Days of God keeps me connected with Israel. I believe that blesses Israel by honor. But again, my choice as it is yours and I don’t think that classifies me as having converted or wanting to convert to Judaism.
- http://www.soulation.org/ Dale Fincher
  
  On my understanding, you inherit the blessing because you are adopted by God through Jesus the Messiah. His sacrifice and rulership make it possible for Gentiles to be “grafted” in (Rom 11). There may be freedom for Gentiles to observe Torah in that way, but it is not what the Apostles required of Gentiles… the Gentiles are to know that a relationship with God is through God’s grace when we have a trusting relationship with God. That’s the big point the apostles return to over and over against those who used the Torah in non-grace and non-trust ways.
  
  The Torah for Israel sets Israel apart from the nations, for they have a special work to do. I think when we recognize Torah as a gift to Israel for her special work and place, it makes more sense on the requirements to Gentiles. At least from my view, today.
  
  Also, from what I see, Gentiles do not have to observe Passover nor convert to observe Passover. The Passover is a re-telling of the Jewish story. And Gentiles get to do Passover to remember the death of Jesus too. I have to iron some of this out in practice, but I do know that what is generally called “The Lord’s Supper” was the Passover and Jesus told his Jewish audience that as often as they do the Passover, they remember him in it. I do not think Passover is a requirement for Gentiles. The Passover has become a simple cracker and grape juice part of a church service, about once a month for many protestant churches, by which the Jewishness of it has been stripped out. But as I said, I need to iron some of this out.
  
  April, I agree with you… it can be a way to honor Israel. And the Feasts are a good way to remember Israel and to re-think how we look at Scripture and our place in the larger Story. And I also agree that does not classify you as trying to be a Jew or a Jewish proselyte.
  
  As Rachel said above, thinking in “religious” terms confuses the concepts. The Nations worship the God of Israel. Israel worships the God of Israel. Israel and the Nations bless one another. And that blessing should not merely be to a blessing to ancient Israel, but to Israel now. It is the conversion of the Gentiles to the God of Israel that is the hallmark of eschatological significance. The more we can support Israel as our sisters and brothers and stand with her, the more she will see the Messiah. After all, she suffers and is blinded so that the Nations will see Jesus (Rom 9-11) and that blinding may be coming to an end… which means the Gentiles and many “churches” may be in for a rude awakening.
  
  I’ve often wondered if Jesus were to return today if the churches would even recognize him… even as a concept, would we stand in opposition like the Pharisees or would we come like the blind man?
Mandy

Thanks, guys. I enjoyed reading each post, especially by Rachel Wolf April 18th, 2011 at 9:09 am and Savvy Wolfson April 18th, 2011 at 12:23 pm. Girls I wish you guys lived closer. I’m in Atlanta.
The reason for my question is that my husband is Gentile and I’ve been tugged closer and closer to wanting to learn more about Jewish culture/holidays and the difference between true Messianic Judaism – true Judaism (completed) and Rabbinism which is what most people think of when they think of Judaism.
I am reading a book right now that I am thinking through carefully because I don’t like to read any book without having my filter turned on.
“For nearly 2000 years, the Christian church has not fulfilled its mision to bring the good news of the coming of the Messiah to the world’s Jewish population. The time for change has come.
A tenant of Messianic Judaism asserts that when a Jew accepts the Jewish Messiah, born in a Jewish land, who was foretold by Jewish prophets in the Jewish Scriptures, such a Jew does not become a Gentil. In fact, he becomes a completed Jew – a Jew who believes Jesus is the Messiah. This is because he not only has the promist of a Messiah, he actually knows Him. Where ritual and tradition previously were obligatory, they now take on a higher meaning. They are seen as the foreshadowing of God’s overall plan. Such traditions now give a Jew a sense of purpose and a link with his cultural past.
Messianic Judaism is not a new cult seeking to separate itself from the body of believers in the Messiah. It is a way of reconciling belief in the Messiah while continuing to be a Jew. This is important when attempting to explain about the Messiah to traditional Jews. Who else can better be a Jew to Jews?
By becoming better Jews, by being interested in Hebrew Scriptures and the State of Israel, traditional Judaism no longer can justify the claim that acceptance of the New Testament is an attempt by other Jews to assimilate. Also, by speaking in a united voice, the full chorus of such transformed lives can be heard. This adds credibility to Jewish believers in the New Covenant, and checks efforts to write them off as a few misguided fanatics.
The reason the institutional church has been so unsuccessful in bringign the good news of the Messiah to the Jewish people is tied to its failure to recognize an element of Jewish psychology. Every Jew, no matter how irreligious, knows he was born a Jew and wants to die a Jew. Any concept which threatens that view is bound to fail. Unwittingly, the institutional church has erred by insisting that Jews give up their identification. There is nothing in the Scriptures that requires Jews to stop being Jews when they accept the Messiah.
As a matter of fact, the Scriptures strongly support the concept that Jews remain Jews, after they come to know their Lord personally. Early followers of the Messiah continued going to synagogues and celebrating festivals as they always had done. Saul of Tarsus, after changing his name to Paul, spoke of himself as a Jew. He did not refer to himself as a former Jew and he underwent the purification required by festival procedures.
Moreover, Paul instructed Timothy to be circumcised to affirm his Judaism. Any true believer in the Lord realizes that outward forms of expression are secondary to obtaining an inner peace in this life and eternal rest in the hereafter. This true peace is available to anyone who openly looks at the truth…..”
The author continues on later, “Beyond semantical differences, the Bible clearly portrays Jews as a distinctive people. Even when a Jew is completed and becomes a part of the body of the Messiah, he still has a distinctive function. Each part of the body has a different task. If God didn’t want Jews preserved as a distinctive people for a reason, He certainly wouldn’t have gone to the trouble to do so. What God has gone to so much trouble to preserve, what child of God would dare tamper with? The great role of the Jewish people was to bring the Messian and the Word of God to the peoples of the world; it still is. Hebrews were chosen to be a holy people. God called them the apple of His eye.
The Lord is using Messianic Judaism for another purpose. he is using it to break down what the Bible refers to as a middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile which has existed for so many centuries.
Messianic Judaism is living proof there is no esential difference between Christianity and the true Judaism of the Bible. Thus, the existence of completed Jews forces the fair-minded traditional Jew to examine his criteria for determining what a Jew is. If he is honest with himself, he will admit that in today’s context a jew can be a philosopher, academic, dope addict, sex pervert, alcoholic, ahteist or a ne’er-do-well adn still be identified as a Jew. This is true even if he has never been to a synagogue.
Yet, if a person of jewish parentage reads the Old Testament daily, speaks Hebrew, is wholesome and believes in Yeshua, Rabbis would have us believe this person is no longer part of the great Jewish heritage. Because of this baseless belief, Jews are being forced to redefine their Jewishness. In an honest search of the Old Testament Scriptures, a Jew must eventually concede it was faith in God’s Word which distinguished his ancestral patriarchs.”
He goes on later to explain that the Greek or western way of looking at it is why Christianity is so foreign to Jews, how Paul showed how a Gentile receiving the good news about Yeshua becomes a proselyte to biblical Judaism when he accepts the faith of Abraham and how things have become turned upside down. He also talks about how the meaning in a lot of Scriptures have become obscure because some “well-meaning believers take a legalistic posture and are against change of any kind….Paul was a radical. He said Gentiles did not have to accept jewish ceremonies. He maintained that the important thing was the condition of the heart. Now the situation is reversed. The Gentile believers are the establishment, which have their own modes of worship. Paul probably would argue today that the state of Jewish hearts should be of primary concern, and symbols and rituals are of secondary importance.”
Later on he talks about how the Talmud, Midrash and Mishna “became elevated to the point that they began to minimize the importance of the Book itself” which developed into modern-day Judaism, and how the modern-day church is doing the same thing in it’s denominations, subcultures, and other rule-making being well-intentioned but giving these rules the “force of law within the denomination.”
I haven’t read the whole book – just the first chapter, but it is called “The Fig Tree Blossoms:Messianic Judaism Emerges” by Paul Liberman. The Rabbi at a local Messianic temple gave it to me and my husband when we visited recently in our trip each weekend around Atlanta looking for somewhere to attend regularly. Of course, that was my husband’s first experience and exposure to a Messianic congregation and really gave him culture shock. It started the discussion and has caused me to delve deeper to find exactly what the truth is, and to reason things out.
You guy’s comments were helpful as well.
http://www.soulation.org/ Dale Fincher

Mandy, I agree with what you’ve quoted here… execpt that Paul did not change his name from Saul. Saul is his Jewish name… Paul is greek name. He’s still referred to as “Saul” (“Sha’ul” in the Jewish New Testament which I recommend you pick up with the commentary as a set).

Sha’ul’s ministry (just like any Jew who turns to Yeshua the Messiah) is partly to provoke the Jews to envy. Not to envy that the Gentiles are being saved (for the Jews have that in their own prophecies and have long gathered gentile proselytes). The envy is that a Messianic Jew is participating in the eschatological fulfillment as spoken by the prophets, inviting the gentiles into the vine of Israel. Every Jew should be jealous of this… for God has called them to this work and it is happening before their eyes.

Sadly, gentile Christians have persecuted the Jews for various reasons for the last 2000 years that the Jews ears are closed all the more. But there is much hope (and I hear reports that is changing).

I’ve felt one of my “callings” over the last five years is to help Gentiles see the Jewish Scriptures for what they are. I feel like a bridge, as I am a Gentile but see the status of the Jews and growing to better understand the Jewishness of the New Testament. The Gospel is to the Jew first and also to the gentile (Rom 1: 17).

Actually, “New Testament” is offensive. They are literally the “Writings of the Apostles,” or “Apostolic Writings” or “Messianic Scriptures.” The “Old Testament” is also offensive. They are the “Torah” or “Tanakh,” or the “Hebrew Scriptures.” The reasons those words are offensive is the false assumption in Christian theology that the Church replaced Israel and that Torah is outdated (“Old”) and that Jesus brought in a new covenant that replaced the old.

Then comes the confusion of “law vs. grace” which is not a real opposition in Scripture. For Torah taught Grace. Abraham and Moses were used in Romans as examples of grace in Torah. These concepts have been mis-taught for a long time, but in the mis-teaching, we end up brushing over texts that don’t make sense in light of the conventional idea. That’s because these concepts are Jewish, not Greek or Catholic or Protestant.

Now, I’m not saying throw out babies with bath water. The “church” has done marvelous things and developed a lot of good theological thoughts. But something is missing. It is what Kendall Soulen (“Christian Theology and the God of Israel”) calls “the flaw at the heart of the crystal.” Remove the flaw of our theology and we will see the Scripture and what God is up to in our own day more clearly.

This always raises a lot more questions, because we have verses that say such and such. And we have to understand that verses were translated with interpretation in mind. Most english translations keep the replacement theology in tact. Again, check out the Jewish New Testament with commentary for reference.

Then we have the whole concept of “church,” (which you’ve heard me talk about often on FB and I usually put it in quotation marks.). People are surprised to discover the word “ekklesia,” which is the Greek word of “church,” is found all over the Hebrew Scriptures in the Septuagint. The concept was not something new. Jesus and Paul didn’t invent it. It was, traditionally, the “commonwealth (kahal) of Israel.” Gentiles, in replacement theology, replaced the concept of the commonwealth and created a different kind of identity to a gathering (complete with a board of directors, elders over a single assembly, programs in a non-profit, etc). But in a commonwealth you easily see the import to the kingdom of God…. Messiah sitting on David’s throne doesn’t happen in a “church” building but in a commonwealth. The Kingdom of God concept doesn’t come to mind when thinking about “church.” It has only been in recent decades that the “Kingdom of God” has made a resurgence. As if the Holy Spirit is drawing Gentiles to consider Israel again… is something brewing?

Hebrews is written to Jews. When we read it, we must bear this in mind. So was James. If we neglect the Jewish lens, we will not see the context. Romans is written to Gentiles who are to practically bend over backwards to not offend non-Messianic Jews… for the Gentiles still attended synagogue and were to consider the Jews as the key to the salvation of the world.

Romans 9-11. The wild branch are the nations (gentiles). We, Gentiles, are grafted into the cultured vine of Israel. Her roots sustain the tree. Our salvation is dependent on their salvation. It is from them, and their Messiah, that the Gentiles even have hope. It is no small matter to consider that the Jews blessed the world with Messiah. This Messiah did not disown his people (God cannot break his promises) but made a way for Gentiles to participate as heirs.

Not as natural sons and daughters (for Israel is the natural daughter, and Messiah is the Son of God and the Son of Israel, born into the Jewish family), but Gentiles are adopted children with all the rights and previleges. Jews, in Messiah, are not to become gentiles. Gentiles, in Messiah, are not to become Jews. God’s program is God, Israel, and the nations. Gentiles are the “nations.” We have our inheritance and our role to play, but we are not in the same position as the Jews. The New Jerusalem is loaded with Jewish names and symbols. Eternity will be permanently inked with Jewishness… and Jesus’ own scars will be scars on Jewish hands…

Mandy, the journey you are on and the questions you are asking will completely turn your theology on its head, in an incredibly good and refreshing way. God will grow bigger and his work in the world more colorful than previously imagined. It answers questions of the text I always had (like why does Jesus tell the disciples to bring an offender before the “church” in Matt 18 when there was no church, and to treat them like a “gentile” when everyone who reads it to day is a gentile?)… and brings light to texts I never questioned.

There is much more to say. But I will leave it here unless the discussion unfolds more…
- Mandy
  
  Thanks, Dale. I’m glad you’re trying to help win other Jews for Jesus Christ. There are blessings for those who bless the nation of Israel, and I would think making an effort to help tear down the walls is something that causes cheering in heaven. I know the Scriptures says that God would want all people to be saved, but He also said the gate is narrow and many will not pass through it.
  I’m in the wierd situation that I was raised as a Gentile Christian and through various things and stories and information from my great grandma (who’s mother left Bohemia – part of modern day Czechoslovakia) let me know I was Jewish – further reinforced by agreement from a few family members. My dad still resists the idea, and raised us with statements about Judaism and Jews that I now see either as awkwardness on his part, or a reaction to the Messianic movement that started growing when I was a child.
  My maternal grandma came to visit a few weeks ago and took me to this place in LaGrange called Explorations in Antiquity. I recommend going there. They bring practical things to life from a Jewish perspective.
  My biggest question is how could all of this heritage have been lost, but then I look around me at many Jewish people who in one generation or two have become completely Gentile in their lifestyle, and probably won’t even think to talk about it if they have kids. Also there are issues of hiding and/or shame/survival guilt so future generations aren’t given a full picture of their heritage.
  What Rachel said about being pulled by the Holy Spirit towards knowledge about these things I think is true. He is patient and faithful, and throughout my life I have become more free to explore these questions as my husband doesn’t try to be “the boss” and encourages me to decide and study things, and is open to discussing them. He also wants to see me happy, and if that means getting into something foreign to him, he does it, giving from his knowledge and insights along the way – a team effort. I have the blessing of a tremendous heritage of generations of study and knowledge on his side of the family which has also helped create an atmosphere that although the Jewish cultural aspect is partially foreign to them, as scholars, translators of the Scriptures and theologians they are honest students and open to change.
  Because of this journey both my ideas and my husbands have already changed. I can’t really share openly with my own parents because of my own parents die-hard Calvinist gentile perspective and they don’t like change and think they have figured doctrine out. I can pray for them and the Holy Spirit can chip away at that stubbornness as well as my Dad’s chauvinism. An example of reading with new eyes was when I saw a passage I have read many times before, but this time with new “glasses” and read where Paul talks about Jesus dying and rising again as mentioned in the Scriptures. It hit me that at the time the Gospels weren’t all written, and he was referring to things in the Old Testament where Jesus sacrifice is prophesied with stunning detail even 1000 years in advance (David) and the significance of three days is throughout the Scripture. The Bible is a beautiful onion – one with many, many layers, but once brought out and properly prepared is very sweet and savory.
  Yes, in the beginning it wasn’t called “church.” That’s a Gentile idea. I am determined to see Scriptures through Jewish eyes and recover things that have been lost to me. There might have been a couple of generations of interruption, but if God ever make us capable of having children, they will be Jews and know it and the full meaning of the Messiah. Meanwhile, the learning and making sure we find the truth and a good congregation to worship with – whether it’s a regular church or a Messianic congregation – is something I would appreciate whoever thinks of this to pray about.
  Meanwhile, I have to stop typing this verbose but appreciative reply or I’m going to miss a doctor’s appointment!
Cindy

This was interesting:

http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=4266
- Dale Fincher
  
  What I read of the article is fraught with issues from the start… Israel was simply chosen? Jewish Theology 101 is that Israel was created for this very purpose… and the author admits that gentiles are grafted into the olive root of Israel, he fails to acknowledge that Israel remains the root on which the gentiles are nourished!
  
  These issues can become quite complex, especially when we do not take Second Temple historical context into the writings of the Apostles.
  
  The author says he doesn’t hate Jews, but he doesn’t realize how he hints at anti-Semitism… Reformed theology often replaces the “church” in the place of “Israel” which is not something the Apostles did in their writings… the first reference to that was from Justin Martyr. Then it gets read back into the text and treated as though this is what the Bible says. For example, if circumcision of the heart is all that matters and if the Jews are no longer a chosen people (which Peter calls a “holy nation” that the author of the article denies… the church as we talk of it today is not a nation… something else is the nation), then why does Paul circumcise Timothy, both Jews who followed the Jewish Messiah retained their Jewish identity?
  
  If you want to read more, let me know. It’s the best way to digest a Jewish perspective of the Jewish New Testament writers without simply dialoging on a blog.

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