Covenant & Conflict: Responding to Claims About Messianic Jews

You can respond with agree, disagree, or it’s complicated:

“A Jewish person that believes in Jesus is not Jewish. They are a Christian. An organization called Jews for Jesus exists, but don’t be fooled by their name. There is nothing Jewish about what they believe. Jesus could not be the Messiah because he didn’t usher in the Messianic peace. Christians believe in original sin and that Jesus came to atone for this sin. But Judaism doesn’t believe in that. Christianity believes that Jesus is equal with God. A concept in Judaism that is ridiculous.”

Yeah, this is the biggest one.

We are here again with my boss, Nick Lesmeister, the one, the only the captain of the ship, the Gateway Center for Israel. I’m very excited about this conversation because what I want to do is talk about an organization that is a Jewish organization, non-believing in Jesus Jewish organization, for our listeners, that we love, that have lots of great content. But they came out with a piece about Messianic Judaism and the whole purpose was to equip the world and the Jewish world with the knowledge that Messianic Jews are not real Jews and here’s why… So I took some notes on their content and I want to just submit every statement they made to you, and you can respond with agree, disagree, or it’s complicated.

And I’m sure all of them are going to be, Yeah, it’s complicated. And then kind of expound, because for those of you who might not know, you have attended a Messianic synagogue for years. You have lived in Israel, you have been in the Jewish world and the Messianic world for years. And it’s not just one stream of Messianic Jews, but you have friends in many streams, and not just in Israel, but in South America and Africa. So you have a very deep understanding of this world. So I want to submit these questions to you or really these statements and then let you comment on Them.

Yeah. Alrighty. Let’s, let’s do this. Yes.

Okay. So obviously the first one is the overarching one. A Jewish person that believes in Jesus is not Jewish. They are a Christian. Agree, disagree, or It’s complicated.

It’s complicated.

Sorry. I don’t really want to It’s okay. You can use that one every time.

Yeah, why is that complicated?

I mean, I think going back as far as Jesus himself, it’s very safe to say he was not trying to invent some type of new religion called Christianity. And the people that were following him weren’t in any way thinking that they were starting something new. They thought that this was just a reformation of the understanding of what God’s calling was on Israel, and that Jesus obviously being to them the Messiah, they were saying, oh, this is the next evolution in what God wants us to be, to accomplish our mission, which is to bring the knowledge of God to the nations, like all nations. So somebody who puts their faith in Jesus that has a Jewish background or grew up Jewish or was a practicing Jewish person, they’re just a Jewish follower of Jesus. So I guess you could call it Jewish Christian if you really wanted to. There’s a lot of people like to put it in a nice tidy box. So I think that’s the thing is that people these days, they like distinction in that. They’re like, either you’re this or you’re that. And I don’t think that we can, don’t have the liberty of making a nice and tidy distinction with Jewish followers of Jesus because of the witness of the writings of the New Testament.

And the reason that many Messianic Jews would not want to call themselves Christians is because the Jewish/Christian relationship has been so bad for 1700 years, and there’s been so many self-proclaimed Christians who have murdered Jews that it’s kind of left this bad taste in their mouth.

Yeah, exactly. You look back in the book of Acts, it’s like when all this stuff was starting to emerge and take shape, and it says in there there are hundreds of people, hundreds of Jewish followers of Jesus at that point who were very zealous for the law. So then just to speed through history, obviously at some point the church, the Gentile church, Gentiles who came to faith that did not have Jewish ethnicity or a Jewish lineage, they became dominant. And then essentially the whole idea of being Jewish inside of a framework of following Jesus went away. So Messianic Jews over the last, let’s call it a hundred years, have been claiming to say, no, look, we are Jewish. We follow Jesus. We are a legitimate expression of Jewish faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the Jewish Messiah. So that’s why they’d be reticent to say, I’m a Jewish Christian, because they’re trying to claim that, I think biblical distinction, that they continue to be Jewish, but they put their faith in Jesus.

And part of the problem is on us gentile believers, because when we hear Christian for so long, we have this theology that says, Christian can’t be Jewish because Judaism and Christianity are only religions, and they have to be counterintuitive. They have to oppose one another. They can’t live in harmony except for just relationally. You stay in your box. I’ll say mine.

Yeah, we were joking right before we just hit record here, right? About the fact that a lot of Christians that get a little wigged out with Jewish things, and one of our friends, David hoffbrand, says, Newsflash, if you love the Bible, you’re kind of into Jewish things. So the whole idea of, Christian, we have this thought of that’s new and the Jewish thing’s old, but the reality is you can’t actually be Christian without a Jewish foundation. You can be Jewish without Christianity. So it’s kind of simple.

Okay. Second thing, by the second century, Christianity had become its own religion. After bringing on Pagan converts and losing most of its Jewish foundation, Christianity was entirely distinct from Judaism. So their point is, yeah, Jesus was Jewish and the disciples were Jewish, and everything you just said, there was an understanding. But by the second century, Christianity was a completely different religion that was void of all things Jewish. Agree, disagree, or it’s complicated.

Now that one’s a clear disagree, because even when you get up to the Council of Nicea and some of the church councils leading into the second and third centuries, there’s still a large documented number of what’s called Jewish bishops. So these are Jewish people who are obviously at that point maintaining being Jewish because Constantine and many of the Gentile church leaders, the gospel was going from Jerusalem out into the Roman world. And so as it went out numerically, Gentiles who came to faith began to outnumber Jews who came to faith. And so they became, in a sense, over time, the leaders of the new Jesus movement. But there were still a lot of Jewish leaders of the Jesus movement who were maintaining a Jewish expression and faithfulness to Jewish covenantal life. So this is documented. They were not invited to Church decision-making conferences, let’s call it that. So that’s a definite no. They were there. And I think a lot of Jewish people don’t know this history because a lot of Christians have tried to set it aside. That’s the beauty of living in today, where we are looking back fresh at a lot of what happened, and we’re saying, wait, no, there was a lot of Jewish followers of Jesus, and they were actually being systematically excluded from key decision-making in the Gentile dominated Jesus following movement.

It was such a small percentage of the Ecclesia that the Jesus-following community, there was such a small percentage that were maintaining Jewish lifestyle in the second century. It’s easy to see from a bird’s eye view. Christianity was completely different, void of all Jewishness. But like you’re saying, we also see from the Christian fathers, Justin Martyr, their names are escaping me, but a lot of these Ignatius, they’re writing and saying, you cannot continue to observe Sabbath and follow Jesus. You cannot continue to celebrate Passover and follow Jesus. And they’re adamant about it. But then we have to ask ourselves the question, well then clearly it’s happening. Clearly there are Jewish followers of Jesus maintaining Jewish lifestyle or else they wouldn’t come at it so hard. It’d be like if in today’s world, there was a letter from a pastor saying, you cannot change genders. You cannot have a homosexual union, and this church will not perform the wedding. You couldn’t argue that that’s not happening, or else there would be no need for the letter to be raised. Exactly. And so some people have said there were no Jesus-following Jewish people in the second century. It’s like, then why were they writing so aggressively for them to stop being Jewish? So you’re saying it was happening.

Yeah. So one’s a hard disagree because there’s just a lot of historical evidence that needs to be sifted. That’s all.

Yeah. Next statement: From the second century to the 1800s, Christian and Jewish relationship was divided, and the Jewish people suffered much antisemitism from the church to put it lightly. Agree, disagree.

We just went into it. This is what torched all that off. It lit the fire for this because the Gentile majority, they turned their back on the Jewish followers of Jesus. And then by and large, they lost touch with ethnic Israel, the Jewish community that hadn’t put their faith in Jesus, which was a larger part of the Jewish community. So if they were already having a hard time with the Jesus-following Jewish community, they really had a hard time with the non-Jesus following Jewish community. Then absolutely, over those thousand to 15-1600 years, I mean time after time, after time, terrible, terrible things were being done because of this triumphalism that had been adopted in Christian theology by the Gentiles. The Gentiles were the one putting the triumphalism into Christian theology. Totally. The Jewish guys and gals that followed Jesus were like Paul in Romans 9. He’s like, I’d be willing to lose my own salvation if it meant that the Jewish people would be saved and set free, delivered. Somewhere that got lost and the Gentiles flipped, and they don’t have the same type of heart of compassion.

And I would also say the Gentiles forgot that history. I mean, how many Christian pastors and Christian leaders, or just Christians in general do we talk to? And we say, yeah, well, the Nazis were self-proclaimed Christians. And they’re like, what? I thought they were just evil people that rose from hell. And it’s like, no, they were self-proclaimed Christians. There were pastors that were involved in the Nazi movement, the Inquisition that was self-proclaimed Christians telling Jews, get out of our country or we’re going to kill you. And then in Portugal, they said, convert to Christianity and abandon your Judaism, or we’re going to murder you. And they murdered 300,000 Jews, or the Crusades where Christians killed thousands of Jews in the street because they were going to win the Holy Land. But we’re not taught this. And I went to Bible school and I learned about Christian history, and I learned about Azua Street, but I didn’t learn about the Christian Church committing some of the most antisemitic Jewish
murders that I’ve ever even read. And so I think that’s also a big thing is the Christian Church is ignorant of its own history, or much of the Christian Church is ignorant of its own history. And so we can look at Jewish people having a negative view of Christianity, and we’re like, where on earth do they get this? And it’s like not that long ago.

There’s a phrase that history is always written by the victors. And what’s neat about that is you look at the Bible. This is one of the things I think what’s amazing about the Bible is, if the Jewish people, if history is really always written by the victors, then Jewish people have a skewed idea of what victory looks like. Totally. It’s like one account after another about how much they messed up, how the enemies rolled over them. That’s really true. The point though is that when you are somebody who has been in charge of or been superior to another group of people, it’s always easier to look more beneficially on your history. And when you are the oppressed person, it’s always harder to let go of the trauma that you experienced because of those people. Because as time goes on, the gap widens and the people who are the ancestors, if you will, the outgrowth of those who oppressed you are less and less connected to it, and you’re still mad at them. You’re still like, you don’t even know. And they’re like, I literally don’t even know. But that’s an outgrowth of the superiority and the haughtiness, and I think so. Anyway, I won’t get into what I’m thinking about that more. Yeah, that’s great.

Okay. In the 1800s, there were many Jewish converts to Christianity who began practicing Christianity with a more closer link to Judaism. They were known as Hebrew Christians. By the 1970’s, a new branch of Christianity formed called Messianic Judaism.

Yeah, true. Yeah, that’s accurate. That was the case going up to the Holocaust. You can go read, there’s a doctoral dissertation on this by Dr. Mitch Glaser. I don’t remember the exact number, but I believe he, through statistical analysis, assumes that there were around 300,000 Messianic Jews that died in the Holocaust. Whoa. That’s a big number. I didn’t know that. Because, and you can read it, but you go to the museum in Warsaw, the Polish Jewish History Museum, very well known. I’ve been there, and it talks about in the Warsaw ghetto, Jews are going to church, so they’re in the ghetto. So there are Jews that yes, have been already putting their faith in Jesus. They’re still living within the norms of Jewish community life. There’s even well-known orthodox rabbis that in this period, the 1800s into the 1900s put their faith in Jesus, stayed in their position as Orthodox rabbis. There’s a book on all of this. It’s all out there if you want to go look on it. They weren’t abandoning their Jewishness. They were trying to sort through the fact that there were, there’s an 1800 year gap between the Jewish world not talking at all, and really more insulating itself further from putting their faith with Jesus. So then they have to sort through that, right? An Orthodox Jew comes to faith in Jesus, they’re like, whoa, everything I learned, I have to rethink through everything now. It’s almost all compatible. But they have to figure out how to put themselves into this framework. So Hebrew-Christian obviously became a thing because they’re like, well, I don’t know. I guess I’m Jewish and I put my faith in Jesus. Does that make me a Christian? There were no other expressions. They were cutting a path that was already cut, and then it was covered over in the first-second centuries.

So the one part that stuck out to me that you didn’t mention was there were many Jewish converts to Christianity that were practicing Christianity, but it was just Christianity with a closer link to Judaism. Is that a fair description that they were converts to Christianity?

No, I think I understand the way the Jewish community uses the word convert, because I think theologically they would say, you cannot be Jewish theologically and put your faith in Jesus. Now, even today, there’s Jewish people that would say, okay, you have a Jewish grandparent or a Jewish parent, so you’re like ethnically Jewish, but you put your faith in Jesus. So there’s a theological difference here.

But for the most part, especially from this message, if you put your faith in Jesus, you’re no longer Jewish.

That’s what they’re saying. Yeah. And I’m saying, no, there’s no conversion happening. I think when you look at conversion in the Bible, it’s talking about your soul being converted from away from God to God. That’s what it is.

But we’ve come to understand it as a change in identity, right? We’re saying that this person used to be Muslim, this person used to be Buddhist, and now they’re a Christian. They’ve converted, but that’s not really the case. You don’t see that in the first century. There’s not Jews who are like, I converted. I’m following Jesus now. I went through a conversion. The other truth is that even you take this, okay, follow it further back. Where does the idea of conversion come from? It comes from the Jewish world. This is where we get conversion from. When Paul was going out and preaching, well, the Pharisees were a sect of Judaism that was going and trying to convert Gentiles to Judaism. They were doing conversion long before any Christians were doing conversion because they felt this is the mandate to go out and bring the nations into the knowledge of God. So why are there all these God-fearing Gentiles or God-fearers in the New Testament? Because they had been converted to Judaism from paganism by someone in the pharisaical movement. This was a part of the Pharisees’ mission. So it’s kind of funny to me that I would never use the term convert because I think the modern understanding of that is not what actually is happening, but it’s just humorous to me and ironic that actually where do we get convert from? We kind get it from the Jewish world.

Yeah, totally. An organization called Jews for Jesus exists, but don’t be fooled by their name. There is nothing Jewish about what they believe. They are evangelical Christians who use Jewish symbols to lure Jews to Christianity.

Yeah, I disagree. Again, I get it. There have been examples of people, maybe they were with Jews for Jesus, maybe they were with another ministry, maybe they weren’t with any ministry that have been deceptive, that have been manipulative to the Jewish people. There’s a guy that lived within the Haredi community, which is Hassidic ultra-Orthodox in Jerusalem for years with his family. A couple of years ago, this hit the news that they were able to find out the guy’s not even Jewish. He went through this whole conversion to Orthodox Judaism just to be a missionary. And so I think that this is a huge misconception in the Jewish world about organizations like Jews for Jesus, or Messianic Jews, that they’re trying to manipulate and deceive people. They’re not. First of all, they’re very outright with the fact that we’re Jews for Jesus. So even their name, they’re not like we’re Jews who used to be Christian for Jesus. So I get it that the Jewish community perceives them to be evangelical because maybe a lot of the things they do and say is Christian theology. But again, where do Christians get their theology from our Jewish foundation and from Jesus.

But most Christians probably don’t think that deep.

They don’t. Right. And so I just disagree with their manipulative tactics. I think that most Jews have, and most Christians, there’s such a separation between Jews and Christians relationally that we can just pick and choose the stereotypes we believe about one another. And then you start to get to know one another, and you’re like, whoa, I thought that Jews were just always doing these old things like Torah and life and death and all the old stuff, laws and regulations, but you just prayed and you’re very sincere and passionate. And then maybe a Jewish person meets a follower of Jesus, a Christian even, or a Messianic Jew, and they’re like, hey, you’re really sorting this out. You’re trying to figure out how to raise Jewish kids. Interesting. So I think the more that we can just get to know one another and stop believing these stereotypes that exist. Because extreme people, there’s extreme people that have kind of put up these stereotypes. But I got an email from Jews for Jesus yesterday that said seven ways to help your non-Jewish spouse experience Passover with you. If Jews for Jesus is just Christian evangelicals that are trying to make Jews evangelical, why are they sending out emails to help Jewish people understand how to integrate Jewish observance into their house? And nothing in that email was like at the bottom in fine print so that you can share Jesus with all your Jewish friends. There was nothing in there about that. Yeah. So it does bother me that I think sometimes in the Jewish world, there’s this deception or manipulation read into the Messianic Jewish movement that I haven’t found to be there.

So you’re saying because by and large, the Messianic Jewish community are fully Jewish ancestrally. They go back to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, maybe they have a Jewish grandparent, maybe their grandparents were in the Holocaust, but they’re Jewish and they follow Jesus. And they’re not viewing themselves as we’re Christians, but shh… we’re going to pretend to be Jewish. But that’s the understanding from much of the Jewish world is that the Messianic community are secret Christians. Is that what you’re saying?

Yeah.

And there’s maybe been a few of those throughout history, but that’s been expanded as if that’s the bulk of the Messianic community.

Yeah, well they’re just sort of using Jewish form and function of religion to try to lure Jewish people to try to make ’em think like, hey, look at us. We have a synagogue, not a church. And it’s just to lure Jewish people in to then just jump Jesus on ’em…

When in reality it’s out of their authentic faith.

Yeah, they have a synagogue because they’re trying to wrestle through with the fact that we are Jewish. How do we do this? How do we bar mitzvah our kids? How do we celebrate the feasts? They’re wrestling through this with sincerity. They’re not like getting up on the platform every weekend saying, ah, Baruch HaShem, that’s a term you should use when you talk to Jewish people so that you can convert ’em to Jesus. They don’t do that kind of stuff. It’s sincere. They’re really trying to, I believe, say we want to be a legitimate expression of Judaism. If there’s secular Jews, and reformed Jews, and conservative Jews, and Orthodox Jews, and all the Hindu Jews, then why can’t we have a seat at the table? To me, the video like the one you’re describing, drives a wedge between being able to have a fruitful conversation. And I just think from where I look at it, I’m like, I’m sorry, Jewish community, there’s a lot of diverse expressions of Judaism at the table. You guys aren’t kicking ’em out. Bring the Messianic Jews to the table and have that conversation. Instead of just talking at each other, talk with each other.

Yeah, that’s good.

And it’s funny, actually on this note, there’s this Hebrew word, minim , it actually can be translated species. So the seven minim of the land, seven species of the land. But it’s found in a writing that goes all the way back to the early first or second century of some rabbis who were talking about these Jewish followers of Jesus. And they called them minim because the other word for that, the translation for that in Hebrew is heretics. So the key thing here is they weren’t calling them apostates. They were just saying they were heretics. So in calling them minim, basically they’re continuing to affirm, now these are Jews, but they’re kooky. And I feel like in some ways the messianic community’s like, could we just be minim again? Can you guys just treat us as heretics? Because then we have a seat at the table still as Jews, and we can dialogue theologically. But instead, the Jewish community has sort of called them apostate. They’re no longer Jews, so you don’t have a place at the table. And every community has their heretics. I don’t think Messianic Jews are heretics, let me be clear about that. But I believe that there’s space in the Jewish world that they’re not taking advantage of to actually have this dialogue.

Yeah, that’s really good. I have nothing against Christianity. You do you. What I do have a problem with are Christian missionaries appropriating Judaism to convert Jews. We kind of just talked about that.

And I would say, I fully agree, it’s Passover season soon, and we write about this with Seders guys, if you’re a Christian and you’re doing a Seder, you need to be aware that you are appropriating something that isn’t like religiously or historically yours. I am not saying don’t do it, but I think this idea of appropriation lacks sincerity when you’re just trying to do Jewish things as a means to an end. And if you want to take every Jewish thing and turn it into finding Jesus in it, that’s how a Jewish person is going to feel like, well, then the only reason you care about Jewish things is to get Jesus. It’s like you take this big orange and you squeeze it to get Jesus out of it. Take a Seder, we’re going to squeeze it down and get Jesus out of it. You’re overlooking all of the other rich, meaningful history of this. It’s not honoring of the Jewish community. So yeah, I think there is a lot of appropriation. And I would say to Christians, stop doing it. If you’re not Jewish, just stop. Yeah. Be a Christian. Love Jewish people.

Or what we often will do is challenge them to do it in relationship with the Jewish community. Yes. Because doing it on your own, apart from the Jewish community is kind of why we’re in this problem in the first place is we’re like, well, you know what? We don’t really need the Jewish community. Exactly. We’re just going to do this Jesus thing on our own. And Christianity today has drifted further and further away from its Jewish foundation because how many Christians have a relationship with Jewish people and feel connected to the land of Israel? There’s obviously great healthy churches that are, but it’s something that we’re losing. And so can we get that back? Can we begin to link arms again and not just do it on our own?

That’s a part of honoring you’re giving value to somebody else that you don’t have. They have something you don’t, and you’re honoring that. And the Jewish community has something we need. I believe we have something they need, and that’s what coming to the table means. And so if we’re just doing our separate things, then we’re not actually giving each other what we need.

That’s good.

So Jews for Jesus followers will tell you that they’re fully Jewish, that they maintain Jewish lives and accepting Jesus does not renounce their Judaism. But let’s be real. None of that’s true because their theology is 100% Christian and is entirely at odds with Judaism. Here are the five things that Christians, and in this context, messianic Jews, believe that are not Jewish. Number one, the Messianic age is very clear. In Judaism it will be an age of peace. But you look at the world now with all the war, especially right now going on in Israel, therefore Jesus could not be the Messiah because he didn’t usher in the messianic peace. So that’s the first one.

Yeah, number one. So partly true, complicated, right? Jesus says that I have come to bring you peace and peace to the full. So yes, there’s existential peace, and then there’s internal peace. So I think followers of Jesus would say, Jesus came and it was His kingdom is a already kingdom, but not fully kingdom, like a partial filling. And His whole message was, you guys are looking for me to come and throw over the Romans and bring you peace. You think the way you’re going to get peace is to get all the Romans out of here and have a king sitting on the throne. I’m telling you that peace is available to you now regardless of your existential circumstances. That was his battle with the Pharisees and the Jewish leaders. It’s just like, how do we get at this thing?

So that’s I think, partly true. First of all, Christian theology is almost totally Jewish. Totally. All of the writers of our theology were Jewish. Paul, John, Luke, even Peter, obviously all the Old Testament, all Jewish. So I think you cannot say it’s a hundred percent Christian. So the first point is I get it. I do. That there’s a different expectation of what the Messiah will do. But at the same time, Christians fully believe that when Jesus returns, that’s what’s going to happen.

And there’s an understanding that the disciples of Jesus at the time of the New Testament, we’re still looking forward to that day of peace. And you speak about that a lot. How they asked is now the time. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s very apocalyptic, we were just talking about this, that they were expecting it to happen at any moment. They were like, Hey, Jesus came to do some portion of the pre-work, if you will, and he’s going to come back soon and then he’s going to bring in the kingdom of God. They ask him right before he descends, are you about to restore the kingdom to Israel? And he didn’t say no. He said, guys, let’s not talk about timing. So it was basically a silent, not a silent, but a yes. He was just like, you got the timing off.

So they were looking forward to that. The second area that Christian theology, AKA messianic Jewish theology can’t coexist with Jewish theology is Christians believe in original sin and that Jesus came to atone for this sin. But Judaism doesn’t believe in that. Judaism believes in free will, and then it goes to another one. So what would you say about that original sin?

Okay, this would be like me doing a video and saying, Judaism teaches this. There are so many little different theological distinctions in Christian theology. So that’s I think a simplification of Christians believing in original sin. I would need to know what they mean by original sin. We know that Adam sinned. That’s clear. The Jewish scriptures teach us that. So I think what they’re trying to say is that there’s this latent sin that is in every person when they’re born. And I don’t even know enough in Jewish theology to know if they do or do not believe that a person is born into sin. But again, it seems pretty clear from the writings of the New Testament, they’re all Jewish guys. Lemme take it back a step further. All of the authors of the New Testament were Jewish. Paul was a pharisee. So go read anything that he has to say about sin and original sin and the need for atonement. He’s not coming with a Christian point of view. He’s coming as a very religious Jew who has an understanding now of God’s plan of the Messiah. So that’s I guess my simple way to say without getting into all the particulars of all that. But Christian theology emerged from Jewish people that understood at the time, 2000 years ago, Jewish theology.

And fun fact, Paul doesn’t just say he was a Pharisee. He actually says, I am a Pharisee. He didn’t see himself as being different. Which that blows a lot of people’s minds because we are taught that the Pharisees were the bad guys. But theologically, Jesus lined up with the Pharisees, and there’s a scripture, I want to see if I can find it. There’s a scripture where Jesus says, do everything the Pharisees tell you to do. Yeah, he did. And it’s like, what? When I read that for the first time, that blew my mind. I was like, I thought he hated everything they said, but he doesn’t. He says, do everything they say, just don’t do what they do because they’re not practicing what they’re preaching. Exactly. And Paul says, I am a Pharisee. So he’s a hundred percent speaking from a Jewish point of view. We read into Paul that he says, well, I was a Pharisee formally, but now I’m this Christian. And I see how the Jewish community would agree to that as well, because an easy jump to make.

And the other thing that this statement is not making space for is there was a reinterpretation of things in the late 100s of Jewish life when the temple was destroyed. They had to relook at everything and say, oh yeah, how do we deal with atoning for sin now that the temple’s gone? How do we deal with the fact that God isn’t dwelling in one place? So I’ll give credit to that in that, okay, the divergence of where Christian theology went as Gentiles took over and where Jewish theology went as the rabbis took over. Sure. Where we are today at the outgrowth, the end of the outgrowth of those two things, we might be very different, but actually that’s what we’re trying to contend for, is to reclaim the original framework. Yeah, that’s good. Which was late second temple apocalyptic Judaism. Yeah.

Number three, Christians believe that if you don’t accept Jesus, you go to hell. Judaism doesn’t teach a lot about hell, but if there is a hell, you go there based on your actions, not your beliefs.

Yeah. Again, this is a chicken or a egg kind of thing. And I think Christians could do well to understand this a little bit more exhaustively from a Jewish point of view. Jews would say, okay, belief is one thing, but belief always leads to action. So they’re saying, we’re judging action. Kind of like the book of James, right? Exactly. Or Jacob. We have the same message. It’s just how we get there. So James says, faith without works is dead. But I think the teachings of Jesus made it clear going back to Jesus, what were the Pharisees advocating for a richer and more ritual purification of the Jewish people so that God would intervene and establish a kingdom on earth and restore Israel. So you mentioned Jesus talking about the Pharisees. He says, do everything they teach, just don’t do everything they do. That’s why, he was saying, no, they’re right, but they’re claiming more purification. But the problem is that their actions don’t line up with their beliefs. So this I think is where Jesus comes in and says, they have to be congruent. God is going to judge your heart. He isn’t going to judge you if you were an adultress because you went and had a one night stand with your neighbor’s wife. He’s going to judge you if in your heart you wished you could do it and you didn’t. So to me, Jesus is Jewish. I guess you get back to the same thing about understanding heaven and hell, and we don’t even, that’s a huge topic. Again, that’s still a whole conversation for real, but for sure Jesus does reaffirm that there is punishment for those who are not putting their faith in and walking out of a relationship with the God of Israel.

But I could see how it’s easy from the outside to look at many self-proclaimed Christians in the Western world, that it’s all about belief. And so I can do whatever I want because I’m under grace, baby. And say like, yeah, that’s not very Jewish. We talk a lot about actions and a lot about works that come out of belief, but it feels like what you’re doing is not that.
Yeah. So it’s understandable.

It’s the same thing when you’re a parent. I mean, you really understand this, right? When your kids’ hearts are in the right place, but they have a wrong action, you judge them a little differently versus they have a wrong action, and you can clearly tell their heart was in the wrong place. They slapped their sibling because they were filled with rage. But there’s a difference if they slap their sibling because their sibling slapped ’em first. It’s sort of similar when Jesus says, many will come to me in the afterlife and say, Lord, Lord, and he will say, depart from me. I never knew you. And they say to him, look at all these things we did in your name. And so there’s this marriage between action and faith and where our heart is with God. And I think in the modern Orthodox Jewish world, this is actually held in tension really well, just this idea of being in relationship with God, but also acting. And I think we have a lot to learn, even the Messianic Jewish community can teach Christians a lot about this too. Yeah,
Totally. That’s so good.

Christianity believes that Jesus is equal with God. A concept in Judaism that is ridiculous. God is outside our comprehension and cannot be human.

Yeah. This is the biggest one. I mean, absolutely. This is the biggest deal. If you boil everything down, all of the kind of orthopractic stuff of the Christians did this to us and whatever, it’s always going to land on the controversy of Jesus. Was he really who he said he was? He claimed to be the Son of God. And the Jewish community has decided that we can’t accept that. The problem with this is that it’s still not as tidy and neat as this claim is making because a Jewish scholar, Daniel Boyarin, went and wrote a book about all this, I don’t remember the name of it. It was published about 15-20 years ago. And he goes back and looks at a lot of the writing in the late second temple period, and he proposes that inside the Jewish worldview at the time, there was this understanding and openness to a lesser part of the Godhead. So one part of the Godhead who was fully God, but was hierarchically subservient to the Father. Well, what does that sound like to us? Right? It sounds like the Trinity, the three in one equal, but distinct with different roles. You see this in Jesus’s ministry. I only do the things the father’s telling me to do. He was subservient to the Father. So it’s not as outlandish as you think. But what happened again is after the temple was destroyed, after the Jesus movement began to take off inside the Jewish world, the rabbis wanted to create a stronger and stronger distinction about who was or wasn’t Jewish. They were worried that this thing was going to run rampant. So Jewish theology began to be more and more clear. I think in the late second temple period, what a lot of scholars are finding is there was a lot more of an openness to this lesser part of the Godhead. So when Jesus came, why do you think all these Jewish people were okay with it, with Him saying, I’m God? Because at the time, on the street level, the people were already open to that idea, and they didn’t feel theologically that it was bonkers.

So then again, it was a bold claim, but it wasn’t an unfounded claim.

Yeah. Again, it wasn’t an apostate claim. It might be a little heretical, right. Going back to that. In their world. But they’re like, yeah, but you know what? It’s still within the boundaries. So you have to go back and look at all this. And I think you need to sort through it. And it is, it’s controversial. Jesus was very controversial. I mean, but what leader in Israel’s history was not controversial. Which person that God chose in Israel’s history was not controversial.

Like Jeremiah or Isaiah?

Yeah, did the people listen to them? They didn’t. I mean, Jesus says, right in Matthew 23, Jerusalem, Jerusalem city who stoned the prophets and killed God’s messengers. It’s amazing. They really did. They sawed them in half with a wooden saw. I think it was either Isaiah or Jeremiah.

That was Jeremiah. Yeah.

And they didn’t receive the message at the time. You’re not speaking on God’s behalf so out with you. But then 500 years later, that guy was definitely seen by God. I mean, I’m not being judgmental because I think Christians are just as bad as anybody. I’ve looked at people within the last 10 years who like that dude’s crazy. And then 10 years later, wow, they were really hearing from the Lord.

Yeah. They were onto something.

Yeah. So give us a spirit of humility, Lord.

And then lastly, Christians believe the New Testament is inspired by God and Jews do not.

Yeah, we do. But again, Jews believe the Torah was inspired by God. It’s the same framework, right? Did God’s hand take Moses’ hand and go, okay, follow me like a scene from Ghost? Nobody knows what that is. Yeah. A pottery scene. The pottery scene lives rent free in my brain. Sorry. Do not put B-roll of that scene on this video. But it’s similar in that this is the writing of the apostolic witness. So first of all, what is everything that they’re saying? Everything Paul’s saying, he’s yanking from the Tanakh, the Hebrew scriptures. All the scriptures he’s quoting, everything. The way he’s understanding the world, he is writing about the witness of Jesus. All the gospels are the witness to the ministry of Jesus. So yeah, I get it. There’s a difference. But it’s like the saying, I wouldn’t go to a Jew and say, the Talmud’s a bunch of baloney, give me a break. That’s another one of those heavy subjects. But I would say that, yeah, absolutely was the scripture inspired by God? 100%. It was. And just like the Old Testament was, how do we know that Jeremiah’s words were inspired by God? I mean, that’s the same question. If you’re in the Jewish world, put that through the same litmus test as you would of a writings of a gospel or Paul. And I think you’re going to end up with a lot of the same metrics for kind of saying yes or no.

Yeah. Lastly, as we finish the conversation, messianic Jews consider themselves complete Jews, which is insulting to the Jewish community, inferring that they are incomplete Jews. And it showed Messianic Jews saying, or I think it was one video of a Messianic Jewish woman saying, I consider myself a complete Jew. So can you weigh into this? Have you heard this in the
Messianic community?

Yeah. I don’t like it. I’m sorry for anybody in the Messianic community. I have friends that use this word. I tell Christians all the time to avoid using it. And even my Messianic friends, because I think they’re trying to communicate that it was like they were looking for something their whole life, whether they were looking for it in the world, whether they were looking for it in the Jewish religion. And they found this fullness in Jesus. And I think all of us who have come to faith in Jesus, our testimony is that something was off. We were missing something. And when we found Jesus, he filled that space, but he didn’t just fill it completely. He’s teaching us how to keep filling that space with him and with the things of him. So the problem is that when you say, I’m a completed Jew, then think about it like this. You’re like 70% of the way there as a Jew, and the only way you get to the final 30% is with Jesus. So if you don’t accept Jesus, then the Jewish community feels like this point they’re making, is we’re 70% Jewish and the only way to get to 100% is putting our faith in Jesus. So we’re not as Jewish as the Messianic Jews, is the inference. And I’m saying that Messianic Jews are totally Jewish. And a lot of people in the Messianic community would say, putting my faith in Jesus is the most Jewish thing I’ve ever done, because He’s the Jewish Messiah. So that makes sense to me. I just think we don’t have to get it into a quantitative framework of like, we were incomplete, now we’re complete. And some of this is just based on some scripture, but I don’t like to use that framework. I think it communicates something that is a false start.

So as we end, what would you say is the first resource that you would recommend to start diving into this? If someone’s listening to this and they’re like, man, there’s so much that I don’t even know the history of this. If we’re trying to come back to the understanding of the early Ecclesia, the early church, which was rooted in its Jewish foundation. Where do we dig that stuff up?

Yeah. Right. So two books come to mind. One of them I see on the shelf above your head is “The Jewish Jesus”, by David Hoffbrand. Just reclaiming an understanding of the Jewishness of Jesus, the Jewishness of the scripture. I think the other book is called “Restoring the Jewishness of the Gospel”, it’s only like 110 pages, by Dr. David Stern. I think it just helps to start with reclaiming this Jewish world that Christianity lives within.

That’s good.

So for Christians, I would say start there. I would say if you’re a Jewish person and you’ve watched this and you’ve hung into the end, congratulations, Mazel tov. But I’d say if you wanted to start somewhere, start with a book by Dr. Mark Kinzer. Start with a book by Dr. David Rudolph. Paul within Judaism is a good subject to look at, but these are two scholars who are messianic Jews that take these issues very seriously, and I think, critically sort through some of the things that we’ve gone through here, and don’t just kind of boil them down to these really trite black and white answers. So Dr. Mark Kinzer or Dr. David Rudolph are two scholars who I think to a Jewish person asking these questions with sincerity, those two guys represent a very thoughtful, respectful, and within the Jewish framework conversation.

Yeah, that’s great. All right. Well, it was only an hour, so that’s great. Yeah. Crushed it.

See you next time!