Why Does the Church Need Jewish People?

373 Views 2 min Mar 7, 2023 Theology

Did you know it is possible to be Jewish without Christianity, but impossible to be a Christian without Judaism? In this video, Nic explains three reasons why the Church’s relationship with Jewish people is not an option in order to be all that God desires us to be.

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Antisemitism (Collection) Church & Jewish Relations Where to Start

Video Transcript

I’ve said before that the church cannot be fully the church unless it is a table fellowship of Jews and Gentiles United as one in the Messiah, Jesus. So why does the church need the Jewish people? Here’s three quick reasons.

Number one, our foundation. Without the Jewish people, the Christian Church has no foundation. The truth is, you can be Jewish without Christianity. You cannot be Christian without Judaism. It’s impossible. The word of God that you read, the customs and things that you believe, they all emanated from a Jewish foundation of your faith.

Number two, the function. The function of our faith in Jesus is to be agents of redemption in the world. And to take part in that function, we have to know what our identity is because identity demands function. I am not a male because I can lift heavy things or because I can do some male oriented thing. And my wife’s not a female because she gives birth. She gives birth because she’s a female. This is her identity that God gave to her. And this is the identity that God gave to me as male. And so there’s an identity that God gave to the Jewish people, and that was, as Paul says in Romans 11:29, an irrevocable calling to be a light to the nations.

So if we as a church want to know what our function is, we have to understand our identity. And our identity is that we are Gentiles, people of the nations who have been attached to Israel’s destiny, which is the sake of world redemption that’s irrevocable through Jesus, Israel’s Messiah. That’s the functioning part of our faith.

And lastly is our future. The future of the faith in Jesus, of Christian faith in Jesus. It ends in Jerusalem with a Jewish Messiah coming back for a second time, sitting in a Jewish temple, being worshiped by Jewish people. This is our future. Israel is a part of our foundation. Israel is a part of our function as a church, people of the nations. And Israel is inextricably a part of our future. We cannot overlook these things. That’s why the church needs the Jewish people.