1. Our roots are Jewish—but our covenant is not the Sinai covenant
There is absolutely no question that Christianity begins in Israel.
Jesus was Jewish.
The apostles were Jewish.
The Scriptures they read were Jewish Scriptures.
The Messiah was promised to Israel.
The Gospel first went to the Jew.
Paul himself says:
“to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” — Romans 1:16
So Gentile Christianity isn't something detached from Israel's story.
But Paul also makes a remarkable statement:
“But now we are delivered from the law…” — Romans 7:6
And Hebrews goes even further:
“In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old.” — Hebrews 8:13
That's the key.
The New Covenant didn't erase the Old Testament. It fulfilled its trajectory.
Jesus didn't tell His followers to go backward and reconstruct the Sinai covenant. He announced its fulfillment.
Matthew 5:17 is critical:
“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.”
Fulfill.
That word matters enormously.
2. There's a difference between being rooted in Judaism and practicing Judaism
This is where I think some modern Christianity gets itself into trouble.
There is nothing wrong with learning Hebrew names, understanding Jewish customs, studying the feasts, or appreciating the Jewish setting of Jesus and the apostles.
In fact, those things can illuminate Scripture tremendously.
But there is a difference between saying:
“Understanding the Jewish background helps me understand Jesus.”
and:
“I need to become more Jewish in order to properly follow Jesus.”
The New Testament never makes the second argument.
Quite the opposite.
The controversy in Acts 15 was essentially:
Do Gentile Christians need to become Jewish?
And the apostolic answer was no.
The Gentiles weren't required to be circumcised and placed under the Mosaic Law.
That's extraordinarily important because the apostles had the perfect opportunity to say:
"Yes, you're Christians—but now you need to become Jewish Christians."
They didn't.
3. And Paul is exceptionally clear about this
Consider Galatians.
Paul becomes almost alarmed when Gentile Christians begin adopting Jewish covenantal practices as though they were necessary for their standing with God.
Galatians 3:2:
“Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?”
And then:
“Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?” — Galatians 3:3
That's almost exactly the issue we're discussing.
They had begun reaching backward toward the old covenant framework.
Paul's response wasn't:
"Wonderful! You're getting closer to your Jewish heritage."
It was essentially:
Why are you going backward when Christ has brought you forward?
4. This also explains the problem with claiming Old Testament promises indiscriminately
The Prayer of Jabez is a terrific example.
1 Chronicles 4:10 says:
“Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast…”
There's nothing wrong with reading that and appreciating Jabez's prayer.
But there's a difference between:
learning from a prayer
and
claiming a covenantal promise as though God personally guaranteed it to every Christian.
The Bible contains prayers, promises, judgments, prophecies, instructions, historical events, wisdom literature and covenant stipulations.
They aren't all addressed to the same people.
And that's precisely the interpretive principle we are getting at:
Everything in Scripture is for us, but not everything in Scripture was written directly to us.
That's a tremendously important distinction.
5. Matthew's end-time warnings demonstrate this beautifully
Jesus says things in Matthew 24 such as:
“then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains.”
That's not incidental wording.
Judea.
Jesus is speaking within a very specific historical and covenantal setting.
The disciples ask Him:
“Tell us, when shall these things be?”
And Matthew's entire narrative is saturated with Israel's history, Jerusalem, the Temple, Judea, the Law, the prophets and Israel's rejection of its Messiah.
That doesn't mean modern Christians learn nothing from Matthew 24.
We absolutely do.
But we shouldn't automatically transform every sentence into a direct instruction to a twenty-first-century Gentile Christian.
There's a distinction between:
historical audience
and
modern application.
6. James gives us another almost comically obvious example
James opens his letter:
“James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad…”
Who are the twelve tribes?
James tells us.
The twelve tribes.
That doesn't mean Gentile Christians can't learn from James.
Of course we can.
James contains extraordinary teaching about faith, works, the tongue, favoritism, wisdom, temptation, prayer and Christian conduct.
But there's a difference between saying:
“James teaches Christians…”
and saying:
“James was specifically addressing me as one of the twelve tribes of Israel.”
Those aren't the same thing.
7. And this is where the “every word is directly to me” mentality becomes dangerous
I actually think the observation here is one of the most important principles in Bible study.
Imagine receiving a letter.
The letter says:
“John, because you live in Virginia, you need to repair your barn before winter.”
Could another person learn something from the letter?
Certainly.
But they can't honestly say:
“This sentence was written directly to me.”
The Bible works similarly.
We have to distinguish:
What was said
from
To whom it was said
from
Why it was said
from
What principle carries forward to us
That's not diminishing Scripture.
It's taking Scripture seriously enough to let the original author and audience speak.
8. And then we reach something even more profound: Hebrews
Hebrews is almost a divine commentary on this entire question.
The writer repeatedly contrasts the old arrangement with what Christ accomplished.
Old covenant:
shadow
Christ:
reality
Old priesthood:
temporary
Christ:
eternal
Old sacrifices:
repeated
Christ's sacrifice:
once for all
Old covenant:
obsolete
New covenant:
better
Hebrews 10:1 describes the Law as:
“a shadow of good things to come”
A shadow isn't bad.
But once the reality arrives, you don't cling to the shadow as though the person hasn't appeared.
Christ is the fulfillment toward which the Old Testament was pointing.
9. This also explains Paul's extraordinary statement about Abraham
This is where Gentile Christianity actually becomes fascinating.
Paul doesn't tell Gentiles:
“You must become Jewish.”
He tells them something almost the opposite.
Romans 4 and Galatians 3 establish Abraham as the great example of justification by faith.
Galatians 3:7:
“Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.”
And then comes the breathtaking statement:
“In thee shall all nations be blessed.” — Galatians 3:8
All nations.
The promise to Abraham was never ultimately about God creating an exclusive ethnic club.
Israel had a unique covenantal role in redemptive history, absolutely.
But God's purpose was always larger.
Israel was the channel through which the Messiah came.
And the Messiah becomes the blessing to the nations.
That's precisely what we were uncovering yesterday. In our blog post, Was Paul's Gospel to the Gentiles a Different Gospel.
10. So what do we do with Israel today?
This is where we need to be particularly careful.
The New Testament does not teach contempt for Jewish people.
Quite the opposite.
Paul agonizes over Israel in Romans 9–11.
He asks:
“Hath God cast away his people?”
And answers:
“God forbid.”
So Christianity should never become anti-Jewish.
But neither should Christianity become Jewish-Christianity-as-a-requirement-for-Gentiles.
Paul's olive-tree analogy in Romans 11 is especially useful.
Gentile believers are grafted in.
Notice the imagery.
The Gentile doesn't become the root.
The Gentile doesn't replace the root.
The Gentile doesn't become ethnically Jewish.
The Gentile participates in something that began with God's covenant dealings with Israel.
That's a beautiful balance.
11. And then there's the name issue
This one deserves some nuance.
Jesus certainly had a Jewish name in His historical setting—Yeshua (ישוע), corresponding to the Greek Iēsous and English Jesus.
There's nothing wrong with someone preferring Yeshua.
But the New Testament itself was written predominantly in Greek and uses Iēsous.
So there's no biblical basis for saying that Christians who say “Jesus” are somehow using the wrong name.
The same principle applies to YHWH/YHVH.
The Hebrew divine name is extraordinarily important for understanding the Old Testament.
But the New Testament writers routinely speak of God as theos (“God”) and use Kyrios (“Lord”) extensively.
They didn't require Gentile Christians to master Hebrew pronunciation before they could properly worship God.
And there's an interesting theological point here:
The New Testament repeatedly applies Old Testament language about YHWH to Jesus.
So sometimes the attempt to make the Hebrew pronunciation theologically necessary actually misses what the New Testament writers themselves are doing with Jesus' identity.
12. The New Covenant doesn't abandon the Old Testament—it completes it
This, I think, is the heart of what we're seeing.
Christianity shouldn't say:
“The Old Testament doesn't matter.”
That's nonsense.
Nor should it say:
“We must reconstruct Old Testament Judaism because Christianity isn't complete without it.”
That's equally problematic.
The New Testament position is more beautiful:
The Old Testament was the foundation.
Christ is the fulfillment.
The New Covenant is the completed work.
Paul can therefore tell Gentiles that they were once:
“aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise”
but now, through Christ, they have been:
“made nigh by the blood of Christ.” — Ephesians 2:12–13
Notice what Paul doesn't say:
“Now become Israelites.”
He says:
“You have been brought near through Christ.”
That's the Gospel.
No comments:
Post a Comment