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Restoring our Jewish Roots
By Michael L. Brown
As the Church became primarily Gentile (a wonderful thing in terms of the harvest of the nations), it grew ignorant of God’s dealings with the Jewish people, somehow believing He was through with Israel and that their hardening was complete and permanent. This ignorance led to arrogant beliefs: "God is finished with Israel! We are the new Israel! The Church has replaced Israel! The Church has cut off its Jewish roots!
By Jewish roots, I do not primarily mean rabbinic or traditional Jewish roots (except insofar as they reflect biblical truth), nor do I mean that we should have a superficial fascination with everything Jewish – which is often nothing more than a sentimental fascination that does not bear spiritual fruit.
The Name Game
The stark reality is that by cutting off its Jewish roots, the Church cut off a source of life as well as truth, affecting the way we think – and what we believe – as Christians.
Let me illustrate this for you with a simple name game. What comes to mind when you hear the name Miriam? Do you think Christian or Jewish? Jewish, no doubt. How about Mary? You would probably say Christian. Let’s take this a step further. What comes to mind when you hear somebody talk about Mary, the mother of Jesus? You think Christianity. You certainly do not think, That’s Jewish! But if I say, "Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah," you think Jewish rather than Christian.
So there is a dichotomy in our thinking between the faith of the Old Testament and the faith of the New Testament, between Israel and the Church. Rather than seeing Jesus as the One who came to fulfill the faith of Moses and the prophets, we see Him primarily as the founder of a new religion called Christianity. Yet that is not a biblical concept. Mary is simply the Greek-Latin form of Miriam, Jesus is the Greek-Latin form of Yeshua and Christ is the Greek-Latin way of saying Messiah, "Anointed One."
There is more. What comes to mind when you think about the names Saul and Paul? This one is simple, right? Saul (in the New Testament) was a Jewish leader who persecuted the Christians, then he got converted and became Paul, a Christian leader, correct? Not at all! Saul was a Jewish leader who from birth also had the name Paul. One was a Hebrew name, the other a Greek name, and he was a Jew until his dying day – and a faithful one at that (see Acts 23:1,6; 28:1-8).
The point is, God gave us the New Testament in Greek to bring it most efficiently to the ancient world. The problem is the Church’s severing of its Jewish roots, thus forgetting the Jewishness of these names and concepts.
And did you know that what our English Bibles call the epistle of James is actually the epistle of Jacob? And did you know that English is the only language in the world where Jacob in the New Testament is translated "James"? The original text says Yakobus, "Jacob," and not "James". In German and Dutch Bibles, the epistle is called Jakobus; in French, it is Jacques; in Japanese, it is Yakobu; in Polish, it is Jakub. Only our English Bibles say "James" – completely without justification. Yet words and names have meanings and conjure up images of all kinds.
Church – Redeemed Jews and Gentiles
The word Church is not so much a word introduced by Jesus to describe all Christians around the globe as it is the Lord’s way of designating His worldwide congregation, His community of faith from every nation, consisting of Jew and Gentile alike, bound together through Yeshua the Messiah and King.
When Jesus said in Matthew 16:18, "I will build my church, and the gates of Hades (hell) will not overcome it," He was not speaking to His Jewish disciples about a new religious body and a new religion. To the contrary, the Greek word ekklesia, translated "church" in our English bible, simply meant "congregation, assembly of believers." The Jewish translators of the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible made more than two hundred years before Jesus) used this word to render the Hebrew words qahal and edah, both meaning "congregation, community, assembly)." And since Jesus/Yeshua spoke to His disciples in either Hebrew or Aramaic, He would have made reference to building His qahal/edah or gehala’/kenishta’ – standard words for already- known concepts.
What was new in the declaration of Jesus – radically new – was that this community would be His community ("I will build My congregation"), consisting of redeemed Jews and Gentiles, all with equal access to God, all with equal rights, all cleansed in Messiah’s blood, all empowered by the Spirit, all sent to change the world. What a congregation! No wonder the gates of hell cannot prevail against it.
Kingdom of God
A restoration of Jewish roots would also emphasize the importance of concepts like the Kingdom of God, a major theme in Acts, but hardly one in most evangelical circles today. Yet according to Acts 1:3, "After His suffering, He showed Himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that He was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God."
Philip "preached the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ" to the Samaritans (Acts 8:12). Paul and Barnabas told the believers in Antioch, "We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God" (Acts 14:22). In Ephesus, "Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God" (19:8; 20:25). Paul "boldly and without hindrance preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ" (28:23; 28:31).
Jesus, Philip, Paul and Barnabas were talking about the breaking in of God’s Kingdom and its eventual domination of the earth (as we pray in the Lord’s Prayer). This has implications for our daily living, for ministry in the gifts and power of the Spirit, for our view of the end times. And didn’t Jesus tell us to seek first God’s Kingdom, and then our earthly needs would be met? (Matthew 6:33; Romans 14:17).
Jerusalem
A restoration of Jewish roots would give us a better grasp on some of the end-time spiritual conflicts, not least of which is the battle for Jerusalem, the only city Scripture commands us to pray for (Psalm 122:6; Isaiah 62:1-8), the only city God called the apple of His eye, which He promised to protect with a wall of fire (Zechariah 2:5), the only city over which it is recorded that Jesus wept (Luke 19:41) and the only city of which it is written that all nations will attack it and God Himself will fight for it (Zechariah 12: 1-9).
This is because Jerusalem is the city to which Yeshua will return (Zechariah 14:1-5) and the city that must welcome Him back. He will not return to this earth until His own people, represented by the Jewish city of Jerusalem, welcome Him back (see Matthew 23:37). Everything is hanging on Jerusalem. That is why the conflict over this city is so great. That is why the terrorist group Hamas has freely spoken of "the Battle for Jerusalem," proclaiming that "Jerusalem will be the battlefield" and pledging, "Revolution until victory!"
Think of it. Jerusalem is not mentioned a single time in the Koran, it has never been a major attraction for Islamic pilgrims, and Muslims living near Jerusalem pray daily with their backs toward the city (while religious Jews worldwide pray facing Jerusalem), yet the whole Muslim world wants Jerusalem be the capital of a Palestinian State. Why? The capital city of every sovereign nation is recognized by all other nations, with the sole exception of Jerusalem, the holy city of the Jewish people for the last three thousand years, and the chosen capital of the nation of Israel. Why?
Return to our roots
Christian pacifist author Dale Brown once commented that "the radical must be a man of tradition, for without roots ‘he is unlikely to have the security to question the depths.’" This holds true for the Church’s Jewish roots.
A proper grounding in our biblical foundations would make us secure enough to question many of the man-made traditions that have often undermined the Word.
Sometimes the most radical, revolutionary thing we can do is return to our roots. Sometimes the way to real progress involves going back and retrieve what was lost before moving forward into unexplored territory. Sometimes the most revolutionary thing we can do is tear down and repair before trying to build something new. But doing this is costly, painful and quite unsettling.
My question for you is this: Do you really have a choice?
(Michael Brown is the founder and president of the FIRE School of Ministry in Concord, North Carolina, U.S.A.) |
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