We are all familiar with the text from John 14:6, where Jesus says the following
6Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
This verse is usually quoted to show that there is no way to God outside of Jesus. However, there is one situation that creates quite a bit of tension in this regard, and that is the situation surrounding Orthodox Judaism. In the perception of many inside Christianity, they could be an exception to that statement. It was only this week that I heard someone say that he could not imagine that these devout Orthodox Jews could be lost only because they had not accepted Jesus Christ as their Messiah. Surely these “devout” Jews are very involved with their Bible, the Tanakh, they pray to God daily, and they keep the Law of God. Would these people be lost just because they do not to believe in Jesus? I have heard in various places that God still considers these Jews to be the people of God, and therefore God has mercy on devout Jews because the Old Covenant is still in effect for them. The Jewish people are seen as the “eldest brother” of Christians, and we serve the same God.
In this time of war between Israel on the one hand and Hamas and the Palestinians on the other, this question is particularly relevant and requires a closer look into the Bible.
There are a number of questions we can ask:
-1 Are the Jewish people still the people of God?
-2 Do the Jews serve the same God as the Christians?
-3 Can we see the Jewish people as the eldest brother of Christians?
-4 Is the old covenant still in effect for the Jews?
To answer these questions, we have to go to the Bible, and we have to put aside our emotions and feelings for a while. The Bible is the Word of God and therefore the supreme authority in this matter.
Are the Jewish people still the People of God today? To answer this question, we must go back to Exodus, where God makes a covenant with the people of Israel, who have just been led out of Egypt with great power. This covenant is the Old Covenant in which God uses Moses as a mediator. Just one crucial passage from Exodus 19:3-6 reads:
3And Moses went up unto God, and the LORD called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel; 4ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself. 5Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: 6and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.
The Israel of that time is here confronted with a choice by God: “Will you serve Me and live in the covenant and keep the rules associated with this covenant, so that you may be My possession, My people?” God chooses Israel as His representative on earth in the midst of a world totally under the power of Satan, and He does so on the basis that they are the descendants of the faithful fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. People are challenged here to follow in the footsteps of these fathers. God, in spite of the consequences of the Fall, has a plan to reconcile mankind to Himself, and to this end He chooses first Abraham and later the people of Israel to play a crucial role. The question now is whether the people as a whole made the proper decisions. As I read the Bible, I keep coming across a different story. Although there is always a small “remnant” that remains faithful to the God of Israel, the vast majority continues to make the wrong choice. The result is that after centuries of being tolerated by God, the people are at various times removed from the Promised Land, and then the Bible speaks of them being led into exile. Most of them, namely the House of Israel, never returned and disappeared amidst the Gentiles; a small part of the House of Judah had a second chance and was allowed to return in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, but they too repeatedly chose not to go the path of the covenant but another.
God’s plan finally culminates in the coming of Jesus, the promised “seed” of Eve, the woman, and Abraham. The question that can be asked after that is, does this not end the Jews as beeing God’s people and thus no longer have a roll to play, or do we still have something to expect?
In order to do this, we must go to the second question we posed, namely, whether the Jews serve the same God as the Christians. If so, then we have also answered the third question, namely, whether the Jews are regarded as our eldest brother.
In John 8:44, Jesus makes an audacious statement:
44Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
Jesus makes this statement towards the contemporary leadership of what is left of the great nation of Israel. In this passage, the Jewish leaders claim that they are the descendants of Abraham; however, Jesus disputes this.
On what basis then? Are these Jewish leaders, these Pharisees and scribes, not keeping the law, not living within the requirements of the covenant? We find the answer, among others, in Matthew 15:1-9:
1Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying, 2Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread. 3But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? 4For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. 5But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; 6and honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. 7Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying,
8This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips;
But their heart is far from me.
9But in vain they do worship me,
Teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
What is going on here? The Jewish leaders are accusing Jesus and his disciples of disobeying their traditions, which are said to date back to the time of Moses and have been passed down orally from generation to generation. These leaders claim that we should not only obey the written law of God, but that these oral laws, these traditions, also apply, hence the accusation. Jesus’ response is very simple and goes over and beyond this particular issue. In Jesus’ view, the written Word of God is negated by these oral traditions. In Jesus’ view, not only do they add to the law of God, but they also subtract from the law of God. For example, in Deuteronomy 4:2, Moses says the following:
2Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.
So not only is it important to follow all the rules, but it is also forbidden to make up rules and add to the existing ones. This hand-washing ritual found in Matthew 15 is such an illegal addition. But Jesus is also addressing a situation where God’s law and oral tradition contradict each other, namely, that the sacrificial rite, called “korban” in Hebrew, is used to justify not caring for one’s parents in their old age. In fact, the fifth commandment also implies that we are responsible for the daily care of our parents when they are no longer able to do so themselves. So what these Jewish leaders are doing is using their own rules as an excuse for not keeping God’s law.
The big question can be asked whether modern Orthodox Judaism is still in this tradition, or whether they are now really keeping the Law of God, as many people think today.
In today’s Orthodox Judaism, in addition to the Torah and the rest of the Old Testament, there is also the so-called Talmud. The Talmud is based on the traditions of that time, the so-called Mishna, which were written down in the course of the first centuries A.D. and supplemented in later times by the commentaries of the Rabbis. This Talmud has the highest authority within the Jewish religion, the Torah can only be interpreted within the framework of the Talmud, so you cannot just read what it says, you have to follow the interpretation that the Rabbis, the spiritual leaders, give to it. By doing this, they are explicitly still guilty of what Jesus was referring to, that they are taking authority away from the Law of God. Their religious practices still serve as compensation for not fully observing the Law of God. If this is true, then we cannot claim that Judaism worships the same God as Christianity, and we cannot see the Jews as our “eldest brother.
The fiercest opposition to Christianity, especially in the early years, came from Judaism. So it is not just that they accidentally did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah, but it goes much deeper.
We read the following in 2 John 1:7-11:
7For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. 8Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward. 9Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. 10If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: 11for he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.
This passage can be explained in many ways. At the time when John wrote this, there was the rise of Gnosticism, in which Jesus Christ is not seen as God incarnate, but of course this also applies to Islam, which will not confess Jesus as the Son of God, and the same applies to Judaism. So, the aforementioned Antichrist includes all religious movements, including Judaism, that do not confess Jesus as the incarnated Son of God.
This also answers our last question about whether the Old Covenant still applies to them. By not keeping the law of God in this way, by adding rules and substituting them for the law of God, they no longer claim the Old Covenant, even if it should still apply at all, and this is something that Paul makes strong statements about in Hebrews, but that seems to me to be a subject in itself for a later date.
