The Jewishness of the faith

[johnd]

Shalom Aleichem.

In post after post on other message boards I encounter fierce opposition from believing Jew and Gentile alike that ours is a Jewish faith. And any deviation from it or attempt to reinvent it or redesign it will always end up in error (if not defeat). It's faith God's way or no way at all. This is usually where I am accused of trying to impose MY way on everyone else. Rather, I am in humble submission to the will and design of God the Holy Spirit.

2 Peter 1:20–21 (NASB95)
20But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation,
21for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

John 16:13 (NASB95)
13“But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.

All scripture came from prophecy (from the Holy Spirit through the the writing prophets). And the scriptures are of no private interpretation (including congregation, denomination, etc.). But God the Holy Spirit who authored the Bible is the sole interpreter of it. And to be sure what [we think] is the Holy Spirit giving us truth, there is a validation process prescribed in scripture:

1 Thessalonians 5:21 (NASB95)
21But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good;

1 John 4:1 (NASB95)
1Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

Acts 17:11 (NASB95)
11Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.

2 Timothy 3:16–17 (NASB95)
16All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;
17so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

[johnd]

We take figuratively deliberate expressions used in the Bible like King of the Jews. Is Jesus the king of the Jews or was he in the past only?

John 4:22 (NASB95)
22“You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.

The King James says "salvation is of the Jews." Meaning the pathway to salvation (to Jesus) is through the Jews, but also the outcome of that salvation. Salvation is of Spirit Jews.

Romans 2:28–29 (NASB95)
28For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh.
29But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God.

The distinction between the physical and the spiritual goes back at least as far as Deuteronomy 10:16.

Deuteronomy 10:16 (NASB95)
16“So circumcise your heart, and stiffen your neck no longer.

Reiterated in:

Romans 9:6 (NASB95)
6But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel;


Only the distinguishing between spirit and body could make any sense of this verse.

And when applying Romans 11:16-26 to include grafted in Gentiles into Spirit Israel (not physical Israel but Spirit Israel). It would be replacement theology only if this grafting in of Gentiles applied to physical Israel, which it does not. So in Spirit Israel (in Christ):

Galatians 3:28 (NASB95)
28There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

[johnd]

The prophet to the nations writes...

Jeremiah 31:31–34 (NASB95)
31“Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,
32not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD.
33“But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
34“They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

The Gospel of the Old Testament / Tanakh.

No mention of Gentiles here. Strange omission for the prophet to the Gentiles. Again the grafting in of the Gentiles through faith in the Jewish Messiah makes them of the Spirit House of Israel.

You see the standard (incorrect) perception is that Jew or Gentile plus Christ equals something other than Faith in the Hebrew God and the Jewish Messiah a strange / foreign entity that has no appeal to Judaica. The Bible speaks of provoking the unbelieving Jews to jealousy with something that would make sense of it all to them rather than some gentilized version of things. The Jews who came to Christ before the leaven of the Pharisees (their teaching) prevented them from even considering it... was that Christianity in those days is what made sense of it all (Judaism, the Law of Moses, etc.).

The Gentile / Roman Catholicized version does not make sense to Jews today and would not have in the first century CE.