Restoring The Jewishness of the Gospel

A Message for Christians Condensed from Messianic Judaism

David H. Stern, Ph. D.

• Publisher: Messianic Jewish Communications
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781936716180
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology

Introduces Christians to Messianic Judaism. Explains how both Jews and Christians are God's people, the difference between Jews and Gentiles in the Church, how God relates to Jews today and the relevance of the Lw of Moses for today.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
1	CONTEXTUALIZATION VERSUS RESTORATION
	A.	Christianity And Culture
		1.	Transcultural Judaism
		2.	Non-Transcultural Christianity
		3.	“Now That You’re Christian, Have A Ham Sandwich!”
	B.	Contextualizing The Gospel
		1.	Contextualizing The Gospel For Jews
		2.	Type I, Type II And Type III Evangelism
	C.	Not Contextualization But Type IV Evangelism
2	RESTORING THE JEWISHNESS OF THE GOSPEL
	A.	Definition
	B.	The Church And Israel In Theology And History
		1.	Three Theologies: Covenant, Dispensational and “Olive Tree”
		2.	The Church And Israel In History: Early Period
		3.	Olive Tree Theology
		4.	The Church And Israel In History: Modern Period
	C.	The Gospel Is Corporate As Well As Individual
	D.	Yeshua Is Identified With The People Of Israel
	E.	God Will Fulfill His Promises To The Jewish People
		1.	The New Testament Proves It
		2.	The Tanakh Proves It
		3.	Refutation of Arguments that God is Finished with the Jews
			a.	2 Corinthians 1:20
			b.	Matthew 5:17
		4.	The Promise of The Land
		5.	The Promise of The Kingdom
		6.	Conclusion
	F.	The Role of Torah in the Gospel
		1.	Torah Incognita
		2.	Nomos
			a.	Romans 10:4 — Did The Messiah End The Law?
			b.	“Under The Law” and “Works of The Law”
			c.	Galatians 3:10-13 — Redeemed From The Curse of The Law?
			d.	Hebrews 8:6 — The New Covenant Has Been Given As Torah
		3.	The Gospel with an Ended Law is No Gospel at All
		4.	New Covenant Halakhot
			a.	John 7:22-23
			b.	Galatians 2:11-14
			c.	Mark 7:1-20
			d.	Acts 10:9-17, 28
			e.	Acts 15 And the Torah
		5.	New Covenant Halakhah?
3	PRESUPPOSITIONS TO RESTORING THE JEWISHNESS OF THE GOSPEL
	A.	Christianity Is Jewish
	B.	Antisemitism Is Un-Christian
	C.	Refusing or Neglecting to Evangelize Jews is Antisemitic
		1.	Benign Neglect of the Jews is Antisemitic
		2.	Purposeful Neglect, Justified by History, is Antisemitic
		3.	Purposeful Neglect, Justified by Theology, is Antisemitic
		4.	Romans 1:16 — The Gospel is “For the Jew Especially”
4	BLESSINGS
	A.	How Will The Church Be Blessed?
	B.	How Will The Jews Be Blessed?
APPENDIX
GLOSSARY OF HEBREW WORDS AND NAMES
INDEX OF SCRIPTURE AND EARLY LITERATURE
GENERAL INDEX

INTRODUCTION

“The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” The Gospel which the Church preaches, the Gospel of God’s grace to individuals, expressed so perfectly in the first eight chapters of Romans and sometimes epitomized in four or five “spiritual laws,” is the truth, and it is nothing but the truth. But it is not the whole truth. The whole truth requires restoring the Jewishness of the Gospel.

This book brings one simple message, namely, that unless the Church does everything in her power to restore that Jewishness, she lacks a key component of the Gospel. In consequence she cannot fulfill the Great Commission properly, and the Jewish people cannot be the right kind of “light to the nations.” Rather than define what “Jewishness” means, I will let the whole book, in the process of presenting its message, convey the content and flavor of what it is that needs to be restored.

When the Church proclaims a Gospel without its Jewishness restored, she is at best failing to proclaim “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). At worst she may be communicating what Paul called “another Gospel” (Galatians 1:6-9). Moreover, not only Jews suffer from this off-target preaching — Gentiles suffer too. Therefore I believe I am focussing on an extremely serious problem which has not received from Christians the attention it deserves.

In speaking of restoring the Jewishness of the Gospel I assume that my readers will agree to the following three points, which are not themselves part of this restored Jewishness but are presupposed by it: (1) Christianity is Jewish, (2) anti-semitism¹ is un-Christian, and (3) refusing or neglecting to evangelize Jews is antisemitic. We will review these propositions in Chapter III, closing with an examination of what is meant by the phrase in Romans 1:16, that the Gospel is the power of salvation “to the Jew first.”

The first two chapters present the main idea of the book. Chapter I compares restoring the Jewishness of the Gospel with the alternative of “contextualizing” it and concludes that the latter is misdirected. Chapter II is the book’s center of gravity, a discussion of what gets changed when Jewishness is restored to the Gospel.

Finally, Chapter IV surveys the blessings which will flow from restoring the Jewishness of the Gospel. At the end is a glossary of all Hebrew words and names used.

This little book is written primarily for non-Jewish Christians and for Jewish believers in Yeshua [Jesus] who have not thought much about how Jewish their faith is. All the material in it appears (with minor modifications) in a longer book, Messianic Judaism: A Modern Movement with an Ancient Past², whose primary intended readership is Jewish believers in Yeshua who identify positively with their own Jewishness; others are encouraged to read it as if looking over a Messianic Jew’s shoulder. Therefore people who wish to pursue further the ideas presented in Restoring the Jewishness of the Gospel, or who find that it raises more questions than it answers, or who wish to understand better my viewpoint on these matters ought to read Messianic Judaism. Anyone who, after reading Messianic Judaism, has questions, suggestions or criticisms is invited to communicate them.³

As for those, both Jewish and non-Jewish, who do not believe in Yeshua, it is not a purpose of the present book to convince them otherwise. There is no shortage of literature aimed at persuading people to believe in him. But this book assumes, without supplying proofs, that Yeshua is indeed Israel’s Messiah, and that the New Testament and the Tanakh (Old Testament) constitute God’s word to humanity.

It has been pointed out to me that there are Christians who experience this book as promoting the Judaizing heresy which Paul condemns in the book of Galatians. But “Judaizing” does not mean encouraging New Testament believers to investigate the Jewishness of their faith. Rather, it means one or a combination of the following three things: (1) insisting that Gentiles cannot be saved by faith in Yeshua the Messiah unless they convert to Judaism, (2) requiring saved Gentiles to follow Jewish cultural practices, and/or (3) legalism, i.e., requiring Gentiles to obey ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents