22 August 2022
A Messianic Jew has suggested that I have completely missed the point of John 13:34-35 because of what I say about people like him: that we should be very cautious about trusting Jews who seek to join our covenant communities.
Ironically, this demonstrates what I meant when I wrote that. Jews claim they want to be treated like everyone else. That's a damned lie. They want to be served, and their cultural background insists that Gentiles must someday come to lie prostrate at their feet as slaves. It's so burned into their thinking that you and I are quite justified in being suspicious of Jews claiming to be Christians.
Indeed, it's one of the first things they need to talk about when introducing themselves to us Gentile followers of Christ. They need to specifically denounce that problem as something that marks Jewish identity in this world to help reassure us we can work toward trusting them.
On the one hand, Jews are actually more at home with the Hebrew mysticism inherent in following Christ. Paul came from the deepest, darkest depths of Pharisaism, and quickly rose to the heights of truth in castigating his own fellow Jews for twisting God's truth so severely. He was able to testify that Jews are uniquely evil in this. Yet, once the gospel gets hold of them, they have advantages by nature for which you and I struggle. Their faith can be something very special. They definitely have an advantage with the gospel, but only if they open the door to it.
It's not that I lack in love for Jewish Christians. It's a matter of a Pharisee's own warning about them. Today, we have an abundance of clear and detailed examination of Jews as Jews. Those who embrace that ethnic identity hold themselves above all the rest of humanity. Their arrogance about it is off the scale. They consider themselves the only ones in this world who truly understand anything that matters. They regard us Gentiles as non-human. Once you really understand that, you are in a position to understand all their carping and underhanded manipulation.
It's just too easy for them to carry that over into conversion to Christianity. Most of them struggle mightily to embrace Paul's self-denunciation about being a persecutor of Jesus Himself. Jews struggle with seeing themselves holding the hammer and nails at the foot of the Cross. Paul owned his sins completely. Jews struggle with that in ways Gentiles do not. They choke instinctively on the idea that they are not the one and only Chosen of God.
I've encountered this in my broad experience in church work. I've dealt Jewish converts to Christianity who struggle mightily with the necessity of confessing the truth about Jews as the world's single greatest threat to the gospel. Their old worldly identity keeps clawing them back into Satan's realm. In my experience, very few Jewish Christians will be able to joke about it their own moral struggles as Jews.
All I'm doing is paying attention to what the New Testament says about how Jewish Christians act, and what kind of things plague them while striving to follow Christ. If you get one that's really been through it, they carry a unique and holy fire. But without that, they can be your worst nightmare. If they cannot confess that, you can't really trust them. With them, it tends to be all or nothing.
On a related note, there's something peculiar about Christian Jews and Zionism. I've never in my entire life even heard of a Christian Jew who wasn't also Zionist. This is part of my caution about Jewish Christians, in that they tend to act like Jewish moles. To the degree there is Christian persecution in America, the vast majority of it is Christian Zionists harassing those who are not Zionist. There's no doubt this sounds like a conspiracy theory, but for those of us who do not support the modern State of Israel, the greatest danger we face is Zionist church folks, not the government. I'm quite certain this threat is the modern version of the Judaizer threat in the First Century.
Again, this doesn't warrant hostility, but you need to be on guard and expect various attempts to silence anyone who isn't a Zionist, AKA Dispensationalist. The fellow who castigated me via email admitted to being a Dispensationalist.
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