8. Paul the Patriot

On the edge of the western shore of the Dead Sea, the lowest point of the earth’s surface, is a remarkable sight. As the sun rises in the dry desert air, light captures the top of a rock 1,300 feet high. At this spot in AD 70, Masada earned a place in history.

Jewish revolt had been smouldering for seven years against the Romans. After four years the Roman General Titus conquered Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple, massacred the citizens and completely demolished the city with the stones being dumped over the city walls into the valley below. A remnant of Jewish rebels held a former holiday fort of King Herod the Great against the might of the Roman Empire.

Stocked with food and water, the rebels held out for three years against the Roman army until the Roman governor built a huge ramp which enabled the Romans to destroy the walls. Rather than lose their liberty, the 960 Jews decided to commit suicide, thus robbing the Romans of the fruits of victory and providing a rich heritage of courage for the Jewish race. Today at Masada members of the Jewish armoured guard shout ‘Masada shall not fall again!’ That shout of pride and fierce determination represents, graphically, Jewish patriotism. 1

Jewish issues today

It is possible to meet in Israel Jews by birth, by religion and by citizenship. The equation becomes more difficult when some are not Jews by birth or religion but are by citizenship, while others are not Jews by birth or citizenship but are by religion. Still others are not Jews by religion or citizenship but are by birth! It is very difficult to identify a Jew, particularly as so many have the racial characteristics of a score of races and yet twelve million people identify themselves as ‘Jewish’. As one scholar said, ‘He is a Jew who says he is’. Normally a person is accepted as a Jew if his mother is a Jew.

Four contemporary issues concern those who care for the Jewish people and their religion. The first was the Holocaust, that incredible programme of genocide perpetrated by the Nazis in World War II. The impact of the Holocaust was horrendous upon the families of Israel. Wherever Jews gather around the world, the Holocaust unites them with a feeling of bitterness and national suffering.

Second, anti-semitism. In the Christian era, anti-Jewish feeling first occurred in the fourth century AD when the Roman Emperor became Christian; then again it appeared in the middle ages when the Germanic kingdom of the Franks sought to protect Europe from Islam and began a religiously based anti-semitism. There were other tragic occurrences in Europe, culminating in Adolf Hitler who persecuted Jews and Christians alike. Jewish political philosopher, Hannah Arendt, has indicated that whenever there is a suppression of true spiritual Christianity, anti-semitism is one of the results. Whenever Christians have been spiritual and close to Christ, such as were the Wesleyans, the Pietists and evangelicals of our era, they have been friends and supporters of the Jews.

But Christians recognise with shame that over the years many have despised and persecuted the Jews. They would sometimes justify it by referring to those Jews who yelled for the crucifixion of Jesus: ‘Let the responsibility for his death fall on us and on our children’. 2 Roman Catholics, at the time of the Inquisition in Spain, enforced conversation at the point of a sword. Martin Luther spoke foully of the Jews. Shakespeare presented an indelible caricature of Jews with the moneylender Shylock, and today right-wing organisations like the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist groups have continued that anti-semitism.

One Jew has written: ‘I don’t remember too much about those early years of my life, but I do remember when I was called a “Christ killer” for the first time. I couldn’t have been any more than five or six. I rushed home crying, not because I understood what a “Christ killer” was, but because I was afraid of the hate I heard in the voice. Later, when I was eight, I was playing ball in the school I yard on a Sunday in July. All I had on was a pair of shorts and my sneakers. As I started home for lunch, I encountered a big, grim-faced woman coming down the street. She stepped directly in my path and with the side of her right arm shoved me across my chest and knocked me down, saying, “Out of my way, ya little kike!” Again that anger – that hate which I could not understand. And I began to cry. I rushed home to my mother, and she quieted me and soothed my tears. That’s when Mom started to tell me about what it was like to grow up in the ghetto and about the hatred that the Gentiles had for Jews.’ 3

Third, Zionism, a term for the movement to establish the state of Israel. It came into focus in 1896. The original concept was that the Israelis were to occupy Palestine along with the Palestinians who had lived there for centuries. Israel’s poor treatment of the Jordanians and the Palestinians in Israel and the surrounding Arab nations has caused much Christian support for Israel to be subdued. The revival of a successful Jewish state had brought great solidarity among the Jewish people. There are 125 references in the Old Testament dealing with the promise of the return of the land. Since 1948, Israel has had its own land and, in the triumphant wars, has stubbornly held that ‘this land in my land’.

Christians should not necessarily accept all that Israel does politically and militarily. Zionism isn’t just a fulfilment of scripture; it is a humanist ideology that even atheist Jews can hold. It is a political and nationalistic phenomenon which is not necessarily carrying out the prophecies of the scriptures. Christians also must have a concern for the Palestinian people who inhabited the land before the Israelis, especially for those today who suffer in that part of the world.

The fourth aspect is messianic Judaism. There are increasing numbers of Jews who seek to live a consistent Jewish life while being Christian believers. Christian Jews who worship Jesus as the Messiah have been growing in numbers and significance in the last two decades. They worship the Lord, hold to the centrality of the Torah in worship, celebrate the Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles, keep the Sabbath, keep the traditions, heritage and culture of their people, celebrate Bar Mitzvah, and in every way are fulfilled Jews while still accepting Jesus as the Messiah. It is calculated that more Jews have become Christians as messianic Jews in the past two decades than in the past 2,000 years.

In a world where Jews themselves are questioning what it means to be a Jew, we must ask afresh: ‘What is the Christian attitude towards the Jewish people?’

The apostle Paul agonised over his own people. He was a Jew – proud of his race, a patriot who clung to his Jewish traditions. Yet more than anything else, Paul wanted his countrymen to be fulfilled by accepting Jesus as Messiah.

Paul’s Jewish heritage

Paul was conscious of the importance of his heritage: ‘I was circumcised when I was a week old. I am an Israelite by birth, of the tribe of Benjamin, a pure-blooded Hebrew. As far as keeping the Jewish Law is concerned, I was a Pharisee, and I was so zealous that I persecuted the church. As far as a person can be righteous by obeying the commands of the Law, I was without fault.’ 4

From a child he had learnt how God had chosen his people and initiated a series of covenants with Noah, with Abraham, with Isaac, Jacob and above all with Moses. To Moses the covenants were ratified, promises exchanged and blessings given. Those covenants were renewed at every period of Jewish history and the Jews were proud of their special relationship with, and privileges from, God. In spite of the fact that for centuries they were subject to harsh domination by other nations, at the centre of their nations, at the centre of their life was the sacred law or Torah which held them together even when they were a scattered people. For more than six hundred years before the time of Jesus there had been more Jews living outside of Palestine than inside it, but the one thing that kept them together in national destiny and identity was their commitment as a people to the Law. Paul was proud to stand in this tradition.

There were many advantages in being a Jew even though, because they had rejected Jesus as the Messiah, Paul felt deeply that they had made the gravest error possible.

How great is my sorrow, how endless the pain in my heart for my people, my own flesh and blood! For their sake I could wish that I myself were under God’s curse and separated from Christ. They are God’s people; he made them his sons and revealed his glory to them; he made his covenants with them and gave them the Law; they have the true worship; they have received God’s promises; they are descended from the famous Hebrew ancestors; and Christ, as a human being, belongs to their race. 5

How proud he was of his own people. But they had rejected Christ. They had refused to see him as the Messiah, the one who would redeem Israel. Now the good news was to be taken to people who were not Jews and through those who did not belong to his race, the peoples of the earth would be blessed through faith in Christ.

Paul pictures this in an extended allegory found in Romans 9-11. Archeologists have discovered a Roman synagogue which would probably have been known to the Roman Christians, called the ‘Synagogue of the Olive’.

Paul likens the people of Israel to a grand old olive tree: ‘and if the roots of a tree are offered to God, the branches are his also. Some of the branches of the cultivated olive tree have been broken off.’ 6 The Jews of faith who believe in Jesus Christ are still the living branches whose roots and tradition go down into the soil of their faith. But those who have rejected Jesus, who do not believe him to be the Messiah, are broken off and discarded, while some wild olive branches are grafted back into the main trunk of the olive tree. It was a Roman practice to bring new vitality to a tree by placing wild olive branches into the old root. Into the traditions and culture of the people of Israel – the old olive stock – God has implanted new stems of strong virile faith. Those old stems that ceased to have faith have been rejected and broken off. But the miracle is that, although the olive tree now grows with fresh virility, the day will come when the broken-off branches will be restored to their own tree again.

Paul says:

You Gentiles are like that wild olive tree, and now you share the strong spiritual life of the Jews. So then, you must not despise those who were broken off like branches. How can you be proud? You are just a branch; you don’t support the roots – the roots support you…You Gentiles are like the branch of a wild olive tree that is broken off and then, contrary to nature, is joined to a cultivated olive tree. The Jews are like this cultivated tree; and it will be much easier for God to join these broken-off branches to their own tree again. 7

Consequently, Paul preached first to his own people. Even though Paul was proud to boast that he was specially called to take the gospel to the Gentiles, he believed the gospel went to ‘first the Jews and also the Gentiles’. 8 Thus, after taking the message to his own people first, and being rejected, he would then take it on to others.

On one occasion, Paul and his companions went first to the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia and gave a message about the nature of salvation, demonstrated through the history of their people. It was only when his message was rejected that:

Paul and Barnabas spoke out even more boldly: ‘It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken first to you. But since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we will leave you and go to the Gentiles. For this is the commandment that the Lord has given us: “I have made you a light for the Gentiles, so that all the world may be saved.”’ 9

Three times in his letter to the Romans Paul indicates that the Jews come first. They come first in hearing the gospel of salvation, 10 they come first in receiving the wrath of God if they reject the offer of salvation, 11 and they can come first when God gives ‘glory, honour and peace to all who do what is good, to the Jews first and also to the Gentiles.’ 12 More than anything else the apostle Paul wanted his own people to believe in Jesus as Messiah. He wanted to establish messianic synagogues and congregations of believing Christians.

Jewish rejection of the Messiah and the church

Many Jews, both in Paul’s day and since, rejected Jesus as Messiah. They could not comprehend that a carpenter from Nazareth without any formal training – a man of patience and peace, who rejected all of the honours and power of this world, and who had been crucified as a common criminal – could possibly be the Messiah.

Then as now some Jews believed that the Messiah was yet to come, while others believed not in a personal Messiah but in the coming of the messianic era. Still others rejected the concept of a physical redeemer altogether. Jesus had never anticipated that the Jews would accept him as Messiah. In one of his most moving parables he told how the tenants of vineyard constantly killed the servants of the owner until the owner sent his own son, but he in turn was taken and thrown out of the vineyard and killed. This was a direct prophecy of what would happen to him. Then Jesus indicated that it was the rejected stone thought worthless by the people that was used by God as the foundation in the kingdom. 13

The Old Testament has more than three hundred references to the Messiah which can be shown to have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. There are more than sixty major prophecies which are fulfilled in him and in him alone.

But the church, the body of believers, was also rejected. Not only in our generation do Jews reject Christians as the true people of God, but in Paul’s day the believers were also rejected. This was because the earliest believers were nobodies, mere fishermen, farmers and tax collectors with no training or experience, simply ‘…ordinary men of no education. They recognised then that they had been companions of Jesus.’ 14 They were rejected because of the way they spoke of Christ as Messiah.

Why was this teaching such a particular offence? For two reasons. First, Jesus claimed to be one with the Father – to be God. This struck at the very heart of Jewish monotheism – the idea that God is one and indivisible. Talk of Jesus as ‘God’s Son’ suggested to orthodox Jews that Christians were claiming there were two gods! This was a logical impossibility as well as rank heresy. Second, the Jews did not believe that a crucified person could be under the blessing of God. Instead their Law taught: ‘If a man has been put to death for a crime and his body is hung on a post, it is not to remain there overnight. It must be buried the same day, because a dead body hanging on a post brings God’s curse on the land.’ 15 Henceforth a crucified Saviour was an enormous stumbling block, though the early Christians used this as the key point in their proclamation of the gospel. Jesus took upon himself the curse of the Law in order that we might be freed from the Law’s curse ourselves.

When his people rejected both his Saviour and his brothers in Christ, Paul felt constantly ostracised. He still took the message to his own people, but he proclaimed that the Temple was no longer necessary, that Jewish customs could be changed, that the Law and ritual were now fulfilled in Christ, that now the day of the resurrection of Jesus was the new Lord’s Day, that circumcision of the flesh was not required, only circumcision of the heart, to be a true Jew.

It can easily be seen why his own people rejected Paul. Paul gave three pointers which help us understand God’s attitude to Jewish rejection of Jesus:

(a) God gave his people a free choice

Paul believed the Jews were the chosen people of God: they were given all the privileges attached to this, yet they rejected Jesus as Messiah. God never forces people against their own will. He respects their right to choose, even when that choice is conspicuously wrong.

(b) The Jews were responsible for their own choice

God did not make them reject Jesus. They of all people should have had faith, but they refused to believe. Paul’s attitude to his fellow Jews is shown when he says: ‘My brothers, how I wish with all my heart that my own people might be saved! …They have not known the way in which God puts people right with himself, but instead, they have tried to set up their own way; and so they did not submit themselves to God’s way of putting people right.’ 16 That disobedience and refusal to believe is why the Jews placed themselves outside the salvation of God.

(c) Yet God still loves the Jews and will give them a chance to be saved

That is the wonderful grace of God. God still has faithful believers among his chosen people. Paul believed that there was a remnant of Israel who were still able to respond in faith. 17 There will still be great rejoicing because both Gentile and Jew will be one in their commitment to God through faith in Christ.

Some commentators believe that Paul has allowed his patriotism to run away with his theology. They say that because the Jews have rejected Christ they have no more special place in the economy of God than any others who have rejected him. But Paul’s teaching is clear: there is still a special place in the heart of God for the people he called his own; one day they will be reunited with the whole family of God.

The Christian attitude to Jews

In a world where one race of people have been disproportionately disadvantaged, prejudiced and rejected over the centuries, Christians must have a very clear understanding of their response to Jewish people.

*Christians should have a high regard for Jews as God’s chosen people.

*We should support the rights of natural justice for Jews and be strongly opposed to any anti-semitism as racist and objectionable. The Christian should reject jokes, snide business stories, stereotypes and caricatures of Jews.

*We must remember that it was from the Jewish race that Jesus, and therefore salvation, came – and be grateful.

*God still has a purpose for the Jews connected with the future purposes of the coming of the Messiah. The scripture states that all Israel will yet be saved. Although there are no clear details of when and how this will happen, Christians believe it.

*Christians should co-operate with Jews in all kinds of community work and social endeavour. We both have the same background of love for God the Father, the ten commandments and the standards of behaviour that come from a Judeo-Christian tradition. We have a common heritage of behaviour and belief that links us together beyond what humanist and secularist people can understand.

*We should help our Jewish friends to hear our own witness that Jesus is the Messiah, and that they can only be fulfilled as Jews by understanding and believing in him.

Some Christians want to show their respect for Jews and therefore will not discuss Christian matters with them, nor present to them Christ as Messiah. That is really a form of anti-semitism in that it discriminates against Jews by preventing them discovering Jesus as Israel’s promised Messiah. Christians have a responsibility to evangelise the Jews but in love with understanding.

The gospel is clear. All of us, Jew and Gentile alike, have sinned, but we are all able to be saved through Jesus the Messiah.

The American Jewish author, Stan Telchin, has the final word:

How shall we believers deal with each other? Paul summed it up in the first chapter of Ephesians: ‘The Messiah came to the Gentiles as well as the Jews to reconcile them both to God the Father; each of them has been selected and adopted into God’s family in exactly the same way: each of them is a joint heir with Jesus and, therefore, they are joint heirs with one another.’

As a result of all my months of study, prayer and experience, I came to this position.

I am a Jew, I was born a Jew, and I will die a Jew. Even if it were possible for me to reject my Jewish identity and heritage, I would never do so. I am a Jew by birth and by desire.

As a Jew, I am even more sensitive to the teachings of Jesus, who was born a Jew, lived as a Jew, chose other Jews as his disciples and loved the Jewish people. As his disciple today, I know that he is more concerned about the attitudes of our hearts than of the actions we perform. This knowledge permits me to have the peace I need to lay all of these issues before him, to cast my cares upon him as I yield to the very Spirit of God and follow after peace, love and joy.

In my relations with other believers, Jews or Gentiles, I am to follow after the peace that passes understanding as I seek the wisdom which comes from above. I am to avoid wrath and anger and striving on my own as the loving nature of God becomes more manifest I me.

In my relations with members of my family and friends I am to remain consistent, never turning my back on heritage, on my ancestry, on Israel or upon them. 18

Endnotes:

1. Yigael Yadin, Masada – Herod’s Fortess and the Zwalots’ Last Stand, Steimatsky. Jerusalem, 1984, pp. 224-230
2. Matthew 27:25
3. Stan Telchin, Betrayed!, Marshall, Morgan & Scott, London, 1981, p.25
4. Philippians 3:5-7
5. Romans 9:2-5
6. Romans 11:16-17
7. Romans 11:17-18, 24
8. Romans 1:16
9. Acts 13:45-17
10. Romans 1:16
11. Romans 2:7-9
12. Romans 2:10
13. Matthew 21:33-43
14. Acts 4:13
15. Deuteronmy 21:22-23
16. Romans 19:1-4
17. Romans 11:1-12
18. Stan Telchin, Betrayed!, Marshall, Morgan & Scott, London, 1981, pp.117-118

For personal reading

Theme: Patriotism for God’s Kingdom

Monday : God’s plan in history (Acts 13:44-52)
Tuesday : A great heritage (Acts 24:10-21)
Wednesday : Christ alone counts (Philippians 3:1-11)
Thursday : God is impartial (Romans 2:1-16)
Friday : Doers of the law (Romans 2:12-29)
Saturday : God’s mercy (Romans 9:1-14)
Sunday : Confessing and believing (Romans 10:1-10)

For group study

Topic: A message and mission to Jews

1. Paul was a Jew and he was proud of his race. What is the Christian attitude towards Jews?

2. The author mentions Paul’s idea of Israel as a grand old olive tree. What truths do you see in this? How does this relate to Christian missions today?

3. How far should religious laws, rules and regulations dictate your lifestyle?

4. What do you understand to be the basis of the Jews’ rejection of Jesus as Messiah?

5. Discuss the recommendations of the author on the Christian’s attitude to Jews. In what specific ways can these be applied today?

Friday, 17th July, 2009, 5:13 pm | Bible Studies