What is a Messianic Hebrew

Legalism is by definition, saying someone must do something (or not do something) to be saved. Has anyone said that a person must wear Tzitzit to be saved?  The answer is, no – I have not and Messianic Hebrews have not.

In a recent debate with Pat Donahue (Church of Christ), he stated Messianic Jews were not saved because they followed Torah. That is true Legalism and is a gross perversion of Rabbi Sha’ul’s (Paul’s) writings. Paul never said to do away with Torah. He did say:

In his writings on circumcision and other Jewish conversion rites; his condemnation was not on the practice, but on people thinking they had to do it to be saved. Thus Paul is not forbidding a Gentile from becoming a Jew, or forbidding Torah practices, but condemning them for believing they have to become a Jew to be saved. Those teachers of the law have added many man-made laws to God’s commands and taught that salvation is based on keeping them, hence they have put a fence around God. Salvation is based on God’s grace and by faith in the redemptive works of Jesus alone. Paul never left Judaism, he just learned from Jesus what true Torah observance meant.

The only “new” thing of the new covenant is that God’s laws are written on our hearts instead of written on tablets of stones. When we claim to be a follower of Jesus but then do away with what God commanded us, we are just kidding ourselves and need to wonder if we are truly born again, born of His Spirit. If we are, we desire to obey, not because we ‘must’ or to gain salvation but because we love Him and we demonstrate our love in our obedience.

This position is scriptural. May I remind you what our Messiah said: Mat 5:19 So whoever disobeys the least of these mitzvot (Commandments, i.e. Torah) and teaches others to do so will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But whoever obeys them and so teaches will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.

I think the words of the Master are the words we should learn from and live by.

So why is the church where it is today? Where did the early church fathers go wrong? How come is the church following a Greco-Roman Jesus rather than the Jewish Messiah? There is lots to say about that too but I’ll summarize this as briefly as possible. When the early church was established during and after Jesus’ time, they weren’t called “Christians”, they were called the Natsarims (the Nazarenes, as in ‘from Nazareth”) or ‘the Way’. They were observing the Torah because this is what the Bible commands. Jesus Himself was observing Torah, He went to the synagogues on Saturdays, ate ‘clean’ meat, observed God’s appointed feast, He did everything perfectly. That’s why He was the ‘living Torah’. However, during Jesus’ time, you had legal teachers, the Pharisees who have added many man-made commands/laws to God’s laws. They added many rules (turned 613 to over 1,500) like you shall not heal on Sabbath. And to make things worse, they taught that salvation is based on keeping these man-made laws as they elevated them even above God’s laws. That’s why Jesus taught so harshly against them.

Paul who was the most zealous Pharisee himself received an insight into ‘the new covenant’ and learned from Jesus directly that he (Paul) was wrong and that salvation is not based on observing those man-made laws but by God’s grace alone. That’s why Paul taught so much about law and about how we are saved by grace. When Paul speaks of ‘laws’ he speaks of 7 different kinds of laws. In the right context, you know what it means but without the right context, you are doomed to misunderstand his writings. And this is what has happened over the 2000 years or so. The Greeks and Romans despised the Jews, they were very anti-Semitic. And when the emperor Constantine made Christianity into the state religion of the Roman Empire, he who despised Jews as well tried to do away with anything Jewish, hence he put up laws that Sabbath should be no more and changed it to Sunday. He persecuted the early Christians for keeping the Sabbath. He himself came out of pagan sun-god worship, that’s why the move to Sunday.  Many passages in the Bible refer to how perfect God’s laws are, so the ‘church’ had an issue. They came up with the split of moral laws and ceremonial laws, teaching that the moral laws (you shall not murder, not lie, etc.) are still to be kept but since Jesus’ death, the ceremonial laws (keeping Sabbath, the appointed feasts, eating clean) have been done away with. 2000 later you have a church that has no idea of its roots and origins anymore.

You may think differently. I’ve been there myself.  I was a very zealous Reformist myself and spent nearly 1 year studying all the various discussion points,  Sabbath, church history, grace, legalism, being grafted into Israel, who are the Gentiles, abolish vs. fulfill, food dietary laws, His Appointed feasts vs. Christmas / Easter, Torah, etc. and I prayed, a lot. Prayed for Him to open my eyes.  In the end, I had to conclude that the Messianic way is true.