|
"Messianic Judaism"; or Judaising Christianity
Part 8 - Is Anything to be Gained by Compromise By DAVID BARON |
||||||
| Is anything to be Gained by Compromise? (6) One point more and I am finished. These brethren seem to think that by observing the Jewish ceremonies and customs, and thus demonstrating their "national continuity," Jewish opposition to Christ will be disarmed, and a way made to the heart of Israel for the Gospel. But history and experience prove that they are mistaken. The first disciples did try to keep up their "national continuity," and conformed to the customs of their nation; but that did not open the heart of the nation for Christ, or prevent their being hated and persecuted. Some twenty or twenty-five years ago, after the death of Franz Delitzsch, a small company of young German pastors who had been his students at the Institutum Judaicum in Leipzig came under the influence of Theodore Lucky (who is the real father of this modern Judaistic movement), and went out to Galicia and other parts of South-Eastern Europe to convert the Jewish nation on these lines. They told Jewish inquirers to remain in the synagogue, to conform to Rabbinic Judaism, and to wait till a national Hebrew Christian Church should be formed. But nothing came of it all, except it be some mischief. For many years Theodore Lucky, the chief and ablest of all the Judaising brethren, has lived in Galicia with a handful of secret "converts." These brethren go in for the "Maximum programme," and conform to the "national customs" of their people to such an extent that there is nothing to distinguish them in their manner of life from the strictest Talmudical Jews: have they in any perceptible degree disarmed Jewish opposition to Christ, or brought the Jews any nearer to the Gospel? By all means let us follow the example and methods of the great Apostle who said, "To the Jew I became a Jew"; let us adapt ourselves to the peculiar condition and needs of our people; let us show them that faith in Christ has not the effect of alienating love and sympathy in our hearts from "those which are our flesh," and that we are ready, if needs be, to sacrifice ourselves for their good; but, in the words of my friend and colleague in the Hebrew Christian Testimony to Israel, C. A. Schönberger, "However much we may stoop to the conception of our unbelieving brethren, taking into account all their peculiar prejudices, one thing we cannot and will not do—we will not lower the standard of Christ, nor smooth over the offence of the Cross." We will not preach another Christ than the One who is the end of the law for righteousness to all who believe, nor preach another Gospel than that of Christ crucified for our sins, and raised again for our justification; and by God's grace we will show to our Jewish brethren that not "observances" make a true Jew, but a character moulded after the pattern of Him who was the only true Israelite, though at the same time God over all blessed for ever! But in truth, to quote in conclusion some pertinent words from an able article by our fellow-worker, Naphtali Rudnitzky, in his little German quarterly, Der Oelberg: "It is neither our freedom from the law which separates us from our brethren, nor is it faithfulness to the law which unites us. One name divides us; at one hill is the parting of the ways. Jesus is the Name; Golgotha and the cross the point of divergence. "This was the experience of the first disciples of Jesus, although under the conditions of their time they held on to the synagogue a ground of contact with their people. 'Let us threaten them that they speak henceforth to no man in this name; and they called them and charged them not to speak at all, nor teach in the name of Jesus' (Acts iv. 17, 18). "This has been the position of the Jewish people since its rejection of the offer of salvation in Jesus of Nazareth. The cross of Golgotha was to the self-righteous people, boasting of the works of the law, an offence, and has continued to be so to the present. day. However we might slavishly humble ourselves under the yoke of the law, it would be but to hear again in the synagogue the cry, 'Away with such fellows from the earth, for it is not fit that they should live!' so soon as we proclaimed Jesus the Crucified as 'Prince and Saviour,' to give to Israel repentance and the remission of sins. "The Judaising opponents of the Gospel who preached a strict observance of law were aware of this, and therefore they did not come with the teaching of the cross, nor with the full Christ. They degraded the Lord, representing Him as a servant of Judaism, and His first elected witnesses as train-bearers of the Pharisees. With one voice the whole company of these Spirit-filled witnesses opposed such misrepresentation. "The success which the disciples had to record among their people was not the consequence of their strict observance of the law, but of their bold testimony to Him who was crucified and risen. Individual souls in Israel who thirsted for the truth and yearned for redemption from sin received their testimony; the others either took offence at it or scoffed (Acts iii. 11-13; Acts ii. 12, 13). And the same is the case also to-day. On the other hand, we cannot deny that not only in America, but in all civilised lands, a number of Rabbis have taken up a favourable position as regards the Person of Jesus. These Rabbis, however, and the Jews influenced by them, belong for the most part to the more liberal-thinking among the16 Jews—just those who consider the national customs as obsolete. He who would win them for Christ must not seek to force 'religious observances' upon them. "Zionism is strictly national, but, for the greater part, holds itself just as aloof from the religious ceremonies of Judaism as do the liberal-thinking Jews. "Now, as concerns the orthodox Jews—to them these observances are the mark not only of their peculiar national character, but of their religion; to them it is the practice of these observances which constitutes the Jew. He who would win them for Christ must first of all show them that their view of religion is a false one; that they have enveloped the heart—the kernel of the religion of Israel—in a shell. Return to David Baron Home Page |
||||||