Christ Covenant Church and her members will no longer identify themselves as Christians or their religion as Christianity. We are instead New Covenant Jews – and our religion, New Covenant Judaism.[1] The following represent the reasons for this change:
1. Jesus did not come to create a new religion (e.g., Christianity) but a new covenant for the already existing and ancient religion of Judaism first established (under the old covenant) at Mt. Sinai.
1.1. (Luk 22:20 w/Jer 31:31) = Not a new religion (e.g., Christianity) but a new covenant for the already existing religion of “the house of Israel and the house of Judah” (i.e., Judaism; hence Luk 24:27 “Moses” and “the prophets” – or the Law and Prophets represent the Scriptures defining the religion of Judaism).[2] (Heb 8:1-13 w/9:10 “reformation” [Grk., diorthosis = To make improvements on something already in existence]) = The author of Hebrews views Jesus’ ministry and covenant as an improvement (“better covenant…better promises”), a reformation versus a replacement of the existing religion that “Moses” and the Jews received at Mt. Sinai (v5 “on the mountain” w/Exo 25:40). (Joh 4:22) “salvation is from the Jews” = Salvation is only available through the religion of the Jews (Judaism).
1.2. If Jesus had started a new religion, He would have been a false teacher and deserved to die (Deu 12:32-13:3; Isa 8:20).
1.3. In relation to Christianity constituting a new – and therefore false religion consider God’s words just before His promise of a new covenant (Jer 31:27-30 w/Eze 18:1-4 w/19-20) = Penal substitution was the evil and unethical practice of the pagan nations around Israel who served demons (Lev 18:21, 20:3-5; Jer 32:35). As such, God not only condemns it under the old covenant version of His religion but promises its condemnation will be the sign of those following His new covenant version in the future.
1.4. The fact that all three branches of Christianity today (Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelical/Protestant Christianity) embrace not only penal substitution but the equally unethical doctrines of trinitarian monotheism and original sin (Joh 8:16-17; Eze 18:20) confirm they no longer represent what God promised and Jesus established. They are apostate.
Brad H. Young (Jesus The Jewish Theologian)
“Jesus was a Jew. He never changed religions. He was loyal to his people, committed to Torah in faith and practice…always remaining true to the vision of the prophets of his own ancient faith tradition.”
Marvin R. Wilson (Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots Of The Christian Faith)
“As far as the Gospel record is concerned, Jesus spoke from within Judaism; he never abandoned his ancestral faith.”
Joachim Jeremias (The Central Message of the New Testament)
“[Jesus was] a prophet who remained completely within the limits of Judaism.”
Frederick E. Greenspahn (Early Judaism: New Insights and Scholarship)
“Jesus, an itinerant Jewish teacher born and active in the first three decades of the first century CE, had no intention of beginning a new religion. Rather, Jesus operated within an exclusively Jewish [context], as did his earliest followers. Although they were different in some ways from other Jewish groups among whom they lived, their ideas and practices fall well within the Jewish spectrum…From a historical point of view it is clear that [Jesus] had no intention of beginning a movement that in time would not consider itself or be considered by others to be Jewish. Christianity was Judaism.”
2. The apostles viewed themselves and their fellow disciples as Jews practicing a form of Judaism.
2.1. The Apostle Paul viewed himself as “called” not converted to be a minister of a new covenant not a new religion: 1) (Gal 1:11-17) = What changed for Paul was not his religion (“Judaism”) but understanding that Jesus was indeed the Christ and that God had now “called” him to “preach Him among the Gentiles.” 2) (Act 21:15-26) = The only reason Paul would abide by James’ request is if the religion he continued to practice was a form of Judaism. 3) (2Co 3:1-7) = Not ministers of a new religion but a new covenant – one able to grant eternal life.
2.2. Even the Jews viewed Paul as still following a form of Judaism (Act 24:14) “a sect” [Grk., heiresis]= A group/party within an existing religion (in this case, Judaism) whose beliefs or practice on some things are different from its other members (Act 24:5 “sect of the Nazarenes” = Those within Judaism who believed Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah; e.g., Act 26:5 “sect of our religion”). On this note consider also: 1) (Act 15:5) “sect of the Pharisees” = These men were still strict followers of Judaism. IOW: They did not see their belief in Jesus as Messiah as a change to a new religion – hence the reason for their demand that the Gentiles be “circumcise[d]” and “observe the Law of Moses.” Their error was covenantal not religious (i.e., new covenants receive new signs/application to distinguish them from previous covs – e.g., Abe [cir.], Old [circ. + sabs]). 2) (Act 28:17-22) = The only reason these Jews were willing to hear Paul is because what he was preaching was still a form of Judaism (again, a “sect” – as in a sect within Judaism). If Paul had converted to an entirely different religion, no Jew would have come or been invited. As further support, notice Paul refers to his religious persecution as “for the sake of the hope of Israel” (20). Israel’s hope was a new covenant not a new religion. Lastly notice also, where he goes to prove the veracity of his message – “the Law of Moses and the Prophets,” (the Scripture defining the religion of Judaism - v23).
2.3. Paul identifies the followers of Jesus (including Gentiles) as spiritual Jews - and the Church, as Israel (Rom 2:26-29; Rom 11:17, 24 Gal 6:16; Eph 2:11-13; Phi 3:3). Paul also claims that Gentiles becoming Jews -and part of Israel, is what will make ethnic Jews and Israel, “jealous” (Rom 11:11).
2.4. The Apostle James identifies the followers of Jesus as constituting the twelve tribes of Israel (Jam 1:1) and mentions them meeting in synagogues – the meeting place of those practicing Judaism! (Jam 2:2 “assembly” [Grk., synagogue]; In this same vein – Act 5:12).
2.5. The term “church” (Grk., ekklesia) also possesses Jewish roots. It is the same word used to identify Israel -or the OC community, in the Septuagint (LXX).
2.6. The Apostles Paul, John and Peter, all identify the disciples of Jesus and the church, as the community now possessing Israel’s ancestry, religion and promised priesthood (1Co 10:1 “our forefathers”; Rev 1:6 w/1Pe 2:5 w/9 = Allusions to the OC priesthood of Judaism which God promised to restore [Exo 19:6 w/Isa 61:1-6 [Luk 4:18] and 66:21]).[3]
James Cantor (“James? Jacob! Brother of Yeshua, first Leader of the Church”)
James and the disciples of Jesus did not see themselves as Christians. They saw themselves as Jews who followed the Jewish Messiah. It needs to be kept squarely in view that these people did not view themselves as founding a new religion…James views the gospel message as a case of Old Testament promises to Jews being fulfilled, and Gentiles joining a Jewish messianic movement centered on Jesus, not of Jews joining some new religion.”
Craig A. Evans (Anti-Semitism and Early Christianity)
“Early Christians did not view themselves as belonging to a religion that was distinctive from Judaism. New Testament Christianity was Judaism – that is, what was believed to be the true expression of Judaism.”
Daniel Boyarin (Dying For God)
“Christianity developed out of the ‘orthodox’ Judaism of the first century.”
W.D. Davies (Paul and Rabbinic Judaism)
“In Paul’s response to Christ, the Messiah, he came to understand the Christian life as patterned after that of Judaism: it was for him not the antithesis but the full flowering of that [religion]’… Paul himself understands the Christian dispensation to be ‘according to the [Jewish] Scriptures’ and in this he was not alone in the Early Church…Paul’s appeal to the Old Testament for support seems to make the radical dichotomy between…‘Christianity’ and ‘Judaism,’ in our judgment, untenable. If the Apostle conceived of his Christian faith simply as something that was not ‘Judaism’, and held that what was wrong with the latter was that it was not ‘Christianity’, his intense involvement with the Scriptures of his people [i.e., the Jews] becomes puzzling…Paul belonged to the main stream of first-century Judaism, and…elements of his thought, which are often labelled as Hellenistic…[are rather] derived from Judaism…It would be erroneous to think that Paul regarded Christianity as the antithesis of Judaism as has so often been claimed. On the contrary, it appears that for the Apostle the Christian Faith was the full flowering of Judaism, the outcome of the latter and its fulfillment; in being obedient to the Gospel he was merely being obedient to the true form of Judaism. The Gospel for Paul was not the annulling of Judaism but its completion, and as such it took up into itself the essential genius of Judaism…We cannot too strongly insist again that for [Paul] the acceptance of the Gospel was not so much the rejection of the old Judaism and the discovery of a new religion wholly antithetical to it… but the recognition of the advent of the true and final form of Judaism.”
Marvin R. Wilson (Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots Of The Christian Faith)
“The Church, firmly planted in Hebraic soil, finds its true identity in connection with Israel. The Church is fed, sustained, and supported by this relationship…The more biblical one becomes, the more [Jewish] one will be…The Church is, in a tangible sense, the outgrowth of Judaism…[Paul’s] Bible was the Tanak, his God was the God of his fathers, his Messiah was a Jew, and from the Jews alone emerged his mother church… Gentiles who had come to faith within the early Church joined themselves to God’s ancient people [the Jews]. They had to adjust to Israel, not the reverse… Jesus and his followers and the believers of the earliest Church found their identity as part of Judaism.”
W.D. Davies (The Gospel and the Land)
“The very matrix of Christianity is Judaism: Christianity is the very bone of Judaism.”
Alan Segal (Rebecca’s Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World)
“Although Christianity’s destiny brought it to Rome and world prominence, its beginnings were in sectarian Judaism.”
Gerald R. McDermott (Understanding the Jewish Roots of Christianity: Biblical, Theological, and Historical)
“Jesus and the early church had deep roots in Judaism, and neither attempted to break from those roots.”
Matthew S.C. Olver (“Important Jewish Influences on Early Christian Worship”)
“For a while Christianity was itself one of the many forms of Judaism. This means the early Jews who believed in Jesus as Messiah and Son of God would not have thought of themselves as anything other than Jews.”
Stephen De Young (The Religion of the Apostles: Orhtodox Christianity in the First Century)
“It is a plain fact of history that in AD 35, Judaism and Christianity were not two separate religions…Clearly Paul does not see himself as someone who has left Judaism or the religion of his fathers [i.e., converted] but as one who was called to a particular service, despite a sinful past persecuting Christ and His Church…Saint Paul perceives himself as persisting in the same religious tradition…To summarize all this, St. Paul understood the religion he practiced (and the gospel he proclaimed) after his encounter with Christ as a continuation of that which he had practiced his entire life. He did not perceive himself to have disembarked from that earlier religion [of Judaism] and entered another [Christianity]…He saw the Gentiles he baptized as entering the religion of his youth; worshipping Yahweh, the God of Israel; and becoming children of Abraham…The Greek term typically translated as ‘Church’ is used throughout the Greek Old Testament to refer to the gathering together of the people of Israel. Its meaning is the same as in the New Testament – the Church is the assembly of Israel, God’s people, which has been renewed and restored…The tribes formerly lost have been reconstituted from among the nations into which they were dispersed. The notion that the Church has ‘replaced’ Israel or is somehow a ‘new Israel’ is nonsensical once one understands the language the Scriptures speak. The Church is Israel. Specifically, the Church is the assembly of Israel.”
David B. Capes (Israel’s God and Rebecca’s Children Christology and Community in Early Judaism and Christianity)
“[Scholars] regard earliest Christianity as a species of late Second Temple Judaism.”
3. The term “Christian” was not prescribed by Jesus or His apostles; rather it was coined by outsiders as a way to distinguish their sect of Judaism from others.
3.1. The term appears only three times in Scripture, each attributed to those outside the church (Act 11:26; Act 26:28; 1Pe 4:16).
3.2. Those in the church were not opposed to the term (e.g., Act 26:28 w/29), because they recognized it as simply one of the ways others (most especially the Jews) distinguished their form (or sect) of Judaism from others (e.g., Act 24:5, 14).
Daniel Boyarin (Dying For God)
“In the Jewish world of the first century, there were many sects competing for the name of the true Israel and the true interpreter of the Torah – the Talmud itself speaks of twenty-four such sects - and the form of Judaism that was to be the seedbed of what eventually became the Church was but one of those sects… and only much later became defined as [a] separate religion[].”
4. Only after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD - and not prominently until the 4th century, did those claiming to follow Jesus identify their religion as Christianity in an attempt to distinguish it from Judaism.
Daniel Boyarin (Dying For God)
“For at least the first three centuries of their common lives, Judaism in all its forms and Christianity in all its forms were part of one complex religious family, twins in the womb, contending with each other for identity and precedence…It was the birth of the hegemonic Catholic Church [fourth century], however, that seems finally to have precipitated the consolation of rabbinic Judaism as Jewish orthodoxy, with all its rivals, including the so-called Jewish Christianities, apparently largely vanquished. It was then that Judaism and Christianity finally emerged from the womb as genuinely independent children… Only the latter success of Christianity [in the fourth century] determined retroactively, that in its earlier relationship with the Rabbis it was a separate religion. It took the historical processes [under Constantine and Roman empire] of what we might call the long fourth century [including its Church councils] before the ‘parting of the ways’ was achieved…[Or] as Rosemary Radford Ruether put it, ‘the fourth century is the first century for Christianity and Judaism [as separate religions].”
Marvin R. Wilson (Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots Of The Christian Faith)
“The destruction of Jerusalem and the disappearance of all major sects but the Pharisees forced a reformulation of Judaism…Through the work of the Pharisees, a new Judaism gradually emerged. Rabbinic Judaism, as it came to be called, was a separate religion from [the Judaism of the Church]…[By the] second, third, and fourth centuries a new spirit of arrogance and supersessionsim had arisen [within the Church]…The tearing away from Jewish roots resulted in the Church defining itself largely in non-Jewish terminology. The word Christianity, derived from the Greek rendering (Christos) of the Hebrew mashiah, meaning ‘Messiah’ is representative of this process.”
5. If Jesus is the Messiah, then His religion is New Covenant Judaism.
5.1. The idea of a coming Messiah, sent by God to bring His law, justice and spiritual light or salvation to the world originates within the Old Testament Scriptures and the religion of Israel – otherwise known as Judaism.
5.2. Judaism therefore is the only religion where the statement “Jesus is the Messiah” has any relevance.
5.3. More importantly and specifically, Judaism is the soteriological context of those prophecies regarding Israel’s coming Messiah and the establishing of a new covenant (Isa 42:1-7 [“law” = A term used throughout the OT to refer to the religion given to the Jews at Mt. Sinai – i.e., Judaism; See also Isa 2:1-3; Mic 4:1-3]; Isa 49:1-8).
5.4. Therefore, to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, is to equally believe His religion is New Covenant Judaism.
CLOSING CONTEMPLATION: “The vital issue for the Church is to decide whether to look for roots in Judaism and consider itself an extension of Judaism, or to look for roots in pagan Hellenism and consider itself as an antithesis to Judaism.” - Abraham Hesche (The Insecurity of Freedom)
[1] This make take time to get used to, but we must be diligent to no longer accept or identify w/these terms in any way. This includes when asked by others, “Are you a Christian?” Our answer must be, “No. I am a New Covenant Jew.”
[2] Covenant and religion are not the same thing. Covenant is the legal binding of two parties in formal relationship. When one of those parties is God, we call that relationship, religion. What God first extended to Israel was religion (e.g., Exo 20:1-17 -the rules of the relationship), then, when Israel accepted, each were bound to each other in covenant (Exo 24:7-8). As such, the mention of covenant – as in new covenant, implies an already existing relationship – or religion. Covenants change, the religion does not (hence Mat 5:17-18 “law” = love, the “heart” of relationship).
[3] According to the author of Hebrews, the priests of Judaism are the only ones associated w/Abraham and therefore in service to his priest, Melchizedek – or Jesus (Heb 7:1-21).
