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(From Chapter Ten of “The Irresistible Kingdom”.)

6 – Christian Misconceptions Concerning the COVENANTAL BASIS of the Kingdom

The record of the early Ekklesia reveals an intense struggle to break free from Judaism. Christianity then was not “Christianity” as we know it now. Believers in Jesus were really just a budding sect within Judaism. Let us revisit the circumstances in which the first apostles began their work.

In the first century there were four sects of Judaism: the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes,[1] and a new sect called the Nazarenes: the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth. The Book of Acts shows how the Ekklesia began. It was centered in Jerusalem. They still kept the feasts. They went to the Temple to pray. And they preached Jesus to the Jews only.

Thank God, this situation would not continue for long. Right away the Holy Spirit began to challenge the notion that faith in Jesus was merely an extension of the current system of Judaism. This was not a mere reformation, it was a revolution. Jesus did, in fact, establish a new covenant, and this covenant was with “all,” not just those of Jewish descent. It was a hard lesson to learn but the Holy Spirit is a patient, if determined, Teacher.

Peter’s rooftop vision showed him that God no longer distinguished between Jew and Gentile.[2] But it was Paul who must be considered the first apostle to really grasp the full implications of the universal gospel and its new covenant. He taught the Gentiles that pure, simple, naked faith in Jesus Christ was sufficient. The Jewish believers saw it differently. They wanted the Gentile believers to observe the Jewish holy days and feasts, and (above all) circumcision as outward expressions of “righteousness.”

Unfortunately, Peter wavered in an attempt to please both sides of the issue. After a very public disagreement between Peter and Paul, [3] attempts to turn the new Gentile disciples into full-fledged Jews was a lost cause. Thousands of people came to Christ through the missionary journeys of Paul and these new believers in Jesus were blatantly non-Jewish. No reasonable person could consider the Nazarenes a sect of Judaism anymore – there were too many Gentiles. A valiant effort by some Jewish believers[4] to persuade the Gentiles to at least adopt circumcision gained some momentum but was largely abandoned after Paul vehemently opposed it as “another Gospel… a perversion of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”[5] And so it was in the Gentile city of Antioch – not the Jewish capital of Jerusalem – that the disciples were first called “Christians.”[6] It was not intended to be a compliment, but the name stuck and it immediately served the purpose of identifying them as something fundamentally distinct from Judaism.

The whole story is there in the Scriptural record. How sad that two thousand years later some Christians are falling prey to the same old line of thinking and allowing the Judaizers to undo what took so many years to accomplish. There is a distinct and popular movement in the Church to return back to our “Hebrew Roots” and observe the Old Testament feasts and holy days, call Jesus “Yeshua,” and insist that all true believers follow their example. Once again, history repeats itself.

There is much to be gained from a study of Judaism and the Old Covenant laws, but in too many cases it becomes a distraction from the New Covenant, and that makes it a distraction from Christ. For a non-Jewish person to purposely adopt a Jewish culture and phraseology that is foreign to them, all the while thinking that this is faith in Jesus, is misguided at best; at worst, it is simply adopting yet another legalistic religious system that stifles spiritual growth in grace. It betrays a fundamental lack of understanding concerning the Old and New Covenants – both of which are clearly delineated in the Scriptures – and it repudiates everything the Holy Spirit endeavored to teach the Early Ekklesia, effectively undoing all the progress made in those critical first years which established the universality of the Gospel. Not surprisingly, some of the more aggressive “Messianic Jews” today do not accept the Book of Hebrews, nor do they accept Paul as a genuine apostle.
7 – Christian Misconceptions Concerning the HEAVENLY LOCATION of the Kingdom

When the differences between Christianity and Judaism are confused then everything else becomes fuzzy. A majority of Christians join the Jews in looking to the earthly Jerusalem as the seat of government for the future Kingdom of God. We have seen that the New Testament teaches that this Kingdom is “within” and “comes from above.” It is the New Jerusalem.

But since this New Jerusalem is spiritual and invisible, it is an exceedingly difficult concept for earthly-minded people to grasp. It is easier, and much more convenient, to adopt a romanticized notion of the Old Jerusalem rising up from the earth with Jesus sitting on a throne on the old Temple mount. It becomes increasingly apparent that Christians get most of their ideas about the end times from television preachers, movies and bestselling books rather than from the Word of God.