Provoked to Jealousy

if somehow I might move to jealousy my fellow-countrymen and save some of them.  Romans 11:14  NASB

Move – What have we done?  That ought to be the paramount question for our time.  I don’t mean what have we done to human dignity, social engineering, planetary capitalism, and the suicide of integrity.  I mean what have we done to create such an enormous chasm between those who love YHWH – the Jew and the Christian?  Paul recognized the beginning of such a tragedy and tried to take steps to prevent it.  But today it is Paul, ironically, who is proclaimed as the author of this divide – by both sides!

We don’t need to cite the numerous Christian apologists from the time of Origen who uphold Paul as the apostle of grace versus law.  But listen to rabbi Telushkin’s comment:  “It was perhaps in response to Jesus’ emphasis on faith and love, and Paul’s decision several decades later to drop the requirement to observe Torah laws, that many Jews came to focus Jewish religiosity on laws, specifically the ritual laws that most differentiated Jews from Gentiles.”[1]  He continues in a lengthy footnote:  “James sent out emissaries to each that the law of circumcision still applied, and he ordered Paul to observe Jewish laws.  Paul, however, rejected James’ command:  ‘We conclude,’ he taught instead, ‘that a man is put right with God only through faith and not by doing what the Law commands’ (Rom. 3:28).  It was Paul’s, not James’s, teachings that prevailed in Christianity.  Paul’s opposition to Torah law was basic to his theology.  If it was true, as Judaism taught, that observing the Torah’s laws could make one righteous in God’s eyes, then that would mean that people could achieve righteousness through their own efforts.  And if that were so, Paul reasoned, there was no need for Jesus . . . Once Paul marginalized the Torah’s laws and dropped the legal requirements for converting to Judaism, Christianity ceased being a Jewish sect and became a separate religion.”[2]

Like so many concerned Jewish thinkers, Telushkin seems to be reacting to the Christian Church’s interpretation of Paul rather than to Paul himself.  Imagine the shock on both sides to learn that Paul never rejected Torah, that he did in fact embrace a common agreement with James, that he didn’t see faith and the law as incompatible, that he certainly did not believe Torah obedience made Yeshua’s role irrelevant and (this might be the killer) Paul never saw himself as the founder of a new religion.  Christianity and Judaism have a caricature of Paul, tailor-made to fit their own presuppositions.  If either side actually paid close attention to the man’s written words, they might discover God’s truth is indeed a unity from Genesis to Revelation.  There is no “old” testament and “new” testament.  There is only God’s great purpose, revealed to Israel and through Israel to the world.  That division in your Bible separating the “two” testaments is a lie.

This leaves us with a great insight from these Jewish apologists.  The center of the argument is not the Messiah.  It is the Torah.  Until Gentile believers called “Christians” embrace Torah as God’s specific direction for the lives of His people, there will be no Jewish Sha’ul and there will be no need to reconcile anything.  We can all go on our merry ways pointing fingers at a man who never existed.

Topical Index:  Torah, provoke, Judaism, Telushkin, Paul, Romans 11:14