Christianity is Jewish

The following is an excerpt from the book "Restoring the Jewishness of the Gospel" by David Stern, Ph.D. You may never have thought along this line, but I encourage you to meditate upon it today. I will be posting various excerpts from this over the next few days. Blessings!

Edith Schaeffer, wife of the late Francis Schaeffer, wrote a book with the title, Christianity is Jewish. Her point, and mine too, is that Christianity, no matter how un-Jewish some of its current forms of expression may be, has its roots in Judaism and in the Jewish people.

The facts are simply not a matter of debate. For years all the disciples of Yeshua were Jewish. The New Testament was entirely written by Jews (Luke being, in all likelihood, a Jewish proselyte). The very concept of a Messiah is nothing but Jewish. Finally, Yeshua himself was Jewish -- was then and apparently is still, since nowhere does Scripture say or suggest that he has ceased to be a Jew. It was Jews who brought the Gospel to Gentiles.

Paul, the chief emissary to the Gentiles was an observant Jew all his life. Indeed the main issue in the early Church was whether without undergoing complete conversion to Judaism a Gentile could be a Christian at all. The Messiah's vicarious atonement is rooted in the Jewish sacrifical system. The Lord's Supper is rooted in the Jewish Passover traditions. Baptism is a Jewish practice. Indeed the entire New Testament is build on the Hebrew Bible, with its prophecies and its promises of a New Covenant, so that the New testament without the Old is impossible as the second floor of a house without the first.

Much of what is written in the New Testament is incomprehensible apart from Judaism...

Although the Gospel message is for both Jew and Gentile equally, the context of Messianic faith is Jewish. Even if one were to accept a false premise of Replacement Theology, that the Jews are no longer God's people, this would not change the fact that Christianity is Jewish. To try to understand it differently can only distort God's message.

About the author: David Stearn earned a Ph.D. in economics at Princeton University and was professor at UCLA. In 1972 he came to faith in Yeshua the Messiah. He then received a Master of Divinity at Fuller Theological Seminary, did graduate work at the University of Judaism, and was active in the Messianic Jewish movement. He has written books along with English translation: The Jewish New Testament and Complete Jewish Bible.