How Celtic Christianity Connected to East & West | The Untold Story - Part 8

 

For every man shall bear his own burden

1 Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.

2 Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

3 For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.

4 But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another.

5 For every man shall bear his own burden.

6 Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things.

7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

8 For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.

9 And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.

10 As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.

Galatians 6:1-10

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Judaizing The US Church

Photo (Courtesy) http://aronbengilad.blogspot.com/2010/04/messianic-jews-and-mysticism.html


By Harmony Grant
4-16-8

The Jewish Forward's recent "most read" article worries that evangelicals might be stealing from the Jews. But it is Christians who should really be worried.

The article describes a Passover banquet in Alabama where 1,300 Christians gathered for unleavened bread and bitter herbs and donated more than $10,000 to the Jewish Federation. A local rabbi complains, "It is a total taking over and arrogation to themselves of the entire concept of the Seder. It's totally Christological."

Evangelical Christians' support of Israel is essential to the Jewish state. The powerful Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations even publicly supports Rev. John Hagee-Israel-firster extraordinaire; they recently wrote the NY Times to defend him as Israel's "true friend". Binyamin Netanyahu-Israel's ninth prime minister, an extremist who resigned as finance minister in 2005 to protest withdrawal from Gaza-said Christian Zionists are Israel's best friends in the world! In a recent poll, a whopping 82 percent of evangelicals agreed that Christians are morally obligated to support the Jewish state. In his New Testament letters, the apostle Paul repelled attempts by Jews to impose on the early church the rites and legalisms of Old Testament law. He furiously rebuked the apostle Peter for bending to Judaizing influences; he said Peter "stood condemned." (Gal. 2:11) As evangelicals today fall even deeper into this unbiblical love affair, they are increasingly eager to participate in Jewish rites, own Jewish trinkets, and learn about Jewish culture.

Who is really damaged by this Christian appropriation? Jews are not becoming more Christian. Christians are becoming more Jewish! Jews are not donating money for Christian evangelism or even allowing it in their country)! It is Christians who finance a religion dedicated to opposing their own. And their gift of millions of dollars to Israel is flatly contrary to Scripture. Christians are instructed to give their tithes and offerings to the "household of faith," i.e., many Christian charities and relief organizations that help further the gospel message. (Gal. 6:10) Judaism and the state of Israel are emphatically not of the household of faith. Israel's "anti-missionary law" mandates a five-year prison sentence for any evangelical who gives to an Israeli a "material inducement" (Bible tract or even a cup of coffee) that might help persuade him to become a Christian!

Christianity Today should be debating the Alabama Passover, not the Jewish Forward. Christian pastors should speak up about the Talmud's anti-Christ vitriol, persecution of Christians by Israel, oppression of Christian evangelism by Jews in Israel and the US-and gravely warn against the Judaization of the American church. We should be asking, "Is this good for the church?" as the Forward and others constantly debate what is good for the Jews. But we don't. These debates never happen.

The Seattle Times published an opinion piece titled, "Passover seders are out of place in churches." Very true. But it was written by Rabbi Mark Glickman, not a Christian pastor as it should have been.

In Ohio, Catholic high school students took a field trip to a Jewish synagogue where the principal of religious education told them: "Judaism is the base of all Christian religion. It's good to know where you come from." That's interesting; I thought Christ was the base of all Christian religion. The "debt" Christians owe to Jews is increasingly taught by evangelicals wanting to stimulate support of Israel and ride the wave of Hebrewness. This movement is so intense the UK Guardian says, "From the mobilising might of CUFI and televangelists, to Jerusalem marches and the 65 million copy-selling Left Behind series, to be an American evangelical has become synonymous with fanatically pro-Israel politics." And the only concerned people getting any real air time about this areJews, the ones worried about compromising and collaborating with possibly "anti-Semitic" Christians.

It's deeply troubling that Jews, not Christians, worry about the Judaization of the church. This demonstrates the incredible deception of the evangelical community, which is so much less wary than the Jewish community even though this alliance is currently only a threat to Christians. Jews remain adamantly, consciously, and militantly opposed to Christian evangelism and theology-leery even to accept evangelicals' strong political and financial support. Meanwhile, evangelicals are so blind to the theological enmity between themselves and Talmudic Judaism that they rush headlong to support, defend, and now absorb Jewish identity and actions.

In his Seattle opinion piece, Rabbi Glickman makes a point that should shock many evangelicals. He says that "to be perfectly honest - the Seder [ritual feast held on first and second nights of eight-day passover] developed, in part, as an anti-Christian polemic - a "slam" on the then-new and growing religion called Christianity. Such religious critique is all but absent from contemporary Seders, but the anti-Christian roots of the event are unmistakable. A church Seder is thus a Christian event rooted in anti-Christianity." Basically-Christians who participate in the Seder are participating in an event directed against their own existence!

Glickman's admission is astonishing on many levels. First, it demonstrates Jews' safety and power in American society, that a rabbi could publicly admit the anti-Christianity of a yearly Jewish event. Second, it highlights a fact that Israel-first Christians refuse to face: Judaism opposes the recognition of Christ as God incarnate, Savior of mankind. For two millennia, it has been self-defined by opposing the explosion of Christian faith. Christians today can't participate in Judaism without opposing their own community and Lord. They can't support Israel without supporting Israeli persecution of Christians and Christian evangelism.

Besides that, the Judaization of the church corrupts and corrodes Christian theology. It's gotten so bad that a bunch of evangelical leaders recently took out a big NY Times ad just to remind people that Christians have to spread the faith (a major thing Jesus told us to do) and to evangelize Jews along with everyone else. This responded to a growing heresy that Jews have a separate covenant with God and don't need faith in Christ or need Christian evangelism. The Times ad expressed kindergarten Christianity-a basic element of our identity that is subverted by our growing obsession with Jewish identity.

Jews have long recognized that assimilation into Gentile culture posed a greater threat to world Jewry than physical persecution. It is long past time for Christians to recognize the threat of losing their unique identity as followers of Jesus and His earth-shaking message. St. Paul knew that the rites and observances of the Mosaic/rabbinic law would entangle the infant church, drawing Christians into their spell of legalism. He knew legalism would drive out the empowering liberating New Testament message of justification by faith alone.

How should believers respond to increasing efforts to incorporate Judaic elements in Christian theology and worship? Such "Judaizers" should be rebuked and repulsed, not embraced.


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Modern Judaizers?

Photo (Courtesy) http://www.texemarrs.com/022005/judaizers_need_light_of_truth.htm


December 31st, 2010 · Nicholas T. Batzig


It appears that, more than ever before, we desperately need to answer the question, “What does Modern Judaizing look like?” The Judaizers were, of course, those false brethren who secretly came into the newly found church to spy out the freedom that Christians had in Christ. We don’t have people creeping into our churches insisting that we need Christ plus circumcision to be saved. We laugh at even the idea that such nonsense could happen in our Reformed churches. So, can we simply wipe our brows with a sigh of relief and go forward knowing that we are not susceptible to such perversion of the Gospel? Are we only to see in the doctrine of Mormons and the JW’s a false Gospel and another Jesus? How are we to apply the teaching of Galatians to our own lives? Is it to be found in certain ecclesiastical settings in which doctrinal distinctions are taken seriously by men who profess to believe them (as some have suggested here and here)? How are we to understand in a careful manner a modern application of the problem of the Judaizers?

The book of Galatians is one of the most important, and yet, most difficult, books in the Bible. The glorious doctrine of justification by faith alone is expounded and defended throughout, on acc0unt of the legalism of the Judaizers aimed at the Gospel that Paul preached. One of the difficulties that the interpreter of Scripture is faced with is making a modern day application that is consistent with historical uniqueness of the Judaizing heresy. Paul, at the beginning of this book, explains to the church that if anyone comes preaching a different Jesus, or another Gospel, they should be accursed to the deepest part of Hell. It was not simply about being cut off from the covenant community (i.e. the social and ecclesiastical dimensions of justification) that Paul saw under attack, it was the soteriological dimension that was at stake–the question of how a man or woman was accepted as righteous by God. Paul had strenuously maintained that it was all based on the Person and finished work of Christ. It was not anything done in us or by us that caused our acceptance with God. Christ was made a curse for us, so that the blessing of Abraham (i.e. justification and the reception of the Spirit) might be ours by faith alone in Christ Jesus. The insistance that one needed to be circumcised in addition to trusting in Christ was to intimate that Christ did not provided a full and free salvation apart from anything we do. Paul ties the whole thing together at the end of Galatians when he explained that the Judaizers were seeking to avaoid persecution for the cross of Christ, and were wanting to boast in the flesh (human accomplishments). Very basically, it appears that the basic error of the Judaizers was not adding circumcision to the New Covenant people of Christ–it was in adding anything the finished work of Jesus for salvation.

J. Gresham Machen, in his Notes on Galatians, drew out, so very nicely, a careful application of the principle argument of Galatians to the church today when he wrote:

The particular form of merit which they induced men to seek was the mertit of keeping the Law of Moses, particularly the cermonial law. At first sight, that fact might seem to destroy the usefulness of the epistle for the present day; for we of today are in no danger in desiring to keep Jewish fasts and feasts. But a little consideration will show that that is not at all the case. The really essential thing about the Judaizers’ contention was not found in those particular “works of the law” that they urged upon the Galatians as being one of the grounds of salvation, but in the fact that the urged any works at all. The really serious error into which they fell was not that they carried the ceremonial law over into the new dispensation, whither God did not intend it to be carried, but that they preached a religion of human merit as over against a religion of divine grace.

So the error of the Judaizers is a very modern error indeed, as well as a very ancient error. It is found in the modern church wherever men seek salvation by “surrender” instead of by faith, or by their own character instead of by the imputed righteousness of Christ, or by “making Christ master in the life” instead of by trusting in His redeeming blood. In particular, it is found wherever men say that “the real essentials” of Christianity are love, justice, mercy, and other virtues, as contrasted with the great doctrines of God’s word. These are all just different ways of exalting the merit of man over against the cross of Christ; they are all of them attacks upon the very heart and core of the Christian religion. And, against all of them the mighty polemic of this epistle to the Galatians is turned. 1

1. Skilton, John H. ed. Machen’s Notes on Galatians (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publications, 1977) p. 10

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Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh

Galatians 5

1Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

2Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.

3For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law.

4Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.

5For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.

6For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.

7Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?

8This persuasion cometh not of him that calleth you.

9A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.

10I have confidence in you through the Lord, that ye will be none otherwise minded: but he that troubleth you shall bear his judgment, whosoever he be.

11And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? then is the offence of the cross ceased.

12I would they were even cut off which trouble you.

13For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.

14For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

15But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.

16This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.

17For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

18But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.

19Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,

20Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,

21Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,

23Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

24And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.

25If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

26Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.
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