Biblical Judaism–
the Root of
Christian Faith
"They were all together part of the Jewish community, which included all sorts of movements. The Christians, as they eventually were called, didn’t have a uniform approach to Jewish law, but they were not trying to break away from Judaism. They were a group within it, trying to make their views normative. First-generation Christianity was a part of Judaism, but the next generation read us out of it." This is Presbyterian theologian Harry E. Gaylord’s startling observation concerning the church which Jesus established during the time of his incarnation. Describing the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, Bible scholar Morton Scott Enslin noted that the scattering of the Jerusalem church, together with the destruction of its records, was "the last blow which separated mother [Judaism] from child [Christianity]."
These two scholars of religious history have discovered a truth that more and more believers in the Christian community are learning today: our roots are in Judaism. Without Judaism, there would be no Christianity, for biblical Judaism is the parent of Christianity. One of history’s most ironic aberrations is the fact that Christianity, the child, has for the most part risen up in antipathy toward Judaism, the parent, so that Judaeophobia, anti-Judaism, and anti-Semitism have come to characterize Christianity for more than nineteen centuries.
Jesus, The Jew
Let’s face it, Jesus was a Jew! He was proud of his Jewish heritage. His own genealogy, outlined in both Matthew and Luke, was founded in the great patriarchs of Israel, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and included Israel’s great kings, David and Solomon. Jesus was called the son of David, the son of Abraham, and the Son of God (Matthew 1:1; Luke 3:38).
The physical seal of his faith was placed in him on his eighth day when his devoutly Jewish parents had him circumcised, initiating him physically into God’s covenant with Abraham and incorporating him into Israel’s ancient covenant, making him an heir of God’s promises to Abraham and his natural children.
From the time of his birth until he reached adulthood, his parents did "everything according to the law" (Luke 2:39), fulfilling their parental responsibility to the faith of Abraham (Genesis 18:19). They dedicated him at the temple and trained him in their home, in the synagogue, and in the temple, teaching him Judaism’s scriptures, history, culture, and tradition. When he was twelve, they introduced him to Yahweh’s pilgrimage festivals, a custom that he continued throughout his life.
By his own admission, Jesus came not to abolish the law and religion of God but to complete or perfect the "one faith" of the Eternal God forever (Matthew 5:17-19). He came as a reformer, but his reformation was actually a restoration in which he sought to return Judaism to the original principles upon which it had been founded in Abraham and at Sinai (Hebrews 9:10, 11; 12:2). As a result of tradition, Judaism had drifted from its inherent ideal; therefore, Jesus promoted restoration of the pure faith of God founded upon the Hebrew Scriptures alone (Matthew 5:21, 22, 27-32; 38-41, 43-44). Naturally, his reforming ideas often brought the charge that he was a destroyer of Judaism’s law; however, he immediately countered such charges with the affirmation that he had come only to fulfill (or complete) the law. The record of the gospels is clear: our Lord never undermined but always strengthened the law (Torah) of God, which was the foundation of the many sects of Judaism in his day, including the emerging Christian faith (Matthew 19:16-19).
A Reformed Movement
When Jesus established the church by ordaining the twelve apostles, he did so to maintain the governmental order that had been unique to Israel since the days of Jacob. When he introduced new methods for observing Passover and the Sabbath, he did so to perpetuate eternal ordinances of God in a new and living way. When he offered up his own blood for the sins of mankind, he did so to continue the divine law of atonement, unique to Judaism, by dying once and for all.
No, Jesus was not a renegade. He was not a disrespectful rebel. He was a Jew who declared that he was "not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matthew 15:24) and who initially instructed his disciples, "Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matthew 10:5, 6). He was a Jew who hesitated to give the children’s bread (healing) to the Gentiles (Matthew 15:26). He was a Jew who wept bitterly over the fact that his fellow Jews had not embraced the reformation that he brought to Judaism (Matthew 23:37).
The church which Jesus established was altogether a reform movement within Judaism. Since there was no such thing as a monolithic Judaism in the first century, the Jesus movement was in fact one of the many Judaisms, albeit a reformed Judaism that differed in many ways from the Sadducean and Pharisaic Judaisms that were dominant in first century Israeli society. Its leaders were Jews who still honored God’s only religion while at the same time seeking to cause their fellow Jews to understand that their religious faith had been perfected by Jesus of Nazareth, whom they recognized as Israel’s long-awaited Messiah.
When the Gentiles came into the church, they were not required to carry out all the ritual of Judaism; however, they were not at liberty to maintain practices adopted from pagan rituals, mystery religions, or Greco-Roman philosophy, and they were not at liberty to ignore the eternal principles of Judaism that were to be applied to their lives in new and living ways. In the earliest times, these Gentiles continued to observe this "Jesus-reformed" Judaism, God’s appointed system of praise, worship, and service in its New Testament order.
The Apostasy
After the death of the apostles of Jesus, and according to their predictions, grievous wolves entered into God’s religion, not sparing the flock or the sheepfold (Acts 20:29). Various theological and Christological heresies challenged the very existence of the church, and though the church survived these challenges, it was, nevertheless, influenced to deny much of its Judaic heritage in favor of concepts from the Greco-Roman world in which it functioned.
Earliest and greatest of these challenges against the church was Gnosticism, a form of which was championed in the early second century by Marcion, who taught that Jesus was the good God who had replaced and cast into hell Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament, whom he recognized as the Demiurge of Greek philosophy. Marcion introduced the first canon of scripture, a truncated and self-edited version that included parts of Luke and some of Paul’s letters. He declared that Jesus was not really a man, and he maintained that Jesus was most certainly not the Jewish Messiah predicted in the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures. While Marcion was branded a heretic and excommunicated from the church, the influence of his teachings has remained to this day, particularly his efforts at de-Judaizing the scriptures and the church.
From this time, some church leaders began well-intended and sincere efforts at converting the intelligentsia of the Greco-Roman world. Since some of them were converted neo-Platonists (so named because they were disciples of the philosophy of Plato), they thought that Platonic philosophy could be reconciled with biblical teaching. Some even declared that Plato was really a Christian despite the fact that he had been unaware of it! Others said that the same God who spoke through Moses spoke through Plato. Unfortunately, this line of reasoning that was an attempt to indiginize or contextualize the gospel in order to make it relevant to Greek society resulted in the sacrifice of the Judaic world view and mind-set of biblical times in favor of Platonic dualism. In an effort of self-preservation, many leaders of the church sought to syncretize Greco-Roman philosophy and polytheistic religion with the purity of their Judaic heritage. As had happened numerous times throughout Old Testa ment history, Yahwism (the religion of the God of the Jews) was overcome by concepts which were, in fact, based in the traditions of ancient Babylon. Century after century of Babylonian accretions were added from peoples, religions, and philosophies that were foreign to the religion of Moses, Samuel, Elijah, Isaiah, Daniel, Jesus, and the apostles. The result is what we know as Christianity today, a far cry from the faith which Jesus and the apostles practiced in the first century.
Severed from the Root
Christianity was systematically excised from its Jewish roots, as one by one the church transplanted the teachings of Jesus in the foreign soil of human tradition. The final blow of the Greco-Roman axe which severed Christianity from the tap root of Judaism was wielded by Constantine the Great, pontifex maximus of Roman polytheism, when he arrogated to himself the headship of the church, enjoined the observance of Sunday as a day of worship in the Roman Empire, and outlawed any practice in the church which was obviously rooted in Judaism. Constantine’s impact upon the church was summed up in his own words: "Let us, then, have nothing in common with the Jews, who are our adversaries . . . therefore this irregularity [Passover celebration] must be corrected, in order that we may no more have anything in common with [the Jews] the parricides and murderers of our Lord."
If some of the Jewish branches had been broken off from the life-giving sap of the olive tree because of their unbelief, the Roman axe struck at the very root of the tree itself because of the continuing anti-Judaism–if not outright anti-Semitism–of both Greek and Latin church fathers and finally of the "Christian" emperor himself. Is it any wonder, then, that the tree of faith in the God of Israel was replaced by the rationalistic sacramentalism of an imperialistic church and that the church took on a totally different appearance from what it had when Jesus and the apostles led it in reforming Judaism and restoring its inherent biblical ideals?
Reawakening To Our Jewish Heritage
Today, after many convulsive efforts at shaking off the Babylonian traditions of men that have been heaped on the faith of Jesus through the centuries, thousands of believers are coming to recognize the fact that they are deeply indebted to Judaism and that Christianity is far more Jewish than they had ever dared to imagine. As more and more people get back to the Bible, they find that the parts of modern Christianity that are founded on the Word of God are deeply rooted in Judaism. When you read the Bible, you get the picture: true Christianity is a New Testament Judaism. Every practice in Christianity that is authentic is based in Judaism.
Look at what we received from Judaism. The four greatest and most important things in Christianity–the one true God, the Bible, the Messiah, and salvation–are direct products of the Jewish faith. The Christian understanding of God is purely Judaic. There was simply no concept of monotheism in the ancient world except in Judaism. The conception of God as a person who interacts with his people was totally unique to Judaism. (Gentile religions, on the other hand, recognized polytheism’s pantheon of capricious gods, or they conceived of God as an impersonal cosmic force, much as they still maintain to this day.)
The Bible is a Jewish book from Genesis to maps. All of the authors were Jews (with the possible exception of Luke, a proselyte to Judaism). The message of the Bible is uniquely Judaic and can be found in no other religion in the world (except, of course, in Christianity, which came from Judaism).
Jesus, himself, was a Jew. "As concerning the flesh," he was called an "Israelite" (Romans 9:4, 5). He calls himself the "root and offspring of David" in Revelation 22:16, and Hebrews 7:14 tells us that it is "evident that our Lord came from Judah," the Israeli tribe that was first called "Jews," a contracted form of their tribal identity.
Salvation, both as a person (Jesus) and as a concept, comes to us from Israel and Judaism (John 4:22). Indeed, no other religion in the world conceives of the doctrine of sin and atonement except Judaism and Christianity which sprang from its matrix; therefore, no other religion espouses the idea of salvation, much less the person of salvation, Jesus, himself.
Numerous Christian practices have their roots in Judaism. We practice water baptism because proselytes were initiated into Judaism by circumcision and immersion in the waters of the mikveh, the ritual bath. We celebrate communion because Israel had the Passover, the elements of which our Lord used to celebrate the first New Testament Passover with communion. We tithe our income because Israel tithed. We give offerings because Israel offered sacrifices. We gather for public worship because Israel of old had the temple and because they gathered in homes for prayer, study, and worship in a system that became synagogal Judaism.
So, to one extent or another, we recognize Judaism in our worship of God. Some are more obedient to the faith of God than others, carrying out the ordinances of the New Testament order of Judaism. But, to one degree or another, all Christians are Jewish, for every believer in Christ Jesus is rightly called spiritually Jewish by the apostle Paul (Romans 2:28). Judaeo-Christianity, then, is an all-inclusive faith. Every believer in Messiah Jesus has a part, for every believer is a spiritual Jew and as such is entitled to the rights of Judaism. Having been grafted into the olive tree of Israel (Romans 11:17), they have become naturalized citizens of the commonwealth of Israel (Ephesians 2:12-16), and as such, they have all the rights of citizenship. They have not superseded or supplanted the natural Jews in God’s plans, nor have they received citizenship in the modern nation of Israel; however, they have come alongside the Jews in the economy of salvation.
If you are a Christian looking for your roots, look into Judaism. Many who have been searching for their roots have found themselves "on the Canterbury trail" and have converted to Anglicanism. Others have returned to Roman Catholicism, and still more have converted to Greek Orthodoxy. Why stop at Canterbury or Rome or Constantinople? Why not go all the way back to Jerusalem, where Christianity began? The answer to the search for roots is in your Bible, which proves that your Christian faith was birthed from biblical Judaism. Let us join Edward H. Flannery in affirming that an over-Hellenized, over-Latinized Christianity needs a "re-Judaizing process" to restore it to its founding Jewish roots and renew it in its own inherent ideal. Let us reconnect with the roots of our faith and begin again to draw from Judaism and the Jewish people the rich and nourishing sap that healthy, productive believers need.
Hold To God’s Unchanging Hand
"Build your hope on things eternal: hold to God’s unchanging hand." This refrain from an old, familiar hymn contains perhaps the single most important truth that the believer can use to understand the Eternal God. Comprehension of God’s unchanging nature is the most fundamental of all keys for understanding the Bible. Without this master key, we can only hope to stumble blindly about in the scriptures, spasmodically achieving a limited knowledge of dispensational truth. With this key understanding of the unchanging nature of God, however, we can undertake a progressive, systematic search of the Holy Writ from Genesis to Revelation and thereby arrive at eternal, unchanging truth, the principles which apply in any situation or time.
God never changes! We have his word on it: "I am the Lord, I change not . . ." (Malachi 3:6). If we can fully grasp the impact of this statement, we can begin to fathom the depths of the revelation of God’s will and plan for the ages. We can recognize that though men change, God is ever consistent, and we can understand that his plan for mankind is and has been an ever-unfolding manifestation of his will that is forever unchanged and unchanging.
The concept of the unchangeable nature of God could best be described as divine law, the one law which Yahweh, the God of the Bible, established to govern his own actions. It is, quite simply, the governing element of all that pertains to or proceeds from the nature of God. It is foundational to all that God does, for he is eternally consistent, unchanging.
The unchangeable nature of God is encapsulated in the word immutability. Immutability is that principle of God which remains perpetual regardless of time, people, or circumstance. The manifestation and/or application of a divine law may change, but the principles which govern those manifestations never change. They always remain consistent and are irrevocable.
An Immutable God
The immutability of God is summed up very succinctly in this passage of scripture: "I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever . . . that which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past" (Ecclesiastes 3:14,15). No, God is not subject to change. Though his fundamental and basic plan for the ages may be developed for the purpose of bringing perfection, it is not subject to revocation or abrogation and the introduction of another totally different plan and will.
Even the name that God chose to be his memorial forever (Exodus 3:15) is a revelation of his immutable nature. Contrary to popular practice in the Western world, names in Hebrew culture were chosen to reflect the nature of the bearer. So it was with God’s personal name, Yahweh, which is associated with other forms of the name and translated as, "I Am That I Am" or "I Will Be What I Will Be" (Exodus 3:14). This name stands first as a statement of its Bearer’s aseity, his condition of underived existence. God is because he is: he is the source of his own existence. There was never a time when he did not exist, nor will there ever be a time when he will not exist. The name Yahweh also reveals God’s quality of immutability. Yahweh is eternally the same. He lives in the eternal now, outside the envelope of the space-energy-time continuum that we call the universe. There is no past for him, and there is no future, only the present. Though this principle is incomprehensible to finite beings like ourselves, it helps us to understand why and how God can always be the same, immutable.
God never changes in two senses: he always remains consistent in the principles by which he operates, and he is forever consistent in the fulfillment of his promises and decrees. We can have perfect confidence that the promises of God are sure to the believer because they are founded on the same principle of immutability on which the very existence of God is based. He cannot lie (Hebrews 6:18). He cannot fail (Deuteronomy 31:6). God is ever the same: the immutable one, and his Word is ever the same: incontrovertible.
God does not change because he cannot change. If he were ever to change, either what he was or what he would be must, of necessity, be imperfect. And, if he ever were or ever should be imperfect, then he would not be God. There was never a time when he was not perfect, and there will never be a time when he will not be perfect; therefore, there was never a time when he changed, nor will there ever be a time when he will change.
Understanding Through Material Things
Romans 1:20 tells us that we can understand God, even his eternal power and deity, by observing the things that he has made. We can know, therefore, that we are serving an unchanging God by looking at the universe which he created. Orderly existence on our planet and in rest of the universe would be impossible if it were not for the existence of immutable laws of physics. Without the laws of gravity which Sir Isaac Newton discovered (what goes up must come down and for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction), everything would be flying apart in every direction with resultant cataclysm and self-destruction. Electricity could not possibly bless us all if it were not for the fact that Ohm’s law of resistance charts an unchangeable course of action for its flow. Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity has led to the discovery of the interconnection between matter and energy. All of the amazing technology of our day would be impossible if certain immutable principles were not operating in the universe to maintain consistency and order.
Israel God’s Sure Sign
One of the surest indications that God never changes is found in the nation of Israel. God related his immutability to the perpetual existence of the Jews in Malachi 3:6: "For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore, ye sons of Jacob are not consumed." For nearly four thousand years, the Jews have stood as a memorial to the unchanging nature of the Almighty, and they remain such even today. They have defied all the historical norms for the assimilation of conquered peoples, and they persist as an identifiable entity despite centuries of unrelenting and systematic persecution, torture, and murder directed against them wherever they have lived. Satan has continually plotted their destruction, and he has had ready volunteers to carry out his plans. If only they could be eradicated, the Word of God would fail, and God would be defeated. But, despite the best (or worst) efforts of tyrants, despots, and megalomaniacs to destroy the Jewish people, Am Yisrael Chai! (The people of Israel live!).
The vicissitudes of Israel’s continuing failures and lack of faithfulness to Yahweh, her husband, have never been grounds for his denial of his own immutability. God’s covenant with Abraham and his physical descendants was a unilateral commitment from God himself and was not contingent upon Israel’s actions; therefore, the calling of God upon Israel is irrevocable (Romans 11:29). It could also be said that the unrelenting unfaithfulness of the church to Jesus, her husband (Romans 7:4), has not been cause for him to deny the immutability of his own deity. Jesus, like the Eternal Father, remains unchangeable: "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever" (Hebrews 13:8). He is ever like his Father in continuing to give good gifts to his people, both Israel and the church: "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning" (James 1:17). The High Priest who now offers gifts to men (Ephesians 4:8) is an immutable Mediator between an immutable God and man. This is why Jesus could say, "Before Abraham was, I am," because his goings forth were "from everlasting" (Micah 5:2). He, with the Father, has always been and will always be. And, even "unto everlasting" he will remain the same.
History Repeats Itself
This common, well-known saying very accurately states the overriding application of the immutability of God in the affairs of men. World history is replete with examples of the repetition of circumstances and events governed by the same laws. The birth, rise, decline, and fall of empires in succeeding generations have followed a strikingly similar pattern as though a given set of circumstances applied to the frailties of human nature always produces the same results. Just as God is immutable, sin remains unchanged, so that there is no such thing as a new morality—just the same old immorality in the society of man.
This truth of the repetitive nature of history is clearly encapsulated in Ecclesiastes 1:9: "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." The eternal, immutable principles of God’s Word continue to be manifest in every generation of man’s existence upon planet earth.
This is not to say that history is, as Eastern Monism would have us believe, purely fatalistic, an unending, mindless cycle of cause and effect, with every effect becoming the cause of the next effect ad infinitum. Nor is it to say that history is cyclical, as the Greek philosophers believed, with everything returning to its source and the ideal condition’s being escape from time itself. History is covenantal, not causal. It is linear, not cyclical. It began somewhere (with creation ex nihilo by God, himself), and it is progressing along a predetermined line toward an ending (the advent of the Messianic Age). Everything is unfolding according to the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God (Acts 2:23). His plan for the ages is set and immutable (Romans 8:29, 30) and is based on his covenants, not man’s actions.
In deference to man’s free will God has chosen to limit his sovereignty so that each individual may choose his own destiny (Joshua 24:15). Men, therefore, either hear the voice of God and restore his will and ways in the earth, or they follow their own devices, repeating the same mistakes that destroyed their ancestors. Mankind’s infidelity has never altered nor can it ever negate God’s fidelity and his immutability. God’s will continues to progress rectilinearly despite his people’s tendency to reverse course or proceed tangentally. Because of his faithfulness, God always finds people who will yield to his reforming hand and return to the precharted course of his will. Reformation and restoration, therefore, are repeating dynamics in salvation history.
History repeats itself not only in the secular realm but also in the spiritual world. This fundamental principle prompted Bildad to rationalize: "For inquire, I pray thee, of the former age, and prepare thyself to the search of their fathers: (For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow:) shall they not teach thee, and tell thee, and utter words out of their hearts?" (Job 8:8-10).
The best way for us to learn something about God’s will today is to inquire of ages past. We can be sure that an unchanging God will operate by the same principles by which he brought forth his will in the past. God simply does not have one will for one time and another for another, nor does he have one will for one people and another for another. He is ever consistent in his demands upon mankind and has even implanted the fundamental principles of that will in the genetic code, the very DNA of man: "For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another . . ." (Romans 2:14, 15).
It’s In The Numbers
Numbers are code words that a Bible student can use to understand the working of God. The immutability of God requires that they be repeated constantly. The circumstances and applications vary; however, the principles remain immutable.
Three is the fundamental building block of many important aspects of heaven and earth. There are three personalities manifest in the one Being of substance called God. There are exactly three components of the universe: time, space, and energy (which includes matter). There are three and only three colors of light from which every other color is made (yellow, cyan, and magenta).
We find the number twelve (or its multiple) whenever judgment is set (Numbers 1:44; Matthew 19:28; Revelation 4:4) or when foundations are laid (Revelation 21:19; Mark 3:13, 14). Seven is used when power is manifested (Joshua 6:4; Judges 16:19; Revelation 1:4; 15:6) and when light comes forth (Exodus 25:31-40; Zechariah 4:2-6; Revelation 1:12; 4:5). Other numbers, including ten, forty, and fifty, are repeated continually as God deals with his people in succeeding generations.
Types, Shadows, Metaphors, Allegories, and Prophecy
One of the tools that God has given us to understand his revelation in the Messiah and in the church which he built is based entirely upon the principle of immutability. When we understand the immutability of God, we can comprehend how that events in the life of Jesus and the earliest church duplicated many of the events and circumstances in the lives of Adam, Isaac, Moses, and numerous other characters in the Hebrew Scriptures. If God never changes, we might readily expect to see the same principles manifest in his chosen people and their leaders in succeeding generations.
Jesus, himself, tells us that "all the law and the prophets prophesied until John" (Matthew 11:13). Now we can readily understand how the prophets proph esied, but how is it possible that the law prophesied? The truth is that the law had "a shadow of good things to come, but not the very image" (Hebrews 10:1). People and events in their lives under the first covenant were typical of people and events that occurred under the new covenant. God laid down types in his dealings with the people of the Hebrew Scriptures that were fulfilled in the antitypes of those in the apostolic writings. All of the Word of God in the first covenant was prophetic of Messiah and the new covenant. It contained similes, metaphors, and allegories (Galatians 4:23, 24) that were manifest in Jesus. These were the shadows of things to come, but the reality was Christ (Colossians 2:17).
We can better understand this manifestation of divine immutability if we call the events of the first covenant pictures of the reality that was to come in the new covenant. They were blueprints of the actual structures that were to be manifest. Moses’ life was a picture of the life of Jesus, the Messiah. Israel in the desert was propaedeutic of the church. This helps us to understand how types and shadows, allegories, and prophecy are part of the Judaic hermeneutic.
Even prophecy itself is subject to repeated fulfillments in different parallel eras so that it often can be seen to have a preteritist fulfillment, a spiritual fulfillment, and an eschatological fulfillment. Such is the case with Amos 9:11: "In that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen . . . that they may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen, which are called by my name, saith the Lord that doeth this." This prophecy was fulfilled historically in the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple in the days of Zerubbabel, Joshua, Ezra, and Nehemiah; however, according to James, it was fulfilled again when Jesus reformed the congregation of God and Gentiles were added (Acts 15:16, 17). This same prophecy is again presently being fulfilled in the restoration of the nation of Israel into their land "never to be plucked out again" (Amos 9:15). It could also be said to be in the process of fulfillment with the present restoration of the church, which, like the temple of old, had suffered at the hands of a Babylonian system (Greco-Romanism). And, the words of Amos might be expected to be fulfilled ultimately in the Messianic kingdom that is yet to come.
Understanding God’s Religion
The unchangeableness of God, then, is the underlying principle of types, shadows, allegories, analogies, and other principles which enable us to understand the working of God in a given time by observing what he did in previous eras. It has been rightly said that one cannot possibly understand the New Testament without knowing the Old Testament, for the symbolism of the New Testament is revealed in the Old.
When we fully comprehend the immutability of God, we can receive the full impact of Jesus’ statement in Matthew 5:17: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill." Jesus could not destroy God’s law or religion of fifteen hundred years to establish another. Knowing the full import of the unchangeableness of God, we can logically assert that if biblical Judaism were ever God’s appointed religious system, in some form it must remain his system.
Since God is not subject to change, he can only reform and remake until the perfect product is achieved. This principle of reformation is revealed in Jeremiah 18:4, 6, where we are told that when the clay became marred in God’s hand, he made it again into another vessel. God did not discard the clay (Israel). He reformed it again (and perhaps again and again) until it became the vessel of honor that he had desired in the beginning. God is simply not hampered by human frailty or failure. He never gives up on his people, for his gifts and callings are irrevocable (Romans 11:29).
What Jesus achieved was a reformation of Judaism, a reshaping of the substance of God’s ancient religion, not a destruction of that system. Hebrews 9:10 clearly informs us that Jesus was a reformer who perfected forever God’s religion through the introduction of the New Covenant in his blood. He is the author and the perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2).
How can we know what God wants today? With all confidence, we can "inquire of the former age" by looking into the pages of Holy Scripture to find the prophetic guidance that we need to work the works of God in this day. To know his will today, we must hold to God’s unchanging hand.
Is God
Really All That Fickle?
"Well, let’s see . . . what can we do today? I think I’ll try to . . . No, I tried that before and it didn’t work. Besides . . . I’m not sure that I like that idea after all . . . But, I’m tired of this same old routine. I’ve just got to do something new and exciting!"
If the thinking of many Christians today were correct, this might well have been a conversation between God and himself before he finally decided that he would send Jesus into the world to redeem fallen man. An amazing number of Christians think that God has been working on a hit-and-miss, stab-in-the-dark basis, flying blind, trying his best to salvage mankind, but always finding himself foiled by Satan and having to try something new.
First, God created man and gave him dominion over the earth, requiring only that he not partake of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But, that didn’t work, and man failed. Then God tried to let man regain his favor in a dispensation of conscience. When that didn’t work, God tried again—this time giving the law to Moses and Israel. After fifteen-hundred years, God finally realized this scheme would not work, so he decided to give up on the law and try something else. He would send his only begotten Son to bring a new religion called Christianity that would replace the flawed and unsuccessful religion called Judaism. Since we are Christians, we are sure that this time God has the right plan that will work.
But, does this make sense? Is God really all that fickle? Is he so limited in his foreknowledge that he was unaware that man would fail, that the law would not keep him from sin, and that he could not establish his righteousness through good works? Is God so inconsistent that he constantly wavers, changing his mind according to whim, giving up on one thing, throwing it out, and starting all over, trying something entirely different that he is not even sure will work?
The very idea is preposterous! God is both omniscient and omnipotent. He knows what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen. He is capable of doing anything he intends, and his power cannot be contravened. With such knowledge and power, why should God be considered to be as fickle as many Christians would have him appear? But, the myth continues, and most Christians today envision God sitting in heaven waiting, not sure what, when, why, or how he will complete this era, just waiting for the notion to strike him to send Jesus back to earth. Rather than subscribe to this absurdity, surely we must believe that the God who by his own word caused Jesus to become incarnate "when the fulness of time was come" (Galatians 4:4) will prompt his return when "the fulness of time" is come again.
One’s belief about the Bible and man’s relationship toward God reflects his understanding of in the fundamental nature of God. And, most Christians’ attitudes toward the working of God among men reflect a lack of confidence in his mental and emotional stability. Fortunately, however, the Holy Scriptures paint a different picture of the Almighty! Listen to these accounts:
"I am the Lord, I change not" (Malachi 3:6); "I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it that men should fear before him. That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past" (Ecclesiastes 3:14,15); "The Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning" (James 1:17); "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever" (Hebrews 13:8); "Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath" (Hebrews 6:17).
Could God Start A New Religion?
Is it conceivable that a God to whom is ascribed such immutability throughout the scriptures could be so fickle as to try anything until perchance he finds something that works? Hardly so! Could such a God give up on Judaism, a fifteen-hundred-year-old religion which he, himself, had authored, and start a completely new religion called Christianity?
Could God allow himself to be perceived as being schizophrenic by revealing himself as a God of anger, wrath, judgment, and legalism in Judaism and as a God of grace, mercy, love, compassion, and freedom in Christianity? Could God be God and admit that the religion which he authored at Sinai was a failure and that he would scrap it and begin anew with Christianity? If he could, would anyone want to serve a God so fickle?
An Unchanging Plan of Salvation
No, the unchangeable God has not been flying blind, so to speak. From the foundation of the world, his divine plan of salvation has been constantly unfolding in each succeeding generation and will yet continue to unfold until the end of the Sabbatical Millennium. Throughout the Old Testament ages, God’s plan was constantly added to and modified to bring it closer to the perfect day. When Christ completed the work of his humanity, the elements necessary for perfecting the plan of salvation were provided. Since that time, God has been calling out chosen vessels to make up the body of Christ to set the stage for the last remaining part of the plan, the reign of Christ upon the earth and the subsequent destruction of evil and death.
And, God certainly did not give the axe to Judaism and raise up a new religion called Christianity. He merely brought the Reformer into the world to bring perfection to the Jewish faith and to extend that faith to all mankind. The faith of the first century church was Judaism, perfected by a new covenant, a Judaeo-Christianity as it were. The earliest church was altogether a part of the community of Judaism and made no attempt to break away from Judaism until after the passing of its first generation of leaders, the leaders established by Jesus, himself.
What is called Christianity today is the product of two millennia of tradition and attempts to reconcile the faith of the Bible with the religions and philosophies of the Gentiles. History offers abundant confirmation of this fact. Christianity was gradually divorced from biblical Judaism, and in the process both Jewish and Gentile believers were denied their heritage in Judaism.
In truth, if God’s counsel is immutable (and we have his Word that it is), then we must conclude that the division between Judaism and Christianity today is man made. Two religions that spring from the same source must be the same if there is no outside interference. It was and is not God’s intention for Judaism and Christianity to be different from one another or to define themselves vis-à-vis one another rather than in the context of one another. Human tradition and hardened hearts have parted the ways between these two great faiths, for God is not the author of confusion (I Corinthians 14:33). And, there is at least as much, if not more, responsibility for this debacle upon the church than there is on Israel and Judaism.
No, God is not fickle. His determinate counsel and foreknowledge have ordered and sealed forever his plan for the ages. And, his immutability will bring that plan to completion in the end of the age in a Messianic Kingdom patterned after biblical Judaism.