True Judaism vs. False Judaism

When one becomes a follower of Yeshua, you are actually becoming part of an ancient family. It existed long before Yeshua. In His day, the faith we know now as Christianity was called Judaism, and the people were called Israelites or Hebrews. The word “Hebrew” is traced back to Abraham, a descendant of Eber, a descendent of Shem. Abraham was a gentile who entered into covenant with the Most High, and he was called a Hebrew, which means “one who has crossed over.” God promised to bless Abraham, because Abraham kept all of His commandments. Interesting, isn’t it? The Law of God existed long before Moses, despite most teachers today inferring that the Law was made and expected to be kept only after Moses.

Genesis 26:4,5 And I will increase your seed like the stars of the heavens, and I will give to your seed all these lands. And all the nations of the earth shall bless themselves in your Seed, because Abraham listened to My voice and heeded My charge, My commands, My statutes, and My laws. 

Abraham’s identity as God’s chosen was firmly founded on the fact that he feared God, had faith, and was obedient. He pleased God, thus God blessed him. All the offspring of Abraham were blessed, and those who stayed in covenant with God through their obedience, became known to everyone as the Israelites. Gentile kings, such as Pharoah and Nebuchadnezzar, were well aware of who the Israelite God was, and He was greatly feared by most.

All the righteous descendants of Abraham had one key belief, and this was their faith in the Messiah. Just as He is our salvation today, He was their salvation too. But did Yeshua exist before His birth? He was not known as Yeshua in the Old Testament, because Yeshua is actually a very common name (Joshua in English), but yes, He existed since the beginning of time. It was He who spoke with Adam and Eve, Jacob, Gideon, and David. Often, He spoke and even visited with Abraham in bodily form (Genesis 18,22). He was called the Angel (or messenger) of Yehovah. Those who saw this Messenger said that they had seen God.

John 8:56-58 “Your father Abraham leaped for joy that he should see My day, and he saw, and rejoiced.” Then the Jews said to Him, “You do not yet have fifty years, and have You seen Abraham?” Yeshua said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, Before Abraham came to be, I AM!”

All the children of Abraham who were in covenant with God eventually became known as the Jews despite that this title comes from the name Judah, one of the sons of Jacob (also known as Israel). Anyone who wished to follow the Most High, the God of the Jews, converted to Judaism, and it was the responsibility of the Jews to teach God’s laws to those who joined themselves in covenant to Him.

Yeshua was a Jew, fully adherent to the Law of God. He was called a rabi because He taught people how to keep the Torah (the Law of God). He was not teaching a new way, but rather an ancient way. He was calling people back to keeping the laws of God rather than the laws of man. Another form of Judaism, a false Judaism, had spawned, and this Judaism was built off of manmade traditions. The Jews claimed that there was an oral law of God that could not be written down, but had to be passed down from generation to generation orally. They also said that each generation must build a “fence” of additional laws around God’s laws to guard them. The Jews followed and guarded these additional laws fiercely, and when they were eventually written down, it was called the Talmud. In Yeshua’s day, they held all these laws as sacred.

Mark 7:6-8  And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” 

Ephesians 2 discusses how Yeshua abolished these manmade laws that created division. The false Judaism of Yeshua’s day is the same Judaism that we have today – all founded on tradition. It is a manmade faith, for those who adhere to it have added to God’s law and are trusting in their own “good” works to save them. The apostle Paul fought hard against these beliefs and preached against keeping these laws for salvation. Paul was a pharisee, an expert in both the Torah and Talmud, and sometimes people confuse his letters to self-righteous Jews as speaking against God’s law. This is why sadly we have Christians who believe that Yeshua abolished the Law.

So, after Yeshua, there were Messianic Jews, and there were grafted Jews. The latter were gentiles who had converted to Judaism. The word “Christian” was coined by the pagans to label the followers of Yeshua. They didn’t understand that the pagans who were converting weren’t becoming part of a new religion but rather part of an ancient faith that had just seen one of the greatest prophecies fulfilled.

Just as the Jews’ ancestors were baptized (Noah in the flood [1 Peter 3:21], the Israelites in the Red Sea), Yeshua continued the symbology of baptism, and all who followed Him did the same. Baptism, much like circumcision, says one has entered into covenant with God, that one has "crossed over". It is the spiritual dying or removing of old flesh and being raised up into a new man. This covenant is honored through obedience.

1 Corinthians 10:1-4 For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Yeshua.

So many today imagine that Yeshua made new laws, broke old ones, created a new belief system, and set up a new church, but all of this is actually heretical. The gospel Yeshua preached existed in Abraham’s day, and nothing is new about it. Just as we say today, “Believe in Yeshua, and be saved,” so was it said to those before Yeshua’s time. In those days, same as today, their faith is what saved them, not the law. Through that faith, of course, they then pursued obedience to stay in covenant with the Father.

Galatians 3:5-8 Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”? Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” 

After His resurrection, Yeshua sent out His disciples to the nations, fulfilling this promise made to Abraham. It is very interesting to note that Yeshua says this during His ministry:

Matthew 15:24 “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 

Did He mean He did not come to save the gentiles? I believe this statement is key to understanding the identity of the gentile believers. We are no longer to consider ourselves gentiles after we have been baptized and entered into covenant with God, and Ephesians 2 confirms this, as does Romans 11, saying that gentiles have been grafted into one tree (Romans 11). There is not “the church” and “Israel.” There is only, “Israel” just as it has always been from the beginning. The church does not replace Israel, and neither is Israel a separate body from the church.

Ephesians 2:11-19 Therefore remember that at one time you gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands - remember that you were at that time separated from the Messiah, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Yeshua the Messiah, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of the Messiah … For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.

Matthew 3:9 And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.

A disagreement arose in the early church, because Jews were upset over the fact that so many gentiles were converting to this true Judaism without following their conversion rituals. They maintained that only after circumcision and keeping all the rituals could a gentile be considered saved. Peter points out that earning salvation through obedience to Jewish rituals and God’s law is an impossible yoke to bear. Belief is all that is required to be saved, and obedience is something that follows in time. Since the gentiles were completely unfamiliar with God’s laws and way of living, it would take a long time for them to learn how to be obedient. Salvation was given immediately, not over the process of years, and the grace of God was there to cover the student’s mistakes.  

Even so, James, in the same meeting, does lay down a few laws that HAD to be kept immediately by gentiles for them to be called saved. The laws concerned idolatry, consumption of blood, and sexual immorality which all caused defilement. Other than those laws, the gentiles were not to be troubled with having to learn everything at once. James finished by saying that the synagogues teach all of Moses’ laws, which implies that any gentile who was saved would learn the rest of the laws through their attendance of the synagogues (Acts 15:21). It is not well known to modern Christians that in those days there were many gentiles who converted to Judaism and lived among the Jews, going to their synagogues. Indeed, it was expected that if one wanted to learn how to follow God, they went to the Jews for this (Acts 13:43).

When more and more pagans began to convert, though, and Jews began casting people out of the synagogues, the pagan converts took over the Jew’s duty of teaching new converts how to follow God, and because they had no understanding of true Judaism, they saw it as a foreign religion and tried to eliminate it. Not only that, false Judaism denied Yeshua as the Messiah and put a bad light on true Judaism. Pagans were averse to the arrogance of the Jews and had no desire to submit to their laws, so by attempting to stamp out false Judaism, pagan converts got rid of all God’s laws and brought over their own traditions from paganism to replace them. This is how Roman Catholicism was born with all its foreign and unbiblical traditions. Messianic Jewish converts would never have thought to go against their ancient faith. Pagans, however, saw the faith of Yeshua as a new religion and Judaism as and an old, incorrect one.

Many “Christian” heretical teachers arose in those days, such as Marcion of Sinope, who taught that the God of the Jews was an evil God who gave impossible laws to follow, and that Yeshua had rescued them from this tyrant. The hatred towards the Jews and their laws is also seen in men such as John Calvin and Martin Luther, who despised it when Christians tried to keep all the laws of God, calling them Judaizers. This animosity all comes from paganism and is rooted in the flesh, man’s unbending desire to do things his own way. Sadly, this condescension of true Judaism has subtly remained in Christianity until now, and there is a strong resistance to following God’s holy law among Christians.

Romans 8:6-8 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 

So, to be clear, the Judaism today that denies Yeshua is false Judaism. Judaism that accepts Yeshua as the Messiah is true Judaism. Jews who do not understand who Yeshua is (because pagan Christianity destroyed His ancient identity and faithfulness towards the law and true Judaism) are offended by gentiles considering themselves as part of Israel, and Christians are offended on behalf of the Jewish people because they’ve been told we are a separate body from Israel.

Israel is the Messiah’s bride, so if you consider yourself part of the bride of the Messiah, you also have to consider yourself part of Israel. Did you know that in the New Jerusalem, there will only be twelve gates for the twelve tribes of Israel? There isn’t a thirteenth gate for the nations. A lot of people speculate over which tribe the nations have been grafted into. My husband says he believes we are part of the tribe of Judah, for Yeshua, a descendant of Judah, calls His followers brothers and sisters (Matthew 12:50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.). Regardless of which tribe our heavenly Father has grafted us into, we are all counted as Abraham’s offspring and can feel secure that we will be able to enter the City. Something very important needs to be stated again, though, and that is that those who are in covenant with the Most High will strive for obedience. No one who is willfully disobedient can enter the city of God in the millennial kingdom.

Revelation 22:14,15 Blessed are the ones doing His commands, that their authority will be over the Tree of Life, and by the gates they may enter into the city. But outside are the dogs and the sorcerers, and the fornicators, and the murderers, and the idolaters, and everyone loving a lie, and making it. 

1 John 2:3-6 And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. 

Many people resist this idea that gentile converts are supposed to follow the same laws as the Jews, because they were told that Peter and the rest gave only three laws to the gentiles. One of the laws of the Torah is not to show partiality. Do you think God would break His own law by showing partiality to the gentile converts? It is like a father telling his biological son that the adopted son doesn’t have to live by the same house rules as he does. If we are true sons of the Father, and not illegitimate ones, we will strive to do all that is required of a true son.

Isaiah 56:6,7 “And the foreigners who join themselves to Yehovah, to minister to him, to love the name of Yehovah, and to be His servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant - these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” 

Exodus 12:49 There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you.” 

Numbers 15:15,16 For the assembly, there shall be one statute for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you, a statute forever throughout your generations. You and the sojourner shall be alike before the Lord. One law and one rule shall be for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you.

The word “church” is not a good translation. The original text in the scriptures uses the word “assembly.” A Jew who believed in God was called a saint (which means a righteous person) and was part of the assembly of God (see previous verse). All of God’s people after Yeshua’s resurrection, including gentiles, are referred to as saints as well. The assembly and Israel is one body. A gentile convert becomes part of that body of Israel. However, just as one body has many members (1 Corinthians12), so does Israel. Inside the body of Israel is the physical seed of Abraham (Jews) and the spiritual seed of Abraham (gentiles). There are some specific promises and even laws made to the physical seed of Abraham (such as for the Levites) that will not apply to the spiritual seed, but God makes very clear in His word that all the rest of the promises and laws He gave are also for gentiles who are joined to Israel (Numbers 15:14-16).

Satan tried to destroy true Judaism through false Judaism, but if you truly believe that Yeshua is the Messiah, then you are a part of the original and true Judaism. There is no need to be shy in believing that. Mainstream Christians and those who adhere to false Judaism will not understand this, though, until Christians recognize that Yeshua taught to follow true Judaism and until Jews see that Yeshua is the Messiah. I hope this post can benefit those who understand their Hebrew identity, but I also pray that it can touch the hearts of those who are offended to see Christians like me desiring to keep God’s ways. We are all one family, Jew and past-gentile, and have one Father who desires us to live in the joy of His holy statutes.