Did Christianity Replace Judaism? Part 1
Several years ago a friend of mine, who is not a Christian, asked me, “If Jesus was a Jewish man, why did He come to start Christianity?” I don’t remember what my response was but one thing this question did was reveal something significant about the gospel we proclaim to the world around us. If we believe Jesus came to start a new religion like Judaism only better— that the history of Israel was some kind of trial run for God, then we end up ignoring the majority of the Bible as having any significance for us other than being a kind of metaphorical example for the church. As we will see, this cannot be the case. The part of the Bible we call the Old Testament, contains within it promises, all of which are directly linked to Jesus, His kingdom and mission, and our final hope of receiving the inheritance of God’s kingdom in His presence, forever.
As we will see, the church is not distinct from Israel, but the result of God working through Israel to extend His blessing to all other nations with Jesus, the only faithful Israelite, being the central figure through Whom the promises come to a head. Therefore, I want to start by giving a summary of the Old Testament to see why God made a covenant with Israel in the first place. Only then will we be able to see the beauty of what Christianity actually is and how this global, multi-ethnic community of God’s people is connected to the history of Abraham’s family.
THE HISTORY
In the beginning God created the world and everything in it. As He established order, abundance, and rest through the power of His command, God revealed Himself to be the great King over all creation (Psalm 33:6-14; 47:2). He then crowns His creation by making humans in His image (Hebrew: Representation) to embody and represent His kingdom over all the earth (Genesis 1:26-27; Psalm 8). Humanity as a whole was created and blessed by God in this way. The central place from which humans were to fill the earth and subdue it was a sacred Garden in a land called Eden. The place of God’s direct presence and eternal life. God rests the humans in this sacred Garden and gives them a choice of how they are going to carry out the dominion He gave them as bearers of His image (Genesis 2). Rather than rely on God’s wisdom to rule over creation and live under His kingship, humans decided to rule by their own wisdom and forfeit the blessing of God, which resulted in being driven from His life-giving presence into an age of sin, unrest, and death (Genesis 3). Rather than expanding the sacred Garden so that the life of God would fill the earth they were cast out to live as exiles within the very place they were created to live forever.
As their descendants migrated further from the Garden (Genesis 4-10), they continued to build a world by their own wisdom, filling it with violence toward one another as the good world God created to be ruled by wise, image bearing humans spins out of control. The culmination of this was seen when the human race collectively sought to build a city and a tower within that city that reaches into the heavens (Genesis 11). Humans desiring to be in God’s presence on their own terms. The epitome of human evil. God responds by scattering them and confusing their languages. This part of our history shows us that division on the basis of tribe, language and nation is the result of dark spiritual powers at work within our world. Therefore, in scripture, Babel (Babylon) is often put forth as an image of the prime example of a unified human rebellion against God, the Creator of all things.
Because of sin, when humans unite toward that which is good by their own wisdom, the results are divisive, catastrophic and inevitably end with dehumanizing the people God made in His image.
God then calls one man, Abraham (Genesis 12), out of the scattered nations to leave his family. He promises to give Abraham an inheritance and descendants as numerous as the stars in heaven and the sand on the seashore and He establishes a covenant (an agreement to live in partnership to work together toward a common goal) with Abraham that through His offspring God would bless all nations (Genesis 22:15-18).
This passage is extremely important for understanding the gospel and the church. We will see why when we get to the New Testament.
Remember, in the beginning, humanity as a whole was blessed to fill the earth by representing God’s dominion over creation. Humans forfeited that blessing by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That which was blessed (Genesis 1:28) became cursed (Genesis 3:16-19) and therefore God’s plan has always been to bring humanity back into His life-giving presence to experience His blessing.
As Abraham’s descendants grow in number, they display a mix of both faithfulness and infidelity (Genesis 12-50).
At the end of Genesis, Abraham’s family leaves the land God gave them because of a famine to live in a foreign land under a foreign king. As the people become fruitful and multiply, filling the land (a sign of God’s blessing—Exodus 1:7; Genesis 1:22; 28), a new king who did not know them rises to power. Out of fear and his own wisdom (Exodus 1:10) this new king subjects them to forced labor and builds his empire. A human ruling by his own wisdom. Sound familiar? After 400 years of slavery God hears their groaning and remembers the covenant He made with Abraham. God then raises up a leader (Exodus 2-4), Moses, to go before the king and demand he let the people go. Rather than heed the warning, Pharaoh hardens his heart toward God and refuses to let them go and God sends a series of plagues upon the people of Egypt until the final plague of the death of all firstborn in Egypt forces Pharaoh to drive them out of the land (Exodus 5-13). Moses leads them to the edge of the Red Sea where God divides the waters so that they walk on dry ground. Pharaoh’s army chases them into the sea only for the waters to close back in on them leaving many dead and Pharaoh defeated (Exodus 14). He then leads them through the wilderness to Mt. Sinai to establish a covenant with them (Exodus 15-19) declaring that Israel as a whole would be a “kingdom of Priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:1-5). You can see the ideal human reality and the promise to Abraham revealed in this covenant. A kingdom (humans who have dominion under God’s kingship) of priests (those who meditate for God to the people; the nations). It is this moment in Israel’s history where Moses said the LORD Who rescued them from slavery became King over His people (Deuteronomy 33:5).
God leads them to the land promised to Abraham (Numbers-Joshua) and though He made every provision for them to take the land the Israelites were unfaithful to drive out the idolatrous nations and became ensnared by their wicked religious practices like child sacrifice. Their early years in the land were some of Israel’s worst in history (Judges) however, God still worked through a small remnant of His people (Ruth) to preserve them so that the promise given to Abraham would come to fruition. If there is one thing that is abundantly clear throughout the scriptures it is that God goes to immeasurable lengths to be faithful to His promises.
After years of living in the land with conflict and unrest with the other nations the people of Israel declare that they want to appoint a king over them who is not God (1 Samuel). God graciously allows this to happen, and uses Israel’s unfaithfulness to continue His promise to Abraham. He then makes a covenant with Israel’s first faithful king promising that He would set one of his descendants on his throne forever (2 Samuel 7:12-13; Psalm 132:11) and they wait. Son after son, not one of them exemplified themselves to be completely faithful. Though some better than others, it becomes clear that Israel is still waiting for a son of David to come and be king forever. In fact, it had gotten so bad that during the time of the unfaithful Kings (1-2 Kings), Israel split into a northern and southern kingdom and became increasingly unfaithful. During those years God sent prophets (Jeremiah; Isaiah) to communicate to the kings and the people that because they had been unfaithful, God was going to bring judgment upon them and by the end of the period of the kings, the two kingdoms had become so unfaithful, God gave them over to the nations around them (Northern kingdom to Assyria; Southern Kingdom to Babylon) to take them into exile as His prophets warned and even as He spoke through Moses long before (Deuteronomy 28:15-68).
While in exile, God sent more prophets (Ezekiel; Daniel; Zechariah) to communicate that though it seemed they had been abandoned, God was still committed to them because of His promises to Abraham and David. In the end God would finally unify His people under one King, the son of David, and God Himself would put His dwelling in their midst forever (Ezekiel 37:15-28).
The entire story of the Hebrew Scriptures moves in the direction of one hope. One man. Messiah. The word messiah means “anointed one” and is connected to two roles in the scriptures. Priest and King. This word is translated Christ in the New Testament and carries the same meaning. As Psalm 2 says the rulers of the earth surround the LORD’s messiah (anointed one) and God’s response to their wicked plan is to declare Him Son, set Him as king on Zion, and give to Him the nations as a heritage and the ends of the earth as a possession, and the psalmist closes saying “blessed are all who take refuge in Him” (Psalm 2:12 ESV).
The Old Testament closes and the hope is never realized. God’s people, though they had somewhat returned to the land (Ezra-Nehemiah), were still an unfaithful people and still living under foreign occupation and the Messiah had not come. All nations had not become blessed by the offspring of Abraham but rather the people of Israel had become just as wicked as the nations, if not worse. So then, they lived around 400 years waiting for the promise of God’s return to His people (Isaiah 52-53) and the establishment of His kingdom over all the earth through the Messiah (Psalm 2:4-9; Zechariah 9:9 & 14:9).
To be continued..