Congregation Shema Yisrael

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” -John 14:6

It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. He is ‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the capstone.’ Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved. -Acts 4:10-12

But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. -Romans 10:8-9

I’m writing this article as much to ask the question as to provide the answer. Actually, I’m more asking the question. I’m not sure everything I communicate here can be “proven” in the Bible, so keep in mind, there’s a fair amount opinion and commentary here. It’s a question though, that goes to a depth that may have a profound impact on the theologies we often take for granted. Here’s what I mean.

In mainstream Christianity, the idea of being “saved” means that a person is rescued from slavery to their sins and from the consequences of sin, which is death, and is free to worship the Son of God and have everlasting life. To attain salvation as a free gift, all a person needs to do is accept “Jesus as Lord” and in fact, there is no other way for any human being to be saved but by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. No other model of faith is acceptable. This means that Buddhists, New Age people, Taoists, Muslims, and Jews, without accepting Jesus and giving up their former religious practices for those of Christianity, are condemned by God to everlasting damnation.

This is something of a thorny issue (no pun intended) when applied to the Jewish people, since Christianity has Judaism at its root and in fact, the Torah, Prophets, and the Writings (collectively known as the Tanakh in Judaism and the Old Testament in Christianity) make up fully two-thirds of the Christian Bible. For many, many reasons, too numerous to mention in this article, Jews have felt that accepting Jesus as the Messiah was the same as betraying God and entering the practice of polytheism (three “gods” instead of the One). If Christianity is so specifically exclusive regarding non-Christians, putting the shoe on the other foot, how does Judaism view the spiritual state of everyone who is not Jewish?

The answer may surprise you. I remember having an email discussion with a gentleman living in rural Idaho who was angry at the Jewish people for “withholding salvation” from the rest of the world. His impression was that, from a Jewish point of view, only Jews are “saved”. He saw the Jewish lack of “evangelical outreach” to be an affront to non-Jews and a direct attempt to condemn the majority of humanity to being forever “lost”.

In Judaism, the concepts of being “saved” and “lost” don’t really fit well, and it’s difficult to get to the Hebraic perspective if you are married to the “Christianese” nomenclature. Frankly, when I first became a believer and started attending a church, one of the things that made me feel like a total outsider was the special “language” Christians in the church used with each other. It would have been helpful to have a glossary or dictionary available to translate what was being said into “plain English”.

It’s not just language or terminology though, it’s the frame of mind that they spring from. For instance, Jews don’t have the concept of “original sin” as a result of the fall of Adam and Eve. Each person is subject to both a good and evil inclination and people depend on God to help them choose good and resist evil. To answer the larger question though, are non-Jews excluded from a “life in the world to come?”

Do we exclude others? Absolutely not. Any person who wishes to join the Jewish people and their holy mission is welcome, regardless of race, color, sex or family background. We only ask that they commit to keeping the rules G-d gave us, just as the Jewish people accepted those rules when they received the Torah at Mount Sinai some 3300 years ago. And if they opt not to join, we believe that the righteous people among the nations will share in the rewards of the time to come. I don’t know of any other religion so liberal as to say such a thing: You don’t have to join us, you don’t have to do the things we do, just believe in one G-d and fulfill the basic requirements of every human being to society, and you’re in.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
Why Do Jews Exclude Other People?

Judaism believes that anyone who chooses to acknowledge God and keeps His commandments has a life in the world to come (everlasting life), but that the requirements for Jews are much more demanding than for the rest of humanity. Jews are God’s original light to the world or rather “light to the nations”…the non-Jewish world. As God’s chosen people and His am segulah; His treasured, splendorous people, the Jewish nation agreed to take on board many more responsibilities relative to both God, other Jews, and humanity as a whole. The rest of the world by comparison, has very few obligations to meet in order to be considered righteous. In fact, Gentiles have only seven requirements in order to be “saved” from a Jewish point of view:

Belief in G-d
Respect G-d and Praise Him
Respect Human Life
Respect the Family
Respect Human Beings
Have a Judicial System
Respect All Creatures

-From Noahide.org

The link I just provided offers the specific details of each of the aforementioned commandments for Gentiles, but it’s all that God expects from human beings in order for us to have a “right standing” with Him, from a Jewish point of view. Keeping the Shabbat, celebrating the Pilgrim Festivals, wearing tzitzit, are not required of Gentiles by God, only of people who are Jewish. As Rabbi Freemen mentioned above, a Gentile can choose to convert to Judaism if they feel specifically lead, but the path isn’t easy. No one is encouraged to convert to Judaism, the way people are encouraged to convert to Christianity. In fact, Rabbis actively discourage Gentiles from converting to Judaism. The link I just inserted provides the commentary of Rabbi Aron Moss on the subject and is illuminating reading.

Actually, the seven Noahide laws aren’t really all that Gentiles will end up doing in Messianic Days, according to Rabbi Hershel Brand’s book, On Eagles Wings: Moshiach, Redemption, and the World to Come. When Messiah comes, Gentiles, as well as Jews, will engage in the study of Torah and continually strive to attain greater closeness to God. Gentiles will be studying Torah though, only in the context of the portions that apply to non-Jews. The levels of responsibility will still be different. God loves all humanity but He has charged the Jewish people with special purpose and specific requirements, most people don’t have to face. When you look at the history of Judaism, you can see that Jews in general also have suffered a great deal more as a people than most non-Jewish people groups, at least due to their faith.

It’s interesting to note that the Jerusalem Letter written by the Messianic Council to the new Gentile believers (see Acts 15) is sometimes considered a form of the Noahide laws. It’s also used as a proof text by Christianity that non-Jewish believers in Jesus are exempt from the Torah laws, which continue to apply only to Jews who are “under the Law”. Jews are “freed” from Torah obligations by becoming Christians, but from a Jewish point of view, leaving Judaism for Christianity would be taking a step backwards in terms of their relationship to God. Worse, it would be a betrayal of their scared trust to the rest of mankind. This is a concept that seems totally foreign to Evangelical Christianity, which sees being released from the Law and embracing the Grace of Christ as the goal of human existence.

In the Messianic movement for the most part, we see the Jerusalem Letter as a starting point for new Messianic Gentile believers. Typically, we view the Torah commandments as applying to all humanity, but that they were first given to the Jewish nation for “safekeeping” until the Gentiles could be grafted in to the Hebraic root through Yeshua, making conversion to Judaism unnecessary. The Messianic movement was recently “turned on its ear” on this point, by a sudden theological shift by Messianic educational organization First Fruits of Zion who, after years of promoting the Torah for Gentiles as well as Jews, came to the conclusion that Torah observance for Gentiles was not mandatory, but could be engaged in voluntarily by non-Jewish believers who felt lead.

This was a huge disappointment to many Gentile Messianics but, looking at the FFOZ decision through a Jewish lens, it makes a lot of sense. I’m not saying FFOZ is right or wrong in its conclusions, only that the decision was very “Jewish”. They’ve stretched things a bit by saying Gentiles have a Divine Invitation to go beyond the minimal requirements outlined in Acts 15 and take on greater Torah observance voluntarily. Judaism doesn’t extend that invitation to Gentiles and in fact, the Talmud states, among other things, that Gentiles are forbidden to keep Shabbat (Sabbath).

While I can respect the FFOZ position on how Torah is to be observed differently for Jews and Gentiles (though I don’t agree with everything they say), I can’t find anything in Acts 15, the rest of the Bible, or Jewish tradition, that says Gentiles are “invited” to accept more Torah observance than what the Jerusalem Letter and/or the 7 Noahide Laws describe. In that sense, I would suggest FFOZ scale back the content of their publications to reflect their current perspective, since the majority of people purchasing their books, CDs, and DVDs are Messianic Gentiles, not Jews.

Either you’re grafted in, or your not. If grafted in, and nourished by the same blood or sap as the natural branches, and if the grafted in branches are really considered equal covenant members, then it would seem we Gentiles have a responsibility to God and the Torah that we didn’t have before. That’s the general Messianic position on Torah (FFOZ not withstanding) however, I digress.

Maintaining my position within the context of this article and the question it asks, Judaism is unique in that it doesn’t require membership in “the club” in order to have a relationship with God and a place in the world to come. Judaism doesn’t condemn any people group for not being Jewish, at least ideally (individual Jews and specific Rabbis and synagogues may vary in their attitude). Jewish people are human beings however, just like the rest of us, and can fail to live up to the ideal. Case in point: Israel’s Chief Sephardi Rabbi, Shlomo Amar denied 13 year old Gai Ben-David burial in Madrid’s Jewish cemetery because his Jewish conversion was “in question”. As it turns out, Rabbi Amar didn’t feel comfortable with Ben-David’s Conservative conversion and the body of the boy, who died after suffering for years with brain cancer, was relegated to a special section of the Jewish cemetery for people who may or may not have been Jewish.

Although the Torah states that a person who converts to Judaism is to be treated no differently than a “born-Jew”, in fact, there continues to be a struggle among at least some Jews (apparently including Chief Sephardi Rabbi Amar) to be able to “play by the rules” with absolute fairness and fidelity to God and the Torah. I’m not Rabbi or Jew bashing here. Inconsistency and even hypocrisy can be found in any faith group, Jewish, Christian, or otherwise.

Bottom line though, in terms of the original question, is that Judaism, as a theology, does not exclude anyone from “eternal life” just because they’re not Jewish. Being a Jew vs. a non-Jew is a matter of role and responsibility, but anyone can choose to be “right with God” within the context of their role. More over, according to what I’ve read in Yossi Halevi’s book At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden, it’s possible for Jews, Christians, and Muslims to have a relationship with the one true God within the contexts of their own faiths. That’s something Christianity would never accept as a matter of fundamental theology.

This makes me wonder about putting the shoe on the other foot again. One of the classic arguments I’ve heard regarding the Jews and salvation is applied to the Six Million who died during the Holocaust. It seems unfair to most people that, not only were Six Million Jews tortured and murdered by the Nazi regime, but that, assuming they didn’t all accept Jesus as Lord and Savior at the last minute, they also are condemned to eternity in Hell. But what if they weren’t?

I know. It’s a radical thought, and I probably should save it for another article, but what if, when Yeshua said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”, that applied to any Jew who believes in the One God of Israel and who longs for the coming of the Jewish Moshiach? When Luke wrote “for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” in Acts, the name he knew for the Messiah was Yeshua ben Josef of Natzarat, which is hardly recognizable (or acceptable) to the Church today in it’s Hebrew form. Christianity automatically inserts the Christian “Gee-sus” (there are no hard “J” sounds in Hebrew or Aramaic) and Messianics reconstruct the name as “Yeshua”, but the Messiah that is the long awaited King of the Jews is still one being; the same being. God the Father exists objectively and independently of the various theologies who worship Him, so who’s to say that the Messiah isn’t the same for traditional Jews and traditional Gentiles? The differences are “painted on” the face of the actual Messiah by our theologies, but they don’t alter the truth of the identity of the Messiah or of God.

I can’t prove any of this in terms of the Bible, but it certainly would solve a great many inconsistencies in our belief systems. It would also mean that (perhaps) not all Jews nor all “Christians” are “saved/have a place in the world to come”, and salvation is based on our relationship with God through faith, in spite of our theologies, and not because of them. Like I said though, that’s an article for another time.

I don’t write these articles to lecture to anyone or to “preach”, but rather to inspire thoughts, feelings, and actions. I know some of the ideas I’ve introduced may seem unusual or even inflamatory, but we don’t grow in faith if we’re not willing to be stretched. If you have anything to say about what I’ve written (please try to be polite), I want to hear from you. I learn as much from others as I hope they can learn from what I produce because, after all, God is the source of all knowledge anyway.

Afterword: I am by no means abandoning my faith in Yeshua and subscribing to the traditional Jewish theological perspective. I suspect my article may have caused a few people reading it to wonder. I created this article to inspire thought, question assumptions, and provide a platform to explore faith from “outside the box”. That said, I’m not beyond believing that all Jewish people who cling to God and the Torah have a special place with Him now and for eternity.

Shalom and Blessings to you.