The Lingering Attachment to Judaism

Christianity is a Jewish religion, a fact which many people overlook. We can be even more dogmatic and say that Christianity is the Jewish religion, while orthodox Judaism is but the husk from which the true faith has emerged. This wonderful metamorphosis was brought about by the life-work of the Lord Jesus Christ, himself a Jew. Those who carried on the good work of spreading the joyful news were likewise of the seed of Israel, and the nucleus of the Church in its infancy was composed largely, if not entirely, of Jews. The central idea of the Christian belief—the political institution of God’s Kingdom on this earth by the Messiah—is also the leading theme in the hope of the Jew. Prophecies which tell of the glorious future which will overtake Jerusalem and its inhabitants are revered alike by Jew and Christian. Both accept the same Scriptures—the Old Testament.

Small wonder then, in view of this basic identity of hope, that the first converts to the new faith, the disciples, should have difficulty in disentangling the old and the new. The most insistent part of their old belief concerned the Law and its observation. The scribes and Pharisees were not slack in seeing that the details of the Law pressed hard upon the people. In contrast to this daily reminder, the hope of the restoration of the Kingdom was but a dim vision. When the Messiah opened the way of salvation by his death, their world was turned upside down.

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Author: D. A. B. Owen

Keywords: Judaism, Judaizer, Judaizers, Judaiser, clinging to the law, clinging to the Law of Moses, keeping the Law, Under the law, Jewish roots

Bible reference(s): Acts 15, Gal 2

Source: “The Lingering Attachment to Judaism,” The Testimony, Vol. 20 No. 232, April 1950, pp. 141-4.

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