Many people go through life believing that they have a good understanding of their spiritual and moral foundation. But they have a sense that some things are not well defined and remain nebulous. Then one day they studied the Bible or heard someone tell them scriptural things they had never seen before. Through their studies they found a different type of Christianity than what is commonly taught from most Church pulpits. At the heart of this awareness is that the Church never replaced Israel, that through their belief in Messiah they are grafted into the commonwealth of Israel and heirs according to the covenants made with Abraham.  If we are heirs, then we must understand what the Scripture tells us our role is. It has to be a better balance of the spiritual movement within our life, which is most commonly taught from Sunday pulpits, and the truth of the Word of God written on our heart, which traditionally has been taught in either small groups, or Sabbath based groups. Let’s look at how we can attempt to better balance our walks.

Some of the common differences are: Saturday Sabbath vs Sunday Sabbath, the Feasts vs Christmas and Easter, Grace vs the Law, etc. These types of topics have been beaten to death (so to speak) in the growing Messianic movement, but it has also exposed a lack of true historically accurate understandings of these things. If our own fellow Messianics are still struggling with these things, then can you imagine the confusion we must be causing for those awakening to the roots of their Christian faith for the first time?

These revelations at first glance appear to already have been solved. We urge you, though, to consider the matter again, not only from a black and white perspective, but through the colorful lens that Messiah clarified for us. We urge you that as you continue on your Messianic journey that you constantly revisit beliefs and make sure they still align with Scripture. We hope this article will be something that helps provide insights or perspectives that help improve your understanding of the Messianic faith.

Age of Grace vs. Rule of Law

Many have heard the phrase we are in the Age of Grace. This implies that God has placed us in a time where He hasn’t sent his Son back to judge us and thus we are under Grace, not the Law, as our governing path.

This theology has created massive confusion for the majority of Christianity. It compartmentalizes certain time frames in the Bible and causes them to appear as if they aren’t a continuing story with a cyclical pattern but a linear story that grows off of what was before by replacing it. This is how Christians can easily believe that the Church has replaced Israel, Jesus’ followers have replaced the twelve tribes, and so on.

The implications of the Age of Grace theology also paints a picture of salvation that doesn’t exactly align with the entirety of Scripture. So, did God have different rules for different people? Of course He didn’t. Salvation by grace through faith is not a New Testament principle. Let’s look at what the Old Testament says about how our forefathers were saved, not only from a physical standpoint but also from a spiritual one. Remember, the written law wasn’t given until Sinai and Moses, so let’s look at what the Bible says about Noah’s salvation prior to the giving of the law.

But Noah found favor [“grace” in KJV] in the eyes of the Lord. Genesis 6:8

This is the first time in Scripture that God’s grace is specifically cited in a person’s life. God chose to save Noah and his family, not because of their righteousness, even though he had a righteous testimony (Gen 7:1), but because of God’s gracious choice.

According to Genesis, salvation is because of God’s gracious choice. That implies that saved by grace was an original concept, not one that came along in the New Testament. Since we know that God is not bound by our limits of time, it is safe to believe that from Adam through the last person on earth will find salvation the very same way! Their salvation wasn’t by offering a sacrifice in the Temple, or by the righteousness of their own behavior. The theology that salvation by grace came with the Messiah and wasn’t present before in the Old testament simply isn’t correct according to the Bible.

If everyone prior to Messiah’s birth and death was saved by grace, this creates a massive issue with the theological doctrine of salvation as taught by many. Our faith is counted for righteousness which leads us to God’s grace. It was a common belief throughout history that a redeemer would be sent and their faith in that redeemer was counted as righteousness, which leads to God’s grace. This was specifically stated for Abraham.

Then he [Abram] believed [the promise] in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness. Genesis 15:6

Consider this point on an even greater scale. The children of Israel are called the chosen people. Who chose them and why were they chosen? God did the choosing (as an extension of His promise to the fathers) and gave the same grace (unmerited favor) that Abraham received earlier. As God said of Abraham…

For I have chosen him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice; so that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him. Genesis 18:19

This is a key element to understanding your identity in Messiah. Your salvation today is the same salvation offered to our forefathers. It is also through that same salvation that grafts you into Israel. The Church cannot be of God and be separate from Israel. The Church is Israel even if they don’t know it. This is not something that came after the Law, this was something that was embedded into the relationship God had with Israel prior to the Law and still stands today!

Grace did not come after the Law, nor did it supersede or replace the Law. God’s grace came before the Law. The Law has no power to save a single person.  That was not its intent, goal; the Law was given to establish order within a nation. The nation was already saved and even taken through the waters of the sea for “cleansing.” Salvation, even in the times of Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and everyone else was by God’s grace alone.

The Covenants of God

It is common for us to hear the word covenants, not only in our Messianic denomination, but in many other Christian denominations. Most commonly, covenants have been taught that they are conditional, where both parties must do their part to uphold the agreement. One party promises to provide X and the other party provides Y. A faithful agreement is maintained by both parties fulfilling their requirements. This can be likened to the covenant of marriage, with the husband vowing to provide for his bride and she vows in return to love and care for him.

Pulpits in the Christian church as well as some Hebrew Roots fellowships teach that God made a covenant with Israel, Israel didn’t uphold the agreement, so God divorced Israel and entered into a New Covenant with the Church. This is the basis for “replacement theology,” which basically says that the Jews screwed up and Christians won out. Somehow the Church thinks it has been able to stay away from the same mistakes Israel made that cost them their Old Covenant with God did. In the Old Testament, you were violating your covenant if you murdered an individual. In the New Covenant, the conceptual thought alone made you guilty of violating the covenant.

Yes, it is true that almost every human being at one point in time or another will break their covenant with another person. God isn’t a human. He never breaks His covenants. Even when Israel violated their covenant with God, God refused to reject them or break His agreement with them.

If they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their forefathers, in their unfaithfulness which they committed against Me, and also in their acting with hostility against Me - I also was acting with hostility against them, to bring them into the land of their enemies - or if their uncircumcised heart becomes humbled so that they then make amends for their iniquity, then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and I will remember also My covenant with Isaac, and My covenant with Abraham as well, and I will remember the land. For the land will be abandoned by them, and will make up for its sabbaths while it is made desolate without them. They, meanwhile, will be making amends for their iniquity, because they rejected My ordinances and their soul abhorred My statutes. Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, nor will I so abhor them as to destroy them, breaking My covenant with them; for I am the Lord their God. But I will remember for them the covenant with their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I am the Lord. Leviticus 26:40-45

God’s covenants are unlike our own. God keeps both parts of the covenants. This is why the Messiah (the tree of life) hung on a tree and paid the price for all of us with His life. He was keeping our part of the covenant that we didn’t keep. This didn’t begin with Moses and the Law. This began with Abraham and God’s promise of his descendants and the land.

In Genesis 15 God instructed Abraham to flay and divide out five sacrifices. Abraham was made to sleep and Messiah walked between the sacrifices; Abraham did not. This signified that God would keep His part of the agreement and Abraham’s part as well.

Christianity has to awaken to the fact that God keeps His covenants forever. Otherwise, they will misunderstand who God is and not have a complete appreciation of Yeshua’s ministry. God’s loving-kindness is available to all those who love Him and walk in His commandments.

I prayed to the Lord my God and confessed and said, “Alas, O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and lovingkindness for those who love Him and keep His commandments,” Daniel 9:4

We should have learned both from the Law and from the Messiah that God keeps even my part of the covenants and has paid the ransom for my shortcomings and failures.

Communion is part of the Passover Seder

The first Sunday of every month many churches take communion. For those who aren’t aware, this is the ceremony of eating a small wafer and sipping a small cup of grape juice to remember the death, burial, and resurrection of Messiah. They do this as a physical way to remember the ushering in of the New Covenant at the last supper. This is beautiful, except for the fact that they stop short of teaching the context of these passages. Instead, they skip over the entire context and teach it as a new era.

In fact, the New Covenant was ushered in during a Passover seder meal. It wasn’t a New Covenant at all but a Renewed Covenant, one that would usher in the greatest exodus the Israelites had ever seen, that by His blood and body the Israelites would be led out of the bondage, which Adam’s choice in the garden had produced a new creation and a seed that would lead us back to a future Eden was now taking shape.

The Passover Seder is one of the most significant teaching tools that God has used throughout time to illustrate His covenant with His people. By understanding that these things took place at a Passover Seder, you unlock the story of redemption that goes back to the foundation of the world. It ties in the story of Joseph and the Messianic narrative pointing to the future King of the World. You learn that the children of Israel covered the inscriptions about Egyptian gods on their door posts with the blood of the Lamb. You see that the blood of the Lamb protected them from the judgment of death that God sent upon the firstborns in Egypt. You learn about how for centuries God has always shown mercy and loving-kindness towards His people. The Passover seder is the good news about how God has always provided a way. The Church is so close to unlocking one of the most beautiful stories and ways that Messiah ties the entire Bible together.

Many churches and pastors are starting to awaken to these truths. Yet why do so many continue to neglect even the writings of Paul?

Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Messiah our Passover also has been sacrificed. 1 Corinthians 5:7

Paul gives a detailed account in 1 Corinthians Chapter 11, verses 23 through 28, of how the Messiah ate the unleavened bread (the matzah eaten after the meal) and offered the third cup, the cup of redemption, in the Passover seder as a symbol of His work of redemption. His exhortation to eat it, separated from other meals, and to eat it in a proper manner, are the basic commandments of the Passover meal from Moses. Wouldn’t this context be even more revolutionary for those who sit in the pews? “Messiah did what?”

When we separate out elements of Covenants to make new ordinances, we lose the identity that God continuously calls us to in the Scripture.

Both the Law and the Messiah teach us that Passover is a Feast of Redemption, and even in the first exodus the blood of the Lamb covered His people. It is so much more than what many know it to be, and it is our mission to share the truth in love.

Baptism is a cleansing to meet with God

Baptisms are a common element for most churches, yet the how-to is widely debated. Some do a complete immersion. Some do that on their own, some do it with the assistance of a pastor or church staff member. Some don’t immerse at all—instead, they sprinkle water, normally on the forehead. Some Protestant churches also teach that baptism is a requirement for salvation, namely, if you haven’t been baptized then you aren’t saved.

Most churches spend a lot of time talking about the Gospel accounts of baptism, especially John the Baptist, but few churches talk about the baptisms in the pre-Temple period in the Old Testament.

When the Lord led the Israelites out of Egypt to Mount Sinai, He commanded the children of Israel to take a bath (a mikveh, the Hebrew word for “baptism”) before the Lord would come down to the mountain and speak with them.

By understanding that any place on earth the Lord dwells with man is called holy ground or a sacred space, you comprehend more clearly why it was important for John the Baptist to minister through baptisms before the Messiah came. They needed to be clean to meet with the coming Messiah. It was tied directly to the Old Testament’s pattern of meeting with God.

This is in complete contrast to what has been taught in the Church. The teaching was that going through a baptism was a reflection of something that had already happened, an outward sign of an inward decision. If we look at the entirety of Scripture, however, we see it is the other way around. A baptism was in preparation for something that was getting ready to happen. Mark chapter 1 paints this beautifully in the New Testament as the Messiah is baptized before He hears the voice of God above and the Spirit descending to meet with Him. This is even before He enters into His time of ministry. So, the Gospel’s account of Messiah also confirms that it is in preparation, not in a reflection.

Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Messiah Yeshua have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Messiah was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. Romans 6:3-4

That is what Paul said about baptism. It is a reminder of being passed from death to life (via the Passover). But Paul was trying to correct some misconceptions that had arisen about grace apart from the Passover. Apparently, the believers were flaunting the grace of God and His forgiveness to continue in sin and to increase in sin. Paul was trying to point out that the baptism was not only the picture of the Messiah’s redemption (Passover - now the cross - we were cleansed from sin) but it was in preparation for us to hear God’s commandments and instructions so we could walk before Him clean, not to sin again or sin even more! Here is the rest of Paul’s teaching.

What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be! Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification. Romans 6:15-19

Baptism is preparation of the believer to hear and receive the instructions of God. We see that throughout the Old Testament human beings struggle with how to apply the Law to their lives. Then we see Messiah in the New Testament use parables to show us exactly what the Law was intended for and how to best apply the principles of the commandments in our daily life so that the Law would no longer be written on stone alone but on every one of our hearts.

Baptism, as taught by the Church, was a one-time outward showing of salvation. Yet when we look at the entirety of Scripture, we see that we are to be baptized every time we go to hear God speak and meet with Him. We also see that during the Feast of Pentecost (Shavuot) Israelites were immersed annually as a proclamation of their faith in the God of Israel.

So far, we have covered God’s grace, God’s covenants, Passover is the root of communion, and baptism is getting ready for one’s walk with God. Please make sure to circle back next month as we conclude the second part of this article on What Does the Bible Actually Say…...