If you are a believer, it is important to understand our Jewish roots. God chose the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to be His chosen people. They are the Israelites, the Jewish people. From them comes the Bible. In fact, the entire Old Testament of the Bible was written by the Jews. And the New Testament was written by Jewish people as well.
God loves Israel, and He said to Abraham:
“I will make you a great nation,
And I will bless you,
And make your name great;
And so you shall be a blessing;
And I will bless those who bless you,
And the one who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” (Genesis 12:2-3)
In speaking of this, God has indeed made the Israelites a great nation. Even though they disobeyed God and went into exile, God brought them back. In modern times, they are living in the land God gave them. Moreover, God caused them to be a blessing, because the word of God came from them and Jesus the Messiah was born Jewish as well.
Therefore, we should love the Jewish people, because whoever loves the Jewish people and blesses them, God will bless him. But whoever hates them, God will curse. God has cursed many of Israel’s enemies in the Bible. For example, see the book of Obadiah. Even though Obadiah is a short book, an entire book of the Bible is dedicated to prophesying against a nation that hated Israel, the nation of Edom. God destroyed Edom, because the Edomites rejoiced during Israel’s captivity. Where are the Edomites today?
But the Jewish people, despite suffering many tribulations, has come back to their homeland as a strong nation. God has indeed watched over them in order to bring a remnant back, and He will watch over them until the end.
God doesn’t change
We should not think that because we are in New Testament times that God has changed. God has said, “For I, the Lord, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed” (Malachi 3:6). God shows clearly that His promises to Israel are forever.
The Christian church has not replaced Israel. But the church has a lot to learn from the Jewish people.
1. Our Jewish Messiah
First, Jesus was born Jewish. From His genealogy (Matthew 1), we know that He is the Son of David, of the tribe of Judah. We also know that He was circumcised on the eighth day according to Jewish custom (Luke 2:21). Jesus was purified according to the Law of Moses: “And when the days for their purification according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, ‘Every firstborn male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord’), and to offer a sacrifice according to what was said in the Law of the Lord, ‘A pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons'” (Luke 2:22-24).
And as a Jew, Jesus went to the Temple in Jerusalem every year, and kept all the Jewish holy days. Jesus said, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished” (Matthew 5:17-18).
So Jesus was the only One who could keep all of God’s commandments written in the Law of Moses. As the Son of God who kept God’s Law perfectly, Jesus is qualified to be our sacrifice and substitute to take the punishment of sin for us. Because of His perfection, our Jewish Messiah became for us the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And He was able to redeem the Jewish people who were under the Law of Moses, and He was able to redeem the Gentiles also.
2. From Passover to the Communion
In our Christian Communion, we know that bread represents the body of Christ and wine (or grape juice) symbolizes His blood shed for us. We partake of the communion to remember Christ who died for us on the cross.
Let’s look more closely at the bread. Traditionally, the bread that is used should be unleavened (that is, made without yeast or rising agent). Leaven in the Bible often represents sin. During the Jewish Passover and festival of Unleavened Bread, no leaven should be used in making bread. So unleavened bread is pure bread. And in order to cook it, it is traditionally put on a grill and pierced with holes so that the bread does not burst in the heat. Below is a picture of a piece of traditional Jewish unleavened bread.
Notice the holes and stripes? These remind us that Jesus is the “Bread of Life” (John 6:35) and “He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).
Jesus introduced the Communion as part of the Passover with His disciples (Luke 22:14-23). So the Christian Communion is actually a mini-version of the Jewish Passover.[1] Jesus said: “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer…” (Luke 22:15).
“And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’ And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, ‘This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood.'” (Luke 22:19-20)
Did you know that in the traditional Passover, there are three pieces of bread? Jews take the middle piece, break it, wrap it in a piece of cloth and hide it at the beginning of Passover. Later on during the feast, this middle piece is taken out and eaten with a cup of wine.[2]
This represents Jesus (who is the second Person in the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). Jesus was taken away and broken for us. Then He was buried. When the cup of wine called the Cup of Redemption is served, the broken and hidden piece of bread (representing Jesus) is brought out (resurrected).
So Jesus is both the Passover Lamb of God and the Bread of Life who was sacrificed for us.
Whenever we take the communion, we ask God to forgive us of any sins and we turn from those sins. We also remember what Christ did for us on the cross.
“Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly.” (1 Corinthians 11:27-29)
This means that God will judge the one who takes Communion in a careless or disrespectful manner.
3. The Jewish Early Church
As noted earlier, the entire Bible was written by Jews.[3] The word of God comes to the Jewish people first and also to the Gentiles: “to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16) (John 10:34-35). The Apostle Paul was a Jewish rabbi of the tribe of Benjamin (Romans 11:1). All of Jesus’s twelve disciples were Jewish. All the apostles were Jewish. And the early Christian church began as a Jewish Christian church.
They preached the gospel starting in Jerusalem, to all Judea and Samaria, and to the remotest part of the earth (Acts 1:8).
It was the Jews who began to evangelize to the Gentiles, beginning with Philip (Acts 8:25-40), Peter (Acts 10), and Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13:46-47).
So let us honor the Jewish people and do good to them. Let us share the gospel with them, because many of them don’t believe in Jesus today.
4. Blood on Our Hands
Today, many Jewish people don’t believe in Jesus and refuse to even consider Him. The primary reason is that so-called “Christians” have committed horrendous atrocities against the Jewish people over the years.
There were “Christian” Crusades (e.g. Rhineland Massacre of Jews in 1096 AD), during which so-called “Christians” massacred many Jewish people, including women and children. There was the Holocaust, during which Christians either turned a blind eye to the slaughter of more than 6 million Jews or actively persecuted the Jewish people.
And “Christian” nations of the West evicted and persecuted Jewish people. Anti-Semitism is rampant in many churches today, some of which have decided that God has rejected the Israelites and replaced them with the Gentiles! Nothing can be further from the truth.
No wonder many Jewish people refuse to even consider Jesus, because they think Christians are against them! It is considered a betrayal of their own people if one of them turns to Christ the Messiah.
We have paid back the good they did to us with evil. Early Jewish Christians risked their lives to preach to the Gentiles. But we have blood on our hands. Therefore, let us do good to the Jewish people and show love as we ought.
5. We can learn what not to do
Many Christians think the Jewish people sinned in a way that Christians would not. But we need to be careful and not have such pride.
All the Israelites were led out of Egypt by Moses, but not all of them were saved. They were not saved because they did not trust God even though they saw His works. And they were not saved because they disobeyed Him (worshipped other gods and oppressed the needy) (Amos 5:12,25-27).
Today we need to be careful to not commit the same errors. Are we believers according to lip-service only? If we really believe in Jesus, we would do His works.
Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also” (John 14:12). What are the works of Jesus? It is following God’s commandments to love God and love other people (Mark 12:30-31).
Paul compares Gentiles to wild olive branches and the Jews to cultivated olive branches, with the root being Christ:
“You will say then, ‘Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.’ Quite right, they [Israelites] were broken off for their unbelief, but you stand by your faith. Do not be conceited, but fear; for if God did not spare the natural branches, He will not spare you, either. Behold then the kindness and severity of God; to those who fell, severity, but to you, God’s kindness, if you continue in His kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off.
And they also, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. For if you were cut off from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these who are the natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree?
For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery—so that you will not be wise in your own estimation—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written ‘The Deliverer will come from Zion, He will remove ungodliness from Jacob'”. (Romans 11:19-26)
So since God loves the Jewish people and plans to deliver Israel in the future, let us do good to them with action, not with lip service. And let us teach these things in the churches so that the churches will know how to behave properly toward the Jewish people by acting in love and kindness.
[1] Levitt, Zola. The Miracle of Passover (Dallas, Texas: Zola Levitt Ministries, 1977), p.21.
[2] Levitt, pp.11-12, 21-22.
[3] Levitt, p.5.
To learn more about the Jewish roots of Christianity, see Jewish Holy Days and Jewish Love Story.
Read Romans 11 in the Bible.