For followers of Christ to think that they can find favor with God by turning back to the rituals of the earlier covenant is a serious error. There are Judaizers today, as there were in the apostolic church, who try to convince believers that God’s approval is found by keeping certain forms and parts of the Mosaic law.
Paul makes it clear that Gentiles shouldn’t return to the practice of the Jews as a way of seeking God’s grace (Galatians 5:1-12). He strongly warns against the efforts of Judaizers in the church to reintroduce circumcision as a requirement for membership, salvation, or spiritual growth. He even calls the Judaizers “dogs” as an ironic use of the terminology they used to describe Gentiles:
“Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord! It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you. Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh. For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh—though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless. But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith” (Philippians 3:1-9 NIV).
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love” (Galatians 5:1-6).
Why did Paul take such a strong stand? He recognized the subtle danger of going back to anything that would detract from what God had done by sending His Son into the world to fulfill the old covenant and to die in our place.
The church’s faith in the new covenant of Christ had surpassed a religion of nationalism and ritual worship. The new covenant community was now to be inclusive, based on mutual love and servant-leadership. It focused on the spiritual descendants of Abraham, by way of Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, the prophets, and Jesus Christ (their prophet, priest, and king; Hebrews 1:1-4). Everyone in Christ was a Levite in the new order (1 Peter 2:5), and not only Jerusalem, but the whole world was being sanctified by the miraculous outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit.
The apostle Paul noted that by rejecting Jesus Christ, the Jews did not submit to God’s righteousness.
“I bear [my fellow Jews] witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Romans 10:2-4 NKJV).
In his book, What Saint Paul Really Said, N. T. Wright explains what Paul meant when he said that his fellow Jews were unwilling to submit to God’s righteousness:
Israel, says Paul, is ignorant of what God has righteously and faithfully been doing in her history. In seeking to establish a status of righteousness, of covenant membership, which will be for Jews and Jews only, she has not submitted to God’s righteousness. The covenant always envisaged a worldwide family; Israel, clinging to her own special status as the covenant-bearer, has betrayed the purpose for which that covenant was made. It is as though the postman were to imagine that all the 47 letters in his bag were intended for him.
When Paul says that Israel “did not submit to the righteousness of God,” he is clearly referring back to Romans 3:21-26, the passage we looked at a moment ago. There, as we saw, Paul declared that “the righteousness of God” had been revealed in the gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel which declares that God has one way of salvation for all, Jew and Gentile alike. When Paul’s fellow Jews rejected Jesus (as Paul did himself to begin with), and when they continue to reject the message about Jesus which Paul proclaims, he sees the underlying reason: they recognize, as he has had to recognize, that it will mean abandoning the idea of a covenant membership which will be inalienably hers and hers alone.
Any Jewish faith that is not focused on Christ as the promised “Seed of Abraham” (Galatians 3:16-19) reverts to a focus on the Jews themselves as Abraham’s physical heirs. Any ritual return to the practices of the old covenant, no matter how small, is a step away from the glorious new reality of God’s righteousness offered to the whole human race in Jesus Christ. In that context, any return to the forms of the old covenant is idolatry.
(Paul) expounds Genesis 15, and many other passages, to say that Israel’s true fulfillment is now to be found in Jesus Christ and the Spirit. Israel rejected the call of Jesus, and now rejects the apostolic message about Jesus, because it challenges that which has become her all-consuming interest: her relentless pursuit of national, ethnic and territorial identity. She is, Paul reckons, in danger of making herself simply a nation “like all the others.” Blood and soil were the marks of pagan nations; Israel was using Torah and circumcision to emphasize exactly those things. Thus her circumcision had become mere pagan-style mutilation (Philippians 3:2); her adherence to Torah had become mere pagan-style allegiance to principalities and powers (Galatians 4:8-11); and her whole system stood condemned as being now driven by the “Adamic” nature that made Adam’s trespass to abound in the very place (i.e., Israel) where Torah was given (Romans 5:20; Romans 7:7-25). When Paul coins somewhat contemptuous puns to make this point (for instance, katatome, “mutilation,” for peritome, “circumcision,” in Philippians 3:2), this is not mere angry invective (What Saint Paul Really Said, pp. 84-85).
The author of Judaism Is Not Jewish: A Friendly Critique of the Messianic Movement, Baruch Maoz (himself an Israeli Christian of Jewish ethnicity) wrote this regarding those who try to get Gentiles involved in “messianic” groups.
Paul’s choice of words in the letter to the Galatians is so strong that I dare quote only portions of them: for a Gentile to become a Jew is to desert Messiah for a different Gospel (Gal. 1:6), which is really no Gospel at all (Galatians 1:7), not to be straightforward about the truth (Galatians 2:14), to make Messiah a minister of sin (Galatians 2:17), to act foolishly (Galatians 3:3), to be severed from Messiah (Galatians 5:4), to have fallen from grace (5:4). Conversion to Judaism is never an option that a Gentile follower of Jesus may consider. His love for Messiah, his devotion to God and his gratitude for the salvation procured for him at so great a price should preserve him from allowing the thought ever to enter his mind.
Why on earth would he think otherwise? Peter tells us that the recipients of his letters, although mostly Gentile, are sharers in the ancestral prerogatives of Israel in accordance with the divine purpose, which was formulated before the world began (1 Peter 2:1-10). Scan his two letters. There is not the slightest intimation that Gentiles may or could in any way be advantaged by keeping the Torah or becoming Jewish. There is nothing Jewish to be seen in Peter’s letters, just the grace of God in Jesus. See what Paul has to say in his letter to the Ephesians:
“He broke down the barrier of the dividing wall by abolishing in his flesh the enmity, the Law of commandments in ordinances” (2:14-15). (Judaism Is Not Jewish, p. 118)
If the premillennial eschatological viewpoint is correct, a time of great catastrophe for national Israel will coincide with a great revival among hitherto unconverted Jews. This will result in a great revival within national Israel. This has not yet occurred, however. All Jews who accept the truth about Jesus Christ today, just like Jews who accepted the gospel in Paul’s day, recognize that Israel’s true fulfillment is now to be found in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. They become Christians. It is no more acceptable for them to attach first covenant teachings to the gospel today than it was for Judaizers in the first century. Doing so implies that there are two ranks of Christians: the first being Jews who retain their first covenant distinctiveness (along with its rules) as well as second covenant salvation through Christ, and the second being Gentiles who remain excluded from first covenant blessings. Doing so is also to focus on the old covenant and the physical descendants of Abraham rather than the Son of God, the cross, and the resurrection.
Many elements of the old covenant are beautiful for what they prefigure. But the glorious New Testament truth that was prefigured in the Old Testament needs to be our focus. However beautiful old covenant symbolism may be, any admiration for it that detracts from a proper emphasis on Christ is a form of idolatry. Infatuation with the shadows and symbols of the first covenant as a means of sanctification ignores the gospel and reverts to the kind of legalism that identifies righteousness with “torah observance” rather than faith in Christ.
“When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ” (Colossians 2:13-17 NIV).
