COMPETING VISIONS OF YESHUA IN THE NEWBORN APOSTLES: THE BIRTH OF THE MESSIANIC CONFLICT

THE PROBLEM OF MESSIANIC JUDAISM

PART 3

COMPETING VISIONS OF YESHUA IN THE NEWBORN APOSTLES:

THE BIRTH OF THE MESSIANIC CONFLICT

But underneath these marvelous new realities and stunning events, there was a hidden problem. The problem was that the realities associated with Yeshua’s rebirth from the dead came to men whose hearts and minds for the preceding 4 years had otherwise been governed by a faith in Yeshua based in his former humanity as one “born of a woman, made under the Law”—and whose human faith in Him had not automatically been displaced by the new realities.

This is the absolutely critical truth at the heart of the Messianic / pure Christian conflict both historic and present.

It’s vital to understand that the cataclysmic changes that occurred 1) in Yeshua’s identity by His rebirth from the dead as the first of the new transnational creation, 2) by Yeshua’s new transnational commission to the apostles, 3) by their own rebirth in Yeshua’s divinity as new transnational spirit creations and 4) by the Spirit’s own first transnational witness through them at Pentecost—that these changes did not suddenly eradicate the apostles’ Jewish mindsets and frame of reference for their vision of Yeshua.

As anyone who understands the new birth knows, though much changes immediately in us at conversion, much else only changes through a long process of mind renewal as our new identity matures. And, as anyone who understands the anointing also knows, one can prophesy under the anointing of things into which his own mind has not yet come into conformity.

All this was as true for the apostles and the first Jewish believers as for anyone today. In spite of their new birth and unction at Pentecost, the new apostles still needed mind renewal regarding who they had become in Christ and what the practical effects of all these reborn realities must mean for the emerging church as well as for relationship to their own remaining Jewish identity and heritage.

- The Gap Opens between the Transcendent and Messianic Views of Yeshua

The divide between who the apostles had become as newborns in Christ and how they still humanly viewed Yeshua and His kingdom surfaced immediately. Though their new faith had taken hold, the disciples did not always recognize Yeshua, even though they had seen and heard His human form for four years (Jn. 21:1-14).⁶ They also still harbored comparisons, reconstructionist expectations and questions about His kingdom based on the human relationship they’d had with him all along as the earth-born Son of Man (Jn 21:21; Ac. 1:6).

Not having yet grasped who they had now become through the Spirit and all that had transpired in the heavenlies, the apostles and believers in Jerusalem continued worshipping Yeshua as the Son of David, “born of a woman, made under the Law.” And this of course reinforced in them the value of their own Jewish heritage under the Law. Naturally therefore, they also stayed close to the temple. But it would not be long before the frictional consequences of a spirit-reborn people holding onto a human view of Yeshua became evident—a view which we will henceforth refer to as the “Messianic view.”

The church’s remaining Messianic embrace of the Son of Man became taxed from three directions. The first was the negative fruit of racial division within her own midst; the second was the forward motion of the transracial Spirit who would not be daunted in bringing the witness of the transracial Son of God to all the earth (shattering all confines of Jewish Lineage and Law in its wake); and the third was the sly infiltration of satan into the church through “false brethren” minded to press the human view of Yeshua to its max by defining the Way itself in terms of physical relationship to Yeshua’s original Lineage and Law.

· The Fleshly Spirit of Racism

The “leaven” associated with the Messianic view of Yeshua first began to rise as a simple consequence of its own nature. We read that “a complaint arose on the part of the Hellenistic Jews against the native Hebrews, because their widows were being overlooked in the daily serving of food.” (Ac. 6:1). How interesting. This was not a division between Gentile believers outside Judaism and native Jewish believers. It was between mixed-breed /proselyte Jewish believers and native Jewish believers within the same Jewish church!—long before the issue of Gentile believers outside Jewish heritage ever arose.

The source of this race-based “stinking fruit” speaks for itself. It was not of Yeshua’s Spirit. But what we must understand is that this fruit was birthed by a racially inspired view of Yeshua.⁷ From the Messianic perspective of Yeshua, the preferential treatment of the native Hebrew widows was entirely justifiable. Why? Because as the Son of Man, Yeshua was a Jew, and He Himself had said He was sent “only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel” and to “uphold the Law”—which included racial purity. If so, then it could only follow that Yeshua had a preferred place in His heart for native-born Jews. So it could only be right that the native Jews in the church should receive special treatment. ⁸

The apostles resolved the discord by establishing a “deaconate” in which seven Hellenistic Jewish believers (one of whom was Stephen) were appointed to make sure “their own” were being cared for. But the apostles’ solution only treated the symptom, not the cause. They still had to learn that what remained of their own human view of Yeshua was at the root of this problem, and that the issue of race would not go away so easily.

· The Holy Spirit Forces the Gospel out of Judaism

Our introduction to Stephen above is very significant. Stephen is remembered for his martyrdom. But his seminal role in the emergent clash between the Transcendent and Messianic views of the Way is entirely unnoticed. Stephen unknowingly sounds what is to become the “shot heard ‘round the world” in exposing the deficiency of the Messianic view of Yeshua seating itself in Jerusalem.

The Spirit on Stephen’s witness demonstrated Stephen had matured in his newborn identity into a much higher vision of Yeshua than allowed for by the rest of his Messianic-leaning brethren. Indeed, his view of Yeshua was possibly the most advanced of anyone in the Jerusalem church. I say this because of the nature of his witness and what happened as a result of it.

Already versed in the error of “racial profiling,” Stephen’s further testimony of Yeshua to the Jews did not reinforce the vision of the Jewish Son of David who would return to restore the Law. He declared instead that Yeshua was in process of changing the Mosaic Law, and that the temple (hence its system of worship) would be destroyed.⁹ Stephen was preaching nothing less than Yeshua’s surpassing of Judaism.

Not even Peter had proclaimed anything this “far out!” So egregiously radical was Stephen’s witness that the high council had to “stop their ears” as the crazed mob drove him out to be stoned—without even passing a sentence of death! So aggrieved now were the principalities and powers over Judaism that they at once turned on the entire Jerusalem church, smashing and scattering it everywhere.

Behind all this however is a deeply unappreciated truth. The veiled truth is that it was the Holy Spirit Himself, not Stephen,¹⁰ who bore this fiery witness to Yeshua’s transcendence; and He did so to trigger in earnest the international spread of Yeshua’s heritage-blind message, a commission Yeshua had already committed to the apostles, but was not being carried out.

The Holy Spirit’s transnational accomplishments due to this Hellenistic Jew’s testimony validated Stephen’s view of Yeshua past Moses, and back-sidedly rebuked the immature harboring of the Way under the human vision of Yeshua in Jerusalem. Shortly after the diaspora began, the gospel came to the Samaritans through Philip, as well as to Jews of other nations. Finally, its fire jumped the Jewish ship altogether when Cypriot and Cyrenian Jews began winning Gentile converts to Yeshua in Antioch, Syria—entirely outside of Judaism and without prior assent from anyone in Jerusalem. (Ac.11:20-21).

Depending on the timing of the Antioch events relative to Peter’s eventual visit to Cornelius, the “Antioch crusade” is possibly the first time Yeshua was preached to Gentiles outside of Judaism. Regardless, Antioch did become the site of the first international church birthed outside Judaism—not by any apostle’s ministry, but as the end product of events orchestrated by the Holy Spirit Himself stemming from a Hellenistic Jew’s witness to Yeshua’s transcendence past Moses. And this was just the beginning of the Spirit’s pressure on Messianism…

· The Party of “the Circumcision”

There is a third crucial force that preyed on the apostles’ remaining immaturity in apprehending the raceless Yeshua. Lurking in the shadows of the new church (just as the serpent first lurked in the garden) were numbers of Pharisees who had come to profess faith in Yeshua (Ac. 15:5), as well as a number of priests (Ac. 6:7). As a sect of Judaism, the Pharisees were the sworn enemies of Yeshua, as He also was theirs—a faction Yeshua specifically identified as a “brood of vipers.” This makes their conversion a matter for careful scrutiny.

We do not know how many of these “vipers” came into the church. Nor do we know how many of them came by way of a genuine rebirth of heart in Yeshua by repentant faith. Some certainly did. Equally without doubt some did not, and may have even feigned conversion in order to infiltrate the new movement so as either to destroy it or to commandeer it in their direction—just as Judas had. (Paul referred to these men as “false brethren secretly brought in” Gal. 2:4.)

What we do know is this: it was almost impossible for Pharisees to turn to Yeshua on His terms. This means that if any did come to the Lord, they came with more religiosity of which to be cleansed than any “lowly sinner.” It further means that if they did convert without adequate repentant cleansing, their leavenous thinking and influence—their innate trust in their knowledge and performance of the Law (including their ability to intimidate those lest knowledgeable) and their trust in their Abrahamic heritage—stood as a major threat to the true gospel within the heart of the church itself. It would be but a short step to push the apostles’ residual faith in the Son of Man into a religious faith in the Son of Man’s human heritage and Law—necessary not just to spiritual growth, but to salvation itself.

In fact, we do know that a significant segment of these Pharisees were only “half converted,” and that they did push the Messianic view of Yeshua over the edge. They harnessed their new faith into their unrelinquished faith in Jewish legal heritage centered on circumcision, birthing the syncretistic religion we know today as Messianic Judaism.¹¹ We also know that 1) these messianic Pharisees had an intimidatingly aggressive influence on the “less-learned” apostles; and 2) they resisted in some fashion every work of the Holy Spirit among the nations wherever they are mentioned in regard to it.¹²

NEXT – PART 4: THE SPIRIT’S WAR AGAINST THE FLESH OVER THE VISION OF YESHUA

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