Obsessed or Neglected?: How Jewish Is Christianity?

We All Know That One Person…Every church has at least one. You know the person I mean.

Somewhere along the line they discovered the Jewish roots of Christianity and got a little carried away. What started as a healthy interest in Israel somehow became a borderline fixation.

Now before anyone gets upset, the Jewish roots of Christianity are absolutely a thing. The problem comes when people start treating them as though they're the whole thing.

Some people are only a hop, skip and a jump away from changing their name to Shiloh, turning up to church in a skull cap, and wondering whether a prayer meeting that doesn't include praying for Israel is really a prayer meeting at all.

Every sermon somehow ends up back in Jerusalem. Every news headline is a prophetic confirmation. Every conversation contains at least one overly accented Hebrew word that nobody asked for.

The Jewish roots of Christianity matter enormously.

But roots aren't the same thing as the whole tree.

The funny thing is that whilst a few Christians can get carried away with all things Jewish, most of us have the opposite problem. We're not in danger of becoming too interested in the Jewish roots of Christianity.

We're in danger of forgetting they exist altogether.

The Bible Isn't British

This may come as a surprise to some people, but Jesus wasn't an Englishman.

He didn't drink Yorkshire Tea. He never apologised when somebody else bumped into him. He didn't discuss whether it was acceptable to wear shorts when the temperature climbed above twenty degrees.

The Bible wasn't written in Britain. It wasn't written in America either. It was written by people living in the ancient Middle East. Most of its authors were Jewish. Its stories are Jewish. Its imagery is Jewish. Its assumptions are Jewish.

And it was meant to be understood that way too.

Yet many of us read it as though it was written by modern Western people who think exactly like we do.

We bring our assumptions, our culture, our questions and our worldview to the text without even realising it. Then we wonder why certain passages seem confusing or difficult to understand.

The problem is that the Bible wasn't written to us.

It was written for us.

And those aren't quite the same thing.

If we're going to understand what God is saying, we need to understand something about the world in which he first said it.

Reading the Bible Like Westerners

One of the things I've noticed over the years is how naturally we treat the Bible like a textbook.

We want information. We want answers. We want clear definitions. We want neat theological systems that explain everything and leave no loose ends.

None of those things are bad. Theology matters. Truth matters. Sound doctrine matters.

But sometimes we can become so focused on extracting information from Scripture that we forget why God gave it to us in the first place.

The Bible isn't simply a collection of facts about God.

It's the story of God revealing himself to humanity.

It's a story of covenant, worship, rebellion, redemption, promise and fulfilment. It's a story that stretches from Genesis to Revelation and finds its centre in Jesus Christ.

We often approach Scripture asking, "What does this mean?"

The biblical writers are often asking, "What kind of people should this make you become?"

That's a very different question.

The Bible wasn't merely given to inform us.

It was given to form us.

Somewhere along the way, many Christians started treating the Bible like a divine instruction manual rather than a story we're invited to enter. We became very good at analysing Scripture, but not always as good at allowing Scripture to analyse us.

Jesus Didn't Start Christianity

That heading might sound strange, but stick with me.

Jesus didn't arrive to create a brand-new religion disconnected from everything that came before him.

He arrived as Israel's Messiah.

He stepped into a story that had already been unfolding for centuries.

The covenants point towards him. The sacrifices point towards him. The priesthood points towards him. The temple points towards him. The promises point towards him. The law points towards him.

The whole story is moving towards Jesus.

That's why understanding the Jewish roots of Scripture matters so much.

When Jesus dies on the cross, he isn't abandoning the Old Testament. He's fulfilling it. He satisfies the demands of the law. He becomes the sacrifice that every previous sacrifice pointed towards. He accomplishes what generations had been waiting for.

The cross doesn't make the Old Testament less important.

It makes it make sense.

When we disconnect Jesus from Israel's story, we don't get a clearer picture of Christ.

We get a smaller one.

Don't Become Jewish

At this point somebody is probably wondering whether they need to start learning Hebrew.

No.

The New Testament is remarkably clear that Gentiles do not need to become Jewish in order to follow Jesus.

You don't need a skull cap. You don't need to celebrate Yom Kippur. You don't need to move to Jerusalem. You don't need to rename your children after obscure Old Testament characters.

The goal isn't to become Jewish.

The goal is to understand the Jewish story that Jesus fulfilled.

Those are two very different things.

Understanding the roots helps us understand the tree.

But nobody expects an apple tree to become a root system.

Read Scripture On Its Own Terms

I think this is where the real challenge lies.

Too often we come to the Bible asking it to fit into our world instead of allowing ourselves to step into its world.

We rush to application before understanding context. We pull verses out of stories. We flatten poetry into propositions. We miss references, themes and connections because we don't recognise the world the authors were living in.

The more I've studied Scripture over the years, the more convinced I've become that understanding its Jewish roots doesn't make the Bible more complicated.

It makes it richer.

The patterns become clearer. The connections become deeper. The golden threads running through Scripture become easier to spot.

Most importantly, Jesus becomes more glorious.

Every sacrifice whispers his name. Every covenant anticipates his arrival. Every promise finds its fulfilment in him.

The more we understand the story, the more clearly we see the Saviour standing at the centre of it all.

So How Jewish Is Christianity?

More Jewish than many Western Christians realise.

Less Jewish than some Christians seem to wish it was.

We don't need to become Jewish at all.

But we do need to understand the Jewish roots, history and context of Scripture if we're going to interpret it faithfully.

Because the goal isn't to become experts in Judaism.

The goal is to understand Jesus.

God chose to reveal himself through a particular people, in a particular place, at a particular time in history. Ignoring that reality doesn't make us more biblical. It simply makes us less equipped to understand the story he has given us.

The better we understand the story Jesus fulfilled, the more clearly we see the beauty of the Saviour who stands at its centre.

And that's a far better goal than becoming Jewish.