A Loving Father

I have been in an interesting discussion with a friend of mine over the past few days and just finished the following email.  I have been longing to getting back into blogging and felt sharing this would be a good start.  I pray that this is a blessing to you.

I read a great article on the movement toward Torah observant gentiles and some of the complications this is causing. The author expressed a concern with gentiles looking to identify themselves as “Jews” because this supports a replacement theology.  Where they drew the line is with the singing, dancing, and other aspects of Torah observance that imply they are Jewish.  In other words, when they celebrate the Sabbath, they shouldn’t attempt to mimic Jewish tradition, honor traditional Jewish cooking, sing traditionally Jewish songs, or feel a need to pray in Hebrew, etc…  At the same time the author made a point that I had not seen and I believe it to be great revelation.

In Romans we are told that God is going to use the gentile believers to lead the Jews to jealousy in the end days.  This is supported in Deuteronomy 32 as well.  What are we to be jealous over?  He argued that a major aspect will be the result of gentile believers “taking what God gave to us” and making it their own.  This being Torah, the holidays and the way of life God put forth in the Old Covenant, but acclimated to their own gentile cultures.  What does this look like?  Sabbath with music, dancing, cooking, prayer language, and dress that are all culturally applicable to the gentile culture honoring it.

The argument is that this is exactly what God is bringing about in these last days.  God is leading gentiles back to Torah in a way that is distinctly “gentile” but still choosing to honor what He defines as “life” and “our wisdom” through His Old Covenant “commandments”.  As this progresses prophecy tells us that this will move the Jewish people to jealousy as they want to take back what they believe is rightfully theirs.  That being God’s ways and the relationship that is founded therein.

Right now millions of gentiles are coming to realize what the early church looked like, understanding what happened in Rome when the Jewishness was wiped away and replaced with Pagan ritual, and are turning back to the Old Covenant ways as a fulfillment to Jerimiah 31. They are reading Paul’s teaching from a new perspective that leads them into reading the Old Covenant with a new perspective.  This “new perspective” is seeing the loving, forgiving, kind hearted father that is laced throughout the Old Covenant Law and Prophets.

Seeing the Old Covenant this way is not possible when we have too great a buy in to traditional Christian theology.  Our teachings tell us that under the Old Covenant our ability to please God, be in relationship with Him, be under His grace, or enter into His salvation was by works.  This is simply not true as noted in Hebrews, elsewhere throughout the New Testament, and as proven through David’s relationship with God under the Old Covenant.

If salvation was always by faith and grace then our theology that says “Jesus fulfilled the “requirements” of the law” is pointless because there were not “requirements”.  The word “requirement” implies that something would be lost if the requirement was not fulfilled.  Over and over again in the Old Covenant God tells us how He is not looking for perfection but relationship.  Our ability to please Him, be in relationship with Him, be under His grace, and enter into His salvation has always been based on our heart relationship toward Him and His ways, not our ability to provide perfect works or lead sinless lives.

Bottom line, God is opening up the eyes of Jews and gentiles who are willing to let their eyes be opened.  He is showing all of us that from the beginning He has been a loving father who is not works minded but relationship centered.  It is such an interesting fact that so many fathers know exactly how they put forth rules in their own homes from a relationship centered, loving, and forgiving heart yet can’t see God’s heart in His commandments because the word “command” is used. 

Maybe it is because as children we felt like our acceptance from our earthly parents WAS based on our ability to meet the “rules of our homes” and we still haven’t gotten over these old wounds.  Maybe this leads us to seeing the God of the Old Covenant in the same way we judge our earthly father in the way he went about attempting to raise us?

Maybe, our earthly fathers were no more “works” based than God and until we get over our judgment and unforgiveness of our own fathers we won’t be capable of seeing the God of the Old Covenant for who He was to Israel in their infancy.

The bigger point here is that my greater calling is not to lead gentiles to Torah, but to lead people (Jew, gentile believers, and the anti-God) to seeing the God of the Old Testament as the same as the God of the new WHILE embracing who He says He is through the prophets and WHILE seeing His loving heart as it is woven through the Old Covenant commandments.

My calling is to help people of the world move from a childish and judgmental perspective of God toward seeing Him as a Loving Father who gave His young child (Israel) a way of life in the form of the Law that was presented in such a way that the young child would hear, listen, and grow. 

The church wants to make excuses for who God was, say that He has somehow changed, and lead people into believing that He is somehow different from who He claims to be.  In other words, we are attempting to rationalize God based on an immature, wounded, childish, flesh based perspective.  In doing this we are leading people into remaining infants in the Lord instead of helping them mature into spiritual adults who can embrace Him for who He says He is.  This keeps them locked in legalism, sin, and confusion.

Going back to Romans:  We are the continuation of that child, it is time we step into maturity and see our father for who He is, who He has been, and who He will be.  This will bring my people to jealousy over the relationship as our hearts open to claim Him as our rightful father leading us to embrace Him in spite of the 4,000 year journey He has subjected us to.  Our past, present, and future is all based on a loving relationship.  Nothing more, nothing less.

I pray that this blog has inspired you to look at God in a new way, look at your own parents in a new way, and lead you into a greater level of understanding of each.