Belonging to the Messiah
What It Means to Be “in Christ”
The first official Christian apostolate to the Gentile nations featured the ministry of Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee and student of Rabbi Gamaliel (Acts 22:3; 23:6), who just happened to be the grandson of one of Israel’s finest sages, Hillel the Great. This Saul was proud of his pedigree and of the fact that concerning the Torah (God’s law) he was “blameless” (Philippians 3:6). He was an impassioned defender of mainstream Judaism of his day. Despite a Hillelian education in pluriformity and tolerance, his zeal for the Torah and for rabbinic tradition had been fanned into a rage of violent confrontation with the talmidim (disciples) of Jesus.
Having just supervised the execution of Stephen, one of the Jesus movement’s leading apologists, Saul was on his way to Damascus, Syria, to expand his efforts at suppressing the emerging Messianic sect that was challenging Pharisaic control over teaching and practice in Jewish society. Suddenly, he was thrown to the ground and blinded by a profound light that left him virtually paralyzed and only able to whisper a feeble, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply that he received from above was just as stunning as his condition: “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5). Paul instantly learned the lesson that to persecute believers in the Messiah is to persecute the Messiah himself.
Reorientation in Messiah
In Saul of Tarsus, God found a man of unbridled zeal and fervor for the Word of God, a man who needed only a reorientation to become one of the greatest witnesses to the good news of the emerging Kingdom of God who would ever live. When the Holy Spirit that knocked him from his high horse into the dust of the Damascus Road had completed its work in him, Saul would become Paul, a “new creation in Christ Jesus” (2 Corinthians 5:17). He would be set on a course of that would transform him from his role as a Jewish rabbi into that of a Jewish apostle of the gospel of the Messiah, God’s Son.
When Saul recognized and believed in Jesus, he found that he was “in the Messiah” and the Messiah was in him by the Holy Spirit. Immediately everything changed as he experienced a paradigm shift of cosmic proportions. All that he had aspired to be in the Ioudaismos (Judaism) of his ancestors suddenly paled in comparison to the radiance of the Sun of Righteousness whose presence had blinded his eyes and left him prostate on the ground. All of his training in the written Torah, Nevi’im, and Ketuvim and in the oral Mishnah and Gemara took on new meaning as he beheld the wonder of the very essence of the Hebrew Scriptures and their interpretation—the living, incarnate Word himself.
The passionate disciple did not, however, discard his Jewish heritage when he cried out, “Lord, who are you?” and Jesus answered, “I am Jesus whom you persecute.” Instead, he channeled all of his erudition and training in the Hebrew Scriptures and the massive corpus of Jewish interpretative literature into understanding and proclaiming the Good News that the God of the universe had become incarnate, suffered, and died for the sins of humanity, ascended in glory, and promised to come again to establish his kingdom on earth.
A New Status in Messiah
This Pauline lesson is one that should be learned by all believers in Jesus, particularly those who seek to recover the Hebrew foundations of the Christian faith. “If anyone be in Messiah, he is a new creation and everything has become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Paul summed up this revolutionary understanding by declaring, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
In reality, moreover, all of those who come to faith in Jesus as Messiah and Lord become children of Abraham, the father of faith: “If you belong to Messiah, then you are Abraham’s children and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:29). Paul makes it clear that “Abraham is the father of us all [Jew and Gentile who have faith in God]” (Romans 4:16). How can Gentiles be “children of Abraham”? It’s simple, they “do the works of Abraham” (John 8:39). In effect, then, Gentiles who believe in Jesus are grafted into God’s family tree of salvation and covenant relationship (Romans 11:11–31). At the same time, they have become naturalized citizens of the Commonwealth of Israel and “members of God’s household [family]” (Ephesians 2:11–21).
Race, color, ethnicity, nationality, gender, stature, or handicap simply does not matter anymore after one is “in Messiah” or “belongs to the Messiah.” The only thing that is important thereafter is “the new creation in Christ Jesus.” In fact, “the old has gone, the new is here!” because “God has reconciled us to himself through Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:17–18). The most profound miracle has occurred, for the pagan heart of the unbeliever has been transformed into a heart of faith in—and faithfulness to—the God of Israel.
Fatal Distractions
Despite this profoundly obvious truth that is and has always been central to Christian faith, there have always been those in Christian circles who somehow have not felt that it was adequate simply to be named among the Notzrim, the Messians or Christians (Acts 11:26), or to practice “the Way” (Acts 24:14). For them, something more is required to complete their identity! The profound spiritual transformation that they have experienced by faith in God’s Messiah somehow needs something soulish or fleshly to satisfy their quest for self-identity and self-fulfillment. They need something that they can be or do in order to complete their identity. For them, it is “Jesus and . . .” when, in reality, it is “Jesus alone,” nothing more, nothing less.
“If you belong to Messiah, then you are Abraham’s children and heirs according to the promise.”
Galatians 3:29
For some Gentiles, this “need” has culminated in conversion to Judaism, wherein they obviate the sacrifice of Jesus in their quest for a superior self-identity, effectively “crucifying the Son of God afresh and putting him to an open shame” (Hebrews 6:6). For others, it has been the siren song of esoteric knowledge that sends them on a neo-Gnostic ego trip and elevates them above everyone else because of their secret insights. For still others, it has been an often convoluted attempt to establish some genetic, genealogical link with the people of the first covenant. This thirteenth tribe, the Wannabes, has emerged to claim special status for themselves. More often than not this subtle, soulish exaltation of flesh manifests itself in separatism, exclusivity, and elitism—which are little more than idolatry—that cause them to look with disdain upon others who do not share their special, self-exalted status.
Whatever the case may be, everything that people try to add to their self-identity as simply being “a new creation in Messiah” merely distorts their faith and sends them flying off on tangents that remove them from the central foundations of their faith and put emphases on a self-righteousness of what they “are” or what they “do.”
While God still maintains his irrevocable covenant with the physical descendants of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob, the New Covenant has renewed and extended that Abrahamic covenant to “every creature,” on equal terms; therefore, it is of no consequence whether one is of Judah, Benjamin, Levi, Ephraim, Manasseh, Simeon, Cherokee, Apache, Zulu, Maasai, Hunan, Hindi, Samurai, or Aborigine. The real truth is that everyone on earth likely has some trace of Abraham’s DNA. But, even that is of no consequence. This is why Paul warned believers in his time not to engage themselves in “endless genealogies” (1 Timothy 1:4) and mythologies (1 Timothy 1:4) or to exhaust themselves in “logomachy to no profit” (2 Timothy 2:14).
Being In Christ Is What Really Matters
These exercises offer no advantages, but they do pose grave dangers both to the believer and to the body of Messiah. One needs only to look as far back as the Third Reich to see the extreme of what the spirit of elitist idolatry can produce. Anglo-Israelites, Black Jews, and others are honest in their desire to identify themselves with the People of the Book, and they may well find some oblique connection; however, their efforts, though often full of sound and fury, signify nothing, and in most cases are little more than a tempest in a teapot! The case is closed. The verdict is in: The “new creation” is being in and belonging to the Messiah. Who could—or would ever want—to improve on that!
