Make disciples of all nations

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“Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’” (Matthew 28:18-20)

Did Jesus instruct his apostles to make disciples of heathen nations only, and not of Jews? And what must one be taught to become a disciple of the Lord Jesus?

While there was little disagreement over these questions in the past, the idea that Jewish evangelism is contrary to scripture is widely advocated within the German Evangelical and Lutheran Churches, and gaining acceptance.

A Statement issued by the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation in Hamburg, proposes as follows:

“Mission to Jews did not only become historically obsolete, it is also in conflict with biblical findings. The mission command of Mt. 28:19 and following, says that the disciples are sent out to bring the teaching of Jesus, that is his interpretation of the Torah, to the gentile nations in the world, that is not to the Jews who already have and guard the Torah. This has to be underlined; only in this way can one give justice to the insight that Jesus was a Jewish teacher of the Torah.” ( ‘Renunciation of Mission to the Jews,’ Article 3)

This view is actively promoted by the Jerusalem Church of Hamburg, formerly a bastion of Jewish evangelism and the church in which our own ministry (Messianic Good News) had its origin. Organisations and denominations elsewhere have adopted similar positions.

What is at stake?

The broad acceptance of the position advocated in the ‘Renunciation of Mission to the Jews’ has a tragic consequence. There is no qualification to the Lord’s warning to the Jews:  ‘I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins’ (John 8:24).

To ‘have’ and ‘guard’ the Torah is no consolation, ‘for it is not those who hear the Law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the Law who will be declared righteous.’ And, since ‘Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin … no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by observing the Law. Rather, through the Law we become conscious of sin’ (Romans 3:9,20). Indeed, ‘if righteousness could be gained through the Torah, Christ died for nothing!’ (Galatians 2:21).

‘But now a righteousness from God, apart from Law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe’ (Romans 3:21-22). ‘And how,’ cries the apostle Paul, ‘can they hear without someone preaching to them?’ (Romans 10:14)

Discharging our debt to the Jews

Every Gentile throughout history, who has found life through faith in Messiah, has that gift on account of the testimony of one of the original Jewish disciples of the Lord Jesus, and our indebtedness on account of their sacrifice is not yet fully discharged. The apostle Paul, who wished himself accursed for the sake of his brothers after the flesh, those of his own race, was consoled in the knowledge that his work among the Gentiles was not in vain. For God had ordained that the faith of the Gentiles would provoke Paul’s kindred Jews to jealousy, and that, in this manner, many Jews would believe and be saved (Deut. 32:21; Rom. 11:11ff). This process has been at work and borne abundant fruit for Jewish salvation over the past 2000 years.

In order to share in this privilege we may need to suffer the same indignity as the apostles, who, after being flogged for their witness among the Jews, ‘left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah’ (Acts 5:41-42).

Those who avoid the offence of the cross find themselves in a superficial coalition with unbelieving Jews that cannot bear fruit for eternity. Christians who have earned the right through their ‘renunciation of missions to the Jews’ to participate in ‘Jewish-Christian dialogue’, are left with no purpose other than to ‘gain insight into the Jewish root of their faith.’ ^[1]  Those who enter the Dialogue with the secret hope of bringing Jews to faith in Messiah will sadly find that it is impossible by the flattery of imitation to provoke any Jew to jealousy.

As the apostle Paul warned of Hymenaeus and Philetus whose teaching spread like gangrene and destroyed the faith of some, we must similarly contend with a teaching that may rather prevent the coming to faith and salvation of many.

How is Christian doctrine established?

Since the renunciation school claims a scriptural basis for their position, we must first consider how Christian doctrine is established.

It appears from Article 3 of the Renunciation of Mission to the Jews that the ‘biblical findings’ on which its advocates base their conclusions, relate to a single text, namely Matthew 28:19-20, which text they interpret, moreover, for the express purpose of justifying the ‘insight’ that ‘Jesus was a Jewish teacher of the Torah.’

In keeping with the Mosaic prescript that ‘a matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses,’^[2] the Scriptures contain multiple texts on which its principal doctrines may be established. The life and teachings, death, burial and resurrection of our Lord Jesus are affirmed by four independent gospel writers, of which three could by the strictest Pharisaic interpretation, testify on matters pertaining to Jewish Law.^[3]

The English term ‘heresy’ is derived from a Greek word for ‘choice’ and is thus appropriate to doctrines derived from selected texts read disjunctively from the rest of Scripture. Our Lord himself, when presented with scriptural grounds for throwing himself off the Temple, responded: “it is also written …”!

While many texts offer opportunities for divergent interpretation, we gain certainty and confidence when doctrines are established on the “full oracles of God”, i.e. when our understanding of a particular text is informed with reference to the whole.

Any honest attempt to formulate doctrine should thus start with a systematic overview of all relevant portions of Scripture, interpreted contextually and without any preconceived motive.

The evangelic commission in light of scripture

The renunciation school takes a particular view on Matthew 28:19 –

“Therefore go out and teach all nations …  Jesus commands his disciples to go to all nations and to teach them. But we must translate more accurately and say: all non-Jewish nations. In other words, the disciples shall teach all nations, but not the Jewish nation. One can only come to such an interpretation if you consider the original Greek text of the New Testament. The Greek word used here for ‘nations’ namely ‘ethne’ means the same as the Hebrew ‘goyim’, and this means the heathen nations, those who do not yet know the God of Israel. Thus the great commission according to Matthew concerns only the heathen nations of the world, not the Jews, who already know the Name of God and also His commandments. Consequently, missions to the Jews cannot appeal [for support] to Jesus’ commission according to Matthew’s gospel.”^[4]

This interpretation ignores parallel accounts of the Lord’s commission as contained in Mark and Luke’s gospels and in the book of Acts.

Since Matthew renders the commission ‘make disciples of all nations,’ he provides a basis for arguing that ‘nations’ means ‘heathen nations’ and that these be taught what is termed “Jesus’ interpretation of the Torah”.  But Mark drives home the universal scope of the commission – emphasising ‘every creature’ rather than Matthew’s ‘all nations’:

‘And he said to them, Go you into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believes and is baptized, shall be saved; but he that does not believe shall be damned.’ (Mark 16:15-16)

Mark also clarifies what it is that the apostles were instructed to teach, i.e. that the clause‘all I have commanded you’ in Matthew’s version pertains to the ‘gospel of the kingdom,’and that this teaching is the means to salvation for all who believe, ‘first for the Jew and then also for the Greek’ (Romans 1:16).

When the Lord Jesus taught the Jews the true meaning of the Torah, it was to bring them under a conviction of sin: ‘You have heard that it was said, `Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart’ (Matthew 5:27-28).

John the Baptist called the Jews to repentance and prepared them through baptism for the coming of their Redeemer. Both the Baptist and the Lord Jesus taught Jews only, and their message to them was ‘repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near’ (Matthew 3:2, 4:17). Those who did not repent were excluded from the promise: ‘The Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who repent of their sins, declares the LORD’ (Isaiah 59:20).^[5]

The Kingdom of Heaven is the restoration of God’s rule on earth, over those who receive His Spirit. After the resurrected Messiah ‘appeared to them [his disciples] over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God,’ (Acts 1:4) he commanded them: ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.’

Significantly, the Torah refers to Israel as an ‘ethnos’ in the Septuagint, and ‘goy’ in the Hebrew.^[6] God promised Abraham that he would be the father of many nations (goyim), and Israel is chief among these.^[7] In Luke’s gospel, Jews are included in the term ‘all nations’: the Lord Jesus, ‘opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations,beginning at Jerusalem’ (Luke 24:45-47).

Once more, in the book of Acts, the apostles are told: ‘you shall be witnesses to Me, both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and to the end of the earth’ (Acts 1:8).

The renunciation school further disregards the many texts that demonstrate how the apostles understood and fulfilled their own calling. It is clear from the book of Acts that the apostles initially taught none but Jews, and made disciples of none but Jews. ‘They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching’ (Acts 2:42). ‘They’ in this context are the 3000 Jews who were baptised after Pentecost into the name of the Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins.

The apostles were violently opposed by the Jewish authorities for teaching Jews. The Sanhedrin ordered them ‘not to teach at all in the name of Jesus,’ but they responded:‘Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God’ (Acts 4:18).

After Stephen was killed for his persuasive witness among the Jews, ‘those who had been scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, telling the message only to Jews’ (Acts 11:19).

The witness to the Jews continued even after other nations began to be gathered in. The apostle Paul testifies: ‘I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as Peter had been to the Jews. For God, who was at work in the ministry of Peter as an apostle to the Jews, was also at work in my ministry as an apostle to the Gentiles’ (Gal. 2:7-8).

Before Israel could become a light to the nations, it had first to receive that light (Isaiah 60:1-3). When God told Abraham, ‘I will bless you … and all the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you,’ He was announcing the ‘gospel in advance’, namely ‘that God would justify the Gentiles by faith’ (Galatians 3:8). But the blessing had to come to Israel first, before she could take it to others. And so it did, as Peter affirms to the men of Israel: ‘God said to Abraham, `Through your seed all peoples on earth will be blessed.’ When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways’ (Acts 3:25b-26).

The need for baptism

To sustain their interpretation of Matthew 28, the renunciation school must redefine baptism in such a way that it applies to Gentiles only. For the great commission is not only to teach, but also to baptise, and if baptism is required for Jews then the attempt to extricate Jews from the scope of Matthew 28:19 has failed. The proponents of the Renunciation have thus formulated a new doctrine which views baptism as the means for Gentiles to gain acceptance from God, an acceptance which the Jews already have. This is how it is argued:

‘“Make disciples of them,” says Jesus, “and baptise them”. What does baptism mean here? Baptism is a ritual in reciprocity – a person has responded to the gospel and he or she is ready to begin again and to enter the way of Jesus, and God grants him or her with His acceptance or assent. One could just as easily put this the other way around: God loves people and admits them into His covenant. It is the same order of events that we heard earlier from the Old Testament: “Because He has loved you, therefore the Lord has also adopted you and chosen you,” it says in Deuteronomy.’ ^[8]

Yet the Jews who were ‘cut to the heart’ by Peter’s preaching after Pentecost, were told:‘Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off – for all whom the Lord our God will call’ (Acts 2:38-39).

Baptism in the name of Jesus was the response in faith to the promise of forgiveness through his blood. The Holy Spirit is God’s affirmation that righteousness has been obtained by faith. Since the Holy God cannot inhabit a defiled dwelling place, the indwelling of a man’s soul by the Spirit of God confirms the absolute purification of that soul through the remission of all sin. The righteousness that the Jew diligently strives for under the Torah, but cannot attain, is thus demonstrably imparted to and experienced by those who are forgiven and cleansed through faith in Messiah.

It is thus of no minor consequence for a Jew to submit to baptism, and the privilege may very well have been withheld from Gentiles, were it not that the LORD God poured out his Spirit on a Gentile family, before any of its members had passed through water. The Jewish church was thus forced to recognize that ‘God has granted even the Gentilesrepentance unto life’ (Acts 11:18).  So began the justification of Gentiles – in fulfilment of the promise ‘and all peoples of the earth will be blessed through you’ (Genesis 12:3) – and the participation of Gentiles in the glorious inheritance of the Jews.

Having once obtained the goal of the Torah, namely righteousness, there is no further purpose in trying to fulfil its commands. To those who fell victim to such a fallacy, the apostle Paul wrote: ‘Who has bewitched you … did you receive the Holy Spirit [the affirmation of righteousness] by obeying the Torah or by believing what you heard [i.e. the gospel]?” (Galatians 3:1-2). The righteousness that the Law maintained through commandments and sacrifices of atonement is superseded and perfected by the righteousness of faith in the One who died ‘once for all’.

Through baptism, the Jew participates in the death and resurrection of Messiah, and is thus released from the Law in order to live a new life by the Spirit of God. ‘By dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the Law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code’ (Romans 7:6).  Believers in Messiah become God’s workmanship, in order that God may work in us to will and to act according to His good purpose.^[9]

The New Covenant

This new life is governed by a New Covenant as promised by YHVH through the prophet Jeremiah:

“The time is coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant  with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant  I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them, declares the LORD.” (Jeremiah 31:31-32)

From this prophecy we learn that the New Covenant is intended for and made with the very same nation that entered into the Sinai Covenant, namely Israel. Moreover, that it was Israel’s breach of the Sinai Covenant that made the New Covenant necessary!^[10]Moreover, that the New Covenant was ordained to be different to the Torah covenant which Israel had broken.

It was in order that YHVH might continue in His love relationship with His people, that He offers through the New Covenant to forgive them their wickedness and remember their sins no more (Jer. 31:34). The Lord Jesus came as the covenant mediator – in the typology of Moses. The Torah provides: ‘I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put My words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. If anyone does not listen to My words that the prophet speaks in My name, I Myself will call him to account’ (Deut. 18:18-19). Consequently, all Jews who refuse to listen to the ‘Prophet like Moses’ (i.e. who will not be taught by him) are in transgression of the Torah and cut off from their people. These then cease to be a part of Israel, God’s covenant nation  (Acts 3:22-23).

Gentile believers are ‘grafted into Israel’ in order to have a share in these covenant benefits,^[11] provided that they persist in faithfulness.^[12] If the New Covenant has not been made with Israel, Gentiles have no basis for justification or salvation.

Who is Jesus?

Has the professed insight of the renunciation school, namely that Jesus was “a Jewish teacher of the Torah,” led to the simultaneous conclusion that he is not the Jewish Messiah, the ‘Son of God’ promised through the Prophet Nathan, who pre-existed with the Father in eternal glory, and came to ‘save his people from their sins’?^[13] That he is not, moreover, the one who is now exalted to the highest place as ‘king of kings’ and ‘Lord of Lords’, to whom ‘every knee shall bow and every tongue confess, that he is LORD?’  If so, the renunciation school is proclaiming ‘another Jesus’ and an unspeakable blasphemy.

Does it further deny that Jesus is ‘the way, the truth and the life’ and that ‘no-one comes to the Father but by me’? If so it has dispensed with the core of New Testament teaching and has effectively renounced the Christian faith.

The idea that Jesus had an ‘interpretation’ of the Torah denies moreover that Jesus was Immanuel, i.e. God with us, i.e. the very author and giver of the Torah. ‘For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him’ (Colossians 1:16).

‘The Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son.’  ‘If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.’  ‘This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed.’ ^[14]

Mankind is being divided on the question, ‘Who do you say that I am?’ and the renunciation school must kindly make it clear to us on which side they stand.

Conclusion

It is quite clear that the advocates of the ‘Renunciation of Mission to the Jews’ have used two verses from Matthew’s gospel as a pretext for a doctrine that is incompatible with the rest of Scripture.

While their teaching implies that it was the purpose of Messiah to bring people to the Law, the New Testament teaches the opposite, namely that it was the purpose of the Law to bring people to Messiah.

Jesus taught the Law to Jews to bring them to an acknowledgement of their sin and their need of a Saviour. The same process of repentance followed by baptism is required for both Jew and Gentile (Acts 2:38; Acts 10:47). ‘There is no difference [between Jew and Gentile], for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus … This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe’ (Romans 3: 23,22). The Holy Spirit is then given in response to faith as God’s sign of approval or acceptance.^[15]  This blessing is for the Jew first and then only for the Gentile.

The gift of the Spirit makes the Mosaic Law redundant. Life by the Spirit, in faithfulness to Messiah, is the essence of the New Covenant faith.

Those who compromise faith and doctrine for the privilege of participating in a Jewish-Christian Dialogue have embarked on a fruitless exercise. ‘Fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward’ (1 Cor. 3:13-14).

Once the door to compromise has been opened it may lead to the eventual betrayal of Jesus Messiah and the irrevocable loss of salvation.

It is our fervent prayer that those who have been seduced into these errors may return to the faith once for all entrusted to the saints. ‘Christ Jesus, who died – more than that, who was raised to life – is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.’

Full text of the Statement issued by the ‘Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation’ in Hamburg, 1995, entitled:

Renunciation of ‘Mission to the Jews’

1. The productive encounters between Jews and Christians still experience one obstacle in particular: the churches have not yet expressed a clear, unambiguous, authority supported renunciation of mission to Jews.

Certainly, individual churches, groups and personalities have approached such a renunciation with various degrees of clarity. In 1980, the synod of the Protestant Church in the Rhineland recognized the “Faithfulness of God who stands by the election of God’s people Israel”: “We believe that Jews and Christians, each in their own calling, are witnesses to God before the world and each other.” Other national churches expressed themselves similarly. This position, however, does not yet expressly eliminate mission to Jews. The dialogue group “Jews and Christians” of the “Central Committee of German Catholics” declared in 1979 that “Jews and Christians are fundamentally denied the right to try to move the other to unfaithfulness towards the call of God issued to them respectively”. This comment, nevertheless, has no place in the official teaching of the church. In 1992, the Protestant “Central Association for Witness and Service among Jews and Christians” formulated a clear refusal to missionize Jews. Nevertheless, their Northelbe membership association does not support this nor other decisions. No governing church, church body or synod has yet adopted a stance against mission to Jews.

This hesitation and ambiguity expressed in church statements is an extraordinary burden to the Christian-Jewish partnership. The meeting of Jews and Christians can only continue to be trusting and fruitful if every intention – however concealed – to missionize Jews is completely rejected.

2. The churches are making great effort in opposing anti-semitism which has again and again received impetus over the past years. Nevertheless, their effort is open to suspicion if some groups and representatives in the churches refuse, openly or in a veiled manner, a renunciation of mission to Jews. Jews experience [Christian] mission to Jews as a brusque threat to their existence. That is only too understandable after the experiences of the last centuries and especially the Shoah. Only if the churches clearly refuse to missionize Jews, is their fight against anti-Judaism within the church and against every form of anti-semitism in society really plausible .

3. Mission to Jews did not only become historically obsolete, it is also in conflict with biblical findings. The mission command Mt 28:19 f. says that the disciples are sent out to bring the teaching of Jesus, that is his interpretation of the Torah, to the gentile nations in the world, that is not to the Jews who already have and guard the Torah. This has to be underlined; only in this way one can give justice to the insight that Jesus was a Jewish teacher of the Torah.

4. The demand for the church’s decision against mission to the Jews that leaves nobody in doubt arises out of theological, historical as well as political reasons: mission to the Jews, that is the methodic, organized and intentional effort of Christians to dissuade Jews from the Jewish religion, should not be acceptable.

5. The Executive Board of the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation in Hamburg [Germany] asks all Christian churches in Hamburg, their responsible leaders and committees, to stand unequivocally with the Jews who live in our midst and with the Jewish communities by declaring publicly that a “Mission to Israel” is inconsistent with Christian faith.

The Executive Board at the same time encourages the churches to introduce an intense opinion-forming process to bring about a consensus to abstain from mission to the Jews.