If you trust in the Son of God, Yeshua [Jesus] the Messiah for salvation, you are no longer a “Gentile”. You have become a biblical, spiritual Jew. You are subject to the King of Judah, the King of the Jews, if you follow Him in Truth.
There are several images that Yeshua used to point out that He was creating “one” Body. He used olive trees. He used flocks of sheep. He used people [bodies]. And the apostles added to the imagery, such as Paul comparing the Body of Messiah to the building, the House of God in Jerusalem. Nowhere, in any way, does He ever intimate that His followers would be “two” of anything, divided between Jews, Gentiles, and ‘spiritual people who do not identify’.
Mankind, on the other hand, is only interested in being “special”, in dividing ‘we’ from ‘they’. We are forever looking for the right club to join that is exclusive. We are forever looking to be the best, to be the most special in God’s eyes over everyone else.
The only thing that makes anyone, Jew or Gentile, special in the eyes of God is trusting in His Son, whom He sent into the world in order to make one flock, one nation, one family, one Body of Messiah. The forefathers of Israel are saved by trusting in that coming Messiah and obeying God’s Word.
This article is addressed to people who believe in the Creator, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is addressed further to those who believe in the former, but also understand and trust that Yeshua is God’s Son, sent into the world by the Creator to save His Jewish people from their sins, and then anyone else who would hear the Good News that He gave to them to take out into all the world. Salvation is offered to the Jew first, and then to the Gentile.
This is not addressed to unbelievers who have no stake in the conversation. So, do not try to elicit a response if you do not believe as the previous paragraph explains.
Today, there are people that say they are neither Jew, nor Gentile, nor Christian, nor any other ‘religion’. They say they are only a follower of Yeshua [Jesus]. Fine. That’s a good thing. But, you are not following Him if you are disparaging being Jewish itself. If there is one ounce of disdain toward the Jewish people or the faith of, the religion of the Bible, then there is a problem.
Yeshua Himself referred to the Jewish people as a flock of sheep. He did so just as the prophets of Israel did. And Jeremiah did say that Israel was as lost sheep on every hill. But he was not talking about their geography, but about their spiritual condition, of having leaders, Rabbis, who taught them their own ‘rules’. But, today’s “two house” people who are believers who do not want to unite under the Jewish Rabbi Yeshua, but under some renegade rabbi who has disdain for Jews, do not realize that Jeremiah was speaking to an Israel that was only “Jew-dah”, reunited already with the northern tribes, still living in the land of Israel, which came to be called Judah. Jeremiah ministered long after Isaiah, to the southern Kingdom, after the southern kingdom had been reunited with the remnant of the Northern tribes. [2 Chronicles] And Yeshua’s own words, where He uses the flock analogy to send out His Talmidim to minister to the Jewish people, prove it:
“These twelve Yeshua sent out, and charged them and said, “Keep away from pagan practices, and do not enter a city of Shomron; but above all, go to the sheep which are lost from The House of Yisra’el. And as you go, declare and say that The Kingdom of Heaven is near.” ~ Matt 10:5
Shomron is “Samaria”, and these are the closest people the world has, even to this day, to being the “10 Lost Tribes”. The people of Samaria today still worship the God of Jacob, call Jacob their father, read from a Torah scroll, but are not genetically Jewish! Yeshua came to the Jewish people, and did not permit 12 Jewish men to go to their closest kin just yet. That did not happen until roughly 16 years after Yeshua rose from the dead when the 12 had actually done what He said above and had ministered in all the cities of Judah! Before He finally left for heaven, He gave them the pattern they were to use, the road map, of how they were eventually to branch out into all the earth, fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy in Isaiah 2:3:
“… when The Holy Spirit [Ru’akh HaKodesh] comes upon you, you shall receive power, and you shall be witnesses to me both in Yerushalayim and in all of Judah, also in the province of Shomron [Samaria], and to [then] the uttermost parts of the earth.” ~ Acts 1:8
And that is exactly what they did. For the first ten plus or so years of the Messianic community, everything that happened was centered in Jewish cities. Then, in chapter 8 of Acts, after Stephen died because of his faith, Phillip went to Samaria. This was the next step according to Yeshua in Acts 1. And the book of Acts shows us that after they saved many thousands in Jerusalem first [chapters 2 through 4], so much that they had to appoint seven “Shamashim” [deacons] to serve the body, that then they started to go out from Jerusalem, just like Yeshua said, into other cities of Judah [Jew-dah].
In Acts chapter 5, we see the Jewish apostles go into the “areas” around Jerusalem. And then in chapter 8, after it became dangerous to be close to Jerusalem and be a Messianic believer [one who believes Yeshua the Nazarene is Messiah], they began to venture out from there.
And Phillip is the first to go into Samaria, the next section of the roadmap according to Yeshua. And again, the Samaritans are the closest kin to the Jews, being 1/2 “Israelites” of the former northern kingdom of the earthly and rebellious “House of Israel”, and 1/2 of all manner of other peoples brought into northern Israel to displace the ones they hauled away eastward into and beyond the kingdom of Assyria. It is only after this that any apostle could then go into the “uttermost parts of the earth” to minister to the Gentiles.
But before that happens, Philip is again the next to spread the net a bit. God told him to ‘hit the road’ and go south from Samaria toward Gaza, where he met a Jew from Ethiopia. He gives him the gospel, saves and immerses him, and then departs, as the Jew from Ethiopia takes faith in Messiah back to there, the first place outside of Israel for it to go! Philip seems to be the one opening inroads into other territories! And after that, all the apostles start to branch out.
The official call to begin to minister to Gentiles was when Peter is commanded to go into Samaria himself to preach to one Gentile in particular. This is in spite of his still being influenced by earthly Rabbis and not by His Messiah, concerning fellowship with Gentiles. It was a Rabbinic law that Jews should not eat with Gentiles, and Peter was still abiding by that law, which is not in the Torah! God gave him a vision of sheets full of unclean animals and told him to ‘eat’ them. Peter said “No!” because nothing ‘unclean’ had ever touched his lips, which is according to Torah. But God shows him that the vision is not about the animals, but the people, as Peter explains, “You know well that it is not permissible [by Rabbis] for a Jew to associate with a stranger who is not of his tribe; but God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean.” ~ Acts 10:28
So Peter went to Caesarea, which is on the coast of Israel, in the territory of Samaria, to minister to the man to whom God Himself had sent him. So, the very first place anyone went to minister to a Gentile was to a former city of Northern Israel, Samaria, which had been occupied by Roman forces! Gentiles. The first Gentiles to believe in Yeshua were thus Gentiles who had already converted to Judaism [Acts 10:2], living in the Holy Land.
It wasn’t until Sha’ul/Paul was saved and sent to be the Apostle To The Gentiles that anyone actually left Israel to go to a foreign, Gentile land and minister to Gentiles, but, he went “to the Jew first“, in every city, ministering to Jews and Gentiles together, in the Synagogue, on the Sabbath. Because, as Yeshua said, “Salvation is from the Jewish people,” and, as Paul writes, “to the Jew first, and then also to the Gentile.” ~ Romans 1:16, Romans 2:10
But, when Paul went into the Synagogues and saved Jews and Gentiles, he didn’t start a ‘church’, in the sense of separating the Jews from the Gentiles. He ministered in the Synagogues [on the Sabbath]. And after Sabbath, they met in their houses for Havdallah, together! This is what we see in Acts 20, when Paul, a Jew, is in a house at the end of the Sabbath [Saturday night] teaching the believers and ministering, as was [and still is] customary in Jewish homes, where special candles are lit [Havdallah/Lapidot] and alms are given. Paul, a Jew, raised Eutichus, a young Greek/Gentile man, from the dead on Saturday night, at the same time that Yeshua had risen from the dead, in the season of Passover!
Paul teaches us using the image of the Olive Tree of Israel. He says that the Jews were ‘cut off’ of their Olive Tree, just like Yokhanan [John] the Immerser warned Israel, saying the axe is laid at the root of the tree. And then Yeshua gave new life to the Olive Tree of Israel when He, a Jew, rose from the dead, and then saved the Apostles. When the tree became mature enough to start adding ‘wild olive branches’ to it, which we saw with the first Samaritans, the Ethiopian Jew, and then Cornelius, then gentile branches were cut off their own gentile/wild olive tree, and grafted into the Olive Tree of Israel. They became Jewish, spiritually. Religion is spiritual.
There are not two trees, but one. And the original tree of Israel is made up of Jewish people! Because Israel is led by the Jewish King, Messiah Yeshua. And He came to the Jewish people first. He is Himself a Jew, of the tribe of Judah, and of the kingly line of David both genetically [Miryam] and legally [Yosef]. He lived His life as a Jew. He worshipped as a Jew in the Synagogue and in the Temple at the times prescribed by God. He wore Jewish apparel with the tzit-tzit on it. He ate biblically kosher food only. If He did not do those things, then He is not our Messiah! But He did!
And Paul warns Gentiles not to ‘boast’ over having been grafted into the Jewish Olive Tree! He calls the Olive Tree “Israel” in Romans 11: “What, then? Yisra’el has not obtained what it sought; but the elected ones have obtained it, and the rest were dulled in their minds.” The ‘elected ones’ at this point are Jews and Gentiles, as Paul is writing to a Roman congregation made up of Jews first, and then Gentiles [Jews brought the gospel back from Israel after Shavu’ot/Pentecost, as no apostle had ever been to Rome!]. This verse contrasts believers with natural, unbelieving Israel, Jews of the day who were ‘cut off’ of their own olive tree, contrasted against Jews and Gentiles who learned to trust in Yeshua! But Paul warns Gentiles not to get high-minded, and I am seeing so many today who do:
“And if some of the branches [of Israel/Jews] were cut off, and you, who are a branch of a wild olive tree, have been grafted in their [unbelieving Jews’] place, and you have become a partaker of the root and fatness of the olive tree, do not boast over the branches [Jews]. For if you boast, it is not you who sustains the root, but the root [Jews] sustains you. Perhaps you may say “the branches were cut off that I might be grafted in their place.” Well, they were cut off because of their lack of absolute trust, but you exist by absolute trust. Be not high-minded, but fear! For if God did not spare the natural branches, beware, or He will not spare you! Consider therefore the goodness and severity of God: on those who fell, severity; but on you, goodness, if you continue in His goodness; otherwise you also will be cut off!” ~ Romans 11:17-22
Paul describes himself as a Jew, even though he is of the tribe of Benjamin. He describes himself as an Israeli. The terms are interchangeable.
Romans 11:1 – “For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.”
Philippians 3:4-6 – “Of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews…”
2 Corinthians 11:22 – “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the offspring of Abraham? So am I.”
Acts 22:3 – “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia…”
Acts 23:6 – “I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees.” [Rabbi]
But, more importantly, the way he describes the Gentiles who were brought into covenant with God was by teaching them that they had joined the House of Israel, the Nation of Irsael, [Ephesians 2:12] the Family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and they are now Jewish, spiritually! And like the believing Jews, they are more Jewish than those Jews who do not believe in the Messiah!
“For He [Yeshua] is our [Jews and Gentiles] shalom, who has made both one [Jews and Gentiles], and has broken down the M’khitzah [dividing wall in a Synagogue] between them; and He has abolished by His body the enmity [contention between Jews and Gentiles], and the teaching of regulations in its commandments, that He may create, from the two [Jews and Gentiles], one new man in His image, thus making shalom;and He reconciled both [Jews and Gentiles] in one body with God, and with His stake He destroyed the enmity; and He came and declared shalom to you who are far away, and to those who are near. Through Him we both [Jews and Gentiles] are able to draw near, by one Ru’akh [Breath/Spirit], to The Father. Thus from henceforth you are neither strangers nor foreigners, but fellow-citizens [one nation] with the Holy Ones, and children of the House of God; and you are built upon the foundation of the Apostles [Shlikhim, writers of the NT] and the Prophets [Nevi’im, writers of the OT], Yeshua The Messiah Himself being the cornerstone of the building: and through Him the whole building [Jews and Gentiles] is fashioned and grows into a Holy Sanctuary in יהוה , you also are built up by Him for a Dwelling Place of God through The Spirit .” ~ Ephesians 2:14-22
And Paul, who was the one chosen by Yeshua Himself, the only other person ever to see the resurrected Yeshua to become an actual Apostle [Acts 1:21-22], taught the Torah to Jews and Gentiles, and instructed Gentiles to stay in the faith handed to them by Jews, and keep the Jewish customs:
“You, then, should imitate me, even as I also imitate Messiah. Now I praise you, my brethren, that you remember me in all things, and keep the [Jewish] customs as I [A Jew] delivered them to you.” 1 Corinthians 11:1-2
“Henceforth, my brethren, stand firmly established and be strong in The Jewish Customs, which you have been taught, either in The Word [of God] or in our letters.” 2 Thessalonians 2:15
“Now we command you, my brethren, in the Name of Our Master Yeshua The Messiah, to shun every brother who leads an evil life and not in accord with the Jewish Customs which he received from us [Jews]. For you know well how you ought to imitate us; for our behaviour was not disorderly among you.” 2 Thessalonians 3:6-7
So, understanding this, being obedient to Messiah, and doing life, including religious life, the way Paul and all the other Apostles taught, is how one is now become a True Jew. Because that is the very definition of circumcision of the heart, described in Deuteronomy 10:
“And now, Yisra’el [the olive tree], what does יהוה your God require of you, but to fear יהוה your God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve יהוה your God with all your heart and with all your soul;to keep for your good the Commandments [Mitzvot] of יהוה and His Statutes, which I command you this day?Behold, unto יהוה your God belongs the heaven, and the heaven of heavens, the earth, with all that therein is.Only יהוה had a delight in your fathers to love them, and He chose their seed after them, even you, above all peoples, as it is this day. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked.”
And Paul says that when one does that, one is truly a Jew:
“For it is not the one who is outwardly a Jew who is the real Jew; neither is circumcision that which is seen in the flesh. But a real Jew is one who is inwardly so, and circumcision is of the heart, spiritually and not literally; whose praise is not from men but from God.” ~ Romans 2:28-29
This is why Paul can describe the ones who walk according to the Spirit as the “Israel of God”, a body of people made up of Jews and Gentiles who are transformed by the Word of God in all their behavior, religious and civil:
“And upon those who follow this path be shalom and mercy; upon the Yisra’el of God be shalom and mercy.” ~ Gal 6:16
זֶה יֵשׁוּעַ הַנָּצְרִי מֶלֶךְ הַיְּהוּדִים
[This is Yeshua The Nazarene, King of the Jews] John 19:19