Of New Wine and Old Skins

We talk a great deal about the mindset and worldview of the Hebrew people, because that’s the only way to understand the Bible. But not everything about that outlook is admirable, especially in light of the very real changes brought about in the Covenant of Christ.

The western outlook is still perverted. The changes Christ brought don’t justify anyone who truculently insists that God built Western Civilization. That notion is blasphemous. Rather, the New Testament outlook corrects the Old Testament a little, and condemns the western outlook in whole. A significant part of John’s Revelation laments the fading of Hebrew influence in church doctrine. This is where the Harlot Church image comes from, a church that became so westernized that it bore little resemblance to the faith community of those who knew Jesus personally.

Let’s remind ourselves of something: On the one hand, Judaism is a perversion of the Old Testament, a clear departure from the ways of Moses. Looking back, we can see just how radically different those two things are. On the other hand, Judaism did not arise as a clean break from the Old Testament, as if you could go back and pin down a specific time and place when the Israelis got lost. Rather, it is the net result of trends that have always been a part of who they were, and their tendency to wander from God’s Word.

Judaism is the net result of Israel’s fleshly nature, their peculiar moral flaws as a nation, perverting divine revelation. Throughout the history of Israel, we can see how the best and most faithful kept trying to pull them back on track, but the truth is that they were never really there. The bulk of the nation was never faithful without a very active sword keeping them in line. Their foul nature was never far below the surface.

When they ran into the peculiar materialism of Babylon during captivity, followed by another form of materialism from Hellenism’s conquests, they quickly detached from their ancient mystical orientation. They kept a hollow shell of symbolism very much like the Greek version.

This is the core issue I’m getting at: Jews claim to understand their own Hebrew roots, but their actions as a people betray a literalism that Moses did not promote. The hardest thing for western Christians to grasp is the tension between the symbolic and the literal. The western form of mysticism is intellectual, while the ancient Hebrew form was rooted in a whole range of heart-led wisdom that defies intellectual grasp. It’s not a question of data, but the power of a living Lord in your soul.

Divine Election is not a law or decree; it is the divine Presence Himself. The concept of Israel as “chosen” was not a status painted onto them as a people. It was a domain God built to house them, and which most of the nation at any given time would abandon with glee. It was Israel as the mission and message, not Israel the people who were chosen. English translations of the Hebrew Scriptures are often misleading in how things are worded. English transmits data like ore in a string of carts; Hebrew is a collection of signposts pointing out the Person of divine truth you should get to know better.

Thus, the fundamental image of the Covenant for the Hebrews was like a closed camp within a wilderness ruled by Satan. They were besieged, and dare not leave the boundaries without an armed force under God’s command. They sought to expand that domain when God commanded it. The difficulty here is understanding how that symbolism applies in real life. For the flesh, it’s easy to apply the imagery in ways that don’t work out too well. It’s the old proverb of having only a hammer so that everything looks like a nail.

The living truth is not an instrument. It is a divine Presence with all the subtlety and whimsy of any real person you encounter. You cannot reduce divine revelation to a set of rules. The Decalogue was a manifestation; it was not God Himself.

The only thing Judaism today remembers from that background image is that they insist they should conquer the world with their list of rules, and when it doesn’t work, they are under siege. They see themselves as persecuted because they don’t rule, whining and carping until they do rule. God is not commanding them, so it’s all a fleshly operation. Had they understood the moral and spiritual mandate within that image, then a physical conquest would be unnecessary.

The Covenant of Christ inherits that image. We should recognize that the image is symbolic. We conquer in the moral and spiritual realm, and scarcely pay any attention to the politics of this world. We do not whine about real world persecution; we welcome it as Jesus did the Cross. The sorrow of the Cross led to the joy of conquest in the Spirit Realm. We are besieged in the flesh, but we reign in the Spirit.

The conquest has already taken place in the Unseen Realm. We are not under siege there, and what happens in the flesh is of little consequence. The political manifestation was important for Israel in the Old Covenant. That ended with the Cross; God abandoned human politics into the hands of His opposition, but seized the victory in the Spirit Realm. He now rules in the hearts of humans, and the worldly situation is just the background against which His glorious reign shines.