The name I’ve given this path is Radix Fidem. In case you’ve forgotten, you can check the tab marked “Radix Fidem” near the header image of this blog, or read the longer version in booklet form. It still outlines the path I’m taking.
Where am I going in the first place? I’m following the Great Commission:
And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen. (Matthew 28:16-20 NKJV)
A little context here: The gospel was no longer something for the Covenant Nation alone. When the Temple veil was torn in two, that ended the closed national covenant, and translated it to a global covenant rooted in Heaven. They were to make disciples from the whole of humanity.
The reference to baptism is an ancient Hebrew ritual of cleansing by which someone becomes ceremonially clean and fit to enter the Temple. The whole point of going through the ritual was just that — to be ready to come into the divine Presence. It was a symbolic action that arose from ancient customs used across the entire Ancient Near East (ANE), both with deity worship and in approaching human rulers. Jesus had already made the point with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well that the geographical place didn’t matter; it was a matter of worshiping Him in sincerity, connecting on the level of the Spirit Realm. So the issue of baptism is the same as any other ritual, in that it gives us in our fallen human state a focus that calls us up out of ourselves onto a spiritual plane.
Finally, Jesus told them to teach the whole world to “observe” (Grk: tereo — to protect and guard against loss) all the things Jesus “commanded” (Grk. entellomai — a charge given by a superior). There’s nothing here about “getting folks saved.”
Over in John’s Gospel, Jesus did mention the business of being spiritually born. In a private conversation with Nicodemus, a member of the governing Sanhedrin Council, Jesus answered the elder man’s confusion. On the one hand, the elder had been soaked long in Talmudic teaching. On the other hand, it’s obvious Jesus exercised divine authority, even while deconstructing that Talmudic teaching. To Nicodemus, the Talmud was the Covenant Law, so it was tantamount to Jesus challenging the law of the nation. The poor man was confused how Jehovah could authorize that.
Jesus cut through the debate: Without spiritual birth, one cannot hope to even know God or understand anything about His Kingdom. This would not have puzzled any scholar of ANE mystical lore, of which Hebrew language and philosophy was supposed to be a part. Poor Nicodemus had lost his way. Whether he had received a proper education in ancient Hebrew traditions didn’t matter; he wasn’t using it. He was trusting entirely too much in the Hellenized (Aristotelian) reasoning approach that had been applied to Hebrew Scriptures, resulting in the legalistic Talmud. His comment about being born yet again when old showed he had lost touch with the mystical epistemology of his forefathers. Judaism wasn’t Old Testament religion. Some rabbis surely knew the ancient Hebrew ways, but the arrogance of rationalism disparaged the ancient Hebrew mysticism.
Jesus chided him about that. He explained as a reminder to Nicodemus that there were two realms of existence, one worldly and literal, the other spiritual and parabolic. Again, that would have been natural to someone with a proper ANE education, and it’s how God revealed we should understand things. In the back and forth that followed, it was Jesus’ turn to marvel — that someone appointed to the Sanhedrin Council could have lived so long without such an awareness. How could Nicodemus hope to teach the Covenant to others if he lacked the fundamental consciousness on which the whole Hebrew culture was based? The very definition of being Israeli was a mystical covenant with a transcendent being. Judaism made a false deity of human legalistic reasoning.
The conversation, at least as John records it, transitions to a declaration of why God sent His Son as the Messiah. I would insist it’s a lazy translation into English to express John’s simple Greek grammar in verse 16 as “believe in Him” when the phrase should be “commit to Him” in the sense of one who submits to a feudal master as a servant. It’s not enough to give assent, as the word “believe” implies. It’s a whole commitment of the self on the grounds that one has been delivered from slavery — “saved” (Grk: sozo verse 17).
We do not “get folks saved.”
We do live an eternal life, a life characterized by a fiery passion for making our transcendent Lord look as glorious as He actually is. We seek to provoke an awareness of the heavenly realm. Everything Jesus taught was under the Covenant of Moses. It was already inherent in the published records that manifested God’s divine moral character. But Israel had forfeited her national identity, had reneged on the terms of her covenant, and the original purpose of this calling on the nation was translated to a covenant of redemption in Christ for all humanity. The fundamental purpose of the Covenant of Moses was always to bring the gospel to the world. Israel was supposed to live as a nation that manifested the ways of God as the path to redemption from the Fall.
We should emphasize the continuity between the law and gospel. When the Apostles disparaged “the law” they were talking about the Talmud and Judaism’s legalism. The Old Testament was the only Scripture the church had for several decades. Surely a written revelation could never deliver you from slavery, but obeying it would awaken the meaning of spiritual birth if you had that second birth. It could allow you to lay claim to the full divine heritage of blessings that came with such a rebirth.
Jesus never said anything about how to obtain spiritual birth. That’s because it was a common understanding across the entire ANE that only a deity could make that happen. Paul goes on to affirm in Romans that no one in their fleshly nature can even desire spiritual birth; it is the death of the fleshly nature. It has to be done to people by the hand of God. It has always been an ineffable mystery how God does this, and why He chooses whom He chooses. The whole thing is a miracle beyond human understanding and certainly beyond human control.
What’s left is to seek ways to awaken the power of that divine miracle in those we encounter. Not that we could ever actually know for sure either way, but we can know when someone else walks in the lifestyle that derives from divine revelation. This is a major shift away from the mainstream, and we should expect a lot of resistance. We should expect to see very few people embrace this path.
And there’s more to come on this.
“When the Apostles disparaged “the law” they were talking about the Talmud and Judaism’s legalism.”
I really wish preachers would drive this home. I’ve heard it hinted at throughout the years but not explicitly pointed out. It would clear a lot of confusion, since we (westerners) conflate the Talmud with Mosaic/Levitical law. At most all you hear is that the Talmud was sort of a reinterpretation of Moses but essentially the same.