Friday, April 15, 2016

The Christian Passover: One Bread and One Body

As the Sabbath of April 16 approaches, we are only a few days away from the Passover. In light of our observance of the Passover, I thought it would be timely to consider a first century problem that is still most important to us today. It is a problem that relates to the Passover.

In the world in which Jesus Christ carried out his ministry, Jewish culture predominated in Judea. It was a culture that impacted all of the Apostles and many Christians with a Jewish heritage. Jewish culture greatly impacting the church should not be surprising because the church was almost exclusively Jewish until God added Cornelius and his household in Acts 10.

Although Peter and those who accompanied him to the house of Cornelius could clearly see that God had added Gentiles to the church just as he had the Jews gathered at the temple on Pentecost in 31 AD, it was hard for them to fully grasp the meaning of this dramatic shift. The first century Jewish Christians, including the Apostles, were “cultural captives”, meaning they operated based upon their cultural heritage which was not God’s perspective in regard to the church.

The impact of Jewish culture on the Apostles is illustrated in the book of Galatians. There in Paul’s epistle, we find that Peter and other Jews had no problem eating meals with the non-Jewish Christians.

However, when leading Jewish Christians came to Antioch and saw Peter and the other Jews in Antioch eating with the Gentiles they created a fuss over this. From the perspective of these visitors from Jerusalem Paul and the other Jews were being made ritually unclean by eating with the Gentiles. Peter, Barnabas and other Jewish Christians stopped eating with the Gentiles feeling uncomfortable and maybe confused about what to do. So they separated themselves for meals from the Gentiles.

Paul seeing this take place could not let this hypocrisy pass. We find him addressing this, “But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter before them all, "If you, being a Jew, live in the manner of Gentiles and not as the Jews, why do you compel Gentiles to live as Jews?”” (Galatians 2:14).

Paul addressed this because this division between Jew and Gentile was going to create a huge rift in the Church of God if not properly dealt with. Paul intervened in the matter strongly because of the potential for splitting the church into Jewish and Gentile factions. Such division was not God’s intention as illustrated most emphatically in Acts 10 and Acts 15, as well as, in the epistles of Paul.

We might ask, “How does this situation relate to the Passover?”

Consider the footwashing.

We have a separation for the footwashing between men and women for modesty and decorum in a groups setting.

However, should we seek to separate based on whether we are Jewish or Gentile? I am an Israelite and will not wash the feet of a Gentile. If we went down such a path of segregation, we would be back to the same situation as the first century. We would be divided which is not what any part of the Passover service symbolizes.

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, “For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free — and have all been made to drink into one Spirit.” In other words, we are one body, bound together through the Spirit of God dwelling in each member.

Our being one body is emphasized by each member partaking of the bread and the wine. Every member of the body of Christ partakes of the Passover symbols. Paul points out what this symbolizes in 1 Corinthians 10:16-17, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread.” As we partake of the Passover symbols we are unified.

The word communion in this passage causes some confusion because it is used by some as a title for the taking of the bread and wine. However, the word used by Paul indicates unity of the body of Christ in partaking of it. The word “communion” is translated as “share a fellowship” in Amplified; “a sharing” in the New Century Version; and the Wuest Expanded New Testament translates the Greek as “our joint-participation”. Paul uses the word “communion” to indicate we are together as one body as observe the Passover.

So as we come together to observe the Passover, we are neither Jew nor Gentile, slave or free, male or female. We are all heirs of salvation.

Enjoy a most pleasant Sabbath.

Gary Smith

Friday, April 1, 2016

Prophetic Geopolitics Crucial to Christ's Crucifixion

The Passover is less than a month away. On that date, we gather in order to remember the sacrifice made by Jesus Christ to redeem us from our sins.

At Passover, we are reminded of Christ’s body that was broken by scourging and His crucifixion which led to his death at the point of a Roman spear.

The question we might ask: What does the death of a Jewish man by crucifixion in a backwater Roman province have to do with geopolitics? The answer is that without the necessary geopolitical alignment Christ would never have been crucified.

Going back to the time of Alexander the Great and the generals who succeeded him, the land of Judea was a geopolitical football. Judea was a first dominated by the Ptolemies of Egypt. Next it came under the dominion of the Seleucid Empire. In the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, Judea gained some degree of independence.

In time a third power, the Romans, entered the power struggle for the land of Judea. In the time when Augustus Caesar was gaining control over the Roman Empire, a man we known historically as Herod the Great rose to power. He through his own financing and military prowess took possession of the province of Judea and was able to rule that territory as a client king from 37 BC to approximately 4 BC. During this time, Jewish law governed and death sentences were carried out according the Jewish regulations. If one were condemned to death, the sentence would not have been crucifixion.

With Herod’s death around 4 BC, he was succeeded by his son, Herod Archelaus. He was approved as ruler by the Romans, but they did not rule directly. They gave Archelaus the lion’s share of the Herod the Great’s territory. They gave him Judea, Samaria, and Idumea. They also allowed him to enjoy the title of ethnarch of Judea with the idea if he proved his capabilities and loyalty they would allow him to be called king of Judea later.

Unfortunately for Archelaus, he did not do well and the Romans removed him from power and exiled him to Lyon in what we know today as France.

With the removal of Archelaus the area that Archelaus had ruled became a Roman province. It was known as the Roman province of Judea. The only part of Herod the Great’s territory that came under Roman rule was the part ruled by Archelaus.

This change in the political situation was crucial. It was crucial because the change was necessary to fulfill prophecy. Without Archelaus losing control of Samaria, Judea, and Idumea, prophecy could not have been fulfilled. Judea remained a Roman province from 6 AD to 41 AD

We might ask, “Why is it important that Judea was a Roman province between 6 AD and 41 AD? In what way did it pave the way for prophecy to be fulfilled?”

If Archelaus had been an independent ruler of Judea, then Christ would not have been crucified. He would have died in some other way: either by stoning, beheading, or some other fashion favored by the Jews. The most likely form of execution would have been stoning.

What’s the problem with stoning? Stoning would have violated the prophetic word found in Psalms 34:20, “He guards all his bones; not one of them is broken.” The Apostle John refers to Psalm 34 to buttress the fact that Jesus was the Messiah in John 19:35-36, “And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you may believe. For these things were done that the Scripture should be fulfilled, "Not one of His bones shall be broken."

If Judea had been under rule by any of the descendants of Herod, he would have been most probably executed by stoning. The problem with stoning is that during the execution Christ would have suffered multiple broken bones. If executed by decapitation, bones would have been broken.

It was necessary to fulfill prophecy for Jesus to be crucified. A crucifixion would only have taken place if Judea had been a Roman province at the time of the Messiah’s death.

Geopolitical events insured that at the time when the death of the Messiah became necessary he would die by the uniquely Roman form of execution, crucifixion.

We can rejoice that Christ died on our behalf and we can be reassured that Christ’s crucifixion fulfilled the prophetic word.

Have a most enjoyable Sabbath.

Gary Smith