Salvation is of the Jews, but not “Jewish”. It came through Israel and the Jewish people and the Messiah born a Jew and explained most fully by the Jewish apostle Paul, but the reality of it came from God in such a way that most Jewish people have never believed it, and stumble at the cross. It is not the mindset of any human being or people – whether under the Torah or whether not under the Law. (Acts 15:6-11; Gal 1:11-24; 6:11-18; Eph 3:1-12; Rom 16:25-27)
Being saved by faith and not by works of the law is not what the Torah emphasizes, nor Judaism today. Abraham was justified by faith (written in the Torah) long before the Law was given at Sinai. Gentiles would be brought in equally by saving faith like Abraham had, not by becoming Jewish. This was from the beginning of the current ‘age’ the dispute over how is a person saved; and the way of salvation is the same for both Jews and Gentiles. The New Covenant promises that God forgives any who repent and believe in Yeshua the Messiah/Jesus Christ, the Son of God, not that we can start over and try better to be righteous or a good person and earn our salvation; nor that we can continue with our former sinful lives. We must all be conformed to/converted into the image of the Son of God.
When Jesus said that we must eat His flesh and drink His blood, (for which many disciples left walking with Him), that was totally against the Jewish mindset from the Torah. And He also needed to explain that His words there were to be understood spiritually, not that we were to become cannibals or that the Communion bread and wine or grape juice would become transformed literally into His body and blood. The fact that He has made all foods clean (if He can make me clean, He can make what goes in and out clean!) goes against the strict dietary laws of Moses on the matter. I don’t have to eat what was unclean under the Law, but I am not forbidden to eat them, with thanksgiving and prayer.
The truth of the gospel offends everybody in their natural minds: to the Jews a stumbling block; to the Greeks foolishness. We must accept that “we/I died” with Christ in His death on the cross for every one, and be born-again from Above through repentance and faith in the gospel for salvation, calling upon the name of YHVH (Yeshua/Jesus under Heaven), who rose from among the dead. Living now unto God (Messiah in me), I have to renew my mind to learn His thoughts and His ways, and by the grace of God, do them. The gospel and salvation are not of man, but of YHVH God – from start to finish.
