Cryptosupersessionism exists wherever there is an unconscious and entrenched cluster of presuppositions assuming the expiration or setting aside of identity markers that formerly applied to the Jewish people, effectively nullifying Israel’s covenantal uniqueness in whole or in part. 

Cryptosupersessionism is the more powerful because it is unconscious. In our ranks it is often those who speak loudest about the Jewish people and their chosenness who embrace cryptosupersessionist theological commitments vitiating Jewishness of its substance.

An Example: Some Implications of the Law of Christ Doctrine

Consider the teaching, widely represented in our circles, that with the coming of Messiah/the New Covenant, the Law of Moses is categorically rendered inoperative, and that the only Law that applies to Jewish Yeshua-believers is the Law of Christ.

Since the church too is subject only to the Law of Christ, is it not clear that this teaching postulates the expiration of a major identity marker that formerly differentiated the Jewish people? Some protest that Jewish covenantal uniqueness is preserved through the Abrahamic Covenant, but it is highly questionable that Jewish covenantal identity can be successfully transmitted intergenerationally on such a basis, even if supported by a variety of seasonal celebrations.

When challenged on this by a Jewish missionary who insisted the Abrahamic covenant provided a sufficient foundation for such intergenerational transmission, I reminded him that he had just bragged to me about his son having participated in a Bar Mitzvah ceremony. I pointed out that this observance does not come out of the Abrahamic covenant but out the fabric of Jewish Torah living. His own actions demonstrated how he needed more to sustain his son’s Jewishness than reminders about the Abrahamic covenant. Inevitably, jettisoning the Law of Moses and substituting the “the Law of Christ” means reducing Jewishness to genetics and nostalgia, while assimilating Jews into a code of conduct and way of life indistinguishable from Gentile Christians—the same Law, the Law of Christ.

We in the Messianic Movement have declared seriously defective One Law Movements which postulate that both Jewish and Gentiles must keep the Law of Moses. However, whenever and wherever the Jewish Missions community insists that Jews and Gentiles are only responsible to adhere to “the Law of Christ,” this too is a One Law Movement, and equally defective.

Commenting on One Law Movements in a paper for the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations, Russ Resnik and Dan Juster write:

Paradoxically, One Law people undermine their own vision for “One People,” by basing unity on a common response to Torah. In other words, they hope to achieve unity by producing unified Torah-based behavior among all believers. Scripture, however, portrays our unity as accomplished in Messiah himself. *

The letter to the Ephesians, which includes some of the strongest statements of unity within the Body of believers, never posits the idea of One Law. Instead, it calls us to maintain “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,” for 

“there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all” (4:4-6).

The beauty of this God-given unity is that it honors and preserves biblical distinctions between diverse groups, particularly Jews and Gentiles.

Their critique applies equally to the One Law Movement via the alleged One Law of Christ binding on Jew and Gentile as widely assumed in the Jewish Missions Movement. The unity into which Messiah brings us is a differentiated unity, wherein Jews and Gentiles remain essentially different, distinct but not separate, and reconciled to one another despite their continuing distinctions. This is the marvelous reconciling unity that Messiah effects: not uniformity, lopping off distinctives, not some sort of enforced conformity, nor some utopian unanimity where all agree on every jot and tittle. 

In fact, the unity in Messiah of which Paul speaks is only represented where and when Messianic Jews live differently, in the context of Jewish covenantal life, and yet in unity with their Gentile brothers and sisters, who accept them in their differentness and who recognize that while such a lifestyle is not their own covenantal calling, they ought always to refrain from disparaging Jewish covenantal distinctives, or casting aspersions on those who adhere to them. Unfortunately, such affirmation of Jewish observance by Jewish Yeshua-believers is often lacking in Jewish mission and even Messianic congregational circles. Instead, negativity about Torah-based Jewish covenantal distinctives is the more frequently encountered norm.

This should not be!

This position consigns Jews to assimilation and, within two or three generations at most, communal extinction in almost every case. Although we all know exceptions, these are exceptions. The rule is assimilation and communal disintegration.

If we accept that Jewish Yeshua believers are subject to no religious law other than the same Law of Christ to which the average white-bread Gentile in Tulsa subscribes, then we are fitting Jewish community and continuity into a plain pine box. It is time to say Kaddish.

* Daniel Juster and Russ Resnik, “One Law Movements: A Challenge to the Messianic Jewish Community,” p. 8, found on line March 15, 2010, at http://umjc.net/home-mainmenu-1/faqs-mainmenu- 58/14-umjc-faq/24-is-the-torah-only-for-jews

The Mordecai Mandate is derived from Mordecai’s counsel to Esther.

In the fourth chapter of the book, Mordecai is certain that God will preserve the Jews. He tells Esther, 

“if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter.”

The reason he is confident of this is because of God’s faithfulness to his covenant.  But he also warns her, 

“If you keep silence at such a time as this . . .you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"

Failure to embrace her responsibilities and to do what she could, would have disastrous effects for her time and context. The same will be true for us. We too are culpable to do what we can, despite God’s sovereign will, for if we do not act, then the consequences for our own context will be grave, and we, in part, responsible. The lesson here is that we are all responsible personally and institutionally to do all we can to preserve the Jewish community and its cohesion.

We disobey God and violate our covenantal obligations when we neglect our covenant responsibility for other Jews. 

This is why I state the Mordecai Mandate in these terms: Even though God is at work in history toward this end, we remain responsible to do all that we can to preserve Jewish community continuity. Failure to do so will bring harm to the Jewish people in our own time and context, for which are culpable before God.  Therefore, any approach to outreach among Jews that disrupts or destroys Jewish communal cohesion is wrong.

The Mordecai Mandate is doubly our responsibility because of our claimed allegiance to the Son of David. We cannot rightly claim that allegiance without forwarding his agenda, which we see sketched for us in the New Messianic Jewish Agenda outlined by Ezekiel.  And we sin against these priorities and against the Son of David whenever we treat any of these agenda items with indifference.

What do I mean?

We who claim Yeshua the Son of David as both Lord and Messiah should be recruiting all Israel to the regathering of the seed of Jacob to the Land (aliyah), Jewish unity, repentance-renewal, allegiance to the Messiah the Son of David, Torah-based covenant faithfulness, the communal experience of the Divine Presence, and the vindication of God’s name through the accomplishing of these things.

What we need is a gospel of continuity and consummation for the Jewish

People. Here is a good approximation of it:

• The Messiah has come and He is coming again. His name is Yeshua, and he is the best possible news for the Jewish people.

• Through Yeshua the Son of David, the God of Israel, who has been with the Jewish people in all their afflictions, has come to rescue us again in greater manner and greater measure than ever before, as the prophets said He would (including talk of the atonement, the resurrection of Yeshua and its connection to the resurrection of the dead, of Israel as a nation (Ezekiel 37), of the Gentile world from the grave of idolatry, and Israel’s full restoration as in the New Messianic Jewish Agenda)

• In him, all of God’s promises to the Jewish people are being fulfilled

• Come join with us, to serve the God of Israel by advancing his agenda for His people in the context of Torah obedience and allegiance to Yeshua, the Son of David.

Outreach means more than simply saving Jewish souls.  It means bringing Jews back into conformity with God’s will for us as part of that covenant people who will someday all honor the Son of David and benefit from the consummation of his agenda. It means aligning Jews with God’s future for our people.

One would think that religious professionals who work among the Jewish people, would have a clear idea of what it is that Jews must repent of, and what shape their repentance must take. Yet, as I travel and ask members of the Messianic Jewish movement what it is for which Jews need to repent, and what shape that repentance must take, I have been met with blank stares, and never with a uniform response. Behind those stares are people realizing that that they had never really thought about the questions, perhaps because it seemed so obvious.  Sooner or later one will hear this answer:  “Jewish people need to repent for their sins.”  But how do we know what those sins are for which Jews should repent?

Are they just run of the mill standards of human decency that Jews, like others, stumble over from time to time, or, if you will, constantly?

Jewish Sin – Transgression of the Law 

Kendall Soulen helps to clarify the question for us, pointing us toward the answer, when he says, 

“Human sin is never merely the sin of the creature against the Creator-Consummator. Human sin is also always the sin of Jew and Gentile, of Israel and the nations.” *

And in Romans 2:12 Paul indicates his agreement with this principle:

 “All who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.”

Who then is it that has sinned under the law?  There can be only one answer to this question: the Jewish people. We Jews are a people born into a covenantal identity and responsibility to obey God’s law. And the measure of our sin is our disobedience to Torah’s demands.

And since that is true, repentance requires that we reverse our pattern of neglect.If the measure of Jewish sin is disobedience to Torah, then Jewish repentance requires a return Torah living. While it is true that, due to prior theological and ecclesial commitments I would guess, no Jewish Mission agency has ever come close to affirming this, it is nonetheless true: the measure of Jewish sin and of Jewish repentance at least includes conformity to Torah or the lack thereof.

An honest assessment of Scripture calls for nothing less, as well as something more, for there is one more crucial aspect to Jewish sin and Jewish repentance.

Jewish Sin - Rejection of God’s Messengers 

This second measurement of Jewish sin and Jewish repentance is rejection of God’s messengers. In both testaments, these two measuring rods, Torah disobedience, and rejection of God’s messengers are found together. One passage especially graphic in its force is found in the Book of Nehemiah, written in the mid-5th century BCE. Chapters eight through ten deal with covenant renewal on the part of returning exiles, and chapter nine records a national historical retrospective and confession of sin. In reviewing the experience of the Israelites under Joshua, we read in verse 26, 

“Nevertheless they were disobedient and rebelled against thee and cast thy law behind their back and killed thy prophets, who had warned them in order to turn them back to thee, and they committed great blasphemies.” 

Notice that their disobedience is described as casting God’s law behind their backs, not wanting to hear it, to deal with it, to obey it. Notice as well how this is yoked to how they “killed the prophets, who had warned them in order to turn them back to thee.” Here we have a description of Jewish sin (casting God’s law behind our backs) and its linkage to killing the prophets/rejecting God’s messenger who admonished us to return to God.

But what shape would that repentance take? Nehemiah sheds light on this question and its answer:

 “And thou didst warn them in order to turn them back to thy law. Yet they acted presumptuously and did not obey thy commandments, but sinned against thy ordinances, by the observance of which a man shall live, and turned a stubborn shoulder and stiffened their neck and would not obey.” (Ne 9:29)

Here he explains what he meant in verse 26 when he spoke of turning back to God: the shape of Jewish turning back to God (repentance) is a return to Torah, to his commandments and ordinances, by which a person who does them shall live.  Here then we have the answers to our questions: Jewish sin is disobedience to Torah and rejection of his messengers, and Jewish repentance is acceptance of his messengers and a return to Torah living.

Some are sure to object that this is Old Testament revelation, no longer applicable after the coming of Messiah. To those who say such, and there are many I would guess, one of the best refutations is to be found in the Book of Acts, chapter seven where we read of Stephen, the Hellenistic Jew and first martyr among the Jerusalem-based Yeshua believers. Here we see how he naturally portrays Jewish sin as a rejection of God’s messengers, the prophets, and disobedience to Torah:

"Stiffnecked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You continually oppose the Ruach HaKodesh! You do the same things your fathers did! Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They killed those who told in advance about the coming of the Tzaddik, and now you have become his betrayers and murderers! - you! - who receive the Torah as having been delivered by angels - but do not keep it! (Ac 7:51-53 CJB)

Notice carefully the two aspects of Jewish sin highlighted here: persecuting God’s messengers, culminating in the betrayal and murder of the Messiah, and failing to keep Torah. These are directly parallel to the criteria outlined by Nehemiah, a pattern that occurs repeatedly in Scripture. **

* R. Kendall Soulen, The God of Israel and Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996) 153.

** For other texts referring to the killing of the prophets/rejection of God’s messengers, see 1 Ki18:4,13; 19:10; 2 Ch 24:20,21; 36:16; Je 26:20-23; Mt 21:21-43 (= Mk 12:1-12; Lk 20:9-19; Mt 23:33- 46); Mt 23:34-39 (= Lk13:31-35). For other texts referring to casting God’s law behind our backs, see, for example, 1 Ki 14:9, where the comparison is to casting God behind our backs, an even stronger metaphor for disobedience, and Ps 50:17, and texts too numerous to mention about disobedience to God’s laws.