What Did Jesus Change: The Ger Question?

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God - children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. -John 1:10-14

NOTE: I wasn't really satisfied where I left off in my previous blog post and had to keep pushing on. This is the result. No, the question won't be answered in one article. It's complicated.

Probably every blog I've written in the past month or so has been dancing around this question without ever landing on it. I admit, I've been avoiding it. Why? Because I'm not sure anyone knows what Yeshua (Jesus) changed, at least for those of us who walk the Messianic/Hebraic rather than the traditional Christian path.

From the traditional One Law perspective, we, Jew and Gentile alike, have had the opportunity to be one people with God since the beginning. Consider the following, such as the command of God through Moses regarding Passover:

"An alien living among you who wants to celebrate the LORD's Passover must have all the males in his household circumcised; then he may take part like one born in the land. No uncircumcised male may eat of it. The same law applies to the native-born and to the alien living among you." All the Israelites did just what the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron. And on that very day the LORD brought the Israelites out of Egypt by their divisions. -Exodus 12:48-51

And this directive about the son of an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father who blasphemed against the Name of Hashem with a curse:

" 'If anyone takes the life of a human being, he must be put to death. Anyone who takes the life of someone's animal must make restitution - life for life. If anyone injures his neighbor, whatever he has done must be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he has injured the other, so he is to be injured. Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a man must be put to death. You are to have the same law for the alien and the native-born. I am the LORD your God.' " Then Moses spoke to the Israelites, and they took the blasphemer outside the camp and stoned him. The Israelites did as the LORD commanded Moses. -Leviticus 24:17-23

Finally, this rather famous quote of the Prophet Isaiah:

And foreigners who bind themselves to the LORD
to serve him, to love the name of the LORD, and to worship him,
all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it
and who hold fast to my covenant - these I will bring to my holy mountain
and give them joy in my house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar;
for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations." -Isaiah 56:6-7

Actually, let's back up in Isaiah, just a bit:

Let no foreigner who has bound himself to the LORD say,
"The LORD will surely exclude me from his people."
And let not any eunuch complain,
"I am only a dry tree."
For this is what the LORD says:
"To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,
who choose what pleases me
and hold fast to my covenant -
to them I will give within my temple and its walls
a memorial and a name
better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
that will not be cut off. -Isaiah 56:3-5

Given the reference to eunuchs, it seems appropriate to add the following:

The eunuch was reading this passage of Scripture:
"He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before the shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth. In his humiliation he was deprived of justice. Who can speak of his descendants? For his life was taken from the earth."

The eunuch asked Philip, "Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?" Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus. As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, "Look, here is water. Why shouldn't I be baptized?" And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. -Acts 8:32-38

I must admit, these verses are amazingly compelling. Of course the verses from Exodus and Leviticus are situational, the former having to do specifically with who may and may not eat of the Passover lamb sacrificed by the Priests in the Holy Temple, and the latter addressing a specific individual who, according to modern interpretation, would be considered Jewish because he had a Jewish mother (though in ancient times, this may not have been the case).

But the verses in Isaiah, which rabbinic Judaism considers addressing the convert to Judaism (the foreigner), seem to have a much larger scope. We know the Hebrew word "Ger" isn't always translated as "convert" since the Children of Israel themselves are referred to as "Ger" when they are in the Land of Egypt. In that case, translations such as "foreigner", sojourner", and "stranger" make a great deal of sense. They were in Egypt but not of Egypt, even though they resided there (first as guests and then as slaves) for hundreds of years. What about the "Ger" in Isaiah 56?

Consider the millions of people who stood at the foot of Mount Sinai, some two to three million by modern estimates, who agreed as one man to accept God as their God and to do whatever He said for them to do, before God ever spoke a single word of Torah.

So Moses went back and summoned the elders of the people and set before them all the words the LORD had commanded him to speak. The people all responded together, "We will do everything the LORD has said." So Moses brought their answer back to the LORD. -Exodus 19:7-8

True, in response to God, Moses summoned the elders of the people but it also says that the people all responded together..., not just the elders.

We know that a group of other people, probably Egyptians and other races who had been enslaved in Egypt and saw all of God's miracles and believed, left with the exodus of the Children of Israel when Moses lead them out of captivity. We also read nowhere in Exodus that the "mixed multitude" was told to wait elsewhere while the Children of Israel stood before their God at Sinai to receive the Torah meant only for God's chosen people. A whole bunch of Gentiles must have been standing there too, scared right out of their sandals along with the twelve tribes. What the heck happened to them?

It's been suggested that in the moment they accepted the Torah, the Gentile mixed multitude converted to Judaism, but if that were the case, Exodus 12:48-51 and Leviticus 24:17-23 wouldn't make a great deal of sense. In both of those verses, all of the people present would have been considered the Children of Israel (though the coverted Gentiles wouldn't belong to a specific tribe and thus wouldn't have a specific land inheritance), so the Torah shouldn't have made a distinction. Also, midrash blames much of the sin of the Golden Calf (Exodus 32) on the mixed multitude that left Egypt with the Children of Israel:

It would seem that Aaron also underestimated the strength of these emotions. Aaron recognized their clamor to create new gods as reflective of their primitive emotions. He recognized the futility in trying to demonstrate the error of their calculations. The nation was no longer operating under their intellectual faculty. The primitive behavioral patterns to which they were subject in Egypt, were exerting their influence over the nation. The mixed multitude whom departed Egypt with them, provoked much of their regression. Rashi advises us that the Mixed Multitude (not descendants of Abraham) used their 'magic' to create the calf. In fact, they initiated this entire service and the Israelites followed. The Mixed Multitude had a greater yearning for the security of the physical as a means to relate to God. They therefore utilized the magic they learned in Egypt. Magic is not some supernatural force. It too requires a discipline, where one learns to switch the apparent relationship between cause and effect to which we are accustomed. It therefore is fascinating because it distracts the observer who is amazed since it does not function in accordance with standard causal relationships.
Rabbi Israel Chait from
Mesora.org

If at this point, the "mixed multitude" had been converted to Judaism, would this distinction have been made? Actually, you could argue "yes", since the conversion was quite recent and the underlying personalities and identity factors of the "converts" would have remained largely unchanged, perhaps making them more likely to turn to Egyptian "gods" when under duress.

If you put it all together though, you can paint a fairly credible picture of the "mixed multitude" retaining their status of Gentiles after Exodus 19 and throughout their continued journey with the Children of Israel, only eventually assimilating into the Jewish people and finally losing any distinctiveness as a people of the nations.

This is my understanding of the One Law argument for why Gentile Yeshua-believers are on a covenantal par with Jewish Yeshua-believers and fully share in all of the Torah commandments and obligations. No other act on behalf of a Gentile need be taken to share in the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants than to "attach" oneself to the Children of Israel. Sort of like saying Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God (Ruth 1:16).

But if it's true that all a Gentile has to do is to declare their allegiance to the Jewish people and personally accept the total obligation to the "yoke of Torah" upon themselves and not have to convert to Judaism, then what did Yeshua change? Remember, all of these events occurred prior to Yeshua's existence on Earth.

Think about it. The classic Christian interpretation of Yeshua's (Jesus's) coming is that (among other things) he removed the barriers that stood between all of humanity and God, primarily the barriers of sin and the barriers of the Law. Now, all a person, any person, has to do is declare Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of their life and they're in. Instant covenant relationship with God through the blood of Christ. No need to convert to Judaism and in fact, Christianity puts the cart before the horse and now requires that Jews convert to Christianity in order to worship the Jewish Messiah (go figure).

Christianity doesn't accept the One Law argument because it undoes the purpose of the life of Jesus. After all...

Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." -Acts 4:12

For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile - the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." -Romans 10:12-13

What about God-fearers? In Acts 10, Cornelius the Gentile fears God and possibly could be considered a "Ger" in the Tanakh sense, but he doesn't receive the Holy Spirit until he hears the Good News of the Messiah from Peter. Peter, and the other Jewish believers are amazed and stunned when they witness Gentiles receiving the Holy Spirit, as if such a thing had never happened before. If that's true, then you could reasonably argue there must be some sort of difference between an Old Testament Gentile Ger who attaches himself to Israel and a New Testament Gentile who comes to faith in Messiah.

So what is that difference and what did Yeshua change? End of Part I.