Rejoice and Tremble on the Bridge to Heaven

In the deepest recesses of our hearts fear and love dwell together; they reveal themselves in joy. We rejoice in the consciousness of God's love and nearness but tremble at the same time because of the awfulness of His presence.
-Paul Philip Levertoff
Love and the Messianic Age

Therefore, you kings, be wise;
be warned, you rulers of the earth.
Serve the LORD with fear
and celebrate his rule with trembling.
-Psalm 2:10-11

According to Levertoff, the Chasidic interpretation of Psalm 2:11 (Be glad with trembling) is symbolized by Abraham and his son Isaac. Abraham expresses the love of God while Isaac represents the fear. We tend to think of "fearing" God in terms of awe, but for Isaac after the Akedah, God indeed became "the fear of Isaac".

Depending on who we are, we obey God out of one of those two motivations; fear or love. Most people who have newly come to faith tend to obey God out of the awareness of their own previous lives of sin. We fear God's punishment for the things we've done wrong in our lives and, if we continue to struggle with sin as believers, we continue to experience that fear.

As we develop spiritually, our fear turns to wonder, awe, and love of our Creator and we serve Him, not because we are afraid, but because we love Him.

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

“Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” -Mark 12:28-33

Jesus encapsulated the whole of Torah as well as the point Levertoff is making, in Christ's declaration of the two greatest commandments as recorded in the Gospel of Mark (quoting Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and Leviticus 19:18).

We can "rejoice with trembling" that God chooses to allow His attribute of mercy to outweigh His attribute of justice, so that we, and the world, can endure the presence of the living God. The Vine of David commentary on Levertoff tells us how we respond to God's grace:

Every commandment of the Torah is an expression of God's will. When a person obeys one of God's commandments, he is literally living out God's will on earth - uniting Himself with HaShem and partnering with Him on earth.

When Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, part of what we call "the Lord's prayer" contains the same directive; "on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:10), so again, we see that the teachings of the Jewish Messiah can be viewed in Levertoff's understanding of the Chasidic Jewish mystical tradition (specifically from the Tanya).

If you are looking at Jesus and the Gospels from a more traditionally Christian perspective, you probably are asking yourself what Chasidic Judaism and quotes from the Talmud and Tanya have to do with the saving grace of Jesus Christ. As I've previously written, Paul Philip Levertoff didn't understand how it was possible to comprehend the teachings of the Jewish Messiah without having a background in Talmud and Jewish mysticism. Levertoff read the Gospels and the teachings of the Master like other aggadic teachers from the Tannaim era, and they unfolded before him like a rose in bloom, revealing an interior many of us do not know exists. He recognized concepts from the Talmud and Mussar in the lessons and parables of the Messiah, and thus felt the Gospels were more Jewish in their nature than "Christian", as we understand modern Christianity.

Yet if the message of Jesus is so uniquely Jewish and can only be comprehended and acted upon from a Hebraic lived experience, how can non-Jewish Christians ever sufficiently access the Messiah and draw close to God? How can we, who are not part of Israel, His chosen ones, extend our relationship out of the realm of fear and into the vast expanse of awe and love?

Fear of God is necessary to inspire us to initially repent of our sins and make us aware of our need to turn or to return to God. For all the world, and particularly for non-Jewish believers, Christ becomes our bridge between fear and love, filling the gap that separates us from the understanding of our Jewish brothers and from the divine; a holiness that was previously only available to the Children of Israel. The Messiah came to allow the same kind of access to God for all human beings, regardless of who we are, where we're from, or any other attribute we may possess. Paul was very clear on this point in Galatians 3:28 ("neither Jew nor Greek").

When Jesus sent his Jewish disciples out to make disciples of all the nations (non-Jews) of the world (Matthew 28:19-20), he was extending the love of God to the entire human race, using himself as the intermediary to connect us all to the Father. When Jesus said "No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:16), he wasn't excluding Jews in favor of Christians. Rather, he was projecting God's love beyond Israel by offering himself as a "doorway", so to speak, to the Almighty, using his life, suffering, death, and resurrection as the means by which the rest of us can join the community of the redeemed.

When we join with the Messiah, we join God as junior partners in the work of Creation, acting as small "Messiahs", in a sense, living out the will of God on earth as one day, the Messiah will come and complete God's will with us.

The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. -Revelation 22:3-5

May the Messiah come soon and in our day. Amen.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.