Examining "A More Christlike Word"
by Brad Jersak
“For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.” (Paul’s concern from 2 Corinthians 11:4)
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The False Filter |
The Biblical Filter |
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The word OR the Word |
The Word THROUGH the word |
1. Because my last journal entry
focused on the contrast between BJ’s “Emmaus Hermeneutic” and Luke’s “Emmaus
Road Experience”,
2. and because BJ has been pushing his
hermeneutic from the very beginning of his book,
3. and because it is the exact opposite
of what Jesus really did on the Emmaus Road,
I have created
a little chart to keep a summary of this conflict before us as we continue
along the journey. Picture it like another section of the travel guide that has
presented something we will see all along the rest of the garden path, with
warnings against the poisonous, toxic, and deadly plants on one side, and
invitations to taste and see all the amazingly good plants the Creator has
given us in his garden of life.
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BJ’s “Another Jesus” Emmaus Hermeneutic |
Monte’s “True Lord Jesus” Emmaus Road Experience |
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We need a precondition to reading Scripture
that comes from outside Scripture so we can rewrite Scripture to make a god
in our own image who neither executes justice against sinners nor gives us a
Savior who satisfies God’s justice against our sin. |
We need to come to Scripture with the
precondition that it is the breathed-out words of God that tell us in the
harmonious and rhyming thoughts of the Scriptures how Jesus, the Word,
continually used Scripture (the word) to tell us who he is and what he has
done for us in our so great salvation. |
Now, because this is a journal journey, I
will continue tweaking this chart if I discover that I have left something important
out of either side’s mindset. I also may have opportunity to use the chart to
illustrate specific scenarios where this conflict stands out in BJ’s book as we
travel along.
In
fact, after that introductory thought, I went on my prayer walk and had
opportunity to pray about this and consider the contrast in more detail. Here’s
another way of describing this conflict between BJ’s hermeneutic and Jesus’
hermeneutic on the Emmaus Road.
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BJ’s “Another Jesus” Emmaus Hermeneutic |
Monte’s “True Lord Jesus” Emmaus Road Experience |
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The precondition to reading Scripture is to
take the word of Greek philosophers that Yahweh is just as “bad” as their
gods, and the word of an uncoverted rabbi that God’s justice against criminal
nations was immoral, and the voices BJ hears while doing the counterfeit
spirituality of “contemplative prayer” (which is the opposite of “contemplating”
by the way!), so that anything one does not like about Yahweh can be
corrected by an unbiblical “another Jesus” so people accept “a different
spirit” and trust in “a different gospel”, the very thing Paul lamented that
the Corinthians were putting up with “readily enough”! |
The precondition to reading Scripture is to
know there is a God and I am not him, that I have transgressed whatever God
would consider good since I inherently know there is something seriously
wrong with me, that I must know what is true from God’s perspective since man
has clearly lost his collective mind about what is right and wrong, and I
must know how God has spoken to his creation since there are so many
conflicting claims about who God is and how he has made himself known. This
first brings me to the Scriptures wanting to know for sure if this is the way
God has spoken, and if I find that it is, to humbly receive whatever our
Creator says I must do to know him in the real and personal way my heart
hungers and thirst to experience for real. |
Again, those are just a few thoughts on the
matter, but it is another way of showing that it is a huge thing that BJ’s view is a
deceptive path away from what Jesus said in his own words. From here on in,
the Emmaus Hermeneutic of the BJs is at war with the Emmaus Road Experience of Jesus
Christ our Lord.
So, let’s begin again with BJ’s words, “An Emmaus hermeneutic, in which one reads the Hebrew Scriptures through the gospel lens of Christ, is our primary precondition for reading Scripture” (p. 90). My contention is that this is not Christ’s hermeneutic! He began with the Scriptures and showed how they pointed to him. He did not endorse creating “another Jesus” who then gets to tell us how to interpret “the whole counsel of God”! It is the whole counsel of God that tells us how to know God!
I am just skimming the “SUPERCESSIONISM?”
section because I’m not sure what the point is. However, I'm only a few paragraphs
in and I must correct another false claim.
BJ’s Claim:
The common error shared by both
supersessionists and their opponents is their failure to recall that the New
Testament writings are a Jewish proclamation by Jewish Christians to follow a
Jewish Messiah into a renewed Jewish covenant prophesied by the Jewish
Scriptures. (p. 91).
Monte’s Reply: I do not deny what is
Jewish about Jesus, his early disciples, or our heritage in the Scriptures.
However, I do not agree that the gospel of the kingdom is “a Jewish
proclamation” just because it was first made by Jewish Christians and Jesus in
his human birth was of Jewish descent. If we follow through on how the Christ fulfills
God’s promise to Abraham, we can’t escape that God’s promise included God’s
people being “a light to the Gentiles”.[1] It
is the gospel of the kingdom of God, and God is not Jewish!
And I definitely disagree that Jesus was
calling people “into a renewed Jewish covenant” just because the redemptive
work of Jesus Christ was “prophesied by the Jewish Scriptures”. The apostle
Paul explains this so well when he said (the breathed-out words of God by a man
carried along by the Holy Spirit),
For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father (Ephesians 2:14-18).
Paul made it clear that the way Jesus broke
down the dividing wall of hostility between Jews and Gentiles was by creating “in
himself one new man IN THE PLACE of the two”. So “no” to what BJ said earlier
that there is Greek religious thought added to the Scriptures, and “no” to the
idea that what we have in the new covenant in Jesus’ blood is a “renewed Jewish
covenant”. It is a NEW Covenant in the blood of Jesus Christ that replaces
every Jewish and Gentile heritage. The rest of Ephesians 2 is a beautiful
picture of what that looks like with Gentiles and Jews both sharing a brand-new
kingdom-of-God experience in Christ that none of them ever had beforehand even
though the Jews were “near” and the Gentiles “far away”.
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit (Ephesians 2:19-22).
All of that says that this “one new man”,
this “holy temple in the Lord”, is the kingdom of God in a new way. The Old
Covenant did its assignment of getting the people of Israel through from Moses
to the Christ. Now the New Covenant is in place, and, although it is saturated
with meaning because of what we saw under the Old Covenant, it is not a “renewed
Jewish covenant”, but the “New Covenant in Jesus’ blood”. And, as usual, big
difference!
BJ’s Claim: next, BJ claims that “Christians
and Jews are siblings, reading the same Scriptures but in very different ways” (p.
91).
Monte’s Reply: Ummm… no… that’s not
in the Bible. The “siblings” in the new covenant are those who have been born
again, irrespective of what their background is. We are not siblings to anyone
who is outside the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I suspect there is a reason for all these
little statements that deny the distinction of the new covenant, but here the
author continues,
BJ’s Claim:
“But when Saul met Christ on the road to Damascus, he did not convert from Judaism to Christianity. He converted from violence to peace, in submission to the Prince of Peace, without ceasing to identify as a Jew” (p. 91).
Monte’s Reply: When I say “poison-in-the-pudding”,
I am not saying all the ingredients are bad if there was no poison in the mix.
I’m saying that what the poison does to all the other ingredients is… well… it
poisons them!
So, YES, Paul converted from the religion of
“Judaism” to the relationship with God we call “Christianity”. However, it was
not what many might call Christianity today. So, let’s clarify that Paul left
following Judaism and became a follower of Christ, an apostle to us Gentiles,
and a champion of the New Covenant in Jesus’ blood. That is abundantly clear
from his testimony and his teaching in his letters.
However, leaving Judaism to follow Christ is
completely different from identifying as a Jew, which is his physical ancestry.
Even now, Jews who become believers in Jesus refer to themselves as Messianic
Jews because they are still Jews by birth, but they have come to know that Jesus
of Nazareth is the Messiah they were waiting for. They stop following Judaism,
but are still Jews by ancestry. So, there is no way BJ can claim that Paul was
still following Judaism, or doing any kind of mixing Judaism with faith in
Christ. Paul was far too clear about that!
BJ’s Claim:
As a Christian who worships the God of Abraham and identifies Jesus as both Messiah and Savior, I know that reading Scripture the Emmaus Way continually nurtures my love for Jesus’s kinsmen in the flesh, sends me to their rabbis for help, and deepens my opposition to anti-Semitism (p. 92).
Monte’s Reply: Okay, in some things
two out of three ain’t bad, but here in teaching people how to correctly handle
the word of God, poison is poison.
First, because this is a journal journey,
some of my observations are simply concerns because I’m not sure where the
author will take this. So, do born-again Christians worship the God of Abraham?
Yes, we worship Yahweh as revealed throughout the Old Testament, but through
the realities of the New Covenant in Jesus Christ, not the Old Covenant that
was only a temporary measure. Contrary to what BJ claims, he does NOT worship
the God of Abraham as revealed in the Scriptures since he has made “another Jesus”
to correct Yahweh, and a God who needs correction is not an object of worship
(the point the Greek philosophers were discovering about their gods).
Second, do born-again Christians identify Jesus as both Messiah and Savior? Well… yes… among other things. However, I am not sure if the change from “worship” of Yahweh to “identify” with Jesus means anything, so I will simply clarify that we worship the Father and the Son equally.
And, the primary identification of Jesus Christ is not Messiah and Savior, but “Lord”! That obviously includes Messiah and Savior, but I would simply clarify this now in case this is a deliberate step to exclude the lordship of Jesus Christ from the poisoned mix. It is when we “confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9-10), and when, “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,” what every tongue will confess is “that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10-11). Again, because I don’t know where this garden path is leading, I’m just making sure that we are clear on what we are watching for in this regard. We not only "identify" that Jesus is Messiah and Savior. We acknowledge with Peter, "Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36).
Third, we do not need to read Scripture in
the unbiblical Emmaus Way to love the Jewish people and to be deeply opposed to
all forms of anti-Semitism. The Scriptures already teach us these things.
However, a “Way” that “sends me to their rabbis for help” is a dangerous one.
Rabbis who are not born again into the kingdom of God are as dangerous to the
gospel of the kingdom now as they were to Jesus in the Gospels and to the
apostles in the Book of Acts. There is no partnership whatsoever between Rabbis
under Judaism (they can’t help it that they are born Jews, different story!)
and Christians “in Christ”. Once again, BJ’s aim of turning readers away from
the authority of the word of God to those he considers authoritative over the
Scriptures is one of the completely misleading elements of the author’s garden
path.
After a bit of a prologue about how
technology changes our lives, and even changes whatever it presents in the form
of media, BJ applies this to the Bible under the heading, “The Bible as
Technology”.
BJ’s Claim:
What fascinates me is how the Bible itself became a technology that repackaged and reframed the Scriptures, with real effects on the message itself (p. 92).
Monte’s Reply:
I cannot say at this point how much of what
I “see” in BJ’s book is because he has been so dishonest about almost
everything, but I’m putting this down in my journal as “item of concern”. Here’s
what I want to know:
1. Is seeing the Bible as “technology”
a fair label?
2. Did the Bible “repackage” Scripture?
If so, how?
3. Did the Bible “reframe” Scripture?
If so, how?
4. Is it true that the very fact that
the Scriptures were collected into the Bible that it had “real effects” on the
message in the Scriptures?
What is my concern? That more arguments
external to the Scriptures are acting as authorities over the Scriptures. In BJ’s
world, that means “another Jesus” who brings “a different spirit” with “a
different gospel” in which Yahweh must be corrected by people who do not
understand his justice. I am genuinely curious (in a concerned kind of way) about
where the author is taking us down this part of his garden path.
Now,
because BJ goes into a section where he answers the four questions he began with,
I best set up camp for the night and leave that leg of the journey for tomorrow.
My curiosity in what is ahead will obviously need to learn patience!
Since my journal journey is not only aimed at critiquing BJ’s book, but also to share how walking with God through the Scriptures leads us to know the will of God and how to do it, I will share today’s testimony of how God ministered his word to my heart. I do this to honor the word of God as the way by which I/we get to know the Word.
Part
of that for me this morning was receiving his word as a branch of the vine and
then sharing it with the hope of blessing others with this wonderful gift of
grace: that our souls can find their rest in Jesus Christ our Lord as we come
to him in the obedience of faith and seek to live by “every word that comes
from the mouth of God”.
And I
trust that this encourages you all the more to get to know the Word through the
word!
© 2024 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text
Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.)
A More Christlike Word © 2021 by Bradley Jersak Whitaker House 1030 Hunt
Valley Circle • New Kensington, PA 15068 www.whitakerhouse.com
Jersak, Bradley. A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the
Emmaus Way. Whitaker House. Kindle Edition.
Definitions from the Bible Sense Lexicon (BSL) in Logos Bible
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