Something terrible happened. Very soon after the beginning of Church history, the Gentiles became the majority among the believers, and they rejected God's divine strategy. For the Evil One, it must have been clear: if this unity between Jews and Gentiles were to continue, his reign over mankind would finally be lost. Already, the key victory over evil and death had been won when Jesus died on the cross and rose again. However, as long as Satan can hinder the unity between Jews and Gentiles in the Messiah, the fruit of redemption—the social dimension of healing and restoration—cannot be fully realized.
This realization aims toward bilateral reconciliation between Israel and the nations, followed by multilateral alignment among the nations. This is already envisioned in the "One New Man" peace of Ephesians 2. As long as the proclamation of the Gospel remains disconnected from the context of real unity between Jews and Gentiles, Satan's influence and control over religious institutions and human society will persist.
Although Satan has already been defeated, he still makes the world serve him as its master in many ways. His basis for keeping the Earth under control is the lack of unity within the People of God—specifically, the lack of unity between believers from the nations and believers from Israel. Since this One Church is the instrument of healing and restoration for humanity, a divided Church is massively handicapped in fulfilling its ambassadorial purpose. The victory of Jesus on the cross remains valid. Salvation comes by grace alone. But without the union of Jews and Gentiles, redemption is often limited to the individual.
As long as Satan can prevent this unity of the Body of the Messiah, the social advancement of the Kingdom is hindered. There is power in the unity of the Church. This is a spiritual mystery: Jew and Gentile, united and functioning together as the Church—the One New Man—healed from the first fruit of the original fall, the division of mankind, leads to the dynamic growth of the Kingdom. It is this union of the Body that would significantly help transform parts of the world into the Kingdom of God—making the victory of Jesus on the cross finally relevant for the social experience of salvation. That is why Satan fought from the beginning, precisely to prevent this unity.
The Synagogue Separates itself from the Nazarenes
This may seem an exaggeration. Could it really be that this division, in fact, is the key in the hands of Satan to block the advancement of healing and restoration? I truly believe so. Let's take a brief look at the time shortly after the death and resurrection of Yeshua to better understand how Satan implemented his strategy by severely undermining the relationship between the Gentile Church and the Messianic Jews from the very beginning.
In the year 66 A.D. the Jews protested against the Romans and unleashed a long and bloody war. The Romans, under the command of Titus, invaded, besieged the city of Jerusalem, and then crushed the rebellion in 70 A.D., destroying the Temple in the process. It was the fulfillment of the prophecies of Jesus in Matthew 24 and Luke 21.
Several decades later, around the year 132 A.D., the Jews began a second uprising. A man named Bar Kokhba led the rebellion. He presented himself to the Jews as the promised Messiah and claimed an appointment by God, to be proven when he freed Judea from Roman oppression. Militarily insignificant in conventional terms, they were vigorous enough to protest against this mighty power. The Roman soldiers returned, this time under Emperor Hadrian, and devastated the entire city of Jerusalem. They expelled the Jews from the city and large parts of Eretz Israel. The Romans uprooted the Jews from the Land and left them stateless. By renaming the province of Judea as Palestine ("land of the Philistines"), they declared that the time of the Jews was over. This second exile of the Jews into the diaspora was far-reaching and profound. They were scattered into all regions of the earth. Israel no longer existed as a nation.
As a result of these wars, the Jews hated the Romans and their collaborators all the more. And, vice versa, the Romans hated the Jews and wanted to crush this "small tribe" completely. Among all the provinces of the Empire, Judea had proved to be the most defiant, always causing problems. Jews, in general, became persona non grata within the Empire.
For Messianic Jews, the situation was even worse—they were in the crossfire. Both parties— the Jews and Romans—hated them. The Jewish side blamed the Messianic Jews for the defeat by the Romans. The Messianic Jews had refused to fight against Rome, convinced that the rebellion was not ordered by God, but was instead God's judgment against the Jewish people for their unbelief. So, the Messianic Jews were accused of being collaborators of the Romans and traitors. As a result, nationalistic Jews slaughtered many Messianic Jews. At the same time, the Messianic Movement was weakened from within. Instead of maintaining unity, they began to separate into groups with varying theological opinions. Some sects even abandoned the foundations of the apostolic beliefs from the early beginnings.
Around the end of the first century A.D, following the destruction of the Temple, a period of rabbinic consultation took place in Jamnia (Yavne), a city near Jaffa (now part of Tel Aviv) on the Mediterranean Sea. These discussions brought together many of the leading Pharisaic rabbis of that time period, both from Israel and the Diaspora. The theme was: "How could Judaism survive without a Temple?" Only two options were seen: Either to continue with a wide variety of Jewish groups, which could quickly lead to a loss of identity and increase the danger of assimilation under diaspora conditions; or to unite Judaism around a relatively rigid system of laws and regulations which excluded all dissident groups. This second option was primarily directed against the Messianic Jews.
The second option was adopted. Over time, rabbinic consensus emerged that the Messianic Jews, called "Nazarenes", would be excluded from the people of Israel. From that time onward, this became the prevailing view. If a Jew believes that Yeshua is the Messiah, he is no longer considered Jewish within mainstream Judaism.
This principle remains prevalent even today. If someone with Jewish ancestry seeks to immigrate to the State of Israel, immigration authorities routinely inquire about their faith. If the applicant believes in Buddhism or even declares himself an atheist, this typically poses no obstacle. But if the applicant confesses his faith in Jesus Christ, particularly as a Messianic Jew, they will likely be denied entry as a Jewish citizen under the Law of Return. With this exclusion from the Jewish people, the Messianic Jews have often lost their homeland, their nationality, and their birthright—to be regarded as part of the Jewish people.
The First Division in the Church
The Messianic Jews were caught between a rock and a hard place! An anti-Jewish climate had taken hold throughout the Roman Empire. On one hand, the Romans considered the Messianic Jews part of the Jewish people, without any differentiation. Like all other Jews, they were to be crushed and scattered throughout the world, never to cause problems again. On the other hand, they were seen as even more dangerous than traditional Jews, as their faith in the Messiah placed them in automatic opposition to the Roman Emperor and his near-divine status.
Consequently, because the Messianic Jews were actually Jewish, it became dangerous for anyone to maintain any kind of a relationship with them. As a result, Gentile Christians increasingly avoided mixing with Messianic Jews. Gentile Christians already faced significant challenges with the Roman State, as persecution of Christians occurred in multiple forms. Avoiding association with Jews eliminated at least one reason for persecution.
As a result, Gentile bishops failed to invite Messianic Jewish bishops to their regional councils. This was crucial to the separation of the two parts. It was in these summoned meetings, during the first four centuries, that Church synods deliberated on the common faith and the theology that supported it.
They developed the key aspects of emerging Christianity by interpreting the faith and heritage of the apostles—and the Jewish beginnings of the Church—into Theology, Christology, and Ecclesiology. And the Church synods did so without a Jewish presence. How could they decide on Messianic Jewish heritage in a balanced way without Messianic leaders participating in the process? By the end of the third century, the Messianic Jews were already completely ignored.
The Church excluded many Jewish elements from its services, the liturgical calendar, and the style of worship. It eliminated Jewish music and expunged from its teachings much of the vestige of Jewish influence. It was a conscious and definitive separation made by the Church. They wanted to demonstrate to the public their complete separation from anything Jewish. Around 250 A.D., outside of Judea, in almost all of the Greek and Roman world, the Messianic congregations largely disappeared.
This gradual marginalization was much slower in the East. Nevertheless, the few groups that remained lived secretly, without much outside influence, and, due to their isolation, many of them developed strange or even sectarian tendencies.
The Drama of Replacement Theology
All of this pragmatic development called for a substantial theological reasoning. Around the late second century, a new theological conviction began to sweep Gentile Christianity. This theological foundation sought to rationalize and justify what was already unfolding. In later centuries, this system became known as "Supersessionism" or "Replacement Theology."
According to Replacement Theology, God, in His anger with the Jews for killing the Messiah on the cross, revoked His covenant with Israel. Since they were no longer considered the covenant people, the Jews were seen as having lost their birthright and, as a people, were deprived of divine grace. No longer the Chosen People, they were viewed as remaining in a state of collective sin, under God's condemnation.
In their place, a new "Chosen People" emerged—the Church, seen as the "New Israel" replacing "Israel in the flesh". This meant that all blessings and promises God had made to Israel in the Scriptures—later referred to as the "Old Testament"— now belonged to the Gentile Church. And all the curses directed toward Israel were understood to belong to the Jewish people. Suddenly, the Jews were portrayed as enemies of God, enemies of mankind, and enemies of the Church.
This theology was not the product of some extreme outsiders, but rather the conviction of many of the most respected theologians of the time, known as the Church Fathers, both in the Western and in the Eastern part of the Empire. As a result, Replacement Theology became the leading ideology within both the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Old Oriental traditions. Here are some examples:
The Epistle of Barnabas was written sometime between 70 and 132 A.D. Although not officially part of the Bible, it was regarded by some early Christians to be inspired by God as an important document. Traditionally attributed to Barnabas, the companion of Paul, the Epistle claims apostolic authorship. While this attribution is disputed, many early Christians regarded it as spiritually authoritative. The letter speaks of the loss of the Jewish birthright. It claims that, because the Jews rejected and killed the Messiah, they were excluded from the people of God and replaced by the Church.
Irenaeus of Lyon (135–202 A.D.), a student of Polycarp, who was himself a disciple of John, was one of the most important theologians of his time. Even though he preserved, within his dogmatic writings, the Jewish heritage of the Church of Asia Minor, he nevertheless emphasized that Christians should avoid close association with Jews, in order to prevent confusion in their faith. He sought to see the Church distanced from Jewish elements.
Origen (+ 254 A.D.), one of the most famous Fathers of the Eastern Church, introduced the terminology of "Ancient Israel" and "New Israel." For him, the "Old Israel" was of the "flesh," while the "New Israel" was born of the Spirit. As Christians belonged to the New Israel and did not need Jewish lineage, it was enough to be baptized in water—since, in Origen's view, the Spirit came through baptism and took the place of physical descent.
Ambrose (337–397 A.D.), the famous bishop of Milan, Italy, exercised significant influence on Augustine and his teaching. For him, it was not enough to affirm that the Jews were no longer a part of the Church; the Church must also exert the judgment of God upon them. This, he believed, should be the role of the Church. Even though Ambrose was well known as a holy man and a great Church leader, in regard to the Jewish issue, he developed a certain blindness. Against the Emperor, he publicly defended a bishop in the East who, in his anger against the Jews, took a torch and led a Gentile mob to burn down a synagogue. Ambrose was convinced that the more suffering imposed on the Jews, the more humble and open they would become to the Gospel of Jesus.
Augustine (354–430 A.D.), bishop of Hippo Regio in Algeria, was one of the most influential Church Fathers of Western Christianity. For him, it was clear: Christians were not allowed to kill Jews. However, Augustine believed that God had to keep the Jews alive to use them as a negative example of divine judgment on a nation that had abandoned Him. Thus, the Christian Church felt authorized to persecute the Jews, but not to kill them.
John Chrysostom (344 or 355 – 407 A.D.), patriarch of Constantinople, was the most venerated theologian of the Byzantine Church. He was called "Chrysostom"—"The Golden Mouth"—because of his outstanding teaching gift. Thousands of people surrendered their lives to Christ when he preached the gospel. However, he held deeply hostile views toward Jews and preached eight infamous sermons full of venom against them. He warned his listeners to have nothing to do with Jews—neither in daily contact, nor by visiting their synagogues or participating in religious occasions. For him, it was necessary that Christians avoid any kind of contact with Jews, so as to not get "infected with the Jewish disease."
All of these theologians received great revelations concerning the Church and the Kingdom. Yet, when it came to the role of the Jews in God's plan of salvation, they remained largely blind. The evil one was behind this. He knows that, as long as Christians fail to grasp the mystery of Israel and the Church, he will remain dominant in the world.
The same blindness persists today. Even though many Christian theologians now show greater respect for the Jewish roots of Christianity, and affirm the Jewish people's right to religious freedom and expression, they still often reject any form of "Yeshua-belief" within Judaism. Ironically, this rejection issometimes even justified in the name of protecting Jewish religious freedom.
From Replacement Theology to Anti-Semitic Politics
The Replacement Theology of the Church Fathers established principles that shaped Christian practice and politics for centuries. Church- and state-sponsored legislation against the Jews followed. From the third century onward, a systematic purging of the Church of all Jewish heritage began. From synod to synod, the legislation became stricter, ensuring that no trace of Jewish life remained within Christian practice.
Emperor Constantine, who ended the persecution of Christians and began to employ the Christian Church as a central unifying factor for the Roman Empire, convened all non-Jewish bishops at the First Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.) to distance the Church from all things Jewish. With this same intention, he declared Sunday (in 321 A.D.) the official day of rest, replacing the Jewish Shabbat (Saturday), and separated the celebration of Easter from Passover to break its Jewish association.
The regional Synod of Elvira in Spain (306 A.D.) banned all interaction in private homes between Christians and Jews. For the first time, marriage between a Christian and a Jew was explicitly prohibited.
In 363–364 A.D., the Synod of Laodicea ordered that all Christians who continued to keep Shabbat be instructed instead to honor Sunday as the Lord’s Day, distancing themselves from Jewish practices.
Since the Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.), the prohibition of marriages between Christians and Jews became a formalized Church-wide policy. Every Jew who was baptized was expected to publicly renounce ties to Jewish family and heritage, and declare that he no longer identified with the People of Israel. In some cases, Church authorities claimed the right to remove children from Jewish families and raise them in monasteries as Christians.
In 438 A.D., Emperor Theodosius II authorized the conversion of Jewish synagogues into Christian church buildings.
From the Council of Nicaea II (787 A.D.) onward, baptized Jews who privately continued to observe Shabbat, circumcise their children, and follow the Law of Moses faced increasing persecution.
Additionally, the Church's stigmatization of the Jews fueled growing hatred among uneducated mobs. According to the teaching of Augustine, the Church normally did not allow Jews to be killed. Nevertheless, in most cases, bishops were unable to shield Jewish communities from mob violence. In many situations, bishops even sympathized with the Christian crowds as they mobilized against the Jews in the streets. Jews had become the enemies of Christ, the enemies of the Church, and the enemies of society itself.
Their synagogues were burned. Their civil rights were denied. They were forced to live in hiding and in isolated ghettos.
In the Middle Ages, the Jews suffered under organized persecution and killings. By the end of the 13th century, England declared itself the "First Jew-free Kingdom" in Europe.
During the crusades and in the following centuries, they were stripped of their goods, threatened, and murdered in pogroms.
When the Jews finally fled to Eastern Europe to find a more peaceful place to live, they eventually became victims of the Cossack-led pogroms in the 17th and 19th century, primarily in Poland and Russia. All this was done in the name of Jesus.
A particular tragic chapter in the history of Jewish persecution happened during the reign of Queen Isabella I of Castile (1451-1504) and her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon (1452-1516). Both were granted the title "The Catholic Kings" by Pope Alexander VI in 1496. There were more than 300,000 Jews in Spain and Portugal before 1492, when they were expelled from Spain by royal decree or forced to convert to Christianity. Those Jews compelled to accept baptism were called Marranos ("swine"). Most lived a double life—acting as Catholics outwardly, they remained Jews in the privacy of their homes. Terrorized by the Holy Inquisition, they fled by the thousands to the colonies of the Americas in hope of freedom. But the Inquisition followed them to South America and the persecution continued. Drawing on earlier Church rulings, the Inquisition forced these new converts to deny any link with Judaism. A system of control was established: their neighbors watched them, everything was observed—what they kept in the barn, what they did during Easter, whether they dressed differently during Shabbat. If Jewish practice was identified, those accused were imprisoned, tortured, and many even killed.
Thus, the Jews have endured a long and uninterrupted history of alienation and persecution. The ultimate consequence of the belief in and practice of Replacement Theology was the Holocaust carried out by the Nazis. Even though believing Christian were not the direct perpetrators of the Shoah, Christian theology and institutions paved the way through hundreds of years of anti-Jewish teaching and propaganda. The Nazis were able to build their concentration camps upon the foundations of Christian Anti-Judaism.
There is a possibility that Evangelicals today regard this as a Catholic issue that does not implicate them. Often, Evangelicals consider themselves free of this burden of sinful history because they broke away from Catholicism and formed new movements. Therefore, they believe they are freed from any responsibility for the historical persecution of the Jews. However, this assumption oversimplifies the legacy of theological anti-Judaism.
Anti-Jewish ideology is also found in almost all streams of Protestantism, beginning with Martin Luther (1483-1546) and his deeply antisemitic writings in the final years of his ministry. Frustrated by the small number of converted Jews after years of biblical preaching and Reformation, he called for the persecution of Jews and justified violent measures in his sermons and writings, which influenced future Protestant generations.
Beyond that, the poison of Replacement Theology is still active in many Protestant denominations. Often they follow a certain understanding of supersessionism, which teaches that the Jews played a role in salvation history during certain periods ("dispensations")—but that role ended with the cross and the resurrection of Christ and the grace-teaching of Paul. According to this view, Israel no longer has a role in salvation history for the Gentiles. Consequently, the Church is seen as disconnected from Israel and from Messianic Jews altogether. In many cases, the sins of the Catholic Church were absorbed into Protestant denominations and continued to bear tragic fruit.
The End of Messianic Judaism - the Jewish Part of the Church
In this climate shaped by Replacement Theology, it was no longer possible to believe in Christ and remain a Jew at the same time. A Jew who believed in Yeshua was expected to renounce all expressions of Jewish identity. Replacement Theology, therefore, brought two very tragic consequences: The first was the widespread persecution of the Jewish people. The second consequence was the erasure of the Messianic Jewish presence in the Church.
This extinction was catastrophic, not only for the Jewish part of the Church, but also for its Gentile part. As a result of this loss, the Gentile part of the Church became disoriented in how to preserve the Jewish heritage. The Church became incomplete. The outcome was a "gentilized Christianity," stripped of its Jewish foundation. Theologically speaking, the Christian Church never ceased to be the "Church of Jew and Gentile" according to Ephesians 2:11-22. Otherwise, she would not be the Church of Jesus Christ. There have always been Jews as individual members of churches, but they were not allowed to live and believe as Jews within the Christian Church. Instead, they were expected to live and believe as Gentiles. The terminology "gentilized Church" reflects the reality of a Church that had severed her Jewish roots in both theology and practice.
The separation between Jews and Gentiles was the Church's original fracture. Numerous other divisions followed. This separation worked like a virus and functioned like a theological contagion, gradually infecting the Church's identity and unity. It was perpetuated in every division through the underlying logic of Replacement Theology. Even though it may not be immediately visible, this replacement strategy is a foundational dynamic embedded in nearly every ecclesial rupture.
There are more than 30,000 different denominations within Christianity today. All of them regard themselves as "the true Church." The procedure of replacement seems to be the same when a new church claims to be the "true" Church. But this new denomination will not keep her place as the "true" Church for long. A newer group will appear, declaring the older one unworthy to remain the Church of Christ. A "younger" church takes the place of the "older" one—only until another group arises, claiming that their knowledge God is deeper, their worship better, their teaching more compelling. This replacement cycle has repeated itself so many times right up until today. It almost seems that these divisions result from a structural sin that the "gentilized" Church inherited when she separated from her Jewish roots.
The loss of the Jewish component not only caused divisions but also produced many other negative consequences. If it is true that we are now part of the "commonwealth of Israel," and if it is true that our identity as Gentile Christians lies in the fact that we have been grafted into the Olive Tree, then Replacement Theology has stripped us of our theological foundation and distorted our ecclesial identity.
A Limited Ability to Interpret the Hebrew Scriptures
With the elimination of the Jewish part, the Gentile Church lost the ability to naturally comprehend the shared Abrahamic heritage that belongs to all believers. The Church of the nations gradually lost its Jewish interpretive mindset. How can we read the Hebrew Scriptures if we are not looking through a Hebrew lens? Without understanding the original Jewish mentality, we are partially blind, and we are tempted to interpret the Scriptures through a Gentile framework that lacks covenantal depth.
Jerome (born 347 A.D. near modern-day Croatia; died in 420 A.D. in Bethlehem), was one of the Latin Church Fathers who deeply understood this interpretive hindrance. He followed his life's vocation to translate the Bible into Latin faithfully, moving to the Holy Land and spending decades immersed in Hebrew study, consulting Jewish rabbis to better understand the original texts. However, most theologians historically lacked this understanding, and did not pursue this depth of engagement with the Hebrew sources.
Instead of the Jewish mindset, theologians compensated for its absence by making use of other ways of thinking and different philosophical interpretations of the world. Without standing solidly on the Hebrew foundation, reliance on the Greco-Roman mindset and later the philosophical frameworks of the German tribes in Europe led to theological imbalance.
The lack of the Hebrew mindset resulted in many misunderstandings and misinterpretations of both Testaments. Although the New Testament Scriptures were written in Greek, much of the original text was shaped according to the Hebrew mindset of its authors. In the following centuries, this fact provoked endless debates between theologians. Many theologians claimed that they had the exclusive key to the true meaning of Scripture. But who could be the judge of whether their interpretation was authentic? The Magisterium of the Catholic Church tried to serve as the anchor for a solid interpretation of apostolic teaching. Nevertheless, the fight over the right understanding became endless—especially after the Reformation, and even more so with the emergence of every new stream within Protestantism. Consequently, many divisions within the Church occurred because these streams held conflicting interpretations of Scripture, often shaped by divergent philosophical and cultural lenses.
Like Karl Barth, (1886-1968), other theologians of the 20th century stated that the Jewish issue is at the heart of many ecumenical problems we face. Because the erasure of the Jewish part of the Church has separated the Church from its unifying Jewish roots, each denomination asserts its own claim to authentic Hebrew understanding. In reality, every Church developed its own interpretive lens. In this situation it may be helpful to listen to the interpretation of Messianic Jews. They may help us understand more authentically what the Jewish prophets, the Jewish Jesus and the Jewish apostles really meant. Therefore, this thesis remains: Unless this first division is addressed and healed, all efforts to foster unity in the divided Body of Christ will remain hindered at their root.
The terrible divisions of the Christian Church have not extinguished the God-given glory. The Church is still a divine work. She has persevered in faithfulness to Jesus over the centuries. Her testimony to the triune God is real. The Holy Spirit has been at work within her throughout history.
Nevertheless, without Christian unity, the world will not believe (Jn 13:35; 17:21). All our efforts on behalf of Christian unity will necessarily be weak and powerless, as we will never achieve full unity in the Body of Christ without healing the Church's original fracture. As long as the Church is not truly formed from the unity of Jewish and Gentile believers, her witness about Jesus the Messiah and Savior will remain incomplete.
The difficulty, however, is that we are not able to produce this healing solely through reconciliation among Christian denominations. This first division can only be healed—if our Jewish partner "returns." But this Messianic Jewish partner—as a distinct partner—has been largely absent from the visible Church since the early 4th century. During most of the seventeen centuries since then, we have been without them.
What is scandalous is that we are not even troubled by this reality. The Christian churches are hardly aware of the absence of the Jewish part of the Body. They have adjusted to this absence, and in some ways, we Christians are content with a Church that is incomplete.
However, Jesus will not return to earth until the Bride is restored to her fullness. The Body of Christ needs to be united—the different Christian denominations reconciled, Jews and Gentiles unified into the One New Man. The heavens will retain Jesus until we have finished this work of reconciliation (cf. Acts 3:21). We are now living in a time of grace that can bring about this unity. Our God is giving us hope to bring history to its consummation, completing all that remains for Jesus to return as Bridegroom.
If there is no resurrection of the Messianic Jewish believers, we can do our best, but it will not be enough. Without the Messianic Jews, we will not see the complete healing of the Body of Christ. We need the restoration of this Messianic Jewish part of the Body of Christ in order for a deeper healing to begin—one that touches the root of every division that weakens us. And only God can perform this miracle of resurrection.
