Jesus did not come preaching, “Believe in me so that you’ll die & go to heaven instead of hell.” Please, anyone, can you show me in the Scriptures where such a thing is written?

He came preaching repentance and the kingdom of God, and taught his followers to do the same.* He came preaching life, not death.(1)

The kingdom of God is all about life. The kingdom of God is righteousness.(2) Righteousness delivers from death.(3)

Life. Now, not later. Not death, now or later.

The new covenant(4) is about the kingdom of God, and requires us to “repent.” That means, quit thinking your old way. Change your mind about everything. And change everything you do. Quit plodding through life waiting to die. Start doing the will of God. The will of God is for you to live, not for you to die!(5)

Now, I can hear some of you thinking, “But Jesus said, ‘the kingdom of heaven…’” Yes, of course he did, but the kingdom of heaven doesn’t mean a kingdom in heaven. Heaven doesn’t need a king, but the earth sure does! The kingdom of heaven is bringing heavenly rule to the earth. How did Jesus teach us to pray? Father, send your kingdom here! Let your will be done, in the earth, just like it’s already being done in heaven!(5) He said to focus our energies on seeing God’s righteousness performed in our own lives. Here.(6) On the earth. Psa 115:16: The heavens; the heavens are YHWH’s, but He has given the earth to the sons of men.

Jesus didn’t teach us to pray, “Take us out of this nasty little earth so that we may float around on a cloud,” but rather, “Father, let your rule begin to take effect in our lives, where we live.” Now, not later. Here, not somewhere else, and certainly not in some “sweet by and by,” wherever that is!

Now, this is where all this means something to me as a philo-semite: traditional Judaism is a whole lot closer to understanding the purpose of God for man than traditional Christianity is. Ooh – am I hearing grumbling out there? God wants us to do His will in our every day lives. And we know what His will is by reading what He wrote in His Book. His Teaching. His Torah. That is why His people must be a people of the Book. Read in order to learn, but learn in order to do.

In case it’s not obvious by now, I have speaking here mainly to Christians. It is Christians who say that what we’re here for is to die. Oh, and go to heaven. Never mind that when King Jesus completes his mission and takes up his rightful rule as the son of David, that this will take place in Jerusalem, here on earth. So why would you even want to be in heaven, even as a temporary sojourner?

It does not appear to me that traditional Judaism has the same problem. It seems to me that they have the correct focus on living a righteous life here. This may astonish many, but there is a place in the epistles where the Holy Spirit flatly tells us that if it had been possible for us to keep Torah to the extent that doing so would cause us to live, that would have been the plan.(7)

But keeping Torah doesn’t come naturally, nor does it even come by trying harder. It’s not even possible by sheer human effort, no matter how great or how noble that effort. There’s the little problem called “sin” that enters in. I didn’t say “sins,” all those things that we do or fail to do that come between us and God, but “sin,’ the source of all our trouble.

God knew beforehand all things that would happen, so he had an eternal plan(8) that he brought into view in a particularly dark time during the rule of Rome. This not the place to tell the Christmas story or the Easter story or all that went between, but the end of it was that the very Messiah himself carried away, not only our sins, but our sin.(9) He even became sin, in order to absorb the full penalty.(10) Awesome, even awful. Incredible, unbelievable – except for those who choose to believe. Simply choose.

And this is the point of divergence between Christianity and Judaism. To go so very far as to choose to believe that:
1) Jesus of Nazareth was born perfect, and that then
2) in adulthood he took on himself the sin of all humanity, and
3) suffered the righteous penalty for that sin, which is death, but that he died in our behalf, so that we should not have to die, and that
4) he was raised from the dead by the power of God, so that
5) inasmuch as his death was in our behalf, so was (and is) his resurrection.(11)

Now that’s a lot to swallow! But it’s also the point where we decide what to do. God says he wants us to open our mouths and swallow what he gives us.(12)

And what it takes – again – is faith. The righteousness of God is by faith.(13) We can’t do it until we believe it. We can’t do it by trying. This is where traditional Judaism gets off track. When we try to establish our own righteousness, we fail to submit to God’s righteousness.(14) And, I’m sorry to say, God says that all our own righteousness, done on our own efforts, are, well – disgusting.(15)

To cease from our own efforts, to cease from doing what we think we ought to “for” God, is the true Sabbath rest.(16) But what Christianity needs to understand is that this rest is not in heaven, but here, now, if we will listen to the voice of God. The exhortations in the 3rd and 4th chapters of Hebrews are to choose life over death.(17) He is not saying, because they grieved God they went to hell instead of heaven. He simply says they died. He asks us, why would you want to die?(18) He pleads with us to choose life(19), and to do so in order to live, not in heaven, but in the land.

As a final note, don’t think for a moment that the promise of life, or any of the promises or admonitions of Moses or the prophets are for us who are gentiles by birth, unless and until we enter into the commonwealth of Israel by adopting the savior and redeemer of Israel, King Jesus the Christ, as our own master and redeemer. But be thankful to God, that in his foreknowledge he made this possible. Be thankful to God, and to the original people of the book, that the promises are made available to us by faith in him who was sent to the people of Abraham. Just go ahead and read the whole 2nd chapter of the epistle to the Ephesians.

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* Mark 1:14-15: And after John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, The time has been fulfilled, and the kingdom of God draws near. Repent and believe in the gospel.; also Luke 4:43, Luke 8:1, Luke 9:2, Acts 1:3, Acts 8:12, Acts 19:8 – and the list goes on.

In order to leave this page relatively uncluttered, I’ll use footnotes for most of the Scriptures I’ll be citing, or sometimes a general chapter or book reference for the better known Bible passages. Also, in many places I’ll cite only one or two references for a particular point, but you really ought to get out your Bible and search these things out!

1. John 10:10, John 11:25-26: The thief does not come except that he may steal, and kill, and destroy. I came that they may have life and may have it abundantly; …Jesus said to her, I am the Resurrection and the Life. The one believing into Me, though he die, he shall live. And everyone living and believing into Me shall not die to the age, never! Do you believe this?

2. Romans 14:17: For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

3. Proverbs 11:4; Proverbs 12:28: Riches do not profit in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death… In the way of righteousness is life, and in that pathway is no death.

4. Jeremiah 31:31-34: Behold, the days come, says YHWH, that I will cut a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I cut with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt (which covenant of Mine they broke, although I was a husband to them, says YHWH). But this shall be the covenant that I will cut with the house of Israel: After those days, declares YHWH, I will put My Law in their inward parts, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And they shall no longer each man teach his neighbor, and each man his brother, saying, Know YHWH. For they shall all know Me, from the least of them even to the greatest of them, declares YHWH. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more.

5. Matthew 6:10, Luke 11:2: And He said to them: When you pray, say, Our Father who is in Heaven, hallowed be Your name, let Your kingdom come, let Your will be done on earth as it also is in Heaven.

6. Matthew 6:33, Luke 12:31: But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

7. Galatians 3:21: Then is the Law against the promises of God? Let it not be! For if a law had been given which had been able to make alive, indeed righteousness would have been out of Law.

8. Genesis 3:15: And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He will bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.

9. John 1:29: On the morrow, John sees Jesus coming toward him and said, Behold! The Lamb of God, taking away the sin of the world!

10. 2 Corinthians 5:21: For He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

11. Romans 6:5: For if we have been joined together in the likeness of His death, so also shall we be in the resurrection,

12. Ezekiel 2:8: But you, son of man, hear what I am saying to you. Do not be like that rebellious house of rebellion. Open your mouth and eat what I am giving to you.

13. Philippians 3:9: and be found in Him; not having my own righteousness of Law, but through the faith of Christ, having the righteousness of God on faith,

14. Romans 10:3: For being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, they did not submit to the righteousness of God.

15. Isaiah 64:6: But we are all as the unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as a menstruation cloth. And we all fade as a leaf, and like the wind our iniquities take us away.

16. Hebrews 4:9-10, Isaiah 58:13: So, then, there remains a sabbath rest to the people of God. For he entering into His rest, he himself also rested from his works, as God had rested from His own.… If you turn your foot away because of the sabbath, from doing what you please on My holy days…

17. Hebrews 3:15,17: “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the provocation.” …But with whom was He angry forty years? Was it not with the ones sinning, whose corpses fell in the wilderness?

18. Ezekiel 18:31: Cast away all your transgressions from you by which you have transgressed in them, and make for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit; for why will you die, O house of Israel?

19. Deuteronomy 30:19-20: I call Heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Therefore, choose life, that you may live, you and your seed, to love YHWH your God, to listen to His voice, and to cleave to Him. For He is your life, and the length of your days so that you may live in the land which YHWH has sworn to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give it to them.