Among the “Woe to you!” rebukes Messiah Yeshua leveled at the religious leaders of His day, this is one of the most stinging:
But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.
Matthew 23:13 ESV
He’s saying that the scribes and Pharisees kept people from salvation and their eternal destinies, and that their own eternal salvation was in doubt.
We get a picture of this in the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15, at which the Apostles dealt with the insistence of some Jewish leaders that Gentile followers of Messiah had to be circumcised and keep the entire Torah in order to be saved. They perceived that there was only one way to enter the Kingdom, and that was the way they practiced as Jews. They, like the Pharisees Yeshua addressed, had set themselves up as gatekeepers to the Kingdom, setting conditions for entry that may or may not have coincided with the conditions the King Himself established.
Those First Century Jewish leaders weren’t the only ones who have asserted that their way was the only way to get into the Kingdom – meaning that redemption and salvation could come only by the formula they prescribed. That’s actually been the rule rather than the exception, both for Jews and Christians – including Messianic and Hebraic believers. We regard our doctrines as the highest form of revelation God has given, and insist that all true believers must adhere to the same doctrines and live by the same rules we do if they want to get into the Kingdom of Heaven and stay there.
This goes back further than the First Century. Ezekiel wrote about it in the days that Judah was about to follow Ephraim into exile:
And the word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, your brothers, even your brothers, your kinsmen, the whole house of Israel, all of them, are those of whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, ‘Go far from the Lord; to us this land is given for a possession.’ Therefore say, ‘Thus says the Lord God: Though I removed them far off among the nations, and though I scattered them among the countries, yet I have been a sanctuary to them for a while in the countries where they have gone.’ Therefore say, ‘Thus says the Lord God: I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.’ And when they come there, they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations. And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. But as for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their deeds upon their own heads, declares the Lord God.”
Ezekiel 11:14-21 ESV
Both Houses of Israel have been in the habit of excluding one another since time immemorial. Each has claimed the legacy of the Patriarchs and inheritance of the Promised Land, with the result that neither has been willing to admit that they each have a share in the inheritance.
This salvation and redemption process is about bringing all the scattered fragments of Israel and Judah back together, along with the multitudes from the nations who have joined with them. What that means for us today is that our Redeemer has been at work in every Christian denomination, every Jewish synagogue and yeshiva, and every heart that has sought Him by responding to the light He has shined through all creation.
Messiah Yeshua is the one who makes this possible through His atoning death and resurrection. There’s still a lot we don’t know about how that works, which means we’ll probably be surprised at who is in the Kingdom, and who isn’t. In the meantime, we should consider whether our actions and words serve to help our Redeemer gather His sheep, or scatter them further away.
Albert J. McCarn
BYNA Executive Director
