It is often asked by our fellow Christians, “Are you trying to be a Jew?”  Or they might say something like this, “I am a Baptist, not a Jew.”  Both the question and the statement are misunderstandings of the issue. 

I am a Baptist pastor’s wife whose family has adopted the Messianic lifestyle.  I am not a Jew, nor do I think that I can become one physically.  However, I am a disciple of a Jew.  His name is Yeshua/Jesus.  This is an important distinction that must be made.  As a believer in Yeshua I have been filled with the Holy Spirit/ Ruach HaKodesh and it is His job to transform my life into the image of Yeshua, the Son. 

In Matthew 28 the disciples were told to make disciples.  This term is very specific.  A disciple is a student of a teacher/rabbi.  The student or disciple seeks to pattern his life after his rabbi.  In 1 John 2:6 we are told to walk as our rabbi walked if we are going to abide in Him.  A disciple desires to place each step in the step of his rabbi and not veer off the path of his master.  The disciple should end up looking exactly like his rabbi so that he teaches what his rabbi taught and lives as his rabbi lived.  This is the call of the disciple.

Earlier in my walk with the Lord I often wondered if our faith really looked like His life.  I wanted so much to look like Him, but there seemed to be a disconnect from what I read about His life to the way I lived out my faith.  He lived as a Jew, completely submitted to the Torah or instructions/teachings of His Father.  Yet we are often told in the church that the teachings of the Father are not for us today.  Yeshua fulfilled them so we do not have to.  So, let me get this straight.  Yeshua obeyed and lived out the teachings of His Father so we would not have to obey and live out those teachings. 

If that is the case than our lives do not look like our rabbi and never will.  In fact, our lives would be the exact opposite.  Don’t get me wrong, I know that Christians love the Father very much and want to please Him and for the most part they obey much of His Torah. 

However, there seems to be an attitude of not wanting to look like a Jew.  Many will say, “I am a Gentile”.  While this may be true of our physical heritage, it is not true of our spiritual heritage.  We have been adopted into the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by the blood of Yeshua.  We have been grafted into the tree of Israel.  We have been made citizens of God’s household, Israel.  We may have been far away but now in Yeshua we have been brought near.

To make it clear, we are not to steal the identity of the Jewish people.  We do not replace them in any way.  We do, however, enlarge them.  The God of Israel takes us gentiles and enlarges His people and makes us one.  We are now one people, believing Jew and Gentile.  All those who come under the banner of Adonai through Yeshua are one people.

But what does this have to do with being a disciple?  It is not my goal or aim to live like a Jew, but I do seek to live like a particular Jew, Yeshua.  Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11:1, “Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Messiah.”(TLV)  Paul, a Jewish disciple of the Jewish Messiah, is telling gentiles to follow his example in their walk as believers. 

James in Acts 15:21 makes it clear that he fully expects the gentile believers to be going to their local synagogue each Shabbat to hear Moses read.  He expects them to learn from Moses and so follow the example of their fellow Jewish believers in how to live this life. 

The disciples were Jewish believers and never once intended for the faith to be disconnected from their Jewish way of life.  After all it was God Himself that had instructed the redeemed of Israel on how to live.  That is right, the instructions of the Father were given to a redeemed people.  They had been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb and with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.   Then they were taken to the mountain and taught how to live, how to love God and their neighbor.

To be sure this is not a matter of justification, but sanctification.  We are saved only by the blood of Yeshua.  I do not seek to make a Gentile a Jew or a Baptist a Jew, I am merely pointing out that we follow a Jew.  And, once we are saved, we must learn to live the life of a disciple to a Jew, and not just any Jew, but the King of the Jews.   

Yeshua was not a Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Catholic or any other denomination.  He was a Jew who lived a Jewish lifestyle.  To separate our faith from this way of life is to, in part, separate ourselves from who He was and is.  I know that is not the intention, but it is the result.  If we truly want to be transformed into the image of Yeshua/Jesus than we need to walk in His footsteps so that we can completely look like our master.  Or to say it another way, we need to be totally surrendered to the Holy Spirit/Ruach HaKodesh in being transformed into His image, the image of the Son.

Yeshua is our Rabbi, He is our example.  The ONLY perfect example of how to live a life that pleases the Father.  Therefore, if we seek to please the Father than we must live as Yeshua lived.

So, I ask the question to anyone who seeks to be transformed into the image of Yeshua.  What is keeping you from living the life of a Messianic Believer and following in the steps of your Rabbi?