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The Jewish Roots of Grace

The Jewish Roots of Grace

The Jewish Roots of Grace.

“For you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abundant in faithful covenant lovingkindness.” (Nehemiah 9:17).

Since Christianity is essentially a Jewish faith, an offshoot of Judaism, we will find the roots of common Christian terms in the Hebrew Bible. Grace is one of those key words in our Christian vocabulary, and grace has its roots in the Jewish Scriptures. Christians will not understand the full meaning of grace unless we study its origins with a nod to Hebraic thinking.

GRACE: (Hebrew, “chen” “chanan”) The centerpiece of God’s character that shows divine favor to those who don’t deserve it; the nature of God which prefers to show mercy to those who haven’t earned it; the heart of God which leans toward offering the free gift of love and acceptance to others, free of charge; God’s desire to restore and heal whose who are broken whether or not they deserve it; the lovingkindness provided by God as a free gift for no apparent reason other than sheer compassion.

“I will show favor and grace to whomever I will, and display mercy to whomever I will.’ (Exodus 33:19). Divine grace is not logical in human terms, it has no reasonable rhyme or reason to it. The human mind cannot fathom the logic of grace and fails at making sense of it. Grace is the ideal time for each person to trust God and His instincts, His character, and to accept His way of thinking as best for us. “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not My ways, says the LORD Yahweh. As high as the sky is above the earth are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9).

Grace is the central quality of the nature of God. Yahweh showed His true colors to Moses there on Mt. Sinai. This has long been considered a central passage in the entire Hebrew Bible, because it is God’s supreme self-revelation, expressing to Moses and the world His basic nature, His identity, His Name.  This passage forever formed the vision for the Hebrews of Who God is, how He thinks, and why He acts. Yahweh reveals to all of us in this passage why we can trust God’s heart, His motivation, as mysterious as it may be to all of us humans. “Now the LORD Yahweh descended in the cloud and stood with Moses, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. And Yahweh passed before Moses and proclaimed, The LORD! The LORD! A God compassionate and gracious, longsuffering and slow to anger, abounding in grace and truth, preserving covenant love and grace to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, but by no means clearing the guilty!”  (Exodus 34:6-7).

Noah. The first appearance of Grace in the Hebrew Bible: “But Noah found grace in the sight of the LORD Yahweh. Noah was a man righteous and wholehearted; Noah walked with God.” (Genesis 6:8-9). In this case, on the one hand, Noah earned some of that grace from God. Noah seemed to be flourishing in his relationship with God while all around him humanity had descended to the worst of human behavior. The entire world was depraved, violent, cruel, and even the imaginations of the people were evil. We’re not sure how Noah managed to be blameless in a wicked generation, but he did. The Amplified Bible put it that Noah “walked in habitual fellowship with God.” (Genesis 6:9). He found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Peter stated that Noah was a “preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5), that he “warned the world of God’s righteous judgment.” (NLT). When literally everyone else was going in one direction, Noah was going in the opposite direction. He was going upstream in a downstream world.

Noah’s Obedience. main claim to fame was his unquestioning obedience to the Lord’s instructions to build a huge boat on dry land, distant from all water, with not a cloud in sight. Noah was miles away from any navigable water, and yet he complied with everything God asked of him. “During the whole sequence of events, Noah is not reported as saying a single word. Instead we read, four times, of his silent obedience.” (Rabbi Sacks, in his commentary on Genesis). Interestingly, Peter called Noah a “preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5), which implies that he must have tried to warn the sinful population that they were doomed unless they turned their lives around. Maybe he did his preaching through his obvious obedience, we don’t know. So perhaps on the other hand, God’s grace was not earned by Noah in other ways. Noah was a “righteous” man, but he never seemed to be effective beyond whatever simple instructions were given by God. He never had the courage to question God about the Flood, or challenge God’s actions in any way. Once he heard that the whole human race was going to be wiped out, why didn’t Noah do what Abraham did: bargain with God for just a few of those lives? Why didn’t Noah respond to God like Moses and advocate for those were going to lose their lives to God’s anger? Also, Noah’s blameless character didn’t seem to make his goodness attractive. He didn’t make his righteousness stick to those around him. Noah didn’t have any influence. Noah may have had personal character, but it didn’t affect anyone else. Noah simply wasn’t a very effective leader when the world desperately needed one. That’s why I think Noah is an odd person to be a hero of the faith. He didn’t let his little light shine. Noah was righteous and faithful to the letter, but he did not demonstrate the magnanimous heart of God. As Rabbi Sacks commented in his commentary, “Though Noah was a righteous man, he was not a hero. Noah does not save humanity. He saves only himself, his family, and the animals he takes with him in the ark. He does as he is commanded. But obedience is not enough. In Judaism, God does not demand blind obedience. If God sought no more than mindless submission to the divine will, He would have created robots and machines. God wants us to be mature, deliberative, to do His will because we understand or because we trust Him when we do not understand.”

God’s grace and favor was freely offered to countless characters in Hebrew Scripture, from Lot (Gen. 19:19) to Nehemiah (9:17) to Zechariah (12:10) in his famous “Spirit of Grace.” Over twenty times in the Psalms alone, the Lord is referred to as a gracious God in the famous phrase, “Have mercy on us (or on me)! In all those passages, the word is actually “Chanan” and the translations are usually read, “Be gracious to us and show us favor!” The classic example is, “Be gracious to me and show me favor, God, in accord with your merciful love; in your abundant compassion blot out my sins.” (Ps. 51:3). Or perhaps it is, “But you, Yahweh, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in mercy and truth. Turn to me, and show me your favor…” (Ps. 86:15-16). Notice how so many passages in the Jewish Bible basically repeat God’s self-revelation of grace to Moses in Exodus 34!

Perhaps the most unforgettable passage that had Grace as its centerpiece was the High Priestly prayer of Aaron in Numbers 6, and now let us pray right along with Aron in the spirit of his words:

Praying the High Priestly Blessing.

“The LORD Yahweh bless you and keep you; 

The LORD Yahweh make His face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;

The LORD Yahweh lift up His face onto you and give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26).

[Author Note: I imagine that it is acceptable to insert “us” in the place of “you” when praying this blessing over a family or group of people. This prayer of blessing was given to Aaron in a moment of divine inspiration. This high priestly blessing was discovered on two small silver scrolls dated 7th century BC, which makes it the oldest written Scripture known to us at this time. Needless to say, this sacred blessing has stood the test of time in the history of faith.]

May the Great I AM remain active in our lives. May Yahweh bless us, provide for us our daily bread. May He sustain us in our daily work and livelihood, enabling us to pay the bills and remain productive in our jobs. And may He keep us, protecting us against whatever may cause us harm. May He keep us from crisis, serious illness, accident or injury. May the Lord protect us in whatever spiritual warfare we may experience. Blessing us and keeping us, may God continue to provide for us and protect us.

May the Great I AM, the Lord of Life, shine His face upon us in friendship. May His eyes light up with fondness when looking upon us. May He deepen our friendship with Him, our union with Him. May the radiance of His presence shine on us by taking pleasure in us, like a loving parent smiles in pleasure when with his or her child. May the face of the Lord reveal His divine approval of us. May His shining presence reveal the light of His glory to us in a personal way. May His shining face upon us be like the brilliant sun shining on the surface of the earth to bring about growth and blessing. May Your face pulsate with heavenly light, Lord, and be the light of our world. May we see a smiling face when we see God in the holy ground of our heart.

May the Great I AM mercifully shower His favor upon us, continuing His graces upon us, Lord. Be gracious to us as we go through each day, vulnerable and helpless without Your unearned favor. We thank You for how You have been gracious to us in the past, and we pray that You would continue Your mercies as we seek to follow You each day. Be tender with us, Lord, and understanding, and compassionate. Thank You that You are full of grace and truth. May our children and grandchildren realize at a deep level that You are a gracious God with an inexhaustible supply of favor for us. We realize, Lord, that the word “gracious” is in the middle of this blessing, and we know that it is Your grace that is in the middle of everything in this prayer and in our lives, that quality of Yours that makes things happen according to Your will. Thank You for Your grace and undeserved favor.

May the Great I AM lift up Your face to us and look at us eye-to-eye, Lord. Look upon us with favor, and don’t pass us by. We pray for Your loving attention, that You would turn Your face in our direction and share with us a true glimpse of Your loving countenance. Thank You, Lord, that You are a personal God who recognizes us, who gives us meaningful eye contact. We thank You that You are pleased to show us Your face, King of Glory, that You would deign to be familiar with us, Your servants. We thank You that You have promised us a growing intimacy with You as we seek Your face.

O Prince of Peace, give us Your peace. Give us peace in our spirit, our heart, our mind. May we be free from anxiety and worrisome thoughts as we seek our peace in You and You alone. May there be freedom from strife and disorder in our family, peace between parent and child, between spouses, between children, between siblings. Please heal any division or discord there may be that would take away from Your peace in us. Grant us true shalom in our homes, Lord, a sense of flourishing and wholeness and abundant well-being. Give us peace within each of us and peace with others, through the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Israel. Let’s not miss the forest through these trees, though. For God to have chosen Abraham and his future family out of all the other races of mankind is a grace, a gift unearned. Yahweh didn’t owe the Jewish race anything, they didn’t earn their stature as being chosen to bring God’s light to the world. The Hebrews didn’t deserve their divine favor somehow because they were better than everyone else. God in His wisdom has his reasons, and He chose the Jewish race to eventually produce the light of the world, Messiah Jesus. That is nothing but a grace-gift to the Jews and to the rest of us. God graciously protected the Jewish race all through their history simply because He wanted to, through all their spiritual ups and downs… from Egypt and slavery, to the wilderness for 40 years, to the establishment of the Israelite nation in the Promised Land, to the Babylonian exile, to their return to their homeland and restoration in the Promised Land. The grace shown to the Hebrews by God from its very beginning leads us right into the New Covenant and the Incarnation, the presence of the long-awaited Messiah, Someone we can call Grace in the Flesh.