Christians & Pharisees

Bridging Easter and Passover calls for grace and patience | Marvin Olasky

At Passover/Easter I think a lot about Christ's sacrifice but also the state of Jewish-Christian relations. That's a subject near and dear to me since I'm a Jewish Christian—and it's a particularly good topic for discussion this year because two new, good books examine aspects of it.

One of them, The Christian and the Pharisee (FaithWords, 2006), features a thoughtful exchange of letters between evangelical pastor R.T. Kendall and Jewish rabbi David Rosen. Note: "Pharisee" is an honorable descriptive in Judaism, and Rosen ably defends the Pharisee-led Judaism that developed around the time of Jesus and has been the Orthodox standard for 2,000 years.

Kendall is particularly good at pointing out the differences between relying on faith and on works. For example, he notes that "since the covenant with Abraham—which was ratified by his faith—was in operation when the Law was given, this means that belief is prior to behavior." He then summarizes how this leads to a difference between Rosen and himself: "You say a person is a sinner because he sins; I say he sins because he was already a sinner . . . his heart was prone to sin from birth."