Hebrew4Christians Blog

by John J Parsons
www.hebrew4christians.com

One of the Hebrew Names of God is El Rachum – the Compassionate God (the word rechem means womb, see Deut. 4:31, Isa. 49:15). Practicing compassion is therefore one of the middot ha-lev (qualities of heart) that should mark our lives — especially in light of the rachamanut (compassion) given to us through Yeshua the Mashiach (Col. 3:13, Eph. 5:2).

Proverbs 11:27 states: “He who seeks good [for others] seeks [God’s] favor, but he who searches out evil [in others] upon him shall it come.” The sages remark that he who prays for another and is in need of the same thing is answered first (Talmud: Bava Kamma). For example, when the prophet Job prayed for his friends, God restored Job’s own fortunes (Job 42:10). There is always a shared blessing when we pray for others, as King David said in Psalm 35:13: “may what I prayed for happen to me!” (literally, “may it return upon my own breast” [תפִלָּתִי עַל־חֵיקִי תָשׁוּב]).

This truth works both ways. When we seek the good of others, we find God’s favor, but when we show indifference or apathy, it likewise shall “return upon our own breast.”

Make His will as your own,
so that He will regard your will as His own (Pirkei Avot 2:4a)

Indeed, the very “law of Messiah” (תּוֹרַת הַמָּשִׁיחַ) is to bear one another’s burdens (the word for burden is βαρος (“weight,” from which we derive the word barometer). This same word is used in 2 Cor. 4:17 to refer to the “weight of glory” that we will experience in the world to come. Bearing one another’s burdens reveals the glory of the One who bore our sin and shame at Moriah (1 Pet. 2:24).

by John J. Parsons
www.hebrew4christians.com

Salvation (יְשׁוּעָה) is always corporately understood.  We are one “body,” and when one member hurts, we all are affected (1 Cor. 12:26). This is summed up with the saying, kol yisrael arevim zeh la-zeh (כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל עֲרֵבִים זֶה לָזֶה): “All Israel is responsible for one another.”  The sages reasoned that since the various commandments of the Torah cannot be literally fulfilled by any single person (e.g., the commandments given to the Kohanim (priests) do not apply to the Levites, the commandments given to men do not apply to women, and so on), all Jews taken together are considered a single person. This is why the Ten Commandments are formulated in the singular: “I am the LORD your (singular) God”; “you (singular) shall have no other gods before Me,” and so on.

When we live our lives “as one man with one heart” (כּאישׁ אחד בּלב אחד), we are better equipped to love others as ourselves (Lev. 19:18). Each of us — and this is especially true and vital for those who belong to Yeshua the Mashiach - are connected to one another as ish-echad chadash (אישׁ־אחד חדשׁ) “one new man” (Eph. 2:15). Our welfare, blessing, and even salvation is bound up with one another. Just as the midrash says that each soul is linked to a letter of the Torah, so each of us is linked to the LORD Yeshua who gave Himself for us to reconcile us to God. Each child of God is part of the message of Yeshua’s life and love in this world.

by John J. Parsons
www.hebrew4christians.com

I’ve been somewhat introspective lately, doubtlessly because sickness and suffering tend to direct our focus inward. That seems inevitable. If you stub your toe, your attention immediately is redirected; if you find yourself in a place of physical or emotional agony, you likewise are more likely to search for the source of the pain.

Henri Nouwen (1932-1996) wrote, “I am beginning to see that much of praying is grieving,” and that rings true to my heart. When we pray to the LORD, it’s obvious that we are not imparting to Him any information, since He is omniscient, of course. As King David wrote:

Ki ein milah bilshoni, hen, Adonai, yadati khulah: “For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether” (Psalm 139:4).

Yeshua taught us that our Heavenly Father knows what we need before we even ask Him (Matt. 6:8), and therefore we do not need to use the “many words of the goyim” (Matt. 6:7) to experience communion with God… 

Kierkegaard once wrote that the purpose of prayer is not to influence God but rather to change the nature of the one who prays. When we get past our words — our chatter, the insecurities that rise from our hearts, the cares of the day, even our hopes and dreams — then we are sufficiently quieted to encounter God. It is then that we can truly listen and begin to apprehend something of God’s glory…. It is then that we can grieve over our lives and the lives of others in naked dependence upon God.

There is a saying that we are “only as sick as the secrets we keep.” That applies first of all to ourselves.  We must get past self-deception and wishful thinking in order to soberly see who we really are…. Earnest, fervent prayer “availeth much,” for it is the means by which we can get away from pretense and appeal to the LORD for help.

But this goes beyond a “solipsistic” connection with God.  Jewish prayer is always in the plural: “Our Father, who art in heaven…” We are not even persons when we divorce ourselves from others, but run the risk of delusion and even madness.  A quote by Scott Peck I read recently touches on this idea to make our brokenness known to others:

Community requires the confession of brokenness. But how remarkable it is that in our culture brokenness must be “confessed.” We think of confession as an act that should be carried out in secret, in the darkness of the confessional, with the guarantee of professional priestly or psychiatric confidentiality. Yet the reality is that every human being is broken and vulnerable. How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded! Community requires the ability to expose our wounds and weaknesses to our fellow creatures. It also requires the ability to be affected by the wounds of others. But even more important is the LOVE that arises among us when we share, both ways, our woundedness.

Source: “The Different Drum” by M. Scott Peck

May the LORD give us all the courage and grace to be vulnerable with someone we can trust in our lives. “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (James 5:16).