Discovering The Jewish Jesus

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: He that says he has no sin is a liar and the truth is not in him. But if we confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us of all unrighteousness.

Dustin Roberts: We’re continuing our series today on exploring Paul’s epistle through the book of Romans. The beginning of Romans is really the best explanation of the gospel that we have. Paul begins to outline it line by line from the beginning. He first started by telling us that we are sinners and that we all need God and that we’re all guilty before the Lord. The law is what lets us know that we’ve sinned. Today we’re going to be picking up right there. We’re in Romans chapter three today and Rabbi’s right here in the studio. We’re going line by line through Romans. Rabbi?

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: God bless you, my brother. I just think about this as Paul has taken such elaborate measures to bring conviction to the earth that we’re guilty before our creator so that he can introduce the solution, Yeshua of Nazareth. I just want to say before we move on how critical this is. I think there’s a lot of people listening right now, Dustin, they’ve been believers a long time. You hear this message that we’ve been focusing on and it’s just kind of like, "Been there, done that." You’ve heard it before; it’s Gospel 101. It doesn't really maybe move some of us.

But I want to say that the reason it’s so important to understand the ministry of the law and of the Holy Spirit to bring conviction of sin is because being convicted of sin for the purpose of becoming justified as we look to our creator for a solution, and for the purpose of our continual cleansing and sanctification—because experiential sanctification is an ongoing process. If we don’t have our antennas up and have a sound mind in terms of understanding the importance of dealing with sin in our life, we are going to short-circuit our walk with God.

The Bible says in one of John’s letters, "He that says he has no sin is a liar and the truth is not in him. But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness." So the understanding of sin, it’s not just, "Oh yeah, I heard that. I was a sinner and that Jesus died for our sins and now I’ve received him and let’s move on." That is true, but what is not true is that dealing with sin is not a one-time thing when you first come to the cross. Dealing with sin is a daily battle.

It’s kind of like this. If you’re back in science class, they put the microscope on the table and they would put something microscopic on that little glass sheet that you were going to be examining under amplification. Then what would happen is when you’d first look into the microscope and you looked down at that glass sheet, you didn't see anything on it. But when you began to turn the knob on the microscope, all of a sudden it began to bring into view some little particles on there. They came into focus. All of a sudden you saw, "Yeah, I see that thing in there."

That’s how the Holy Spirit is in our life. It’s like when we first come to God, we think, "Oh yeah, Lord, I need to stop swearing. I need to stop lusting. I need to stop treating people poorly," whatever it is, and we think we’ve repented and we think that’s it. But the more you grow in the Lord, the deeper the conviction of sin becomes. I’ve been walking with the Lord now for 45 years almost. It’s like, no, I’m not stealing. But God is saying, "You know what? That was selfish, what you did there. You know what? What you just did there, you weren't abiding in me. You were in the flesh."

So there’s a constant conviction of sin, and this isn't meant to press people down and be heavy. It’s the gift of God to lead us to repentance so that the more we’re aware of the things in our life that we need cleansed of, the deeper in relationship we become because the more that’s cleansed in our heart, the more that we can experience the fullness of Jesus.

Dustin Roberts: What's this look like for you, Rabbi? You get up every morning and you think about yesterday and you think about the sins and you’re confessing them? Is this something you’re doing throughout the day? What does it look like to be aware of our sin, but obviously not live in condemnation of it? What does it look like? How do we live that out?

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Well, I think that number one, it’s like ongoing awareness, like, how am I treating people? How am I treating my wife? Here is an example. We had plans to go out of town for a little bit. We were going to take some time off. All of a sudden, something came up that Cynthia said, "You know what? I’m not going to be able to go and take this time off for as long as we had planned because I’ve got to go back and take care of this person." She needed to serve somebody.

I was irritated. I was frustrated. Man, I’ve been thinking about this time I’m going to have in this place of just enjoying God’s beauty in nature and now all of a sudden we can't do it exactly the way we were planning on it because Cynthia’s going to have to leave early. Now I’m like, "What should I do now, Lord?" I’m torn in my heart and I’m upset because I’m already feeling guilty like I should go back too. I’m upset and I’m guilty and I’m frustrated.

But the reason that Cynthia needed to go back and to leave early was to help somebody that needed help. But I was upset and irritated inside. So that’s like, okay, Lord, I’m struggling with it because I realize I’m being selfish, but I’m mad. I’m being honest. This is how I feel. I know this is wrong, but I’m still mad. So it takes some time. I know that the way I was feeling was wrong. I know I need to repent. I know I need to get my priorities back in line with God’s priorities. I need to die to myself and say yes to him.

So that’s what it looks like. It’s a constant thing. There are always things coming up. A lot of it has to do with selfishness. I think human beings are selfish by nature, some more than others. But it’s like we’ve got to get it all ridding out, everything that gets in the way of our being conformed to the image of God’s son. It all needs to be washed away. So this awareness of sin, which is where the gospel begins, it’s not an awareness one time that you need to come to Jesus. It starts there, but then it’s a continual process that leads to experiential sanctification and experiential holiness.

Dustin Roberts: Thanks for sharing, Rabbi.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Yeah. Now the good news. Paul continues on here and he says, "But now apart from the law," Paul is saying, "the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets." We talked about the fact that Jesus came apart from the law and the prophets. In other words, the way that he saves people is not by them keeping the law. The way that he saves people is by people simply coming to him and saying, "I need you. I’m sorry. Forgive me. I’m guilty. I believe in you and what you’ve done and I’m putting my faith in you. And your life, it was given on my behalf and your shed blood that was given as my means of being forgiven. I come to you now, Jesus. Make me blameless."

That’s not based on the fact that I kept the law. It’s based on the fact that I put my faith in the one who did keep the law perfectly, Yeshua of Nazareth, and who was completely innocent and gave himself for my life. The innocent one dying in the place of the guilty. So my justification now is apart from the law. It’s by simple faith in the one that kept the law and died in my place.

Dustin Roberts: So this is where Paul is introducing basically justification by faith, that the righteousness of God comes through faith in Jesus Christ, and that is the only way we’re saved today.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Exactly. That’s the next thing Paul says. He says this way that the Lord has made that’s apart from the law and the prophets is the only way. He says there’s no distinction between Jew and Greek; all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We can only be justified in verse 24, "being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus."

I love that. There is no name under heaven by which men can be saved but the name of Y-E-S-H-U-A, J-E-S-U-S, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. That’s why we preach the gospel and we don’t back down and we don’t get confused about so-called nice people that don’t believe in Jesus and say God wouldn't send them to hell, they’re too nice. No, we have faith in the name. We have faith in the name. The one that the scriptures say there is no name under heaven by which men can be saved. He alone is righteous and he alone is the one that has the ability to make us righteous through his own life that was given on our behalf.

Dustin Roberts: I can do bad and feel bad about it and choose to do good. But that’s not enough.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Wow, that’s a really good point because there’s probably a lot of confusion out there about that. I think we live in a real moral quagmire today where people have forsaken the simplicity of the gospel.

Dustin Roberts: Rabbi, why wouldn't God accept me? Why can't he accept me? I’m a good person. I feel bad about the bad I’ve done. I don’t want to do bad. I want to be good to people. But why won't he accept me if I don’t put my faith in Jesus?

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Because God is holy and the Bible says if you sinned against God in one area, there’s an eternal separation that takes place. Paul says to the Jew, for example, when he’s using the law to convict them, that he that breaks one of the laws has broken the whole covenant. Even if you keep 99, if you’ve broken one, the one that you’ve broken severs you from being in communion with God because God is holy.

So sin must be punished. The scripture says that the soul that sins, it must die. We don’t have a revelation, myself included, of the holiness of God. When Moses met the Lord, the Lord said, "Take off your sandals, for the ground that you’re standing on is holy ground." When the priests were carrying the Ark of the Covenant through the wilderness, the Lord appointed certain ones to be able to carry that ark. Remember when the ark one day began to tip?

Dustin Roberts: And someone touched it.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Someone touched it. He was trying to do good. He didn't want the ark to fall; that’s God’s ark. But he wasn't appointed by the Lord to carry it. When he touched it, he was slain because God is holy. This is what we have to understand. God’s standard of righteousness and what it means to be good is not comparable with what we think is good simply by being good human beings. Remember the person came to Jesus and said, "Good teacher"? Jesus saw the hypocrisy and said, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone." So Paul picks it up right here, "All have sinned," verse 23 of Romans 3, "and fall short of the glory of God."

Dustin Roberts: Thank you, God, for sending your son Jesus for us. Before we move on to the next part of this conversation, friends, we want to thank you for tuning in to Discovering the Jewish Jesus. If you love Rabbi Schneider’s ministry, we want you to know that there’s actually a way that you can connect with him. Rabbi would love to send you text messages, instant and in real-time encouragement. All you have to do to sign up is visit discoveringthejewishjesus.com and click "Rabbi text me," or you can also text the keyword "Rabbi" to the phone number 88777 right from your mobile phone.

We look forward to connecting with you soon. Also, if you’d like to join us on our mission at Discovering the Jewish Jesus by becoming a monthly partner with our ministry, we encourage you to do that today. If you sense the Lord leading you to connect with us, please follow his guidance and reach out today. You can become a monthly partner online at discoveringthejewishjesus.com. Now back to our teaching. This has been a really good one, Rabbi.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Praise God. I’m glad that we’re enjoying God’s word together. So what Paul introduces next, I want to point out is the word "gift." He’s introducing Yeshua as the only way that we can be justified. He says this gift of justification before our creator is a gift through his grace. Paul says, "being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus." So I think that we want to stop and pause, Dustin, and put some exclamation marks, some quotation marks around this word "gift."

Dustin Roberts: Yeah, it’s free. Gift means free.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: It’s free. And it’s hard for us, I think. It’s hard for me sometimes to really believe that I am holy and righteous and justified before the Lord and that this righteousness, this holiness has been given to me as a gift because we have a tendency to look at ourselves. I’m still aware of my faults. So for me to understand that I’m righteous and justified and that it’s been a gift to me, Paul continues to go on to tell me that this gift that’s been given to me has come to me through the blood of Jesus, who is the propitiation.

Let me just read the verse, "whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith." So that word "propitiation," it’s a word that speaks of atonement once again, that the innocent one gave his life for the guilty. Because Yeshua did that, he that knew no sin became sin on my behalf that I could become the righteousness of God. This is a gift. So the challenge sometimes is for us to believe by looking at the gift and believe in the sufficiency of God’s atonement that he provided to us, to believe that that is sufficient for us to be able to have a clear conscience before the Lord, that I’m no longer dirty, I’m clean because of what Jesus did.

In other words, we need to take our eyes off of ourselves and look at what Jesus did and say, "I believe that what Yeshua did is sufficient and has been given to me as a free gift to make me holy and righteous and justified before God," and to rejoice in that. We’re not looking—some people say, "Well, God couldn't forgive me. I’ve sinned too badly." But that’s making our sin greater than the gift.

Dustin Roberts: I’m thinking so many of us when we get saved, we realize in that moment we need God’s grace to be saved. But then we start living and then all of a sudden we start trying to make ourselves good enough. We have to rely every day on God’s grace still because we still are never good enough. It really is a gift.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Yeah. And that gets back to what we had been speaking of, but I want to bring it out again because I don’t want to confuse those of you that are tuned in today. Because before I was saying there’s an experiential holiness, there’s an experiential righteousness. So when we speak about holiness and righteousness as it relates to the believer, I want to separate them into two categories. One is a legal holiness and a legal righteousness. We are legally holy and legally righteous right now, not because of the deeds that we have done, but according to his mercy because he’s made us holy and he’s made us righteous in Christ because of what Jesus did.

So we’re legally holy and legally righteous right now. The Bible tells us in Ephesians chapter one that we stand before our creator now holy and blameless because of the redemption that we have through his blood. So legally we’re holy and righteous and we need to exalt in that and declare that and believe that and take a hold of that. But then there’s another phase in which the Lord is experientially cleansing us moment by moment, day by day, so that we’re being more and more transformed into the likeness of God’s son. I just wanted to bring that clarification.

Dustin Roberts: Amen.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: So Paul is continuing on and he says this gift that God has given to us was openly displayed. God displayed publicly in verse number 25 Yeshua as a propitiation in his blood. Just for the fun of it, I want to ask my listening audience today, can you say the word "propitiation"? I bet some of us never said that word in our life before till today. Propitiation. But that’s just a word that means Jesus’ sacrifice for us, his propitiation in his blood through faith. I want to stop, Dustin, and just talk for a moment about the fact that this propitiation, this sacrifice that makes us clean and holy and righteous and brings us into relationship with our creator so that we’re perfect before him, this took place, Paul says, in his blood. So I wanted to ask you about what comes to your mind when you think about this whole concept of salvation through Yeshua’s blood.

Dustin Roberts: Well, I have a bit of a cheat, Rabbi, because I’ve been hanging out with you now for about 10 years and I know that in the Old Testament, God said the life of the flesh is in the blood and I have given it to you to make atonement. It’s only by the blood in the law. The law tells us that it’s the blood that makes atonement for our sins. You say it this way, substitutionary sacrificial atonement.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: I want to stop again because we’re getting back to the foundation that has been laid that never changes. A lot of contemporary Christianity doesn't talk much about the blood of Jesus.

Dustin Roberts: We sing "There’s victory in the blood," but we have no idea why.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Yeah, that also. Yeshua said, "Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in yourself." That’s a hard one to receive. But I think in the contemporary gospel that’s often going forth today, there’s little talk about the blood other than maybe in communion it’s mentioned briefly because people feel that that is too uncouth for today’s contemporary modern man and woman. But we don’t want to be deceived into the spirit of the age. We want to be grounded in the word of God that never changes. The blood is a symbol that a life has been given. Cain and Abel, when Cain slew Abel, his blood cried out from the ground to God since the very beginning.

So somehow it’s not in our brain, it’s not even in our physical heart. It’s in our blood somehow. So when the scripture says that we have redemption through his blood, that there is a propitiation that saved us through Yeshua’s blood, what it simply pointing to is that Yeshua’s life was given. They put the spear in his side and the blood ran out. So we’re putting our faith in the man that was innocent but died in our behalf so that we could become rendered innocent. And it’s by faith, right? We have faith. Where does faith come from? Paul said once again, "propitiation in his blood through faith."

So we’re going to pick up next time on this word "faith." I think we need to talk about that. We hear the word a lot, but what is faith? So we’re going to plan on talking about that, by God’s grace, next time. Blood, gift, and faith. The old-time gospel needs to be preached today and more and more people are not preaching that which saves mankind. For people to get saved, they need to hear the truth and the truth, Jesus said, will set us free.

If you’re in support of what I’m doing here and of the gospel that is going forth through Discovering the Jewish Jesus today, I want to ask you, would you open up your heart and make a financial offering to the Lord through Discovering the Jewish Jesus? Because the Lord has ordained that those that are going out for the sake of the truth should be supported by the church. I truly feel, Dustin and those of us that are listening today, we are going out for the sake of the truth. We’re not perfect by any means, but I think that God is pleased with what we’re doing here. People need to hear it and it’s only through the hearing of the gospel that men are saved. So I want to ask you to support this ministry because through your support, the gospel’s going to go forth to the end of the earth, which is going to usher in Yeshua Hamashiach’s return. Thank you for tuning in today. I love you, my friends. Please join me next time.

Dustin Roberts: Amen. You can give online at discoveringthejewishjesus.com or give us a call at 800-777-7835. Your financial gifts are so appreciated and you can be sure that your donation is being used to further the gospel. As a thank you, we want to send you our most current newsletter and it’s going to help keep you up to date with how the Lord is leading Rabbi and this ministry. Along with the newsletter, we’ll include a teaching booklet that goes deeper into God’s word and gives you something that you can read slowly, pray through, and return to again and again. These resources are really created with care and I believe that they can be a real blessing to you. We know that life can be heavy at times, so if you’re facing something difficult, carrying a burden, or if you simply need prayer, we want you to know that you’re not alone. You’re welcome to reach out to us. We’re here to pray with you and stand with you. Our prayer team meets to pray over every single request that we receive and you can submit yours online at discoveringthejewishjesus.com. Just click on the ministry tab and then click "prayer request." We want to pray for you and we will pray for you. We look forward to hearing from you soon. Now from all of us here at Discovering the Jewish Jesus, we’d like to wish you a wonderful day. Now here’s Rabbi Schneider to speak God’s sacred and special blessing over your life.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: The words from the Aaronic blessing in the book of Numbers chapter six, verses 22 through 27, helps us to realize how good God is to you and I personally. So receive his blessing into your life and then beloved one, go bless somebody else in Jesus' name today.

(Rabbi Schneider sings the Aaronic blessing in Hebrew)

The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift you up with his countenance and the Lord give you, beloved one, his peace. God bless you and Shalom.

Dustin Roberts: This program is produced and sponsored by Discovering the Jewish Jesus and I’m your host, Dustin Roberts. Join us Monday when Rabbi Schneider presents a special message on God’s end-time plans for Israel. That’s Monday on Discovering the Jewish Jesus.