Jewish man finds Jesus after reading The Old Testament

Reflection

Stories of a Jewish person finding faith in Jesus after reading the Old Testament touch on a long and sometimes painful history, since such journeys often involve real cost within family and community relationships shaped by centuries of complicated history between Jews and Christians. These accounts deserve to be handled with sensitivity rather than triumphalism, recognising the weight of what is often being given up as well as what is being found. Such journeys typically centre on passages within the Hebrew Scriptures themselves, particularly around messianic expectation, sacrifice and atonement, read with fresh eyes and found to resonate unexpectedly with the person and story of Jesus. The early church itself, of course, was entirely Jewish in its first years, and Paul wrote at length in Romans about his own hope for his kinsmen according to the flesh, treating the relationship between Israel's story and the church's story as a matter of deep, ongoing significance rather than replacement.

Questions to sit with

• What do you know about the Jewish roots of the earliest Christian church?
• How do you think such a personal journey of faith should be handled with sensitivity?
• Have you read the Hebrew Scriptures with an eye to how Christians understand their fulfilment?

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