Rabbi Loren Jacobs, Jesus made me kosher

Rabbi Loren Jacobs sensed as a student that something was missing from the Judaism to which he was exposed. He began to read the Bible, starting with the New Testament. While reading and praying, it became clear to him that Jesus is really the Jewish Messiah. Watch his testimony: “Rabbi Loren Jacobs, Jesus made me kosher”.

Subtitles from youtube video

Kosher. Kosher means to be fit, to be clean, to be right with God, to be acceptable to God. Growing up in a Jewish family I would never have thought that I would come to the point where I could say that Jesus made me Kosher. But you know what, He has. Jesus is the Messiah, He is the most Jewish of Jews and believing in the Jewish Messiah, Jesus is the most Kosher thing any Jewish person can do.

Kosher? Not so much. Before I came to understand that Jesus is the Messiah, my Jewish identity was missing something. I sensed that I wasn’t close to God and I felt spiritually empty. I grew up in a Jewish home in the Chicago area and, as typical for most Jewish people, I went to synagogue when I was young and I learned about my Jewish history and culture and tradition. And it was beautiful but I found it spiritually missing something, kind of empty. I had my bar mitzvah when I was thirteen and went for another year or two afterwards. But because the Judaism that I was exposed to didn’t answer the big questions that I was searching for, what’s the meaning of life? What are we here for? When you die isn’t there something more? I started looking through other areas philosophy, psychology, eastern philosophy. God got a hold of me however my freshman year of college.

I was a young philosophy major and one of my courses was studying some of the proofs for God’s existence. So, for most of the semester we read the classical arguments why it was likely that God existed and by the end of the semester I became convinced that God had to exist. I started reading through the Bible for the first time on my own and I began reading the New Testament. And I was very attracted to this young Jewish Rabbi, Jesus and His tremendous miracles and His unparalleled teaching and His high ethics like the Sermon on the Mount. Around the same time I discovered that there were prophecies in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew Scriptures, my Jewish Bible, that I really had not been familiar with until that time. And I started reading these Messianic prophecies like Isaiah chapter 53. This amazing chapter, talking about the coming of the Messiah, but He would come lowly and humble and He would suffer and be rejected.

Well as I kept reading the Bible and praying, it became very clear to me within a short period of time, about a ten day period, that Jesus really was the Jewish Messiah and the Saviour of the world. That He came into this world about two thousand years ago lived a flawless life, died on a cross to make atonement for the world, rose from the dead, ascended back to the right hand of God the Father in heaven and was going to return to planet earth to Israel to Jerusalem to rule over Israel and the nations. Jesus thought that He came to fulfil and complete us as Jewish people, to make us kosher, not to set aside our Jewish identity. Jesus himself was and is a Jewish person, He is the king of the Jews, the apostles, his followers were Jewish men. The New Testament was written by Jewish men and when a Jewish person follows the King of the Jews, it’s the most Jewish thing that any Jewish person can do. It doesn’t matter what men say who are fallible, it doesn’t matter what community leaders say, it matters what God says, it matters what the truth is. And the truth is that Jesus is the Messiah, the King of the Jews and He can fulfil us and complete us in our Jewish identity. Jesus can and needs to make us Kosher.

My two words story: Kosher, Kosher

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