Peace be unto you in the Name of Jesus the Messiah! I’m Jewish by birth, Baptist by conviction, and saved by the grace of God alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone.

My parents brought me up, as the apostle Paul put it, in "the strictest sect" of my religion. As an Orthodox Jew, I learned about the commandments of God – not just the ones containing in the written Law of Moses, but those in the Oral Law as well. But I learned that, as a Jew, I had two spiritual problems to resolve.

I had sinned and offended a holy God.

The greatest commandment in the Mosaic Law is found in Deuteronomy. 6:5: "And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." I knew I had broken that commandment – many times. Thus I was a sinner in the sight of God.

But that wasn’t all; I stood accursed as a covenant breaker. Deuteronomy 27:26 declared, "Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them." Even one sin would have been enough to establish my guilt before God.

In Leviticus 17:11, God told the Jewish nation , "For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul." But the Judaism I practiced was a bloodless faith. It had no offerings, no priest, no altar, and no shed blood. What hope did I have that God would forgive my sins?

By the time I reached my early twenties, I no longer practiced Judaism. I had read many religious and philosophical texts while a college student. But I never read a New Testament until I received one from a member of Gideon’s International, just before I left for Air Force basic training (June 1971).

Over the next several weeks, I studied the Gospels. I learned about Jesus Christ: who He was and the miracles He performed. The Jesus Christ I read about was a very different figure from the One about who my rabbis (spiritual instructors) taught. In those pages, I learned about His miraculous birth, His atoning death, and His glorious resurrection – all of which things the Old Testaments prophets had foretold!

As I continued in the New Testament, I discovered that the book of Hebrews revealed in the Person and work of Jesus Christ what I, as a Jew, needed. I needed a sacrifice whose blood God would accept, and I found in Jesus Christ the perfect sacrifice; I needed a high priest whose person God would accept, and I found in Jesus Christ the perfect high priest ("… by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us" – Heb. 9:12). With an acceptable sacrifice offered by an acceptable High Priest, God made it possible for me to receive His forgiveness! Praise His holy Name!

Two fellow airmen witnessed to me at a religious retreat in England, several months later (July 1972). They led me to accept Jesus Christ as my Savior on July 13, 1972.

"Be ye reconciled unto God."

I’m a son of Abraham who now enjoys peace with God through Jesus Christ. To my Jewish kinsmen after the flesh, I exhort you to "look upon him whom they pierced" as our forebears beheld Moses’ serpent in the wilderness (Num. 21) – "LOOK AND LIVE!"