The Most Jewish Thing you can Possibly be is a Christian

It’s understandable that the world doesn’t have a clear view of the Jewish people – understandable because they don’t have a clear view of anything. The world, lost in sin is mired in the darkness, they are blind, and without reason. They don’t understand the Jew any more than they understand the Christian – they don’t understand themselves. Paul writes in Ephesians 5:6–8,

“Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not become partners with them; for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light…”

This condition of being in darkness is not a past tense thing for the world, but an ongoing, chronic ailment, and so it’s not so much a surprise as it is entirely predictable that they lack a clear picture of the Jewish people. On the other hand, it’s far less acceptable for Christian’s to be so confused on the matter. People will throw around buzzwords – they’ll say that they’re a Zionist, they’re anti-Zionist, they’re pro-Israel, they’re pro-Palestine, they’ll say that the Jewish people have a providential right to huge swaths of the middle east, they’ll say that the Jews have no right to any land or nation and should be wiped from the earth. I don’t care what people say, I give no credence to worldly commentary or opinion – I want to know what Scripture says. This isn’t horribly complicated, Scripture provides the answer we’re looking for, but it does take some effort to arrive at – God’s history with His people is a lengthy relationship, and so the answer is – rather than flipping to a specific verse and getting what we need – assembled from information across all of Scripture. We’re going to aim at answering two intertwined questions: How should the Jewish people be regarded, and what should the relationship between Christians and Jews look like? To answer these we’re going to move through three supporting questions to bring us to our conclusion: Firstly, who were the Jews? If we’re going to get a clear picture of who and what they are today, then it makes sense to start at the beginning and recall what formed their origin – determining the foundation tells us much about the structure built up from it. Secondly, who did the Jews become? We’re talking about a history spanning thousands of years – multiple empires have risen and fallen, and the Jewish people have watched them come and go, sometimes as a mighty nation, sometimes as a tattered remnant that’s barely left alive. The process that they’ve been through, the successes that have glorified God and the failures that have shamed and broken their covenant with Him are all relevant in developing the Jewish people into who they are today. Then finally, who are the Jews now? If we understand where they originated, and we’ve plotted out where they’ve been, then we should be able to look at the historical and spiritual information provided by the Word and have a clear picture of what Judaism is, who the Jewish people are in the world today, and what our relationship with them should look like.  

1. Who were the Jews?

We have to consider that in the beginning there was no “God’s people,” they were just people. Adam and Eve were certainly God’s, but there was no identifying marker in this way because that’s all there was. In the aftermath of Eden however we’re very quickly presented with two different kinds of people – everyone is stained by sin, but Abel provides a clear example of someone who is still seeking God, while Cain shows the spirit of the individual that is honoring self and the materialism of the world. As time progresses there is a continual increase in corruption on the earth, and Genesis 6:5–8 tells us,

“The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the LORD said, ‘I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.’ But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.”

So God commands Noah to build the ark, to gather the animals, and then sends the flood. All life, save for that preserved in the ark, is wiped from the earth and the abundant wickedness along with it – but that’s not the end of rebellion against God, just the purging of a world that had become singularly devoted to it. In the aftermath of the flood God makes His covenant with all life on earth that He will never wash away everything with water again, and commissions Noah, much as He once did Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. But as the population of the world begins to increase again we see the corruption grow along with them, culminating in the events surrounding the tower of Babel. United under a single language, the people of the world collectively rely on themselves, on their own strength and ingenuity, to the complete exclusion of God. Genesis 11:3–4 says,

“And they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.’ And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.’”

In this man has gone from just rejecting God (as though that weren’t bad enough), to deifying themselves. It’s interesting to note that they’re aware of their vulnerability. Despite the fact that they’re building themselves up, that they’re glorifying themselves, seeking Satanically to place themselves on the level of God, they see this risk of their feeble, human unity fracturing and their centralized power scattering across the earth. And God, rather than wiping life from the earth again, rather than destroying everything and moving on or starting over, brings upon them the very thing they acknowledged as their point of weakness. Causing a confusion of their speech and different languages to come forth among the people, they lost their humanistic unity, the single mindedness of their desire to rise above God, and they dispersed. Note that fallen humanity didn’t abandon their pursuit to replace God, they simply lost a single-minded approach in doing this. The different languages spawned different nations, and the different nations formulated their different pagan gods. When Adam and Eve transgressed, when they disobeyed the command of God in favor of the temptation of Satan they chose the entire path of humanity. Paul describes the condition of those who are estranged from Christ in Ephesians 2:1–3,

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”

Satan, the Devil, the enemy, this “prince of the power of the air,” this spirit that drives and compels all who have not been made new in Christ, this one who Jesus calls “the ruler of this world” in John 12 is who we elected as our leader – evil and rebellion is what we asked for, and so humanity as a whole could be thought of as irredeemable. It seems perfectly logical that mankind as a whole, following the spirit of wickedness, was never going to turn from the path that only led away from God to ever increasing degrees. But while we were drowning in our failure, God had a plan – actually before we were drowning in our failure – before there was time or space or reality as we know it, God, knowing that we would fail, that despite His love for us, we would betray Him, had a plan. He would do what we could not, He would reconcile us to Himself – and this is where the Jewish people come into play. After the tower of Babel in Genesis 11 we see a list of descendants of Shem, one of Noah’s sons, a genealogy which leads up to a man named Abram – and here the entire fate of humanity, the whole course of our sin-darkened history begins to shift in a direction we can recognize as hope. Genesis 12:1–3 says,

“Now the LORD said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’”

They are not yet called God’s people, not named under the banner of Israel, not known as a people set apart under the Law, but this is the beginning of the promise of the Jews as their own people group – God calls, and Abram, the man who would become Abraham, obeys. Now this begins the process of tracking the lineage of the Jewish people, those who were physically born into the generations of people starting from Abraham, through Isaac, through Jacob, through the twelve tribes. The heritage of the Jews matters – it certainly mattered then, and it matters, though perhaps less significantly, to this day. There are those who would say that under the new covenant (which we’ll talk more about later), Jewish ancestry is completely irrelevant, but this thinking goes too far. We as gentiles are partakers of a covenant that came to us second – no less powerful, no less redeeming, but Christ came first for the Jew and then the Greek. If the bloodline of those set aside by God was completely irrelevant, then it doesn’t make sense why the 144,000 (of which a literal reading makes the most sense), described in Revelation 7 are listed as coming from the tribes of Israel. But while its significant to take Israeli lineage into account, this can become a trap where many people (including the Jews themselves) become fixated on just ancestry alone, and they forget that the Jewish people are far more than just a race or nationality – which brings us back to our point here in understanding who the Jews were in the beginning. They weren’t just a people set aside or singled out – they were set aside and singled out for God, and the spiritual implications that come along with that are far greater than any bloodline. Much later, when God sends Moses to free His people from Pharaoh, Exodus 3:13–15 says,

“Then Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, “The God of your fathers has sent me to you,” and they ask me, “What is his name?” what shall I say to them?’ God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: “I AM has sent me to you.”’ God also said to Moses, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: “The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.”’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.”

This exchange tells us so much about who God is, and who the Jews are as His people – first there is this famous declaration, the name of God, “I AM WHO I AM.” His identity exists completely independently of anything else – He is free from identification by anything but Himself, because He was preexistent, everything else came into being by and through Him. It is a name of unimaginable power and might – but then God gives another name, a name that He is to be remembered by throughout all generations – He is the God of their fathers, of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob. The One who made everything, the One who is vast and unknowable in His grandeur and magnificence, has chosen to make Himself known not just by His power alone, but through the people that He has called to Himself. The Jews are a special people – not because of anything that they themselves have done, but because, as with anyone who can claim anything truly significant about themselves, of the work that God has done. A passage which displays this with brutal clarity is Ezekiel 16, which begins by saying in verses Ezekiel 16:3–14,

“… Your origin and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born. And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I made you flourish like a plant of the field. And you grew up and became tall and arrived at full adornment. Your breasts were formed, and your hair had grown; yet you were naked and bare. When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord GOD, and you became mine. Then I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil. I clothed you also with embroidered cloth and shod you with fine leather. I wrapped you in fine linen and covered you with silk. And I adorned you with ornaments and put bracelets on your wrists and a chain on your neck. And I put a ring on your nose and earrings in your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your clothing was of fine linen and silk and embroidered cloth. You ate fine flour and honey and oil. You grew exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty. And your renown went forth among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendor that I had bestowed on you, declares the Lord GOD.”

The mighty nation of Israel began as nothing. Abram was an old man with no children living in his father’s house when God called Him – but Abram answered, and from his obedience a nation was born, not by the work of men, but by the work of the Lord. But the Jews weren’t made just so that God could section off a group of people and shower them with favoritism, their calling and their individuality from the rest of the world served a purpose. Consider these passages: Isaiah 9:2, 7 says,

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.” … “Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.”

Isaiah 49:6 tells us,

“he says: ‘It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.’”

And Isaiah 60:1–3 says,

“Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the LORD will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you. And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.”

All of these passages point to an expansion of the relationship that God illustrated between Himself and the Jews beyond the nation of Israel, to encompass the entire world. This is what Jesus spoke of when He said in John 10:14–16,

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”

The Jewish people, the nation of Israel, was given the great calling and profound blessing of serving as an example, a light, shining with the glory of those obedient before the Lord. They were given the Law that they might abide by it, provide a contrasting standard against the wickedness of the world, and ultimately lead the world in a path toward God. At the same time, the practice of the Law illustrated that it was ultimately too hard for any man stained by sin to consistently uphold, and the need for constant sacrifice by the priests, both on behalf of the people and themselves, points to mankind’s inability to uphold what God had so graciously given. Paul writes in Romans 7:7–8,

“What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead.”

Through the Law the standard is established, and at the same time it is revealed that we fail to meet this standard. Hebrews 10:1–4 affirms the ultimate insufficiency of the sacrificial system, telling us,

“For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.”

The Law pointed to God’s righteousness, to humanity’s, even those called and separated by God, complete lack, and the desperate need for One who could truly fulfil the Law – the Law, through the Jewish people, points to Christ. Hebrews 10:5–10 continues on by saying,

“Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, ‘Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’ When he said above, ‘You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings’ (these are offered according to the law), then he added, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will.’ He does away with the first in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”

So, who were the Jews? What did they start as? In what can we find their foundation? They were a people raised up God, delivered from nothing into a mighty kingdom, called both by heritage and by spirit for the purpose of drawing the fractured and sinful world toward the singular aim, not of self-glorification, but to reconciliation with the Lord – and this is a mighty, blessed, and deeply admirable beginning.

• Who did the Jews become?

I said before that the Law was too hard to bear, and we read from the book of Hebrews, how its sacrificial system was merely a temporary placeholder, pointing to the still desperate need for the work that Christ would one day do. The problem is that, through the centuries (starting within hours of the Law being given), the people began to transgress. It would be one thing to strive to keep the Law, and fall short, but throughout their history what we see repeatedly is a consistent abuse of the Law. There are periods where the people repent, turn from evil, and honor God, but between these times we see them go from the extremes of abandoning the Law altogether, to turning the Law into their object of worship instead of the God who provided it. In Leviticus 18:24–28, after warning the people not to commit a whole host of vile transgressions, of which the Canaanites were guilty, God says,

“Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean, and the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. But you shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you (for the people of the land, who were before you, did all of these abominations, so that the land became unclean), lest the land vomit you out when you make it unclean, as it vomited out the nation that was before you.”

But before the people even entered the promised land (save for a few spies), they had grievously rebelled against God, and been cursed to wander the wilderness for forty years before they could enter the land God had given them. As you read through the Old Testament there is this cycle played out again, and again, and again. God calls the people to Him, the people obey. The people stray from God, seduced by the idol worship and pagan practices of those around them, or tempted by their own hearts, they transgress, and in many, many cases, they do not repent. God, not having His holy name profaned without consequence, judges them, they suffer for their transgressions. The people are killed by plagues, they are delivered into the hands of their enemies, the book of Judges shows the tribe of Benjamin nearly wiped out through civil war, and later we see as the mighty nations that the divided Israel and Judah have become are both crushed and scattered beneath the heels of empires that God had given them over to. What we see, in a variety of ways is that, typically, in their suffering, the people repent. This isn’t just, “Things are bad, I wish God would bail us out,” though there are certainly cases where the people presume on the Lord’s provision despite the fact that they’ve abandoned following Him. Rather what things repeatedly come to in this cycle is actual guilt over the cause of their condition. This fits the theme of what Paul writes of in 2 Corinthians 7:10,

“For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.”

The people grieve their condition, they lament that they’ve strayed so far from God. We see vivid examples of this when the Law is rediscovered in 2 Kings 22:11–13,

“When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his clothes. And the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and Achbor the son of Micaiah, and Shaphan the secretary, and Asaiah the king’s servant, saying, ‘Go, inquire of the LORD for me, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that has been found. For great is the wrath of the LORD that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us.’”

And hundreds of years later, when after the Babylonian exile the people gather together and again, the Law is rediscovered and read to them in Nehemiah 8:8–9,

“They read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading. And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, ‘This day is holy to the LORD your God; do not mourn or weep.’ For all the people wept as they heard the words of the Law.”

The problem, ironic as it is, is that in their repentance the people draw close to God, in drawing close to God they prosper, in their prosperity they lean on what they perceive as their own strength, and in this they abandon the Lord. This cycle repeats, and with each departure from God and the Law He has so generously given them, they sin in a variety of dark and depraved ways, and even in their restoration, they are limited. Israel was barred from the promised land and wandered the wilderness for forty years. If you track through the book of Joshua, once they enter the promised land you see conquest after conquest, defeating or driving off the inhabitants of the land – but you also see the beginnings of disobedience. You see the occasional failure to seek God first, and at times when the people of Israel could drive the Canaanites from their land or destroy them completely as they’ve been told to do, they opt instead to keep them around as forced labor – not out of mercy, but out of greed. They never succeed in holding all of the promised land at once, much less having dominion over all the land that God first promised to Abraham in Genesis 15:18–21, which says,

“On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.”

This isn’t because God misled Abraham or exaggerated when making this covenant – it’s because the people were repeatedly rebellious and sinful, and just as Moses was a great servant of God, yet failed to enter the promised land himself because of his sin, so the nation of Israel never grew to the size and scope that they would have attained had they obeyed the voice of the Lord. At some of their deepest pits of their transgressions we read passages like Jeremiah 19:4–6, 13,

“Because the people have forsaken me and have profaned this place by making offerings in it to other gods whom neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah have known; and because they have filled this place with the blood of innocents, and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it come into my mind—therefore, behold, days are coming, declares the LORD, when this place shall no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.”

And despite the warning we read earlier from Leviticus 18, after generations of rebellion, Ezekiel 16:47 says,

“Not only did you walk in their ways and do according to their abominations; within a very little time you were more corrupt than they in all your ways.”

We looked at Israel’s origin from nothing through the lens of Ezekiel 16 earlier. In this chapter God describes Israel as a faithless bride, one that He rescued, redeemed, and glorified, only for her to betray their covenant. Not only did she betray the Lord, He describes her unique wickedness she prostituted herself to other nations in a way that no other prostitute had – for rather than being paid, she paid in seeking her partners, abandoning her position as the bride of God, and destroying herself in the process. However despite the many transgressions and repeated rebellions of His people, God closes this chapter by stating in Ezekiel 16:59–63,

“For thus says the Lord GOD: I will deal with you as you have done, you who have despised the oath in breaking the covenant, yet I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish for you an everlasting covenant. Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed when you take your sisters, both your elder and your younger, and I give them to you as daughters, but not on account of the covenant with you. I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the LORD, that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I atone for you for all that you have done, declares the Lord GOD.”

This again illustrates that Israel is not special because of Israel, they are special because of God. If His promises were made to them based solely on their own conduct the world would know nothing of them today – the broken covenant would have meant their end, and they would have been wiped from the face of the earth. As Isaiah 1:9 tells us,

“If the LORD of hosts had not left us a few survivors, we should have been like Sodom, and become like Gomorrah.”

But God maintained His people, He corrected and reproved, He raised up and restored even the remnant that He blessed to survive the judgment they had incurred. And what we see from after the Babylonian exile, when the people are blessed to gather once more into a nation, and to rebuild the temple is a glorious return to the Lord. But after this, during the 400 years of silence of the intertestamental period, a horrible new version of the same old sin rises up. The people are left with the words of Malachi 4:4–6,

“Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”

They have the Law and the prophets, the complete, closed canon of the Old Testament. They are operating under the Law, and its sacrificial system, and they are told to wait, the Messiah is coming, the One who will raise up and restore, the One who will swing wide the gates of heaven, who will take what God began with the Jews and expand the flock to the whole world. As they wait, just as we wait for the second coming today, there is no new Scripture. As they wait, just as we wait today, there is continued study of the Scripture they have. This is good, it’s right, it’s in keeping with what God has told them to do – but there’s a problem. The religious leaders begin to nitpick the rules of the Law, rabbis develop entire schools around their own doctrinal interpretations, and righteousness begins to be a societal measurement of status. Rather than the desire being to have a heart like David’s – not without its flaws, but constant in pursuing God – the goal becomes to be as visibly obedient to the Law as possible. God stops being the object of focus, the singular point of worship, and the Law He gave is put in His place – and this is the condition of the Jews when Jesus begins His earthly ministry. The leadership is corrupt, the teaching hypocritical. These are those of whom Jesus said in Matthew 15:14,

“Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.”

The Sermon on the Mount is a masterclass in living a life that’s obedient to God, but if you look in particular at chapter 5, note every time you see Jesus say, “You have heard it said.” He repeats this in verses 21, 27, 31, 33, 38, and 43, and each time He’s addressing interpretations of the Law that have been taught by the religious leaders that are not consistent with the spirit of the Law, and giving correction. They are teaching and hyper fixating on the letter of the Law, to the complete exclusion of the spirit. In Matthew 23 Jesus gives a brutal examination of the heart condition of the ruling Jews. While I strongly recommend reading the entire chapter, pulling a few excerpts helps illustrate the point. Matthew 23:2–5, 13, 29-32, 37-39, says,

“The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others…” … “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.” … “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers.” … “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

These are those of whom it was said in John 1:11,

“He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.”

These are the leading men of Israel, the teachers of God’s people – they are those who should have expressed the most joy at the arrival of the Messiah, who should have delighted and rejoiced at the teaching and the miracles of Jesus. And yet after Jesus raises Lazarus from his tomb – a man who had been dead four days, a resurrection that surpassed and Old Testament precedent or previous miracle, we see the response of the Sanhedrin in John 11:47–48, 53,

“So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, ‘What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” … “So from that day on they made plans to put him to death.”

Not only that, but after the resurrection we read in Matthew 28:11–15,

“While they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers and said, ‘Tell people, “His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.” And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.’ So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.”

When we read, “to this day,” that speaks of the time at which Matthew’s gospel account was written – but this is actually something that remains to this day. There are Jews who, at this very moment believe a 2,000 year old lie that was started by the wicked and corrupt chief priests of the first century. For those that don’t believe this exactly (as this isn’t necessarily the most popular belief), they believe some variant – that the body of Jesus was lost, that it was buried and forgotten, only for the resurrection story to be made up later. The lie that Jesus didn’t rise has persisted to this day, has led countless souls astray, and it began on the lips of those who claimed to be servants of God. So – who did the Jews become? Well, despite their lofty origins, they became a people that looked tragically like the rest of the world. Were there true, obedient servants of God among them? Certainly. But unfortunately those who were tasked and blessed to lead them provided their biggest stumbling block. These were the people who were set aside, who were called to God to stand as a beacon for the rest of the world, to provide an example and a standard, to testify to His holiness, and they failed far more often than they succeeded. It is by God’s righteous name and that alone that they were left intact, for their actions earned nothing but destruction. Who did they become? I say this with mercy, I say it with the compassion of someone who knows what it’s like to stray and be broken and lament what I’ve done while clinging to the goodness of God. I do not speak in harsh condemnation, but in sober observation – the Jews were failures. They perverted the Law, blasphemed God, and killed their Messiah – they began with such hope and such promise, and they became failures. To this day, for every Jew that remains such, who rejects Christ in favor of an attempted relationship with God through the Law, they are a failure, for they stubbornly refuse the One that the entire Law was meant to guide to – they fail to do the most Jewish thing they could do and accept Christ as their Lord and Savior. They are a pitiable people, for those who began with such lofty promise to be so low, and despite the best of intentions they fail to honor God while they deny His Son. But, if you think this gives us or anyone else leave to hate them, to persecute or harm them, you would be very, very wrong.

• Who are the Jews now?

This question immediately needs two more to keep it company, the same two we set about answering from the very beginning: How are the Jews to be regarded? And, what is the relationship to be between Christians and Jews? Maybe, after everything we’ve been through up to this point you feel like you have a pretty good idea of how to answer these – or maybe all I’ve done is left you between a rock and a hard place. So, let’s tackle these. Not to keep badgering you with questions, but another helpful thing to consider is, when someone says “Jews,” what do they mean? There are cultural or hereditary Jews, and there are religious Jews. While there is often a considerable amount of overlap between these examples, it’s not always the case. There are practicing Jews of every race and nationality, and there are people born culturally Jewish who are diehard atheists, and it can be helpful to know this when addressing the Jewish people in a broad sense. Ultimately however, the answers are going to be largely the same. First and foremost, Jews are, like all who do not have a relationship with Christ, people who need to hear the gospel. Who are they now? They’re the same people they were in the first century as they adopted the lie around the resurrection – they’re a people who are rejecting Christ, while being comforted, as many other religions are, by an idea that it’s the Christians who are wrong and they who have a right relationship with God. Hebrews 9:15 tells us,

“Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.”

The Jews are still trying to make something happen under a covenant that they broke, that has been replaced by a new, better covenant – and they, like everyone else who doesn’t know Christ desperately needs the new covenant. Evangelizing to a practicing Jew is going to have unique challenges in the same way that evangelizing to any other lost person is going to. A Jewish person can look at you just as smugly as a Muslim, a Jehovah’s Witness, or and atheist and deny every facet of the gospel, or they can have their heart broken by the Truth, their soul bared as the Holy Spirit convicts them of their desperate need for a savior, and they can accept Christ. Now, concerning how they should be regarded, the world has historically done terrible things in making the Jewish people scapegoats and persecuting them – the holocaust being the most recent and memorable example for us today, but this was by no means the first peril they’ve faced. They are a people singled out by God, and so they are a people that are easiest to single out and ostracize from the perspective of the world. They are a nation and a people like many others, who, throughout history, have done truly horrible things. They’ve committed sexual abominations, killed, stolen, and enslaved, they’ve burned their children to pagan gods, and magnifying all of this, they’ve done so under the banner of being called “God’s people.” However, from among their midst have also come the greatest people in history, raised up by the hand of God. Figures like Moses, Elijah, and Daniel, judges like Deborah and Samuel – and show me a king in all of history whose heart I can compare to David’s, or whose splendor I can compare to Solomon’s. This is the people group after all through whom God gave us His Son, the savior of the world. While they may merit a different consideration, a different understanding for their heritage, the glory of their delivered victories, and the relevance of their failures, in most all respects, the Jews are just people, and when we elevate them to a higher station or (what seems more common), vilify them in excess it seems we’ve made a mistake and sensationalized them beyond reason. In regard to what the Christian relationship with the Jewish people should look like, first let’s consider Paul’s words from Romans 12:14–21,

“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ To the contrary, ‘if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

There are those who will say that the Jews we know of today aren’t even real Jews, that the nation of Israel is a sham country, blasphemously calling themselves Jews, and flying a flag with a demonic, pagan star on it. While there’s actually some compelling theories around that last one (David has no sign or star associated with him in Scripture and there’s some strange information around the symbol if you start digging, but that’s another subject), the rest of this makes a few assumptions and forces things into a geopolitical direction. Can I prove that every, or even most Israelis are ancestral Jews? No, but I do know that there were Jews who remained living around the known world after Israel was reformed and the temple rebuilt after the Babylonian exile, and, there was another dispersion after the sack of Jerusalem and destruction of the temple in 70 AD. So, the idea that the people occupying Israel today are ancestral Jews who have returned to their original homeland doesn’t seem so farfetched. Are they sinners? Yes, but we’ve covered that. Are they misusing the name of God? Yes, but again, we’ve covered that too. Some will say that Israel is the devil and we should oppose them at every turn, disband their nation, and scatter them to the wind. Others will say that these are God’s chosen people, that the land from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates is their birthright, and that we should shackle ourselves to them, being their allies in every endeavor. Let me offer a far more reasonable, practical, Biblically backed path. Firstly, we as Christians don’t need to be persecuting anyone, and I’ll just leave that as that. Secondly, we as Christians don’t need to offer up undying loyalty to anyone but our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ – we do not have an ecumenical relationship with the Jewish people, and handing Israel a blank check just because they’re the people originally called to God is insane. Instead, here’s the middle ground: Saul was anointed as the first king of Israel. Then, he offered an unlawful sacrifice, made a rash vow that led to a lot of people eating unclean food, and ultimately directly disobeyed God when fighting the Amalekites, then tried to offer sacrifices and act as though he’d remained obedient. In 1 Samuel 15:23 Samuel, relaying the words of the Lord says to Saul,

“For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has also rejected you from being king.”

Soon after, we read in 1 Samuel 16:1, 13,

“The LORD said to Samuel, ‘How long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.’” … “Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David from that day forward. And Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.”

In case you’re not following me here, I want you to think of the original, broken covenant between the Lord and Israel as the anointing of Saul, the first king, the ruler who rejected his position through his disobedience. Following this theme, think of the second anointing, David as the king of Israel as the new covenant between Christ and His bride the Church. Applying this, let’s look at the relationship between Saul and David, and in particular, David’s treatment of Saul. Saul for his part hates David, and as David’s success grows, Saul despises him all the more, eventually seeking with great fury to kill him. But if we look at 1 Samuel 24:2–10 we see David’s regard for Saul’s anointing, despite the Lord’s disfavor with him,

“Then Saul took three thousand chosen men out of all Israel and went to seek David and his men in front of the Wildgoats’ Rocks. And he came to the sheepfolds by the way, where there was a cave, and Saul went in to relieve himself. Now David and his men were sitting in the innermost parts of the cave. And the men of David said to him, ‘Here is the day of which the LORD said to you, “Behold, I will give your enemy into your hand, and you shall do to him as it shall seem good to you.”’ Then David arose and stealthily cut off a corner of Saul’s robe. And afterward David’s heart struck him, because he had cut off a corner of Saul’s robe. He said to his men, ‘The LORD forbid that I should do this thing to my lord, the LORD’s anointed, to put out my hand against him, seeing he is the LORD’s anointed.’ So David persuaded his men with these words and did not permit them to attack Saul. And Saul rose up and left the cave and went on his way. Afterward David also arose and went out of the cave, and called after Saul, ‘My lord the king!’ And when Saul looked behind him, David bowed with his face to the earth and paid homage. And David said to Saul, ‘Why do you listen to the words of men who say, “Behold, David seeks your harm”? Behold, this day your eyes have seen how the LORD gave you today into my hand in the cave. And some told me to kill you, but I spared you. I said, “I will not put out my hand against my lord, for he is the LORD’s anointed.”’”

Saul was delivered into David’s hand, as the man was seeking his life all that David, the mighty warrior of God had to do was reach out and end the threat, but his respect, His obedience was to what the Lord had once done in Saul’s life. Again, later we see in 1 Samuel 26:5–11,

“Then David rose and came to the place where Saul had encamped. And David saw the place where Saul lay, with Abner the son of Ner, the commander of his army. Saul was lying within the encampment, while the army was encamped around him. Then David said to Ahimelech the Hittite, and to Joab’s brother Abishai the son of Zeruiah, ‘Who will go down with me into the camp to Saul?’ And Abishai said, ‘I will go down with you.’ So David and Abishai went to the army by night. And there lay Saul sleeping within the encampment, with his spear stuck in the ground at his head, and Abner and the army lay around him. Then Abishai said to David, ‘God has given your enemy into your hand this day. Now please let me pin him to the earth with one stroke of the spear, and I will not strike him twice.’ But David said to Abishai, ‘Do not destroy him, for who can put out his hand against the LORD’s anointed and be guiltless?’ And David said, ‘As the LORD lives, the LORD will strike him, or his day will come to die, or he will go down into battle and perish. The LORD forbid that I should put out my hand against the LORD’s anointed. But take now the spear that is at his head and the jar of water, and let us go.’”

After this David calls out into the camp, specifically calling out the commander Abner for not keeping watch over Saul and protecting him, before David again appeals to his innocence before the man who seeks his life. Now, Saul’s life doesn’t end very well. He goes into battle without the Lord’s blessing, and is overrun by the enemy. Fearing capture, he asks his armor bearer to kill him, but the armor bearer refuses, so Saul falls on his own sword. When David hears of Saul’s death we see his exchange with the messenger in 2 Samuel 1:5–10,

“Then David said to the young man who told him, ‘How do you know that Saul and his son Jonathan are dead?’ And the young man who told him said, ‘By chance I happened to be on Mount Gilboa, and there was Saul leaning on his spear, and behold, the chariots and the horsemen were close upon him. And when he looked behind him, he saw me, and called to me. And I answered, “Here I am.” And he said to me, “Who are you?” I answered him, “I am an Amalekite.” And he said to me, “Stand beside me and kill me, for anguish has seized me, and yet my life still lingers.” So I stood beside him and killed him, because I was sure that he could not live after he had fallen. And I took the crown that was on his head and the armlet that was on his arm, and I have brought them here to my lord.’”

We know that this man is lying, presumably having plundered the battlefield and taken armlet and crown, he now appeals to having helped Saul by ending his life at his time of desperate need. But after David has begun mourning Saul and his dear friend Jonathan, we see his response to the messenger in 2 Samuel 1:13–16,

“And David said to the young man who told him, ‘Where do you come from?’ And he answered, ‘I am the son of a sojourner, an Amalekite.’ David said to him, ‘How is it you were not afraid to put out your hand to destroy the LORD’s anointed?’ Then David called one of the young men and said, ‘Go, execute him.’ And he struck him down so that he died. And David said to him, ‘Your blood be on your head, for your own mouth has testified against you, saying, “I have killed the LORD’s anointed.”’”

Putting all this together we have a helpful, Biblically grounded picture of what the Christian relationship with the Jewish people should be. We unfortunately lack common ground, our kinship has been ruined so long as their refusal of Christ persists. However, apostate or not, these are the people that God first raised up, called to Himself, and made His original covenant with, and that has to be considered. David did not lay down and allow Saul to kill him just because he was God’s first anointed king, but neither did he raise his hand against Saul, or permit the lying Amalekite to claim that he had killed Saul with impunity. And again, none of this was about Saul, rather it was all about God. We have no leave to persecute or hate the Jews, or to rally and support their enemies. We should be positively inclined to those that God once marked as His own, if perhaps not outright allies, certainly not enemies. In closing, I’d like you to consider Paul’s words in Romans 11:17–24,

“But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. Then you will say, ‘Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.’ That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off. And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.”

Ultimately, the Jewish people aren’t our enemies, and they’re also not our friends – they’re lost people, with a tragic, sinful past, who desperately need the gospel. We may align on certain ethical points, but we’re not on the same team, and because of their denial of Christ, we can’t even say that we serve the same God. Despite what they say and many teachings that they hold, they have abandoned the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in favor of an imitation God of their own creation. We’re wild branches grafted to the True Vine, and they are broken branches that we should desperately want to see grafted back in place alongside us, that they might receive the inheritance they were once destined for.