What does the Messianic movement mean to Jesus?

Introduction

“What does the Messianic movement mean to Jesus?” is a question of both immense importance and terrible neglect.[1] Since the deepest revelation of what matters to Christ is the gospel, then it follows that Jesus’ attachment to the messianic movement will be a part of the revelation in the gospel. Paul introduces Romans by saying, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” (1:16). Whereas all dimensions of the Bible-believing Church have made the first part of this Gospel summary their own, few have come to terms with the motto, “to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom 1:16; 2:10). In what sense is this prioritising of Jew over Gentile important in the world today? I agree with theologian Grant Osborne when he says, “Jewish mission must have visibility and emphasis in the mission of the church worldwide, in terms both of prayer and action.” All Bible commentators on Romans will agree that the reasons for this order, first Jew then Gentile, are laid out in Romans 9-11. My interest in these issues however was not stirred up by reading theologians, but by some words in a magazine by messianic Rabbi Lawrence Hirsch, “Jewish Evangelism is a prophetic activity.”[2]

To speak about “Jewish Evangelism as a prophetic activity” has nothing to do with detailed charts and time lines[3] but everything to do with “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” (Rev 19:10). The nature of Jewish evangelism as a prophetic activity must bear witness to what such a mission means to Jesus himself. Only if we focus on Jesus will it be possible to understand and appreciate the One New Man of Jew and Gentile in Messiah.

According to the Flesh

The question of why there hasn’t been a wholesale movement of the people of the old covenant to Jesus as the Christ occupies a dominant place in Romans. After boldly proclaiming a the close of Romans 8, “nothing in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (8:39), Paul launches into intense autobiographical language as to how the reality of the separation of the majority Israel from Jesus as Lord Messiah affects him personally.

“I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit—that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.” (Romans 9:1-5 ESV).

There are a number of outstanding features of this passage. The first one has to do with authority.

1. The Authority with which Paul speaks:

The comments which Paul is about to make are not mere personal sentiments, they are made “in Christ” and so bear apostolic authority. What he says he says as a witness to Jesus, someone who has seen Jesus as Lord (1 Cor 9:1). The declaration “I am not lying” has the status of an oath pronounced in the presence of God and many witnesses. One of these witnesses is his conscience; conscience as a sense of right and wrong (Rom 2:15) is not infallible, but the alignment of conscience with “the Holy Spirit” means that what Paul is about to say is absolutely truthful.

1. The Pathos of Paul

The second feature of this passage is the depths of Paul’s feelings. The “great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart” of which Paul speaks places him in the line of prophetic witnesses. In the tradition of Jeremiah “the weeping prophet” (4:19; 6:24; 9:10) the apostle embodies the grief in the heart of God over the lost state of “his people” (Rom 11:1). Like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane the whole being of Paul is engulfed in agony (Matt 26:38); so much so that his next utterance is a unique window on the cross.

1. Anathema[4]

“I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers”. This is the only place in Paul’s letters where he uses “brothers” to refer not to Christians but to his fellow Jews. Since “from the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45) these words tell us exactly how deep the tearing pain in Paul’s heart must be. It means that he feels intimately close even to those whom he personally describes just a few verses later, “For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel,” (Rom 9:6). In wanting be “accursed” Paul seems to be praying that if possible he would be eternally condemned (cf. Gal 1:8, 9) in the place of his lost brethren, if only that would lead them to Jesus as Messiah. This is remarkable intercession.

We must pay very careful attention to exactly what Paul says here. The background to his wish-prayer is Yahweh’s holy war when everything that lived, man or beast, was to be totally devoted to the LORD by being utterly destroyed (Lev 27:28; Deut 13:37; Josh 6:17f; 7:1, 11ff; etc.). Paul does not however say that he desires to be cut off from God, but from Christ. From Paul’s new covenant framework, where “all the promises of God find their Yes in him” “the Son of God Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 1:19, 21), this would mean that he would lose the revelation knowledge of Jesus as the Messiah of Israel. Penetrating into this desire even more deeply, it could only be sharing in the sufferings of Jesus himself on the cross where he loses all awareness of God as his Father, the God of the covenant; ““My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” (Mark 15:34 citing Ps 22:1).  This would mean entering into a state where Paul was no longer conscious of the fullness of the meaning of being part of the people of God. An unthinkable condition for anyone who was not filled with the Spirit of God. Paul’s plea echoes that of the greatest intercessor of the old covenant, Moses, at the incident of the golden calf. Just as Moses pleaded before the LORD to be blotted out of God’s book if only he would forgive the people(Ex 32:32), the apostle shares such a heart rendering concern for Israel, for whom the failure to recognise Jesus as  Lord is as serious a sin as substituting a molten image for the living God (cf. Ps 106:20). Paul possesses this empathy and intense pathos because the Israelites are “his kinsman according to the flesh”.

1. The Privileges of Israel

The “flesh” or shared humanity of Paul and other Jews is one of extraordinary privilege, “They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption to sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs…” These advantages (Rom 3:1-2) marked out Israel amongst the nations as the worshipping people of the one true God. In Paul’s thinking however none of these old covenant privileges can be thought of apart from their fulfilment in Jesus: adoption > Jesus is “the Son of God” (Acts 9:20); glory> Jesus is “the Lord of glory” (1 Cor 2:8); covenants > the “new covenant is in his blood” (1 Cor 11:25); the law > Christ is “the culmination of the law” (Rom 10:4);  the promises >  all “the promises of God find their Yes in him” (2 Cor 1:20). It is exactly because the privileges of Israel point to Jesus as the Messiah who truly fulfils them all[5] that the situation of unbelieving Israel is so serious (Rom 11:20). Responsibility before God is always in proportion to  knowledge; “There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek” (Rom 2:9 cf. vv.17ff.).

All of this is intense enough, but Paul’s own prophetic anguish over the dire situation of the lost people of God (Rom 11:1-2) has as its deepest grounding what he is about to sat concerning Jesus;

According to the Flesh

“from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.” (Rom 9:5). This short doxology is full of meaning.

1. Christ as God

At Jesus’ trial the High Priest as the divinely appointed representative of the people, placed Jesus under the strictest possible oath, ““I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of the Blessed God. And Jesus said, “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.”” (Matt 26:63 combined with Mark 14:61-62). Paul declares that the one whom national Israel rejected[6] as sharing the blessedness of the one true God now reigns over all creation and shares in the eternal blessedness of the God as Lord (cf. Phil 2:9). The apostle is very clear in describing who it is that the mass of his Jewish countrymen are rejecting in denying that Jesus is Messiah. Every element of blessedness is concentrated in the person who is united with Paul and all Jews “according to the flesh” (Eph 1:3). It is this statement which is the lynch pin for understanding how and why “Jewish Evangelism is a prophetic activity.”

2. According to the Flesh

Nathanael quipped, ““Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”” (John 1:46). Paul comments about his past attitude to Jesus, “though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.” (2 Cor 5:16). The Galilean-accented, donkey riding, weeping and bleeding fleshliness of a mortal Jesus excluded him in the eyes of his brethren from Messiahship.  Israel could not believe that Jesus’ experience of exclusion from the blessedness of covenant life, ““My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?””  (Mark 15:34 cf. Rom 3:25) was a punishment they deserved (Jer 31:32). The former Pharisee and Hebrew of Hebrews is adamant (Phil 3:5), “Christ crucified is a stumbling block to Jews” (1 Cor 1:23). As he has explained a little earlier in Romans, “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin he condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom 8:3). The man on the cross did not look like a Messiah, he looked like sinful flesh under the severe judgment of God, under the curse of total destruction, the anathema which Paul wished he could take for his people, but could not, because it was already taken by Jesus (Gal 3:13).

Something which a Gentile cannot possibly understand is the terrible humiliation a son of the covenant must endure in recognising that he/she, and Israel as a whole, were so unable to keep God’s law that the law giver had to crucify himself!  This is an appalling state of affairs, but the cross is only half of the gospel. The other half concerns the destiny of flesh crucified in loving obedience to God.

3. Resurrected Flesh

Here is Paul’s powerful declaration at the very commencement of Romans “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, ² which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, ³ concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh ⁴ and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, ⁵ through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, ⁶ including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ” (Rom 1:1-6)

Jesus is the Davidic descendant who’s Lordship and Messianic identity has been established by resurrection from the dead. To acknowledge the transformation from forsaken and accursed flesh to resurrected and glorified flesh in the life of Jesus of Nazareth is to believe in the gospel. This is why Paul puts belief in the resurrection in the centre of his treatise on the future of Israel in Romans 9-11; “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom 10:9). The prophetic sign that God has established in the midst of history that Jesus is Lord and Christ is the resurrection (Acts 2:22-36). Paul’s passion for the gospel to come to the Jews is a manifestation of Jesus’ own longing for his flesh and blood Jewish brethren to enjoy the transformation from mortality to immortality, from judgement to blessing and from death to glory that is his portion with the Father (2 Cor 4:7-12). There is however another sign, one yet to be revealed, that makes “Jewish Evangelism a prophetic activity.”

Anticipating Return

In the midst of his extensive discussion in Romans 9-11 Paul states concerning Israel, “For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?” (Rom 11:15). If the Jews’ rejection of Jesus led to the cross and so to the reconciliation of the world, “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Cor 5:19), God’s acceptance of presently unbelieving Israel into the community of the Messiah, the Church, will issue in nothing less than the general resurrection of the dead. In other words, “Jewish Evangelism is a prophetic activity.” because its fruit will be nothing less than the End of the world and the final restoration of all things (Acts 3:21).

The unity of the one new man, Jew and Gentile united in Christ (Eph 2:15), is a sign, prefiguration and participation in the future regeneration of all things (Matt 19:28), the new heavens and earth (Isa 65:17; Rev 21:1) filled with the righteousness of God (2 Pet 3:13) flowing from the resurrection of Jesus as Messiah and Lord (Rom 4:25; 1 Tim 3:16). The ingathering of the Jewish people into the Body of Messiah, in full and open fellowship with their Gentile brothers, is nothing less than a justification for God’s act of creation despite the many horrors of human history[7].

The restoration to Israel of the kingdom of God (Acts 1:6) whatever else may be true is a bringing to consummation of the meaning of the resurrection of Jesus own flesh. Citing Paul from 1 Corinthians “he who is joined to the Lord is (already) one spirit” (6:17), but the prospect of global Messianic movement is a necessary phase in the climax of the one flesh[8] union of Christ and the Church, Jew and Gentile, in glory; the marriage supper of the Lamb (Eph 5:31-32; Rev 19:9). This climax of history is something of tremendous passionate interest to Jesus.

The pronouncement “behold I am coming soon” (Rev 22:7, 12) has proved paradoxical over the last 2000 years. “Soon” seems to us to have taken a very long time. I am convinced however that we must take this word of the Bridegroom at face value, and that the Gentile Church has failed to “look forward to and hurry along” “the End of all things” (2 Pet 3:12; 1 Pet 4:7) because it has largely rejected the wisdom of God’s plan for his chosen people.

The Maturing of the Church

Over the last forty years I have rarely encountered a group of Christians who had a healthy sense of Christ’s impending Return. Either people are indifferent, carrying on with life as if his Coming Again didn’t really matter (cf. Luke 17:26-27), or else they are extremists, escapists and scare mongers (Matt 24:23-25). Paul uses a particular word in Romans 11 that speaks to the need for a mature perspective from the Church on the Second Coming.

Firstly, speaking of the inclusion of Israel into the people of Messiah, “Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their fullness mean!” (Romans 11:12 ESV). Then a little later in a text meant to humble all of us Gentiles, “Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion[9], he will banish ungodliness from Jacob”; “and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins.”(Romans 11:25-27 ESV). This word “fullness” implies totality, completion and a certain quality of perfection.

Paul is saying that when the fullness of Israel is joined to the fullness of the Gentiles there will be a Church of Jew and Gentile standing together before God as one new man with the quality of Body-life of which the he speaks in Ephesians, “He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,” (Ephesians 4:10-13 ESV).

In other words, the fullness of Israel, the fullness of Gentile believers, and the fullness of Christ himself are to become one even as Jesus and the Father are one (John 10:30; Col 2:9-10cf. John 17:20ff.). When the whole Church, Messianic and Gentile, shares in this revelation our desire for our fullness will be as passionate for the Return of the Beloved as he is to be eternally united with us (Eph 1:6; Song of Solomon). When we share his desire he shall come. Tragically, we are far from that state.

Conclusions

In terms of the presence of the glory of God in their midst unbelieving Israel has been in exile from the time of the destruction of Solomon’s Temple. The manifest presence of God/shekinah glory never returned either to the rebuild temple or to the synagogue. When the glory did come to his own people he was rejected (John 1:11) because of the form of his coming. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14). Scandalously to Israel’s popular expectations this was a glory contained in the mortal physical body of Jesus (John 8:57), a body which had to be destroyed on the cross and raised on the third day (John 2:18-22).

Paradoxically, the person who can help us understand why Jesus was rejected by his brothers two thousand years ago is one of the founders of a mindset inside the Church which has prevented it from reaching the sort of maturity in fellowship with Jewish believers of the sort I have spoken of in this article. This man, to whom all Protestant Christians owe an enormous debt, divided all theologies into two. The first sort is theologies of glory. This doesn’t refer to the glory of God seen in Christ, but a confidence and boasting in our human abilities. The other theology is the theology of the cross. The theology of the cross means that our sole assurance of being right with God comes through the scandal of following a crucified and rejected man. Why then did this spiritual father, who is Martin Luther, leave such a legacy of anti-Semitism[10]?

The answer I believe lies in the very success of the gospel which Luther preached. As long as Christianity is the religion of cultural insiders and the Church occupies a dominant role in society[11], rather than experiencing ourselves as strangers/outsiders/despised/exiles in this world (cf. Heb 11:10, 13-16), it is highly unlikely that the followers of Jesus as Lord will ever sense a rapport with the spiritually alienated and estranged state of the vast mass of Israel according to the flesh. When it is strong and triumphant the Church will never understand why Paul cries out, in his unity with the flesh of the blessed Messiah, “I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers”, which is an echo of Jesus’ own anguish on the cross, and his empathetic suffering today in heaven over the lost state of his own flesh and blood (cf. Acts 9:4). The answer to the question, “What does the Messianic movement mean to Jesus?” is nothing less than a call to the Gentile Church to come to a place of humility and repentance, whether it is of the arrogant triumphalism of “replacement theology”[12] or of those devotees of Israel who are defiantly sure that they know so much more than the rest of us.

Until the Gentile Church is living in active union with the Messianic Movement we have little hope of seeing Jesus’ prayer fulfilled, ““that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”” (John 17:20-21). This is a call for the scandal of denominational separations to be overcome and for Christian groups with a specific Jewish focus to work together as one. All of these things, and many more, flow from what the Messianic movement means to Jesus.