Jesus the Jewish Reformer

I was recently asked to give my thoughts on the Jewishness of Jesus, its expression in Scripture, and the work of Christ's earthly ministry to bring about reform in the first-century-Jewish church. I thought there might be a few of you out in cyberspace here that might be interested in that topic...So here is my response:

"I've done a good bit of thinking about the whole Jesus and His Jewishness topic that you asked me about, and as I begin to ramble on this subject matter I'd encourage you to consider Israel in the first century when Jesus walked the earth. At this point the picture of Jewish life painted by the Old Testament is hundreds of years out of date. During the Old Testament days, for instance, there is no mention of rabbis, synagogues, pharisees, sadducees or zealots.

Most of the people living in the land of Judea and Galilee are the descendants of pious Jews who returned to Israel after their exile in Babylon. Since then, life for God's chosen people has been anything but idyllic. Their Roman occupiers are universally hated for their brutality and pagan ways, not to mention the oppressively high taxes which they levy. Little wonder that everyone is longing for a Messiah to come and deliver them from their harsh oppressors. Keep in mind, however, that this Messiah was not just foretold by the prophets of Yahweh to be a redeemer and a liberator, but this Messiah was foretold to be a redeemer and liberator sent from the Jewish Deity to the benefit of the Jewish People. He was a Jewish Savior sent by the Jewish God for the benefit for the Jewish people...or so they thought...Paul later clarified that salvation to be first for the Jew and then for the Gentile, but that's another matter entirely.

Though anticipation was high during this time, opinions varied about just how or when the Messiah would finally arrive. The ranks among the Jewish hierarchy each had a different take on the history which led them to their first century reality and just how the future would unfold. Political tension and spiritual fervor were both on the rise. It is into this time of intense spiritual searching that another rabbi comes with bold humility onto the scene. He's a rabbi from Nazareth. And from both a Judaic historical perspective, as well as a sociological fact, nothing of any merit ever hailed from Nazareth.

From the early days of Jesus' life, as well as the earlier verses of New Testament, Jesus (Yeshua, the Nazarene rabbi) is fully entrenched in Jewish customs. Beginning his family tree with Father Abraham, Matthew's Gospel undeniably establishes Jesus' Hebrew lineage and foreshadows that Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophesy of the coming Messiah as he further indicates Jesus to be directly descended from Jesse and David. What's also peculiar about Jesus' birth is the apparent understanding of Hebrew Scripture that the Herods had pertaining to this coming Jewish king which led to one of the most obscene genocides in all of history from which Jesus narrowly escaped, a fact which seems to corroborate the evidence of both Jesus' Jewishness and qualifications to fulfill that which the ancient prophets foretold about Him years before.

Scripture is also rich with evidence of Jesus' study of Jewish Scripture, the teaching thereof, worship of the Jewish God Yahweh, and the practice of "behaving" in the manner that the Jewish rabbis behaved. But it is there which the rich Jewish heritage of this Nazarene rabbi takes an interesting turn. In fact it is in the rabbinic practices of the Nazarene rabbi, where we begin to see Jesus' ministry as a reformer unto the first-century Jewish ecclesial customs. As a reformer. when the Nazarene rabbi invited his "talmidim" to "follow him", it became very apparent that his ministry and rabbinic practices would take on a vastly different ideology from the Jewish norm. Whereas the Jewish rabbis of Jesus' day were in the habit of calling disciples who had proven themselves worthy of such higher education with great academic achievement, Jesus sought out his talmidim selecting them based upon entirely different criteria. He was heard among his contemporaries clarifying that, "If you are to be my disciple, you must first deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow me." Jesus also sought out theological reform among the Jews by speaking both publically (the sermon on the mount, among others) and privately (His conversation with Nicodemus in John 3, among others) to bring clarity to the traditional understandings of Torah and it's implications both on the church and the followers of Yahweh for Jews and Gentiles alike. Jesus also worked to bring reform in the form of a new covenant between Yahweh and sinners. Bringing to life the words of Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 among other areas of the Hebrew Scriptures, Jesus made it clear that His life was intended to be laid down as a sin offering once and for all to the benefit of all who believe, and he fulfilled that intention by being the expiation for the sins of humanity giving Himself over to a brutal death by crucifixion alongside of Jerusalem's worst criminals.

What intrigues me the most in this, however, at least from the perspective of Jesus' Jewish heritage, is that Jesus did all of this to bring about a redemption and restoration of the peace and oneness that God had always intended to have with His beloved Israel. But in so doing he thrust wide-open the doors of grace and shalom for people of all nations, races, and tongue to worship Yahweh with confidence and shed-blood-righteousness. In a sense, the true reformation of the Jewish first-century resulted in the heralded and immutable declaration that God is love...that God loves all...and that shalom and righteousness is found through Christ alone...and that the shalom found in Christ is not a Jewish thing...rather the shalom found in Christ is a God thing...offered to all of God's creation...once and for all...and that true Torah is summed up in this, "Love God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself."

Grace and Peace be with you.