#82 – Jesus, Jewish Messiah

The people who actually walked and talked with Jesus in the first century clearly saw him primarily as a Jewish Messiah.

One particular Christian tenet that has been the hardest to wrap my brain around is the idea that Jesus was “fully human, and yet fully divine”. This week, we look at what the people who walked and talked with him thought, and whether that thinking changed over the course of his time on earth. So we grouped them into five different categories:

(1) before he was born: Mary and Joseph (his parents), Zechariah (temple priest), and the wise men from the east talked about this baby being the king of the Jews, being given the throne of David to reign over Jacob’s descendants forever, and restoring the covenant with Abraham. Note the very heavy emphasis on him coming to Jews and doing what a Jewish Messiah would do, rather than a cosmic, universal Savior sent to take away the sins of the world.

(2) at his birth: the shepherds were told he was the Messiah … Simeon, who had been waiting for “the consolation of Israel”, saw this baby as the Lord’s Messiah … and the prophetess Anna said the baby would bring the redemption of Jerusalem. Again, I’m hearing “Jewish Messiah”.

(3) Jesus himself said he came only to the lost sheep of Israel. How does this fit with him being a cosmic, universal Savior sent to take away the sins of the world? Or did he also see himself as the Jewish Messiah? (note: our guest this week will shed some light on this “false dichotomy”)

(4) during his public ministry: John the Baptist, Andrew, Philip, the Samaritan woman, Peter, the people at “the triumphal entry”, one of the two thieves on the cross, the Roman soldiers, and even unclean spirits … they all specifically referred to him as the Jewish Messiah (aka: king of the Jews … the Chosen One … the Christ).

(5) after the Crucifixion: at the Ascension, his followers asked “is this when you restore the kingdom to Israel?”, something that a Jewish Messiah was expected to do. Their sermons almost always took place in the synagogue (where Jews meet) rather than the city square (where everyone would hear) and regularly used very Messianic language. The writer of Acts sometimes specifically summarizes their speeches by simply saying they “showed how he was the Messiah”.

Clearly, the message that everyone was getting and giving was: Jesus is the Jewish Messiah.

I had thought that the Jewish Messiah was only ever going to be a human. But this Jesus as the Jewish Messiah sounds quite different from the cosmic divine being (the Logos) that we find in the first chapter of the Gospel of John (we learned last week that this was written over half a century after Paul saturated the region with his own cosmic divine view of Jesus), or in the rest of the New Testament (written mostly by Paul). So, what do I do with that?

To answer that question, we talked to Dr. Richard Middleton, a theologian with expertise in Old Testament theology and Christian worldview. He showed me a whole different perspective on what it meant to be a Jewish Messiah … on this idea of a “cosmic, divine Jesus” … and on the idea that Jesus was “fully human, and yet fully divine”.

As always, tell us what you think …

To find more about Dr. Richard Middleton, see his blog-site, faculty page, profile at Biologos, and his Amazon book page.

To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher.

Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook.

Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive