Christ as the Faithful Israelite

One of the key underlying concepts in the New Testament is that Jesus Christ is the one faithful Israelite through whom God works to bless the world. That is part of what his mission was to be as the Messiah.

Too often in evangelical theology we have been guilty of downplaying or ignoring the fact that Christ was first and foremost the long-promised and prophesied King of the Jews. And it is precisely because he is the Jewish Messiah that he could be the Saviour of the world and the King of kings.

Instead, we often seem to talk as if God could have chosen to use more-or-less anyone as his appointed Saviour as long as he made sure they were sinless (by virtue of the virgin birth), in order that they could end up an innocent sacrificial victim dying as our substitute to take our sins away and give us his righteousness in return.

Now, of course, nothing in this presentation is wrong. It is true that Christ could only be the Saviour because he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary and was born sinless. It is true he was an innocent sacrificial victim and that he died as our substitute on the cross to take our sins away and rose again that we might be justified in his righteousness. Yet if the story of Israel is missed out and if we ignore the fact that Jesus came as the Jewish Messiah, then we will miss out a whole lot of biblical nuances from the overall picture presented.

God's plan was always to bless and save the world through the Messiah, through the promised Redeemer. As far back as Genesis 3:15 this is promised. "I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel." (HCSB).

But it is also clear that the Redeemer would be born not just as a human child, but as one of Abraham's descendants: "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." (Genesis 12:3, NIV). "And through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed." (Genesis 22:18, NIV).

God's purpose was therefore always to choose Israel as a means of bring salvation to the whole world. Yet, there was a problem. Israel as a nation was far from perfect. Israel was chosen to be "light bearers" for the world: "I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." (Isaiah 49:6, ESV). Yet the people time and again chose darkness rather than light. They always revealed themselves to be "in Adam" - just as sinful at heart as all the rest of humanity.

This is why though Israel was called to be faithful to God, it was going to take an extra special Israelite who would actually be able to fulfil the divine covenant promises and fulfil the divinely appointed mission for Israel. It was going to take the Messiah to do for Israel and for the world what Israel could never do for herself.

Christ's coming as Saviour and Lord was not God's Plan B. He only ever had a Plan A: to save the world through Israel.

How he did it is extraordinary in its sheer scale and wisdom and utterly surprising grace. All the gospels make it clear, but especially Matthew's Gospel, that Christ came to re-enact the failed history of Israel in his own life and person, except that where Israel failed over and over again, the Messiah, Jesus would not fail but would fulfil his divinely appointed destiny - all the way to death, his death on the cross, and right through to his rising from the dead on the third day.

Matthew's Gospel is basically structured to show the parallels between Christ's life and Israel's history. Like Israel, Jesus is called out of Egypt (only Matthew focuses on the Egyptian period of exile when being hunted by Herod). He then goes into the wilderness for 40 days (compared to the nation's 40 years in the wilderness). Like Moses with the Ten Commandments, Christ goes up a mountain to teach the people the truth about God's law in the Sermon on the Mount. And so on. Parallel after parallel until we reach that last passover in which Christ offers himself as the unblemished lamb that takes away sin and breaks the power of death.

Through his life, death and resurrection, the Messiah redefines who the people of God are around himself, so that he becomes their representative and what is true of him, then becomes true of them too. This re-booting of Israel as God's people (if we can use that modern phrase) includes such clues as choosing twelve apostles (the number twelve tying in with the twelve tribes of Israel), talking about Christ's people being the true temple of God - and by implication not the Temple in Jerusalem, and so on.

As people respond to the gospel message in faith they enter into union with Christ, become part of the people of God, and receive all the blessings of salvation that belong to God's people in Christ (Ephesians 1).

N. T. Wright sums it up like this (discussing Romans 3:21-31): "And, beginning in 3.21, he provides a fresh answer to the question, an answer not available to writers like 4 Ezra: God has unveiled his dikaiosyne in the faithful Messiah, Jesus, the one in whom at last we find an Israelite faithful to God’s purpose, the one through whose death sin has been dealt with, the one through whom God has now called into being a renewed people among whom Jews and Gentiles are welcome on equal terms."

So much of the richness of biblical teaching is lost if we neglect or silence the link between Israel, Christ and the saving purposes of God. Nothing is lost, and much is gained when we include the fact that Jesus wasn't just acting as a sinless man in his mission, but as the faithful Israelite whose life was fully and comprehensively in line with God's will for the glory of God and the rescuing and renewing of the entire cosmos.