From Jewish Jesus to Gentile Church
How a Galilean prophet became the founder of a Gentile religion
At one point, Jesus told his disciples:
(A) “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel” (Matt 10:5-6).
Yet the risen Jesus instructed his disciples:
(B) “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt 28:19-20).
How do you get from (a) to (b)?
There are several theories.
Maybe Christianity was the evolution of a messianic sect into a more inclusive form of Judaism capable of capturing the hearts and minds of non-Jews once its religious principles were translated into the idioms of Greco-Roman culture.
Maybe the first generation of Jewish Christians had a chapter that was very enthusiastic about Gentile conversion to Judaism and they developed a non-intrusive mechanism to facilitate conversion by replacing circumcision with faith.
Maybe the first generation of believers responded to the failure of Jesus to return as quickly as they thought by compensating for their disappointment by encouraging itinerant religious entrepreneurs like Paul and others to go out and establish groups of Gentile adherents far and wide.
None of those answers really have anything to do with Jesus, but I think the answer has to involve Jesus in some way!
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Here’s the answer, which I will give you with two little books you can read online.
George Caird gave a lecture called Jesus and the Jewish Nation which shows that Jesus really believed that he was sent to Israel, to call Israel to repentance, so that a great moment of restoration would happen. It was then scholars like Ben Meyer and E.P. Sanders who took that a step further and showed that Jesus was a prophet of Jewish restoration eschatology, with a hope for the restoration of the 12 tribes of Israel, the end of exile or a new exodus, a new temple, agricultural fecundity, a Davidic ruler, a new covenant, etc. And I think this right!
But to that we add:
T.W. Manson’s lecture Only to the House of Israel? which notes that prophetic and thus restoration hopes for Israel’s restoration normally included the sequel of the nations coming to worship the God of Israel, bringing gifts and offerings to the temple, escorting Jews back to Judea, etc. Which leads to his helpful saying that I think sums up much of the biblical story: “A transformed Israel will transform the world.”
Once you know that axiom, then you cannot jump from Genesis 3 to John 3:16, because you know God’s plan and purposes run to and through Israel then to the world.
My favourite example is in Zech 8:20-23:
This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Many peoples and the inhabitants of many cities will yet come, and the inhabitants of one city will go to another and say, ‘Let us go at once to entreat the Lord and seek the Lord Almighty. I myself am going.’ And many peoples and powerful nations will come to Jerusalem to seek the Lord Almighty and to entreat him.” This is what the Lord Almighty says: “In those days ten people from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the hem of his robe and say, ‘Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is with you.’”
To this, we could a heap of other texts such as Isa 2:2-4, 42:6, 49:6, Mic 4:1-14, etc. But it’s the same story. A restoration of Israel leads the nations to worship Israel’s God, often as converts, proselytes, or as guests.
Returning to Matthew’s Gospel, we can now understand how to get from Matt 10:5-6 to Matt 28:19-20, which is via Matt 8:10-11 when Jesus encountered the faith of a Roman centurion:
The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.
The language of people coming from the “east and the west” means the end of exile, in other words, Israelites returning to Jerusalem with Gentiles in lockstep with them. This is Jewish restoration eschatology whereby a transformed Israel would transform the world.
This explains Jesus’s mission specifically to Israel yet the accompanying hope that the nations would share in the salvation that Israel experienced.
For more, see my PhD thesis Jesus and the Origins of the Gentile Mission.
Thank you for expanding my horizon on this. I've been reading N. T. Wright's The Challenge of Jesus. He points out how Jesus was critical of the groups that focused on God restoring Israel (Make Israel Great Again), and wanted them to be an example for the nations, to be the light of the world, to forgive 70 x 7.
Have you interacted with Dr Jason Staples work in Paul and the Resurrection of Israel? He has an interesting perspective on the issue that raises a few questions and challenges.