If Jesus fully succeeded where Israel could not, what is the relationship between Christianity and Judaism? Are Christians and Jews doomed to endlessly feud over who God’s chosen people are? We will try to address a few points and point to other resources to address others.

Blaming the Jews

Christians were wrong to blame the Jews for “killing” Jesus. They did this in two ways: in the immediate historical sense and the enduring collective sense. In the immediate history, the Jewish community of Jesus’ time was actually divided over him. They did not collectively turn against Jesus, even on the leadership level. While it is true that many Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day conspired to put Jesus to death, not all did: leading teacher Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea became followers of Jesus; even Rabbi Gamaliel was respectful and cautious. And while it is true that Jewish-background Christians like Matthew and John, Gospel writers, said “the Jews” opposed Jesus at times, they must be situated in an intra-Jewish debate.

The New Testament writers also hold Pontius Pilate and the Roman centurions responsible for crucifying Jesus. So representatives of both the Gentiles and Jews were formally responsible for putting Jesus on the cross. This makes one thing clear: Power, not ethnicity, was the important factor in why people rejected Jesus. The reigning Gentile power, the Roman Empire, is critiqued as much as, if not more than, the various Jewish leaders who tried to silence Jesus by violence.

Christians were also wrong for blaming Jews for killing Jesus in the enduring, collective sense. Gentile-background Christians did this partly out of disappointment and frustration that Jewish people at various times did not receive Jesus. They also did this once they had political power in the Roman Empire, to justify marginalizing Jewish people in Gentile Christian society. How did they justify this blaming? They used statements made by particular Jewish people in the New Testament as if they were universal and enduring statements. For example, the Jewish crowd who demanded that Pontius Pilate release Barabbas instead of Jesus cried out, “His blood be on us and on our children!”. Some Christians took great liberties with this--as if God called down retributive justice on all Jewish people ever since then--as if “our children” meant “all our descendants.”

This may be the most notorious of all the bad Bible quoting. And this example of bad Bible quoting is worth exploring just a bit more, painful as it is to read. For all the later Christians who blamed their Jewish contemporaries shared bad habits of Bible quoting demonstrated here.

Matthew the Gospel writer did not interpret the Jewish crowd’s cry so vindictively. At most, the cry reflected the link between that specific generation and the very next one: the generation of people who rejected Jesus “parented” the next generation who chose the military interpretation of the Jewish Messiah liberating Jerusalem from the Romans. Those who tried to oust the Romans lost their lives in the year 70 at the hands of Roman general Titus Vespasian. Jesus had repeatedly warned his contemporaries that rejecting him also meant rejecting his own interpretation of the Messianic role, which necessarily meant affirming the military interpretation. For Jewish commitment to the Scriptures required them to choose one or the other. Either Jesus as the true king of Israel cleansed the true temple of God, his own human body, of the presence of sin, or the Israelites led by another claiming to be king will try to cleanse the Jerusalem temple of the Romans.

Matthew also saw an ironic but good twist to the cry. Jesus was giving his life, expressed symbolically by his blood, to purify others. In typical Jewish fashion, blood could be applied to people or doorposts for various reasons -- all of which related to cleansing and entering a new life. So “his blood be on us and our children” could have been a positive remark. To Matthew, certainly, they should have meant the latter, not the former.

Did God Set Israel Up to Fail?

There are larger theological questions. In this Christian understanding of biblical history, did God use Israel only to set them up to fail? Did they have to reject Jesus? If so, did God manipulate people to bring about this history? How does God feel, according to Christians, about the Jewish people? And how should Christians feel towards the Jewish people?

These questions are not just the result of Christian reflections after the fact of centuries of tensions between church and synagogue. The apostle Paul in Romans 9-11 shows that New Testament writers were reflecting on Jewish-Christian relations very early. Not that they would have used the term “Christian” per se. They understood Jesus as fulfilling the promises of God given to the Jewish people and especially to David, and part of that promise included extending the reign of David’s heir throughout the Gentile peoples. For, curiously enough, God had promised that He would fulfill the promises of Israel to Himself--to circumcise the human heart and partner with Him to purify and restore human nature. Of course, the New Testament writers expressed concern that many Jews did not believe the claims of Jesus and follow his teaching. The New Testament writers were not alone, however. Old Testament authors also foresaw some Israelites rejecting God in the Messianic era: Moses in Deuteronomy 32; Isaiah in Isaiah 63 - 66; Zechariah in Zechariah 9 - 14; etc. So these questions have to be located much earlier in Jewish history. Why did history play out this way?

We believe the best model for understanding the relationship between Jesus and the Jewish people is the model of David. David was anointed by the prophet Samuel to be king when he was young. But he had to serve under another for years. He was eventually persecuted, had to avoid Jerusalem, and gathered a community around himself in the wilderness. That community became the nucleus of his actual kingdom when he was enthroned by his own tribe, Judah. But he had to win over the other tribes over time to constitute a united Israel.

Jesus followed the same basic storyline. He was anointed to be king by the prophet John the Baptist, who stood in the role of the prophet Samuel to his own retelling of David. Jesus also had to serve under others for years. Jesus also was eventually persecuted, also had to avoid Jerusalem, and also gathered a community around himself in the wilderness. Like David’s community, Jesus’ community also became the nucleus of his kingdom when he was enthroned after his resurrection and seated at the right hand of God the Father. From that point, Jesus also had to win over the Jews--and Gentiles, too--over time.

Thus, the Old Testament, Jesus himself, and the apostles expected people--both Jewish and Gentile--to come gradually, not instantaneously, to Jesus.

Did God foresee or even manipulate the Jewish leaders to reject Jesus and hand him over to the Romans? Foresee, yes. Manipulate, no. The Gospel accounts and Paul’s reflection in Romans 9-11 indicate that God did foresee it. Jesus had to die as the victim of imperial violence, to reveal the truth about empires and the intoxicating quality of human power. But did God manipulate anyone? No. Everyone made their own choices. More importantly, God continues to affectionately love the Jewish people and long for them, as the apostle Paul wrote.

Therefore, how should Christians feel towards Jewish people? Deep appreciation and admiration that the Jewish community of today descends from the ancient people who took up the challenge of being the Clinic. Regret and contrition that Christians have mistreated and mischaracterized the Jewish people for so long. Awe and respect that the Jewish people have an unusual bond with Jesus who was born among their predecessors. Patience and love that they are not forsaken by God but beloved. And desirous of partnership to uphold a basic position of resistance to the empires, nations, and powers throughout the people-groups we find ourselves in together. On that, see below.

Did God Set Israel Up to Be a Geopolitical Kingdom?

Dispensationalism is a Protestant view that holds that God always intended to work through two covenant communities: Israel and the Church. This view is uniquely popular in the United States. It says that Israel was supposed to pursue geopolitical nationhood, a “physical kingdom” on a physical land. It also says that the Church is meant to be a spiritual kingdom doing evangelism throughout the nations of the world.

One of the implications of dispensationalism is that God did set ancient Israel up to fail in a particular way. God required them to reject Jesus, not just in the specific generation of his earthly life but for as long as the Church is the main vessel God uses to reach Gentiles. That is quite peculiar, and concerning. Dispensationalists assert that the physicality of Israel’s nationhood and claim to land are only respected in their framework. They assert that nothing about ancient Israel’s institutions can be “superceded” by Jesus or the Church. By contrast, we believe Jesus supercedes the former temple by becoming the human, living temple in which God dwells and the place from which (and person in whom) God cleanses people.

Another implication of dispensationalism is that, at some point in the future, God intends to “rapture” the Church from the earth and resume working through Israel -- understood to be more or less the modern State of Israel. This helps explain why American evangelicals tend to support the State of Israel with military aid at the expense of other considerations. American evangelicals tend to think they are accelerating God’s time table. They believe they are marching towards Armageddon and the return of Jesus. By contrast, we are concerned that dispensationalists instrumentalize the State of Israel and the Jewish people, at large and also down to particular persons.

Dispensationalism, we believe, weakens the connection between ethics and the person of Jesus. Imagine two followers of Jesus. One is a Jewish-background believer in Jesus living in the modern State of Israel. The other is a Palestinian-background believer in Jesus living in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, or Gaza. How does Jesus speak to each person about their relationship to each other? Does Jesus say the same things about loving one’s neighbor, loving one’s enemy, peace-making, and reconciliation? Or does Jesus say something to the Israeli citizen about nationhood that he does not say to the Palestinian? Does Jesus say things to the Israeli about land-occupation, militarism, rebuilding the physical temple in Jerusalem, restarting animal sacrifices, and so on? Things he would not say to the Palestinian? Might Jesus lead these two people in two different directions?

We say no. If Jesus is the one and only Israelite who circumcised his heart and thus fulfilled the Jewish Sinai covenant, then Jesus is the one and only normative human life. He is the only teacher of ethics because his manner of life alone heals human nature. Dispensationalism is incorrect for weakening the connection between human becoming, ethics, and Jesus.

Moreover, Jesus claimed the whole planet for himself. And Jesus said he will share it with those who share it like him and with him. That means Jesus calls us to adopt his basic posture in the world: “The Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” Jesus called us all to take up the “exile” posture he shared with the Jews of his day. Hence, the Christian community--both Jew and Gentile--were to learn from the Jewish synagogue community to be “exiles in dispersion” and maintain that relational connection. We are all looking “forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God”.

In fact, Jewish - Christian relations should have led to “freedom of religious conscience” in societies much sooner in history. For Jews, the Book of Esther points the way for the Jews in exile among the Gentile empires to maintain their freedom of worship and call for the Gentile empires to grant it to them. For Christians, Paul’s reflection in Romans 9-11 about respecting Judaism and loving their Jewish neighbors should have made Christians align with Jews as sister communities. Church and synagogue could have shared the ethos of religious minorities protecting other religious minorities and calling for tribes, empires, and nation-states to decouple religion from the body politic. Christians should have defended Judaism as such. This vision was practiced in limited ways and times, and it waits to be seen in holy Scripture by every generation, to deploy it.