Salvation is of the Jews
Is Christ Jewish? Does God’s plan for the future include the Jewish people? Does Christ have a present interest in His chosen people, or has He moved on to other projects?
Acts 1:8 tells us that the church’s mission effort began in Jerusalem:“But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” Paul told the Romans, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16). Jesus told His disciples, “But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 10:6). Jesus identified Himself with the Jewish people when he told the Samaritan woman, “Salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22).
Peter was a Jew. Paul was a Jew. James was a Jew. Mark was a Jew. Matthew was a Jew. Even after Paul said, “I will go unto the Gentiles,” he still visited the synagogue first in every city he visited. Peter and Paul represented an authentic Christ in the first century. Christ remains today where He has always been: in His Jewish context. When we read “to the Jew first,” what does “first” mean? Are the Jews first in priority, or merely first in order? In Matthew 6:33 Christ commands us, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God.” Twelve times in Acts we read that Paul went to the Jew first. In every city he visited, his first stop was the synagogue. This was after the crucifixion, the stoning of Stephen, after the seeming rejection of the Jewish people.1
Four of these visits were after Paul said, “I will go unto the Gentiles” in the city of Corinth. Thus Paul continued to emphasize taking the gospel to the Jewish people first.
Why did God choose the Jewish people in the first place? We know the answer from Deuteronomy 7:6–8.
For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth. The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people: But because the Lord loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
The basis of God’s covenant with the Jewish people is not their own merit. God says it is “because the Lord loved you.” God’s love is unchanging. Paul asks the rhetorical question in Romans 11: “Hath God cast away his people?” He answers with the emphatic negation, “God forbid.”
When God called Abraham, He promised, “I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). This blessing stretches beyond Israel’s history into distant future. “God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew” (Rom. 11:2). Paul’s conviction was rooted in God’s promise to Abraham. It was confirmed by His laws to Moses and emphasized in God’s covenant with David, who wrote, “For the Lord will not cast off his people, neither will he forsake his inheritance” (Ps. 94:14). Abraham’s God is our God too. God’s covenant with Abraham was a real, literal, and present blessing—a blessing that extends to the ages.
When Abraham’s faith was tested on Mount Moriah where he was to offer his son as a burnt offering to the Lord, Isaac asked his father, “Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” The Lamb was mentioned in the Scriptures from time to time. He was longed for by David. But the question remained, “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” For twenty centuries Isaac’s question lingered, unanswered. John the Baptist answered it when he pointed to Christ and declared, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).
In Revelation 13:8 Christ is called “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” This was His purpose. In His flesh, as a boy, as a teenager, as a man, Christ knew His destiny. He was about His Father’s business. Christ knew the death that awaited Him. As Isaiah had described the suffering Messiah in Isaiah 53, he told of the mission of Christ in Isaiah 61. Jesus Christ, the Messiah, must be understood in his Jewish context. He kept Passover with His family and yearly partook of the Passover lamb. He stood in His home synagogue in Nazareth and read from Isaiah 61, proclaiming himself to be the Messiah (Luke 4:21).
In the presence of the ruling religious authorities “Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. Then took they up stones to cast at him” (John 8:58, 59a). “I am.” There was no mistake about what Jesus was claiming. Christ was claiming to be the friend of Abraham, the One who spoke to Moses out of the burning bush, the One who revealed Himself on Mount Sinai. Jesus was telling the Jewish leaders that He was the Jewish Messiah. He had come to the Jewish nation to do a Jewish work in a Jewish way, according to the Jewish Scriptures.
Throughout the New Testament, the gospel is intensely Jewish. Consider how much of the New Testament applies primarily to the Jewish people. Matthew was written to a Jewish audience to prove that Jesus was the King of the Jews. Hebrews was written to explain to Jewish believers how Christ fulfilled every detail of the Old Testament sacrificial system and now completed the need for animal sacrifice, urging them as believers to place their confidence fully in the Lamb of God. Paul ties the New Testament to the Old Testament with his repeated, “according to the scriptures,” as in 1 Corinthians 15:3, 4: “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.”
Christ told the woman at the well, “Salvation is of the Jews.” The Jewish people brought us our Bible and our Savior. Now the question remains, what have we to give the Jewish people today? What attitude should we, as a “wild olive tree,” grafted into the vine, have toward the natural branches? An example is given in Luke 7:2–5, in the story of the centurion’s servant.
And a certain centurion’s servant, who was dear unto him, was sick, and ready to die. And when he heard of Jesus, he sent unto him the elders of the Jews, beseeching him that he would come and heal his servant. And when they came to Jesus, they besought him instantly, saying, That he was worthy for whom he should do this: For he loveth our nation, and he hath built us a synagogue.
He was kind to the Jewish people, and they loved him for it. He outshined the Jewish people around him. In respect, in alms giving, in reputation, and above all in faith he lived an exemplary life. Christ praised his faith as a lesson to the Jews. We should take the lesson from this centurion.
This is exactly what Paul commands us to do in Romans 11:11: “I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy.”
We have what our Jewish friends lack: assurance of forgiveness, a cleansed conscience, a more sure word of prophecy, an everlasting covenant, a reward that fadeth not away, a High Priest that ascended into the heavens ever to make intercession for us. That confidence, holiness, faith, and joy should exude from our lives to provoke the Jewish people we know to jealousy. This is the living that will give life to our obedience to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee” (Ps. 122:6).
God does not demand that you become a Jew. But to know Him, you must know Him as a Jew, in His Jewish context. He is the Lamb of the Scripture. He is Jehovah. His second coming will be as the Lion of the tribe of Judah. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His Kingdom there shall be no end. He will rule from a Jewish throne in Jerusalem, and we will reign with Him in a Jewish Millennium. At any moment He will come for us, and after the Great Tribulation of the Jews, they will cry in faith “Hosanna” on the day John describes in Revelation 1:7: “Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.”
He is coming one day in power and great glory as the King of kings and Lord of lords, the Lion of the tribe of Judah. As the angel told Mary, “And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end” (Luke 1:33). Salvation is of the Jews, and until that day, our task is to lovingly take it back to them.
At the time of original publication, John Huffman was the pastor of Heritage Baptist Church in Florissant, Missouri.
(Originally published in FrontLine • March/April 2010. Click here to subscribe to the magazine.)
- Instances of Paul going to the Jewish people first in the book of Acts: Damascus (9:22), Jerusalem (9:28), Salamis (13:5), Antioch (13:14), Iconium (14:1), Thessalonica (17:1), Athens (17:15–17), Corinth (18:1–4), Ephesus (19:8), Asia (19:10), Miletus (20:21), and Rome (28:23, 24). [↩]