Jesus is More Jewish Than You Think

I remember hearing this old story about a church that had a mural painted of Jesus. The paint started chipping and as they went back, they found another layer of paint underneath it, and the paint was darker. When they started investigating and getting deeper and deeper into the walls of the church, they found another layer of paint, another layer of paint, another layer of paint. They realized that the church that had been there for hundreds of years had always renovated and updated this painting, but what they realized was every generation seemed to paint Jesus paler and paler. As they got back to the roots, the first painting, it was a much darker man. I think sometimes we forget that Jesus was Jewish. Some people don’t know that, but even the ones that do, we often don’t realize the implications of this.

I would say it this way. Jesus is more Jewish than you think he is. Jesus remained an observant Jewish man his entire life. We often think of Jesus as sinless, but that also means that he was brought up to observe the Jewish law and keep it religiously. He made pilgrimages to Jerusalem. He was faithful in keeping the Jewish festivals that were listed in the Old Testament. He even celebrated things like Hanukkah. In John 10:22, it says, he came to the Feast of Dedication at Jerusalem. The reason I’m telling you this is because if we misunderstand or minimize the Jewishness of Jesus, we undercut the whole biblical story where at the beginning God chooses Israel and then he sends a Jewish Messiah to save his people. Jesus even said himself, I came for the sheep of Israel. And now today we need to realize as newcomers, as Gentiles being a part of this rich history, that we are reading a Jewish book. We’ve been saved by a Jewish Lord, and one day we will celebrate in new Jerusalem.