Was Jesus anti-semitic?

A theological faq from the oracles of Revelation 2–3 (Pt. 4)

Audio Version!

I’m just back from traveling in Canada with friends the past week or so (Montreal and Quebec City). During this time, Hurricane Helene reeked destruction in the South, especially in areas I visited many times as I grew up—Boone, Blowing Rock, Cherokee, Bryson City, and other towns in Western North Carolina. The devastation is beyond my imagination. It appears another hurricane is headed to Florida again. And … today is October 7 and a remembrance of the events of just one year ago in Israel (a mere months after I was there).

Lord, give your mercy to all. Give strength to all who are providing assistance in the aftermath of Helene. Be with the families of those who have lost loved ones here in the US, in the Middle East, Ukraine, Russia and elsewhere. Help us all to look to you for our hope and joy in the midst of our earthly sorrows. Come Lord Jesus!

Psalm 23 came to my mind. Here is my translation:

Yahweh is my shepherd. I lack nothing. He lets me lie down in grassy meadows. He leads me to quiet waters. He revives my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Even when I walk through the valley of deep darkness, I will not fear evil, because You are with me, Your rod and your staff—they comfort me. You set a table before me in front of those who are hostile to me. You anoint my head with oil, my cup is overflowing. Surely goodness and lovingkindness will pursue me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of Yahweh forever.

We are down to the final three questions in this FAQ series. I am sure as we make our way through the rest of Revelation, there will be many more, but hopefully addressing these will make our task easier (not easy!).

Here are the final three questions:

• What is God’s wrath on sin? 

• How is the (seeming) triumphalistic language of the Kingdom an expression of God’s love?

• Why is Revelation so hard on the Jews?

In this post I address the final two.

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Why does Revelation seem so hard on the Jews?

What Jesus said and why

In the oracles, Jesus says the following to the angel of the church of Smyrna:

I know your tribulation and poverty (but you are rich), and [I know] the blasphemy from those who say they are Jews and are not, but a synagogue of the Satan (Revelation 2:9).

And to the angel of the church of Philadelphia:

Look, I am handing over those from the synagogue of Satan who say they are Jews and are not but they are lying—look, I will make them to come and to bow before your feet and to know that I love you (Revelation 3:9).

In these oracles, Jesus did call out those Jews who were deriding and persecuting the churches.  

He did seem hard on them—and these days scholars and many others bandy about accusations of anti-semitism for the New Testament, Revelation included (though all of the NT authors were Jews but Luke). 

In this case Jesus the Jew would be called antisemitic!

But we must realize that the Jews were not alone.

Jesus’s words in the oracles were not harder on one group than any other including the Jews. 

Jesus was (and is) an equal opportunity truth-teller. 

He spoke the truth about the religious leaders while he was here on this earth—and he was put to death for it. 

In the oracles, besides the Jews, he spoke the truth about the governing authorities: in the oracle to Pergamum, he referred to the killing of Antipas “where the throne of Satan dwells” likely the provincial governor. 

He spoke the hardest truths to the churches themselves: you’ve left your first love … you allow Balaam or the Nicolaitans or Jezebel … you are tepid.

Were Jesus’s words to those Jews in Smyrna and Philadelphia hard? Yes, but no harder than any other. 

When Jesus claimed that they were not Jews at all, he spoke the truth about their spiritual condition—not just their rejection of him as Messiah but their persecution of his true followers.

By calling them “the synagogue of Satan” he placed them right alongside all others who sought the destruction of the saints.

Repentance and conversion can never come without recognizing our human sinful condition.

Jesus spoke hard words to all out of love for all of their souls.

Leaving them to their lies would only lead to more lies—and more violence.

So to ask why Jesus was so hard on the Jews should be rephrased to why was Jesus so hard on everybody!

The answer rephrased: true love is not love without truth. 

As long as we are deceiving ourselves (whoever we are, be it Jew, Gentile, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim or any other group), Jesus cuts through our lies—our self-reliance, our prejudices, our justifications for so many thoughts and actions, even our propensity to retaliation and violence—to tell us the truth about ourselves as well as his actions to redeem and rescue us from the piled up falsehoods and the incessant blame we place on others to cover up our own sin.

What Jesus did not say

But I want to expand this discussion by considering what Jesus did not say to the churches about the Jews or any other group.

Despite persecution from Jews or Gentiles, Jesus never told the churches (nor even suggested) that they respond in kind.

Their only response was to trust in Jesus and to take on the derision and persecution from others just as he did.

This observation leads to another one.

If the Jews and Gentiles saw the Christians as some sort of rival to be competed with and to conquer, either in the name of political power or religion, Jesus’s response was “let them.” 

The church was called only to be faithful and persevering and loving to one another and to the world. 

The world was not their rival but the object of God’s loving action through Jesus (the same can be said about the “heretics” in the churches—there was no call to throw them out but to allow Jesus himself to judge).

Judgment would come in due time, but the church was to have no part in meting out judgment. 

That was in the hands of God—I’ll discuss the wrath of God in my next post.

Jesus’s work on the cross—his taking on the sins of the world and the defeat of death and Satan—effected a sea-change in the way his followers viewed and responded to the world. 

Those transformed by the love of God in Christ: 

—spurned the eye-for-an-eye mentality to a turn-the-other-cheek mentality. 

—went from revenge and retaliation to forgiveness. 

—realized that all people were created in the image of God, that all were broken by sin, most of all themselves (Paul: I am the greatest of sinners), and that Jesus called us to love and forgiveness and reconciliation.

My prayer is that Jesus would be as hard on me as he needs to be to form me into his image.

(cont.)

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Triumphalism?

This answer about the Jews and other groups goes a ways in responding to the other question, How is the (seeming) triumphalistic language of the Kingdom an expression of God’s love?

The verse quoted above about those from the synagogue coming and bowing and knowing that I love you can come across as haughty and triumphal in tone—something it is not. 

Instead, Jesus was simply restating the very thing he said to the disciples: the first will be last and the last will be first. 

The poor and persecuted churches at Smyrna and Philadelphia were promised a reversal in their fortunes, not as a result of their own efforts or retaliation, but because of Jesus.

Jesus bore suffering and death at the hands of others and God exalted him in the resurrection.

For the followers of Jesus, this very thing is our hope. Whatever persecution or suffering we take on (even to death), God will exalt us—not to gloat over our enemies, but to praise God. 

And our enemies? They will see God’s salvation and his love in us and through us.

The triumph in Revelation is the triumph of God over evil, not by participation in the evil, but overcoming evil with good, epitomized and made possible by Jesus’s “witness” on the cross, as well as the prayers of the saints and the sovereign hand of God, who knows all and works his will through and despite the free acts of humans (I’ll have more to say on this topic as we go through the rest of Revelation).

On this day of remembrance of the violence in Israel of a year ago and since, and of the suffering around us, the goodness of God and his sovereignty is our foundation for trust (with no fear) that “for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose, he is working all things for good”—most notably conforming us to the image of his Son (Romans 8:28-29).

Thanks for reading.