To Hate the Jews Is to Hate Jesus
On April 27th, 2019, in an extreme act of hate and malice, a synagogue in San Diego was attacked by a gunman, leaving one dead and three more injured. The gunman (who will not be named) released a manifesto prior to the act claiming, among other things, his Christianity as a motivation for the shooting.
To be clear, any act of terrorism, for any reason, is egregious and should be condemned. We are just coming out of the aftermath of two shocking acts of terror, one in New Zealand against worshiping Muslims that took the lives of 50 people and one against worshipping Christians in Sri Lanka that killed 253. What makes the San Diego shooting different is the “Christian” motivation, demonstrating that forms of anti-semitism have been both ignored and bolstered in the Christian church for too long.
This may not come off as a surprise to anyone, but Jesus was a Jew. He was born and raised a Jew, and is the Savior of the Jew first and then the Gentile (Romans 1:16). The Christian faith was birthed out of Jewish revival and the original Christian church was Jewish.
To accomplish this task, the Lord chose a family that would carry the seed of the Savior as foretold in Genesis 3:15. The Old Testament, the front two-thirds of the Christian Scriptures, is the story of the people of God (the Jews) and is the basis for the New Testament and the creation of the church.
In Matthew 5, we find Jesus giving His sermon on the Mount, the summation of all His teachings in one location. In verse 17, Jesus clarifies that He did not come to create a new gospel, but rather, to fulfill the story of the Jews and their law. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” It seems that many overlook this passage, and since the beginning of the church have tried to preach the opposite, that Jesus replaced the law and prophets and the Jews with them.
This false doctrine is called supersessionism or replacement theology and states that instead of the continuation of the story of God, the New Testament replaces the Jews with a new chosen people that supersedes the original plans and people of God. There are many reasons that churches promote this doctrine.
First and foremost, pastors are ignorant of the total story of God and preach mainly out of the New Testament. Several months ago, I was visiting a new, up-and-coming church where the pastor is younger and the congregation follows suit. They are a lively bunch dedicated to community and intentionality. However, as I sat in my seat during the service, the pastor made a comment that could not leave my mind. He stated as an example to his message that, “the story of the Jews, in fact, the whole Old Testament is an example of how not to follow God!” He went on emphatically and charismatically finished his message. Although the crowd seemed energetic and involved, I never made it to the end.
That statement is one of many that has crept through the church today; subtle messages about the greatness of Christianity at the expense of the fathers of our faith. This is a disease that must be stopped in the church and would quickly be eradicated with a true study of Scripture.
Not only did Jesus not replace the Jews, but He also has a plan for their future, alongside that of the church. If God were to change His covenant to the nation of Israel, then what is to say that the covenant, through Christ, can be known with assurance? Paul speaks to this in Romans 11:11-24, showing that if the promise of the root cannot be counted on, then the branches have no hope.
When replacement theology is proffered as truth, it undermines the faithfulness of God and the teachings of Scripture. Paul makes it abundantly clear in his letter to the Romans that Israel was not replaced or forgotten, rather God is still using them and chasing them down as he does with his Gentile children.
God originally chose the Jews to bring salvation to the Gentiles, and Paul explains, that it is now the task of the Gentile to reach out to the Jew. There is only one path of Salvation, Jesus Christ, and knowing that the Messiah is the fullness of Jewish scripture, it is our duty to evangelize, not terrorize, as the San Diego gunman did.
When the church buys into replacement theology it has to question the assurance of their faith in Christ. For if God will forget one child, He will surely forget the other. Galatians 3:28 says, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Here we understand that we are all equal in the eyes of God. Being a Jew, Gentile, slave, free, male, or female does not make God love us any more or less. God’s faithfulness will remain the same, as Hebrews 13:8 reminds us, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
When we see the promotion of anti-semitic doctrine in the church aimed at tearing down or hurting others, it’s usually fueled with blatant hate by purposefully changing the meaning of Scripture. The largest portion of Scripture that the gunman twisted is John 8:42-44. Jesus, speaking at the temple with religious leaders and those attending, tells the leaders (translated in many translations as Jews), “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”
The gunman used this passage to call all Jews sons of Satan, which is not what the text says. When finding the meaning of a text, one must look at the context. This passage, John 8, demonstrates how the fruit of a person’s life shows their root.
Jesus, sitting in the synagogue, declares that He is the son of God. Knowing that the leaders in the room wanted to kill him, he asks them who their father is. They state that their father is Abraham, but Jesus, knowing their hearts, states that Abraham would not be planning to kill an innocent man, only Satan would (8:39-41). Therefore, in a statement meant to reveal their true intentions, Jesus shows their actions as satanic, not Godly (also explained in Ephesians 2). Today, by this same standard, Jesus would have declared the gunman not to be a son of God, but a son of Satan.
Let me be clear, to hate the Jew is to hate Jesus. This may seem strong, but it is the truth. Jesus, speaking to Nicodemus, warned that: “For everyone who does evil hates the light and avoids it, so that his deeds may not be exposed.” This also is the case for the gunman in San-Diego.
Though claiming to be a Christian, his actions proved otherwise. Not only did he promote a false, hateful reading of Scripture, he also wanted this act of terror to motivate others to kill Jews. This is not new; it is satanic and evil. The Christian church was inspired by Judaism, and yet in our history, whenever the Jews face oppression, Christians have failed to stand up and speak out.
The quickest justification that must be stopped is the argument that because Jews in the first century killed Jesus, all Jews, throughout all time, should be blamed. This is false! Jesus was not unwittingly killed by the Jews, nor by the Roman Gentiles. Rather, Jesus gave up his life as a sacrifice for the sins of his people. It is immoral to attribute the actions of those in the past with an entire people-group today; to promote this lie is to hurt the gospel, and justify apathy toward the strife of the Jew.
Holocaust survivor, Nobel laureate, and philosopher Elie Wiesel warned the world in an address to the White House in 1999 stating: “Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor — never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees — not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity, we betray our own. Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment.” Wiesel saw the horrors of the Holocaust and saw many with the potential to help those facing evil do nothing. We must learn from the past.
Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein came face to face with the gunman on April 27th and consequently suffered bullet wounds to his hands, losing his right index finger. He watched a good friend, Lori Gilbert-Kaye, get murdered in front of him. Running to save the children sheltering in fear, the Rabbi took the congregation outside and finished his sermon. He reflected on the past pain of the Holocaust and how we cannot allow that same prejudice, hate, and violence to repeat itself today. As Christians, we must stand up and fight the disease of anti-semitism in the church with no more indifference.