“Salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22). Few statements of Jesus are more plainly communicated, yet so potentially controversial. Theologians tend to look for radical sayings to dissect and debate, and alleging that salvation comes from the Jews seems about as radical as a text can get.

 

People argue about some of Jesus’ declarations. Take “Blessed are the poor.” Does Jesus mean the literal poor or the poor in spirit? What constitutes poverty? What kind of blessing do the poor receive? Then there is Jesus’ directive to the rich young ruler. “Go sell all that you have. Give to the poor and come follow me.” Was that intended for this one man only, or is it applicable to everyone? Does Jesus really mean people to divest themselves of all possessions, or is he speaking of a mental attitude? Isn’t it better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish?

 

We could go on, but you know the statements of Jesus that generate debate. The arguments might stem from Jesus’ apparent ambiguity, our imperceptivity relative to what Jesus was attempting to communicate, or our seeming reluctance to concur with Jesus. Oddly enough, “Salvation is of the Jews” is not one of those hotly contested maxims. It is sufficiently straightforward to merit little wiggle room, and it is not vague enough to disagree with. Consider textual critics who read anti-Semitism as permeating the New Testament. John 4:22 is absolutely pro-Semitic. In light of Jesus’ Jewish identity and practice, we should not be shocked that Jesus affirms a Jewish source for deliverance.

 

Perhaps not surprisingly, few ancient writers commented on the pro-Jewish mood of John 4:22. That era of church history was noted for its anti-Jewish sentiment. When the ancients did mention it, they found imaginative ways to circumnavigate Jesus’ pro-Jewish attitude. In Letter 23, Augustine read the passage as being related to circumcision and baptism. In his Exposition on Psalm 48, he argued that John 4:22 indicates nothing more than “Christ is of the Jews.” In this same commentary, Augustine argued that ‘true Jews’ are those who have made Christian confession. He, thereby, supplants the Jewish source of salvation that Jesus affirms.

 

Traditional anti-Jewish rhetoric coming from Christian sources may partially explain why theologians, preachers, and exegetes have bypassed this statement of Jesus. Yet in modern times, the traditional tendency of following Augustine is deemed distasteful and patently incorrect. Jesus did not envision Christian supersession of all things Jewish. Instead, he affirmed the absolutely indispensable Jewish source for human deliverance. Max King critiques the countless theories of Christian replacement theology. He affirms the Jewish nature of God’s promises as he counters “the interpretations that turn Israel’s promises into Christian promises” (Old Testament Israel and New Testament Salvation, p.71).

 

 

In the current-day rush by Christian scholars to recognize Jesus’ Jewish heritage without ascribing to him any zealous Jewish nationalism, this affirmation may come across as a little troubling. It almost appears that Jesus is claiming Jewish primacy. We might expect something like this coming from a Pharisee like Saul of Tarsus. But Jesus of Nazareth? Jesus was Jewish, but was he really “that Jewish?”

 

So, we might be left with a dilemma. While much of traditional Christianity has held a certain degree of anti-Judaism, Jesus affirmed a pro-Jewish stance. Today’s scholars recognize Jesus’ Jewishness, yet John 4:22 may seem “too Jewish.” Perhaps the impasse helps explain the dearth of scholarship on this saying.

 

On the surface, it appears to be a throwaway line in the middle of a broader context. Jesus says these apparently innocuous words in a conversation with the Samaritan woman. The Samaritans, as you probably recall, inhabited Palestine alongside Second Temple Jews. Samaritan culture began centuries earlier with the Assyrian invasion of the northern kingdom of Israel. In line with Assyrian imperial policies, some Israelites were exported while people from other parts of the empire were imported. The peoples married and melded their religious practices.

 

By Jesus’ day, the Jewish establishment looked down on the Samaritans. Although they practiced their own form of Torah observance, it did not align with the interpretation coming out of Jerusalem. To the Jewish establishment, Samaritan practice may have looked and felt too “pagan.” Perhaps this attitude was linked to the Samaritan rejection of the Jerusalem temple and power structure, especially regarding the sacred sites. Instead of seeing Jerusalem as the holiest of all places, the Samaritans looked to Mount Gerizim. This place held special significance because it was the site of chosen by God to announce a blessing upon Israel (Deut. 11:29; 27:12; Joshua 8:33).

 

The issue of the proper locale for worship shapes the woman’s question to Jesus in John 4. Sensing that Jesus is a prophet, she inquires of his opinion on the controversy. Jesus announces the irrelevancy of geographical locales as holy sites. No spot is more sacred than any other to God, Jesus says. The ubiquitous God who inhabits all spaces and hearts is not limited to any singular point on the planet.

 

(An aside: Jesus eschewed sacralizing places. Yet people who follow him have a proclivity to investing one day each week at a prescribed place deemed as the most special time and location. In other words, Jesus said neither Jerusalem nor the Mountain. The church ostensibly agreed and said, “Yes. Neither the Mountain nor Jerusalem will do. Come to our facilities on Sunday at ten o’clock. Also, his statement has relevance because of centuries of warfare related to “holy sites.” To Jesus, blood is more sacred than ground.)

 

The raging controversy—in his day and ours—over the ‘proper’ place to hold religious ceremonies might obscure Christ’s central claim that “Salvation is of the Jews.” He is not defending one set of worship practices vis-à-vis another. Additionally, everyone is familiar with Jesus’ judgment on the extortion taking place in the Jerusalem temple. He overturned the tables, called the place a “den of thieves,” and declared the house empty. While it may appear that the heart of the issue in John 4 is the correct place for worshipping God, Jesus transcends the worship wars by offering a thesis seminal to his teaching and work. “Salvation is of the Jews” shaped the entirety of Jesus’ ministry. Max King notes that “all that Jesus ever did and taught was with the view of confirming or making good God’s promises unto the fathers of Israel” (Old Testament Israel and New Testament Salvation, p.1).

 

Following his resurrection, Jesus maintains his Jewish roots, framework, and hope. In Luke 24:44 he affirms, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” He never intended to destroy the Law. Instead, he was grounded in the Torah, Psalms, and Prophets. Jesus identified himself firmly in line with the Hebrew scriptural tradition. His goal, then, was not to replace Judaism with Christianity. Rather, he sought to bring about the consummation of what he understood to be thoroughly grounded with Jewish roots—the kingdom of God.

 

The coming of kingdom of God grows out of the messianic hope promised to King David in 2Samuel 7 and 1Chronicles 17. The kingdom theme unfolds throughout Hebrew prophetic texts such as Isaiah 2, Ezekiel 37, and Zechariah 14. Perhaps the most influential kingdom passage is Daniel 7.

 

Jesus integrated the coming of the kingdom into his ministry to the degree that the coming of the kingdom was the exact goal of his mission. He initiated his teaching program with the proclamation, “The kingdom of God is at hand.” His parables began with the portentous phrase, “The kingdom of heaven is like.” He described himself with the royal designation, “Son of Man.” Many of his contemporaries called him by the kingly title, “Son of David.” He described his message as the “gospel of the kingdom.” The kingdom of God permeates all that Jesus said and did.

 

For Jesus, to speak of the kingdom of God is to speak of the salvation that is of the Jews as promised in the Hebrew Scriptures. ‘Salvation’ and ‘kingdom’ are interrelated events. Daniel 7, for instance, links the deliverance of the saints to the Son of Man taking the throne. “Then to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom…the Ancient of Days came and judgment was made in favor of the saints of the Most High, and the time came for the saints to possess the kingdom” (Daniel 7:14, 22).

 

We find these interconnected themes present in Ezekiel 37. When the graves of the whole house of Israel are opened, all Israel is delivered from the power of sin and death. At that point, “David My servant shall be king over them” (Ezekiel 37:24). This illustrates the deliverance of Israel and God’s kingdom go hand-in-hand. Also relevant to the conversation in John 4 is Ezekiel’s prophecy of God’s eschatological sanctuary and tabernacle set in the midst of the people, not in Jerusalem or on Mt. Gerizim (Ezekiel 37:27-28).

 

Jesus announced that the coming of the kingdom was “at hand.” He believed that the time had come for the arrival God’s promised kingdom. Consequently, the moment had arrived for the deliverance/salvation that was “of the Jews.” However, unlike the expectations of many of Jesus’ contemporaries, Jesus suggested that the coming of the kingdom would not happen all at once (Luke 17:20-21). There would be time from the initial sowing until the harvest (Matthew 13:24-30).  The kingdom would arrive in stages, beginning with the ministry of John. It would include the preaching of the kingdom in the cities of Israel (Matthew 10:23), the crucifixion (Matthew 16:21-28), and the Great Commission amongst the nations that would culminate in the end of the age (Matthew 28:18-20).

 

In the mode of the Jewish prophet Jeremiah, Jesus envisioned that the consummation of God’s eschatological deliverance and the full advent of the kingdom promised in the Law and Prophets would become a reality by the time of the catastrophic fall of Jerusalem that would occur in his generation. “These are the days of vengeance in which all things written in the Law and Prophets will be fulfilled” (Luke 21:22). Like Jeremiah, Jesus recognized that the fall of Jerusalem would not spell an end of Judaism. Instead, it marked the beginning of the promised “age to come” that was thoroughly “of the Jews.”

 

(Another aside. I believe that it is imperative to observe that Jesus did not celebrate the impending destruction of Jerusalem. Like Jeremiah six hundred years earlier, Jesus wept over the city. He lamented the catastrophic fate of nursing mothers and children. In the Olivet Discourse, he warned people to flee to the mountains as they saw the armies descending upon the city. He advised them not to hope for a Maccabean miracle; instead, they should leave quickly. Jesus mourned as he contemplated the fate of those whom he sought to gather under his mother hen wings. To rejoice in the destruction of the city misses the human cost involved.)

 

In forecasting the kingdom of God’s arrival in the lifetime of his generation, Jesus did not envision one eschatological deliverance for Jews and a different one for Gentiles. He did not imagine God making one set of promises for Jews and another for Greeks. There was never one covenant for Israel and one for everybody else. Jesus did not promise to deliver the church and then offer a sonderweg for Jews. For Jesus, God promised a singular deliverance that would include Jews and Gentiles. This deliverance would culminate when the deliverer would come out of Zion (Romans 11:26). This helps clarify John 4:22, which reads: “The salvation [deliverance] if from [out of] the Jews.”

 

After nearly 2000 years of Christian thought, ‘salvation’ tends to connote post-mortem paradise. In most Christian theology, one who is “saved” is one who goes to heaven after death. However, Jesus did not approach ‘salvation’ with centuries of Christian theology behind him. As a Second Temple Jew, Jesus would have understood ‘salvation’ in terms of ‘deliverance.’ To be delivered from a foe or a situation would have constituted salvation. For example, see Deuteronomy 33:29, Judges 2:16, Psalm 18:3. This does not inherently mean “going to heaven” after death.

Additionally, Jesus employs the definite article when referring to “salvation/deliverance.” He says speaks of “the deliverance.” For him there is one salvation, one deliverance. The specific saving act of God refers to the ultimate eschatological deliverance foretold in the Law, Psalms, and Prophets. This eschatological deliverance is the “Adamic” deliverance designed to deliver humanity from the world of the First Adam.

 

The world personified by Adam was a world marked by the curse of sin and its death. “To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, “You must not eat of it,” ‘Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return” (Genesis 3:17-19).

 

Paul suggests that the first Adamic world-order was subjected to futility by God (Romans 8:20; the word is “vanity” in the King James). Humanity in this world could not actualize the promise of being fully-fashioned in the divine image because this world-order was specifically God-designed for this purpose of confining all—Jews and Gentiles—under sin (Romans 3:9; Galatians 3:22). To reach its liberated status humanity needed deliverance (salvation) from that Adamic world-order. The entire order—the whole Adamic world—marked by death would have to be done away with in due time, and a new creation would be born. Subsequently, “the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption” (Romans 8:21).

 

The apostle Paul contrasts two Adamic worlds in Romans 5:12-21. The first was identified with sin, death, judgment, and condemnation that affected all. “[B]y the one man’s offense many died” (Rom. 5:15). The new Adamic world is characterized by the grace of God, the free gift, justification, the gift of righteousness, and eternal life. Consequently, the status of humanity was governed by its world-order, and as Romans 5:13-14 indicates the Law was unable to bring about a change in world-orders. The Law was powerless to create a new heaven and new earth, yet as we will see below it performed an indispensable function in the work of God to produce the new Adamic world-order.

 

God’s promise to Abraham to bless all families of the earth through Abraham (Genesis 12:3) would culminate in the deliverance of humanity from the Adamic world. The promise to bless the world through Abraham amounts to the new creation, the new world-order, the birth of a new heaven and earth through the seed of the Last Adam (Galatians 3:14-18, 29).

 

Another way to communicate the coming of the new world is through Jesus’ initial announcement, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” He insists that God’s eschatological program had commenced and would come in its fullness within a relatively short time. As noted above, Jesus declares a singular kingdom—just one ultimate inclusive kingdom in which those from the east and west would sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Matthew 8). God would deliver all in the old order into the new so that in “the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephesians 1:10).

 

Like the prophets before him, Paul (in 1Corinthians 15) links deliverance and the kingdom. Drawing from Ezekiel, he describes the Adamic deliverance in terms of resurrection. “For in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive” (1Corinthians 15:22). The new Adamic world-order would be characterized by the absence of sin-related death as the corruptible puts on incorruption and the mortal puts on immortality. This transformation would mark the fulfillment of the Hebrew prophetic promise, “Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?” (1Corinthians 15:53-55; Isaiah 25:8; Hosea 13:14).

 

Similar to Romans 5, Paul argues that the Adamic dilemma would be resolved by God through Christ. The death of the one man would be resolved in the life of the other. At the consummation of the resurrection, Adamic death itself would be swallowed up (in accordance with Isaiah 25 and Hosea 13). This results in life to all with God being “all in all.”

 

Jesus holds to his belief that the singular eschatological deliverance promised by God is Jewish in origin. The deliverance would involve not simply one’s supposed post-death destiny. Instead, it entailed the arrival of the kingdom of God and the onset of the “age to come.”

 

Paul agrees. He shapes the issues in terms of Adamic world-transformation. The world personified by the first Adam was perfectly fit for its God-intended purpose. Yet, that world was not the ultimate aim of God. Paul argues that God through Christ had affected the transformation of the worlds. This means that Christ is the Last Adam, and he personifies this New Heaven and Earth indwelt by righteousness.

 

Jesus foresaw the arrival of the kingdom in terms of a process that would culminate within his generation. Paul, who worked after Jesus but still in that generation, anticipated the full arrival of the kingdom and the ultimate Adamic deliverance in his near future (for example, see Romans 13:11-14). Hence, he advised his audience to put on the new Adamic identity “which was created according to God, in righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24).

 

Just as ethnicity did not determine one’s status in the old Adamic world, ethnicity would not determine one’s status in the new Adamic world (Galatians 3:28). One could retain ethnic identity—whether Jew or Greek. “For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!” (Galatians 6:15). Paul, for instance, never renounced his Jewish identity; to do so would have been unthinkable (Romans 11:1-2). Instead, Paul preached the arrival of God’s promised eschatological deliverance of “all things” in anticipation of the new Adamic world-order that would result in the kingdom of God (Colossians 1:20). Both Jesus and Paul saw this Adamic transformation occurring by the work of God through Jesus. “He has delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13). God alone had the power and prerogative to bring about this new world, and this God-fashioned and God-indwelt world determines the status and identity of all its residents.

 

 

URL: http://www.presence.tv/cms/cov-john422.php

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