Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

So Jesus’ message is thoroughly good news, but from the very beginning it contains within itself a radical “for others,” “for Israel,” “for the world.” This “for” is inextricably bound up with the message itself. If one were to take it away, the message would be an empty husk.

What happens when such a message encounters indifference, resistance, even the will to destroy? Then it still remains good news, but at the same time the giving-oneself-for-others that is inherent in the message from the beginning emerges more clearly and sharply, even harshly.

The New Situation

We have to consider the whole matter still more radically. It is false, to begin with, to reduce Jesus’ preaching of the reign of God to a timeless message about the timeless essence of God. That is as unbiblical as anything can be,⁸ for the nearness of the reign of God is not something timeless, as far as Jesus is concerned. The reign of God is not something to be had always and everywhere. It has its hour. For him it is unique, self-contained, to be grasped now, not something that can be repeated at will, an eschatological offer from God. In that, it resembles John’s baptism, which also had its unrepeatable hour. Jesus could build on the movement the Baptizer had begun. Without his call for repentance the good news would not have been possible. Like John’s baptism, Jesus’ preaching is a once-and-for-all address by God to Israel. The salvation offered by Jesus must therefore not be detached from its historical situation.

If Jesus encountered more indecision than faith in Galilee, and if now in Jerusalem Israel’s representatives rejected him—indeed, made sure that he would be killed—then Israel was rejecting the reign of God. But if Israel refused to accept the reign of God it abandoned the whole meaning of its existence, squandered salvation for itself and the nations, and made God’s action in choosing Israel absurd. That is the only way to explain the terrible seriousness of the judgment sayings Jesus spoke over Israel toward the end of his public activity. He must have reckoned with the definitive refusal of the people of God when, for example, he said:

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you, desolate. (Matt 23:37-38)

“Your house” is the temple. The “your” only sharpens the point of the judgment saying. It is no longer the common sanctuary, the holy house for all Israelites, but “your house.” It is abandoned to Israel; that is, it is abandoned by God.⁹ At the hour when God’s eschatological messenger was done away with there had to arise a situation in which nothing was any longer as it had been at the beginning of Jesus’ appearance in Galilee—a situation in which Jesus’ proclamation, “the reign of God has come near,” could never again be simply repeated. Because in that case grace itself would have been rejected.¹⁰ Indeed, we have to phrase it even more sharply: not only would grace have been rejected, but in the very moment in which God gives himself totally to his people Israel in Jesus, when, so to speak, he shows his innermost self and does his utmost—in that very moment the highest religious authorities of that very people he had cared for over the centuries and struggled for since Abraham reject him.

Therefore in this moment Jesus and Israel were faced with an entirely new situation, and that new situation demanded a new interpretation. To argue that Jesus never spoke before about his blood, about substitution and atonement, is not to the point. It assumes that the existence of individuals and of nations is carried on outside history. But the new interpretation Jesus gives in this very moment when the people of God is at the point of squandering its election for the sake of the world does not happen just anywhere and at any time. It happens at the Passover meal, at one of the holiest hours of the Jewish year. Jesus interprets his death as a final and definitive saving decree of God. Israel’s guilt, concentrated in Jesus’ death, is thus answered by God: he does not withdraw election from his people but instead truly allows that people to live, even though it has forfeited its life. That is precisely what the Bible means by “atonement.”¹¹

In this interpretation Jesus makes use of Scripture in masterful fashion. He is familiar, of course, with the texts about the Sinai covenant, sealed with atoning blood;¹² he knows the texts about the new (= renewed) covenant that sets aside Israel’s sins after it has broken the Sinai covenant;¹³ he knows above all the texts about the Suffering Servant who gives his life and takes the guilt of the many on himself.¹⁴ The Servant, of course, is Israel,¹⁵ but Jesus can see himself as the embodiment of the true Israel.