Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

Jesus’ appearance in Israel marks the decisive crisis in its history. Nothing is yet final. There is still, for Jesus, a last hope that his audience will grasp the “signs of the times” and understand their own situation (Luke 12:54-57). That is why his judgment sayings have such power. That is why he speaks so sharply. Even if Jesus in the end formulated the judgment on Israel as a settled fact, his discourse was still “conditioned,” still a warning, still the unremitting attempt to achieve repentance.

The history of the subsequent few decades validated Jesus’ warnings. Whole sections of the people did not take his call to repentance and nonviolence seriously. The Zealots were able to set loose a war against Rome that took an immense number of victims and at the end of which the city of Jerusalem and the temple were a field of ruins. Previously the different Jewish groups had fought among themselves within the city itself and killed one another off.

We simply have to read these horrible eruptions of violence, which Josephus tells about in his Jewish War, in light of Jesus’ judgment sayings. His warnings were not something we can simply erase from his preaching. Jesus was realistic to the utmost, and he wanted to preserve Israel from the catastrophe into which it was maneuvering itself. When he speaks of the threatening judgment he is not merely referring to the judgment of the world at the end of time. He always means also the judgment that is already taking place in history and is caused by unbelief itself. The coming judgment about which Jesus speaks extends just as much into the present as the coming reign of God. Here too the axiom of “already and not yet” applies. Jesus’ judgment sayings are absolutely intended to provoke and shock. That is how they hope to bring people to repentance and change the course of history.

Is it allowable for Jesus to provoke, to drive fear into people? I say yes. He was allowed to do it just as were all Israel’s prophets, because the warning of judgment is always aimed to bring it about that the poor and the oppressed, who have no one to stand with and for them, should be helped now, that society’s structures of injustice should be changed now, that Israel should now struggle for peace and reconciliation.

The crisis in society by which it is bringing itself down cried out to heaven at that time just as it cries to heaven today. Jesus saw that misery clearly. He had the oppression and rape of the poor before his eyes. Should he have remained silent? Should he have said, “Oh well, it isn’t so bad”? In light of the catastrophe toward which Israel was plummeting, which he clearly saw coming, should he have simply spoken of divine mercy that covers everything? A Jesus without a preaching of judgment, one who never shook things up, never shocked, never warned, never spoke of consequences would, for me, be absolutely unworthy of belief.

Judgment as Salvation

As regards the theme of “judgment,” today so well suppressed and rendered toothless, we should also consider, however, that at some point an hour must come when history’s lies and manipulations, meannesses and hidden acts of violence will all be revealed—the endless, twisted, matted tangle of human guilt and human innocence. A world that would not be judged in this sense would be a world without hope, without purpose, and without dignity. A world history in which the murderers triumph over their innocent victims, in which the ruthless are justified and the betrayed remain so forever would be absurd in the extreme.

Human courts are helpless in face of the immeasurable potential for injustice in the world; they are even involved in the injustice themselves. Ultimately, it is only God who can clarify guilt and responsibility. But judgment does not mean that in the end God will require satisfaction, that he punishes, that he demands reparation, but first and foremost that he makes history clear—or, to put it in better words, that in light of the absolute truth that God essentially is, history will reveal its own meaning. The masks will fall; the veils will be torn away; the self-deceptions will be removed. In this sense we can positively hope for judgment, judgment even for oneself and one’s own life with all its confusions. Clarity in light of God’s truth is salvation—and it may be precisely in such clarification that God’s mercy is revealed.

There is a short text in the book of Hosea that introduces a long, wrathful discourse against Israel in which the voice of God alternates with the author’s commentary. That discourse begins with chapter 4 and extends to the end of chapter 11. The introductory text reads: