WAS JESUS REALLY SENT TO THE WHOLE WORLD?

 

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WAS JESUS REALLY SENT TO THE WHOLE WORLD?

Was Jesus sent for mankind or was he sent only to the Israelites?

On the one hand, we have unequivocal statements by Jesus where HE STATES that he was only sent to save the Israelites:

“I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel” [Matthew 15:24].

On the other hand, we have statements ABOUT him saying that he was sent to save the entire world:

“The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” [John 1:29].

Christians try to make sense of this by saying that Jesus was initially sent to the Israelites and then subsequently to the Gentiles, and that ultimately there is no longer any distinction for either in belief or practice. This is very much Paul’s theology:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. [Romans 1:16]

Keep in mind that many of the books of the New Testament were authored long after Paul, and so the authors of these books could very well have been influenced by Pauline Christianity when they were interpreting and recording the life and teachings of Jesus. Recall that we’ve already seen signs of bias towards Paul when it came to canonising the New Testament, as he dominates its pages with almost half of the 27 New Testament books attributed to him.

We can shed some light on the question of the true target audience of Jesus by looking at those who were closest to him. Their understanding of his message is based on decades of living and speaking with Jesus, and not unverifiable mystical experiences on the road to Damascus. We can look at their handling of the Jerusalem Council incident to get an insight into the mission of Jesus. Recall that there was initially a lot of disagreement among the apostles and elders as to how to deal with the sudden influx of Gentiles, specifically on the question of whether they must follow the Law. We saw that in coming to a decision, there was no reference to any of the teachings of Jesus. Why didn't Jesus leave behind some instructions for how to deal with Gentiles?

Apparently, the teachings of Jesus had nothing to say on this matter at all. In addition, if Gentiles originally were the target audience of Jesus and part of his mission all along, then, given the critical importance the Law had played in the lives of Jews since the time of Moses, surely the first question the apostles and elders would have asked Jesus is, “when we eventually come to evangelise to the Gentiles, what is their status with respect to the Law?”

This is not what we find though; they had to convene a council in order to settle this question. This indicates that the sudden influx of Gentiles into the religion was an unplanned and unexpected turn of events and not something that Jesus had prepared them for, hence the friction that was happening and the disagreement over how to deal with them.

The answer to whom Jesus was sent to may just be the simplest one. Why did Jesus preach a message of total obedience to the Law? He preached a Law-centric message precisely because he was sent by God to the people of the Law, the Israelites. This is the view taken by many historians and theologians who believe that the historical Jesus saw himself as a Prophet of God sent exclusively to the Israelites. Professor Stanley E. Porter, a specialist in New Testament studies, states that Jesus

“looked to the house of Israel alone”, and that “the theocracy he proclaimed had nothing to do with non-Israelites at all.”

The Qur’an also supports this understanding as it reveals to us that Jesus was primarily sent to the Israelites and not the whole world:

“He will teach him [Jesus] the Scripture and wisdom, the Torah and the Gospel, He will send him as a messenger to the Children of Israel...” [3:48-49].

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