Theopedia

Jewishness of Jesus

“For it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah.”

— Hebrews 7:14 (ESV)

Definition

The Jewishness of Jesus is the New Testament’s insistence that Christ was a genuine Israelite: Abraham’s offspring, of the tribe of Judah, a descendant of David, and “born under the law” of Moses rather than outside it.1 This is not incidental biography. Christ took on Jewish flesh and stood under Israel’s own law precisely in order to redeem those who were under that law (Gal. 4:4-5).2

Biblical Basis

Scripture identifies Christ’s descent in specific, repeated terms. Bavinck gathers the New Testament’s own testimony: Jesus “is Abraham’s offspring (Gal. 3:16), from the tribe of Judah (Heb. 7:14), a descendant of David (Rom. 1:3), born of a woman (Gal. 4:4; Heb. 2:14)… he was under the law (Gal. 4:4), learned obedience unto death (Phil. 2:8; Heb. 5:8; 10:7, 9).”1 Hodge draws the same testimony from the Old Testament’s own predictions: Christ “was predicted in the Old Testament as the seed of the woman; the seed of Abraham; the Son of David,” and the New Testament’s own genealogies exist “to prove that He was of the house and lineage of David.”3

Paul states the purpose of that descent directly: “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:4-5). McCormick presses the force of “born under the law”: Christ, as the eternal Son, “did not need to be put under the law,” yet “as the mediator who was also truly human, he was born of a woman and made subject to the law in order to render to the law the obedience that fallen humanity owed.”2 His Jewish birth placed him, uniquely among mediators, under the very law he came to fulfill on behalf of those he came to save.

Doctrinal Significance

Christ’s Jewish descent secures two things at once. It grounds the covenant promises made specifically to Abraham and David, since a Gentile or a stateless mediator could not inherit either promise.3 And it places him, as a true Israelite, under the same law that condemned the rest of Israel, so that his obedience to it could be rendered in the place of those under it (Gal. 4:4-5).2 Both points depend on his Jewishness being real rather than symbolic: the New Testament does not present Christ as a Gentile who happened to live in Judea, but as Abraham’s own offspring and David’s own son, born under Israel’s own law.1

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 14, “The Only Begotten Son of the Father.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. Micah John McCormick, “Messiah’s Obedience for Eternal Life Fulfilled,” in “The Active Obedience of Jesus Christ” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010), 272. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. Charles Hodge, “Chapter III. Person of Christ,” in Systematic Theology, Volume II (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 379-382. ↩ ↩2