To the Jews a Stumbling Block

Dear Ehud,

In my last letter, I was emphasizing the prophetic office of Christ. He was the greater prophet who had been promised by Moses (Deut. 18:15). But I also need to present Christ to you as the one who holds two additional offices. John Calvin famously described the Lord’s three combined offices as the crucial offices of prophet, priest, and king.

So we have discussed His work as a prophet, but it is when we come to His office as priest that we encounter what the apostle Paul called the particular stumbling block for the Jews. In my next letter, we will discuss what the kingship of Christ means for Jews—we will get to that. But in this letter we are going to talk about Christ as the offering priest and Christ as the offered sacrifice, and also get into why this concept would be a particular stumbling block to Jews.

Now the central message of Christianity is the cross of Jesus Christ. When that message is truly and fully unpacked, one of the first things we note about it is how offensive it is. And by this I am not referring to the cross as Christianity’s logo, or as some kind of brand indicator. Nor am I referring to the silver crosses that gracious Christian women wear as a necklace. Those things are fine, but they are well downstream from the central offense of the cross, and in some ways help everyone to forget how raw and unacceptable the whole thing is.

We cannot get around it—the center of the Christian faith is a human sacrifice. Among the Jews who are called by God, one of the advantages that first century Jews have over 21st century Jews is that they had a bloody Temple. They knew there had to be blood. And because the spiritually insightful among them knew that the iniquity of sin could not be dealt with adequately or permanently by killing some goat (Hos. 6:6; Ps. 40:6), they therefore knew that the raw fact of blood was a type, pointing toward something greater, something final, something entirely complete. Modern Jews have been worshiping God without a Temple for two thousand years, and this bloodlessness has left them at a disadvantage. But let us say it out loud. To say the Christian faith is founded on the ultimate human sacrifice, a sacrifice that was accepted by God, sets the offensiveness of it plainly before us.

So let’s take a look at the text that teaches the issue of the stumbling block directly.

Notice here that the apostle Paul divides the unbelieving world into two broad categories—the Jews and the Greeks. Both of them together are lumped under the heading of the “wisdom of this world.” The world, in short, has more than one way of being wise. The Greek way is rationalistic—philosophy is the path, and reason is the measurement of all things. Rationality is the thing; no blood necessary. The Jews are shrewd and practical—you need to show them a miraculous sign that will prove that you and your message are from God. Spiritual power is the thing; no blood necessary.

It is worth mentioning in passing that the metric used by both kinds of unbelievers, Greek and Jew, was disingenuous. Rarefied philosophy cannot justify its own existence, still less anything else. And what? Are we really going to say that Jesus didn’t do enough miracles? The Lord spoke truly when He said that if people don’t accept Moses and the prophets, a man coming back from the dead wouldn’t convince them (Luke 16:29-31). Remember that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead after four days, with a watching crowd, and He didn’t persuade the entire crowd (John 11:45). Many of the watching crowd believed. Many? Many? Not all?

However a sovereign God is fully capable of breaking through the barriers that Jews and Greeks throw up against Him. To those who are among the called, whether Jewish or Greek, Christ crucified is the folly of God—which runs circles around the wisdom of men. This folly from God is potent.

So instead of giving the Greeks a sophisticated line of refined argumentation, the gospel gives them some evangelical argle bargle about a crucified carpenter. And instead of giving the Jews a miraculous sign, they are instead given an obnoxious message about a crucified Messiah. And this is where the pinch comes.

A crucified Messiah is a sign, and it is a miracle. But it is the kind of miracle that a certain kind of mind cannot grasp. Paul explains the reason why in his letter to the Galatians.

Now the Old Testament taught bluntly that if a man was hanged on a tree, as Jesus most certainly was, he was cursed by God. And His carcass must not be left on the tree overnight because if it was left overnight that would result in the entire land being defiled—no nonsense about that kind of thing ever cleansing the land.

Despite this clear teaching of the Scriptures, the Christian claim was that Jesus of Nazareth was the true Messiah of Israel, and this true Messiah of Israel had ended His days on a gibbet outside Jerusalem. Not only were the Christians maintaining that this cursed one was the blessed one, but they were also maintaining that His twisted body was offered for the healing of the nations—not just the land of Israel, but all lands everywhere. The nature of this claim is actually breathtaking. If true, this was a miracle all right, but it is the kind of miracle that is impossible for a carnal mind to understand.

If you saw a man walking on water, you would not understand how, but it would be relatively simple to understand what the miracle was. The man was walking on the water. If you saw a man turn water into wine, again, you would not understand how but you could understand the what. The servant carrying some liquid to the master of the feast knew that his cup used to contain water, and when he got there it was rich wine, the very best in fact. The master said so. The servant knows what happened, and understands that part of it fully.

The thing about this miracle, the thing that is the stumbling block to the Jews, is the difficulty in getting clear on what the miracle even is. It looks less like a wonder or a miracle, and more like a flat contradiction—something more like a round square. What on earth could you possibly mean by a cursed Blessed One? And the blessed curse isn’t any better.

The answer lies in what is pictured when the high priest laid both his hands on the head of the scapegoat.

I will be writing about Isaiah 53 in greater detail later on (how could I not?). While you already know that Christians are obligated to take it in a Messianic way on the authority of the New Testament (1 Pet. 2:22-25), I am sure you have heard the explanations of your rabbis as to why it is not. We can talk about Jesus and Isaiah later on, as I am sure we will. My point at this juncture is much more modest, which is simply that Isaiah is talking about somebody.

And that somebody provided us with a great blessing—he bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. He was despised by the people He was saving. We thought of Him as stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted, also by God. But there was a point to it—He took the blow for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities. His stripes healed us. Somebody was favored by God . . . and cursed by Him.

My point here is not that this is talking about Jesus—again, that is for a later letter. My point here is simply this: the thing that Christians claim is going on in the sacrificial death of Christ is, at a bare minimum, going on with somebody. It is not possible to argue that the imputation of guilt and sin is something that can happen with scapegoats, or with Pascal lambs, or with suffering servants, but it is an incoherent concept if we are talking about Jesus.

Imputation is therefore the way that a sinless one can become a cursed one. The Passover lamb really was spotless. It was a requirement that there be no blemish. And what was to happen to the lamb without blemish, this highly favored lamb, the best of the flock? He was the one that was going to die.

And so this is how we understand the one who was the blessed one of God coming under the curse of God. Our sins were imputed to Him, and the fury of God against those sins was poured over His head. And all of it happened on a tree.

He knew no sin—He was the blessed one. He was made sin on our behalf—He was the cursed one. And why? So that His righteousness, all His goodness, could be imputed to us. Imputation is how the clean was made sin—our sin, not His—and how the sinful are made clean—His righteousness, not ours.

And remember that one great difference between Christ and the sacrificial animals that typified Him is to be found in the fact that He rose again from the dead. This is what enables Him to be the sacrifice itself, and also to be the priest who sprinkles the blood of His sacrifice on the altar. Jesus rose from the dead, ascended into Heaven, and there presented His holy sacrifice to His Father. That sacrifice was accepted, and so it was that my sins were forgiven. And the mechanism that makes everything work is imputation, a mechanism that is clearly Mosaic. The high priest lays both hands on the head of the goat.

All for now.

Cordially in Christ,

Douglas Wilson