About five million times a day on X (I’m rounding down) someone posts a thread reminding the world that “Jesus was a Jew.” The claim is meant as a moral corrective, as if repeating it often enough can disarm any Christian who speaks critically about Judaism. It comes wrapped in slogans like “Jesus was the Jewish Messiah of the Jewish people with Jewish disciples in a Jewish church.” The effect is to present the faith of Christ as an ethnic extension of Israel rather than the world-changing covenant that completed Israel’s story.
That was the spirit behind Dan Burmawi’s recent tweet replying to Dale Partridge. Partridge had written, “I do not hate Jewish people. Like Christ, I hate Judaism.” Burmawi responded that “Jesus didn’t hate Judaism; He loved it so much He globalized it.” It was a polished answer, full of reverent phrases about the Judaism of the Old Testament, as though it had something vaguely to do with the Talmudic Judaism of modern Israel. Yet it proved the point Partridge was making: many modern Christians defend the bastardized religion of Talmudic Judaism more fiercely than they defend the gospel itself. In the end, they pick the Pharisees who killed Christ rather than Christ Himself.
The New Testament does not portray Jesus as a reformer who expanded Judaism’s reach. It presents Jesus as the appointed and anointed one who brought about Judaism’s conclusion. When Jesus said He came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it, He was declaring its completion. Fulfillment is not continuation; it is consummation. A shadow fulfilled by the substance disappears in the light.
Every Gospel page shows Jesus declaring an end of the rites of Judaism. The reasons were simple; Jesus is greater than the temple, greater than the Sabbath, and greater than the entire ceremonial system that defined Jewish worship. Piece by piece, verse by verse, page by page, Jesus did not “globalize” Judaism; Jesus rendered it old and obsolete.
At the Feast of Booths, Jesus interrupted the ceremonies three different times to declare the shadows vanquished, and himself their fulfillment. He interrupted those ceremonies to signify their end; they were unnecessary to foreshadow his coming, because He was now in the room. The response was immediate: they sought to kill Him. That confrontation was not interfaith dialogue; it was the moment Judaism met its expiration date and recoiled from it.
When Dispensational Zionists and Jewish Supremacists declare Jesus a Jew for the umpteenth time every day, they leave out the part about Jesus taking an axe to Judaism and cutting it down. It’s like that statue of Luther the Vatican unveiled in 2017, celebrating him having been a Catholic. While true, it missed the whole point.
TERMINUS IN CHRIST
Every major symbol of Israel’s religion met its terminus in Christ. The temple was destroyed just as Jesus decreed it, and no priesthood followed because Jesus replaced the Jewish Priesthood. The Jewish sacrifices ceased because the once-for-all Lamb had been slain. The Jewish Sabbath rest gave way to the Lord’s Day, the first day of the new creation. The Jewish Passover became the Lord’s Supper, centered not on Egypt but on the cross. Jewish Circumcision of the flesh gave way to the Christian circumcision of the heart. The Covenant of Law gave way to the Covenant of Grace. Jesus did not expand the old system; He replaced it with Himself.
The Book of Hebrews said that Jesus “hath made the first [Covenant] old” because it “decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.” And Jesus did away with Judaism according to the Book of Hebrews because Jesus is the Mediator of a new covenant that is “better, established on better promises.” Did you get that? Jesus should not be known for the Old Covenant He abolished, but the New covenant He brought.
When modern writers insist that “Christianity without Judaism is rootless,” they invert the entire biblical order. The New Testament does not say the Church exists because of Israel. It says Israel exists because of Christ. The Messiah is not a branch growing from Israel’s tree; He is the root that gave it life. Apart from Christ, Judaism withers into history. Burmawi (mentioned above) ended his, “Jesus was a Jew” tweet, saying, “Jesus without Israel is meaningless.” It’s just about the most blasphemous thing one could imagine. Think of that, if your brain can go low enough; The Son of God is meaningless without that savage little nation-state consisting of Europeans who migrated to Palestine in 1948. What would Jesus do without Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Polish president? It’s unbelievable those words were even written.
The apostles understood this with absolute clarity. Peter preached that the stone rejected by Israel had become the cornerstone. Stephen declared that the temple itself was temporary and that God does not dwell in houses made with hands. Paul told the Galatians that the Law was a tutor whose task ended when faith came. The author of Hebrews wrote that when the priesthood changes, the law must change as well, and that the first covenant was becoming obsolete and ready to vanish away. None of these men thought they were “globalizing” Judaism. They were preaching its full-stop in Christ.
JESUS THE JEW
It is true that Jesus was born into Israel, spoke its language, quoted its prophets, and lived among its people. The Gospel is rooted in that soil. But the purpose of the root is to produce fruit, and fruit does not remain underground. The faith of Abraham was always aimed at the nations. God promised that in Abraham’s seed all peoples of the earth would be blessed, and that seed, Paul says, is Christ. Once the Seed came, the covenant broadened not by preserving Judaism but by transcending it. The distinction between Jew and Gentile dissolved, and the only identity that remained was union with Christ.
That is why the early Church did not define itself as a Jewish sect. Within a single generation it was filled with Gentiles who never kept the feasts, never practiced circumcision, and never visited Jerusalem. The apostles called them full members of the household of God because the dividing wall of the Law had been torn down. To call that “globalizing Judaism” is to misunderstand both Judaism and the Gospel. Judaism was a covenant of preparation. Christianity is the covenant of fulfillment. The difference is not size but substance.
When Jesus called unbelieving Israel a brood of vipers, or said their father was the devil, He was not expressing ethnic hostility; He was declaring spiritual truth. The same prophets whom Burmawi celebrates did the same in their day. Jeremiah called the leaders of Judah liars. Ezekiel called the princes of Israel ravenous wolves. Their words were not antisemitic; they were covenantal. Jesus stood in that same prophetic line and spoke judgment on the system that had rejected its God. His harshest words were not hate but justice, and His offer of salvation remained open to every Jew who would believe.
To say that Christ “loved Judaism so much He globalized it” empties His cross of meaning. If Judaism continues unchanged, then the blood of the covenant is unnecessary. If Judaism is still salvific, then the Gospel is an optional accessory. But if Jesus is who He said He is, then every shadow of the old order found its completion in Him. What began at Sinai ended at Calvary.
The modern fascination with Jesus’ ethnicity distracts from His identity as the Son of Man. The point of the Incarnation was not that God became a Jew; it was that God became man so that all men might be reconciled to Him. His birth in Bethlehem anchored the promise in history, but His resurrection opened it to the world. The New Testament is not the story of a rabbi who exported Judaism; it is the story of the Savior who came to redeem the world through a religion carved out in his own scars. In fact, the entire “mystery of the gospel” - the grand reveal upon which Abraham longed to look - is that the covenant was for the gentiles.
That is what the apostles preached, that is what the Church Fathers confessed, and that is what the modern Church must recover. Christ did not found an interfaith coalition. He founded a kingdom. And that kingdom stands not beside Judaism but above it, because the King who sits upon its throne has already fulfilled every covenant, prophecy, and promise that Judaism ever carried.
JESUS THE ANTISEMITE
If you said aloud everything the New Testament records Jesus saying about Rabbinic Judaism, someone would accuse you of “Jew hate.” I know that, because it happens to me every day. The modern definition of antisemitism from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) describes it as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
As broad as that is, the evangelical colloquial definition is even broader, and applied to anyone who doesn’t speak of Judaism in obnoxiously thankful terms, as though we owe something to people who deny Christ’s Lordship on account of who they claim they’re related to. And by their definition, Jesus is *definitely* an antisemite.
By that broad wording, even quoting Christ’s confrontations could be flagged as antisemitic. In fact, not only could they be, they are. The phrase “Synagogue of S____n” is an immediate red flag to almost every social media platform as instant “hate speech” (try it, I dare you).
Yet those confrontations are part of the Gospel record itself. Jesus not only foretold the destruction of the temple (Matthew 24:2), he literally decreed it. It was by Christ’s will that it was torn down brick by brick. How’s that for antagonisms “toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
Jesus’ only known arts and crafts session was when he sat down to braid a whip himself, and cleansed the temple, over-turning tables, and driving out its merchants (Matthew 21:12-13). Jesus personally ended the Jewish temple, but not without first giving it his physical fisticuffs.
Then Jesus personally ended the Jewish priesthood, replacing it with a priesthood all his own. I mean, he fired the Jewish priests, and took the job. Jesus replaced the Jewish Sabbath with the day named after himself (Revelation 1:10), because he’s the Lord of the Sabbath (Matthew 12:8) and declared himself to be our Sabbath (Hebrews 4:9-10).
Jesus replaced the Jewish Passover with the Lord’s Supper (Lukee 22:19-20). After all, he’s our Passover lamb. And then, Jesus hand-selected and personally instructed His Apostles, who abrogated the Ceremonial Law in Acts 15, the Book of Galatians, to Peter in his dream in Acts, and so-on. Heck, he was already getting rid of the Jewish diet way back in the Gospel of Mark, “making all meats clean.” Jesus was the one who ended the kosher diet (thank God, bacon is delicious).
And Jesus saved his harshest condemnations for the Pharisees, the fathers of the modern day Talmudians. The Cult of the Pharisees were the ones who had him crucified, and followed the Rabbinical teachings. These same teachings were later turned into the Talmud, the Holy Book of the new Christian antithesis religion. It’s not like Jesus was tougher on the Pharisees than he would be with modern Jews; modern Jews are the spiritual lineage of the Pharisees (and even worse than they).
Jesus said things to them like, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,” He said, for “you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces” (Matthew 23:13). He warned that their authority would pass away, that the vineyard would be given to others who would produce its fruit (Matthew 21:43). To those who claimed Abraham as their father, He replied, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did… you are of your father, the devil” (John 8:39-44). To the leaders who gloried in the Law, He said, “If you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me” (John 5:46-47).
Jesus replaced the old covenant’s mediators with Himself: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). There is no other altar, no other sacrifice, no other priesthood, no other sanctuary. The entire ceremonial structure of the Mosaic era has no function apart from Him.
Jesus replaced the covenant sign of circumcision with the circumcision of the heart (Romans 2:28-29). He replaced the covenant’s boundary of nationhood with the boundary of faith: “There is neither Jew nor Greek… for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). The people of God became defined not by genealogy but by belief.
From His first sermon to His final breath, every word and act moved his followers away from Old Testament Judaism and toward his own religion. The temple Jesus predicted to fall did fall. The sacrifices He replaced never returned. The priesthood He completed never resumed. The Sabbath He fulfilled became the day of resurrection. The covenant He sealed in His blood remains forever.
Measured against the IHRA’s language, these deeds would be considered “rhetorical and physical manifestations directed toward a Jewish religious institution.” But in the language of Scripture they are the fulfillment of divine promise. The Son was not acting in hatred but in sovereignty.
The question that follows is not whether Jesus was an antisemite. By the modern definition (which is its only definition, because it’s a recently made-up word) Jesus was 100% full-on antisemite. And if you argue, “Yes, but you misunderstand. It only sounds like hate, he’s just telling the truth in love” I would respond that so are a great many Christians who are called antisemites on a regular basis. Either Christ is an antisemite, or there are a great many Christians upon whom the term is misapplied.
THE REAL JESUS
That is the danger of a definition that confuses theology with animus. Christianity makes exclusive claims about salvation. It teaches that no one comes to the Father except through Christ (John 14:6). It teaches that the old covenant is obsolete (Hebrews 8:13). It teaches that every religious system apart from the Gospel, including the Mosaic law as a self-sufficient path to righteousness, is powerless to save (Romans 3:20-22). Those are not slurs. They are doctrines. Yet in an age that treats disagreement as violence, even Scripture itself can be branded as hateful.
If Jesus were preaching in the modern West, His words in Matthew 23 or John 8 would likely be removed from social media for violating “hate-speech guidelines.” When Peter told the crowd at Pentecost that they had crucified the Lord of glory (Acts 2:36), he would have been accused of “collective blame.” When Paul wrote that unbelieving Israel had been broken off so Gentiles could replace them in (Romans 11:17-20), he would have been banned for “group defamation.” Yet these same passages form the foundation of Christian theology. They describe the Gospel’s expansion, not its cruelty.
The broader point is that truth cannot be measured by offense. The cross itself was offensive. It declared that all human efforts, whether Gentile philosophy or Jewish ritual, fail apart from grace. To say that the covenantal symbols of Israel reached their end in Christ is not to despise Israel but to affirm what her own Scriptures promised. The Messiah’s fulfillment is the reason any of us, Jew or Gentile, can approach God at all.
The world’s definitions will never comprehend this. They divide humanity into victims and offenders, and the Gospel allows neither category to stand. All have sinned. All need redemption. When the modern age demands a religion that never excludes, never judges, and never calls anyone to repentance, the Gospel will always appear intolerant. But the intolerance it shows is toward sin, not toward any people. Its call is universal: repent and believe.
So if proclaiming that Christ fulfilled the Law and the Prophets is labeled antisemitism, then every apostle was guilty. Every missionary who ever preached in a synagogue was guilty. Every church that celebrates communion instead of Passover is guilty. And by that measure, the Son of God Himself stands condemned by the very world He came to save.
That irony reveals the real conflict. The issue is not between Jew and Christian, but between revelation and relativism. Modern society cannot tolerate a faith that insists on final truth. Yet Christianity cannot exist without it. The Gospel’s claim is absolute: “There is salvation in no one else” (Acts 4:12). To call that hatred is to call the love of God a crime.
Christ does not fit neatly within the categories of modern tolerance. He fulfills Jewish covenants, ends Jewish rituals, and commands Jewish repentance. That authority offended Jewish elites in the first century, and it offends Jewish elites now. The difference is only vocabulary. Then they called Him blasphemer. Today they would call Him bigot.
The Christian’s task is to bear witness anyway. To speak what He spoke, to preach what He preached, and to trust that truth will outlast every fragile definition the world invents. For the same Christ who overturned tables will overturn every false accusation. The same voice that silenced the Sanhedrin will silence the world’s tribunals. The judgment seat of Christ will stand when every human committee is forgotten.
If that message violates the world’s definition of tolerance, so be it. The Gospel is not hate speech. It is hope speech. And the Christ who fulfilled every promise of Israel will one day judge every lie spoken against Him.
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