The Case for the Real Jesus

by Lee Strobel

  “It’s not just a matter of cutting your finger and putting a little blood on the altar. No, the sacrifice had to die. That’s the terribly ugly picture of the cost of sin—that it’s so serious to God that it requires death. The shedding of blood is our repayment of sin, but instead of us shedding our blood, Yeshua shed it for us as our substitute. As we know from John 1:29, Yeshua was called, ‘the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.’”

  Brown had been sitting on the edge of his chair, pleading his case every bit as compellingly as his attorney father used to. Now, his presentation complete, he eased back.

  “So add everything up,” he said. “All of these clues point to Yeshua and Yeshua alone. He fulfills the prophecies in the most incredible way. Since the Messiah had to come almost two thousand years ago, according to the testimony of the Jewish scriptures, then if Yeshua isn’t the Messiah, there will never be a Messiah. It’s too late for anyone else. It’s him or no one. If Yeshua didn’t come and do what had to be done in the first phase of things, when there was a definite deadline, then there’s no hope that the second phase will ever come, when he will come in the clouds of glory to rule and reign.”

  He smiled. “We have the deposit,” he said. “We have the down payment. We can be confident he will return to accomplish the remainder.”

  THE SHEKINAH AND THE MEMRA

  The room fell quiet except for the faint buzz of a distant lawn mower. For a few moments, I contemplated what Brown had said. From his sweep through the Old Testament, from Genesis to Malachi, he had marshaled powerful evidence in building a convincing case for Jesus—and only Jesus—having fulfilled the messianic prophecies. Standing alone, unchallenged by objections, his arguments seemed conclusive.

  Still, my clipboard, which was brimming with questions, reminded me there was another side to the story. No verdict could be reached until Brown’s case could be tested by opposing views. With his permission, I began to probe potential soft spots in his presentation.

  “Let’s be really honest,” I began. “The prophecies don’t foretell that the Messiah would be divine, do they?”

  Brown leaned forward. “Actually, Lee, yes, they do,” he replied.

  I glanced down at my clipboard. “Not according to the late rabbi Aryeh Kaplan,” I told him. “‘In no place do the Prophets say that he will be anything more than a remarkable leader and teacher,’ he said. ‘The Jewish Messiah is truly human in origin. He is born of ordinary human parents, and is of flesh and blood like all mortals.’”45

  Moving to the edge of his chair again, Brown said, “Let’s look at the facts. There are definitely verses that point toward his divine nature. Bear in mind, however, that the Jews were staunch monotheists, and it would have been totally misunderstood if the claim of the Messiah’s divinity had been too explicit.”

  “So what’s the evidence for his predicted divinity?” I asked.

  “The Davidic king was described as being highly exalted and the one who will someday rule and reign. Several parallel descriptions are used of both God and this exalted king: people will praise God, and the people will praise the king; people will serve God, and the people will serve the king; people will bow down before God, and people will bow down before the king.

  “Also, Psalm 110:1 says, ‘The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand.”’ That’s a position of great exaltation. The figure in Daniel 7—the Son of Man—is highly exalted; he comes before the throne of God, is worshiped, is given sovereign power and authority, and his kingdom is eternal. Being worshiped, having sovereignty, being eternal—those sound a lot like divine characteristics to me. And of course, Jesus’ favorite self-description was the Son of Man, and he applied Daniel 7 directly to himself.46

  “Even more explicitly, Psalm 45 says of the Messiah-king, ‘Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever.’ God is anointing this king, yet the king himself is called Elohim, a Hebrew name for God. That’s very significant. We know that sometimes Elohim can be a reference to earthly judges and angels, but to call an individual Elohim in this context is really stretching things.

  “Isaiah 52:13 says the servant will be ‘raised’ and ‘lifted up.’ In Isaiah, those words only occur in reference to the Lord. And even more directly, in Isaiah 9:6–7, the king is given various names, including ‘Mighty God’ and ‘Everlasting Father.’ So you have the royal king, or the messianic figure, being described as divine.”

  “Did the people of that day anticipate a divine Messiah?”

  “It wasn’t really until Yeshua came and they looked back at the Hebrew scriptures and said, ‘Oh, that explains it!’ In hindsight, it becomes much clearer.”

  “But the Hebrew scriptures say God is one and incorporeal,” I protested.47 “The Bible says nobody can ever see God.48 So how could Jesus be God?”

  “It’s clear there’s only one God, yet it seems that he’s somehow complex in his unity,” Brown explained. “On the one hand, he’s ruling from his throne in heaven, and yet on the other hand he’s present on the earth. There are other times when he himself is seen, even though the Bible says no one can see God, who’s spirit. Let me give you a few examples. In Genesis 18, Yahweh and two angels appear to Abraham. Jacob saw God face to face.49 Isaiah says, ‘I saw the Lord.’50 Exodus 24:9–10 says, ‘Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel.’”

  I jumped in. “Wasn’t that just a vision?”

  “No, because verse 11 says, ‘God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites.’ That doesn’t sound like a vision to me,” Brown said, a chuckle in his voice. “So who is it that all these people saw if they can’t see God and yet they saw God? Could it have been the Son?”

  Without waiting for a response, he said, “Yes, I believe it was. Then the New Testament begins to enlighten us—God is complex in his unity and this one God makes himself known as the Father, Son, and Spirit. The Father has never been seen; the Son is the one who reveals him and makes him known, and who now takes on flesh and blood. So in a sense God did not become a mere man, as the Hebrew scriptures emphatically say. But can he make himself known in flesh and blood? Can he, while remaining enthroned in heaven, come down among us?

  “This explains how all these things can be said at the same time about God. Interestingly, the rabbis came up with different concepts about how God can be untouchable and invisible, yet touchable and known. One of the concepts was the Shekinah, which is the dwelling presence of God on earth. God said in Exodus 25:8, ‘Have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them.’ One rabbi said to me, ‘So Jesus was like a walking Shekinah—that’s what you believe?’ I said, ‘Exactly.’

  “We also see references in the Hebrew scriptures to the Word of God. The Word is something that proceeds forth from him, yet is him. We see in Genesis that God created all things through his spoken word—in fact, Psalm 33:6 says: ‘By the word of the LORD were the heavens made.’ His Word is even worthy of praise: Psalm 56:4 says, ‘In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust.’ The Targums, which are Aramaic paraphrases of the Hebrew scriptures, use the expression Memra, which is ‘Word.’ For instance, instead of saying the Lord spoke to Moses, it says the Word of the Lord spoke to Moses.

  “So now go to John 1 and merely substitute Memra for Word: ‘In the beginning was the Memra, the Memra was with God, the Memra was God and the Memra became flesh.’ This is God drawing near. He was in the tabernacle; now he’s in Yeshua, who combines deity and humanity. Though God remains invisible, though he remains God transcendent and not a man, yet he reveals himself fully in bodily form.

  “If John had simply written, ‘God became a human being,’ it would have given the false impression that the Lord was no longer filling the universe or reigning in heaven, but that he had abandoned his throne to take up residence here, like one of the pagan deities. Instead, John tells us that it was the divine Word that became a human being, and through the Word, we can know
God personally. As John said, ‘No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.’51

  “Think about Genesis 18 again, where God appeared to Abraham. This clearly teaches that God can come to earth in human form for a period of time if he wants to. If he could do this for a few hours, in a temporary human form, could he do it for a few years, in permanent human form? Of course. This is called the incarnation—God coming down to earth in the person of his Son. When we recognize the Son as the exact representation of God, yet God himself, then we can explain how God remained the Lord in heaven while also appearing as the Lord on earth in Genesis 18.

  “Seeing Jesus was seeing God. Jesus said in John 14:9, ‘Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.’ He said, ‘I and the Father are one.’52 Notice that Jesus didn’t call himself God; he called himself God’s Son53—the one in whom the fullness of God dwells in bodily form.54

  “This doesn’t contradict anything in the Hebrew scriptures,” he said in conclusion. “In fact, this explains many verses in the Hebrew Bible that are otherwise unintelligible.”

  WHERE IS WORLD PEACE?

  Nevertheless, as I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, one of the biggest objections brought up by critics is the fact that Jesus didn’t fulfill what they consider to be the main messianic prophecies: bringing about a world of peace and unity, and ending evil, idolatry, falsehood, and hatred. “In light of that,” I said after mentioning this to Brown, “how can you say that Jesus is the Messiah?”

  “Again, there are things that had to happen in a certain time frame before the second temple was destroyed,” Brown replied. “If those have not happened, then there can be no other potential candidate. Secondly, these critics have identified prophecies six through ten as messianic, but have left out prophecies one through five. I’m saying Yeshua will fulfill prophecies six through ten because he has already fulfilled one through five. He will both suffer and be exalted. He will be both priestly and royal. He will be both rejected and accepted. He will be a light to the nations before being received by the Jewish people. So looking at the larger picture points me back towards Yeshua.

  “Also,” he added, “it’s not as if Yeshua did certain tactical things that had to happen and now has been absent for two thousand years. Instead, we see certain things unfolding just as expected, with his kingdom continuing to advance. Look at how many people came to worship the one true God in the twentieth century alone. This tells me the pace is accelerating. So the fulfillment of the first stage, as well as the ongoing fulfillment of those things that had to be ongoing, tells me that the final stage is clear.

  “For instance, imagine that two people owe me a lot of money. One gives me a partial repayment of a hundred thousand dollars and says, ‘When I come back, I’ll give you the rest.’ The other person says that someday he’ll repay me, but he doesn’t even give me a deposit. Who am I more likely to believe? Especially when I get ongoing letters from the first one reassuring me that the remaining money will indeed be fully repaid soon.”

  “But the term second coming isn’t found in the Hebrew scriptures,” I pointed out.

  “The word trinity isn’t used anywhere in the entire Bible either, but the evidence is there supporting it,” he countered. “The prophecies require certain events to happen—like atonement and the visit to the temple—before other events can happen, like the Messiah bringing peace to the earth. The first act precedes the second act and prepares the way for it. First atonement for sin, then peace on the earth.”

  I tried another tack. “Couldn’t the idea of a second coming be used by any false Messiah who failed to fulfill all the prophecies?”

  “Well, if Yeshua had done nothing to fulfill any of the prophecies and said he was going to do everything in the future, then, yes, I’d agree. But that’s not the case,” said Brown. “He did what needed to be done before AD 70, so we can have confidence he’ll do what needs to be done in the future.”

  “Some say he fulfilled none of the provable prophecies,” I said. “Anyone could die, anyone could claim to have been born in Bethlehem, as Micah 5:2 foretold, and so forth.”

  “One simple response: the story of his deliverance from death, according to Psalm 22, was supposed to have such an effect that people around the entire world turned to God,” Brown said. “That’s pretty provable. Rejected by your own people but being a light to the nations—that’s pretty provable. There’s the ongoing accreditation by God of who he is, through the extension of his kingdom around the world. It’s convincing enough to read the amazing accounts of Yeshua in the New Testament. It’s quite another to see how he continues, without break, to have worldwide impact.”

  REPENTANCE AND SACRIFICE

  Critics also have attacked Christianity’s claim that Jesus’ atoning death is the culmination of the Old Testament practice of animal sacrifices. I pulled out a document from Jews for Judaism and read it to Brown:

  None of the biblical prophets taught that animal or blood sacrifices were indispensable in order for the forgiveness of our sins. As a matter of fact, the prophets constantly berated people who mistakenly thought that sacrifices, in and of themselves, bring about forgiveness.55 The Bible clearly teaches that the only way of atoning for sins is through repentance—a process of transformation that includes acknowledging our wrongdoing and confessing it to G-d, feeling regret, making restitution if we harmed someone, resolving to improve our behavior, returning to G-d and praying for forgiveness.”56

  I slipped the paper back into my briefcase and looked at Brown. “If repentance is all that’s needed,” I said, “doesn’t that negate the belief that Jesus was the fulfillment of the Jewish sacrificial system?”

  “Let’s make something clear,” Brown began. “The new covenant writings—that is, the writings of the New Testament—consistently emphasize the importance of repentance as well. They don’t teach that Jesus died and therefore you’re automatically forgiven. Jesus said, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.’57 He said, ‘I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’58 In Mark 6, he sends out the Twelve—and what do they preach? That people should repent.59

  “I don’t argue that. But repentance has never existed independently from the larger system of atonement that God made. Go back to Torah. Every time you find something barely resembling the concept of repentance, I’ll find fifty to a hundred that talk about blood sacrifice. God was trying to get something across, which was the foundational nature of the blood sacrifice. That system was pointing toward the one who would come. God never really wanted the blood of bulls and goats. The prophets repudiated sacrifices that were offered with an empty heart; they never repudiated sacrifices themselves—”

  I cut in. “But doesn’t God say in Hosea 6:6, ‘For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings’?”60

  “Jesus quoted that twice in the New Testament. I agree with that!” he declared. “The problem was not the sacrifice; it was the empty heart. First Samuel 15 says God prefers obedience to sacrifice. What he wants is an obedient heart.61 Yet because we all fall short, he established the sacrificial system to ultimately point people toward the Messiah.”

  Another objection popped into my mind. “When God forgave the sins of the Ninevites in the book of Jonah, no sacrifices were offered,” I observed.

  Brown’s answer was direct. “God never called the Ninevites to offer sacrifices,” he said. “This was Israel’s role as a priestly nation, and that role finds its fulfillment in the work of the Messiah.”

  I picked up my Bible, which was next to me on his desk, and opened it. “Leviticus 5:11 says if someone can’t afford the animal sacrifice, they can bring ‘a tenth of an ephah’—that would be a couple of quarts—‘of fine flour for a sin offering.’ So there you have it—blood sacrifice wasn’t always required.”

  Brown shook his head. “God didn’t build a theology on the atoning power of flour,�
�� he said. “Have Jews through the ages just offered flour? If you read the next verse, it says a handful of the flour should be put on the fire offerings on the altar. So the flour is put on existing offerings, which is how poorer people would participate in the atonement system. The idea of just offering flour without offering blood sacrifices—they never did it. You needed repentance and you needed the blood. That’s the whole message of the new covenant to Jew and Gentile alike: turn in repentance toward God and put your trust in Jesus’ atoning sacrifice. He’s the ‘Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.’”

  Though Brown had answered my basic questions about the atonement system, one last issue was hanging. “Sacrificing animals seems like such a barbaric practice,” I said. “These days the animal-rights folks would howl in protest.”

  “In the culture of the day it was perfectly normal to offer sacrifices as part of worship,” came his response. “It was saying, ‘I’m taking something valuable that I have and offering it up to God,’ but ultimately God was not interested in that. He was interested in something of massive eternal value, which is showing us how ugly sin is and how he was going to send a substitute. So for centuries and centuries—because it takes people a while to get the point—he kept giving the same lesson, until he finally sent the one who brought an end to the necessity of blood sacrifices.”