To the Jews, Jesus was a Messiah-King that would redeem Israel and all the other nations in the world, will raise the righteous from the dead on the Day of the Lord, and bring final judgment to all mankind. He will create a new heavens and new earth restoring and redeeming the material world and usher in the glorious age to come with the coming of his kingdom implementing global peace on the Earth on the Day of the Lord. The main focus of the Jewish narrative is the Day of the Lord and the age to come.

To the Greeks, Jesus became a Messiah that would deliver them from the material world and take them to an ethereal paradise in which the corrupt fleshly material world no longer exists. To some Greeks he also became a path of secret knowledge to deliver salvation through this secret knowledge. For the Greeks the focus is on escaping this material world to go to a heavenly ethereal existence rather than the restoration of creation in the age to come.

To the Romans, Jesus became a king that would live his life through the Roman government and later the Roman Church ruling as an emperor by his spirit through men to establish global peace throughout the world. It makes the Roman government the salvation tool that Christ uses to conquer the world in his name bringing peace and prosperity through the Imperial empire. As Imperial Rome was dismantled this idea switched to the peace and prosperity being ushered in through the church to dominate the Earth and make everyone Christian. In the beginning the Roman Imperial government was viewed as the kingdom of God and after it was dismantled then the church was viewed as the kingdom of God and it was her job to bring Global Peace to the world through Christ. The main focus of the Roman Jesus narrative is redeeming the present evil age, rather than waiting on the Lord to come with his kingdom on the Day of the Lord.

To the easterners, Jesus became a shortcut to Moksha delivering them from the endless cycle of reincarnation and human suffering. The Christ consciousness brings enlightenment to secret knowledge and deliverance from the suffering of the material world. The Eastern Jesus narrative is the most removed from the Jewish narrative.

The Jews viewed the kingdom of God as the restoration of Israel, the Messianic Kingdom, and the restoration of the Davidic Kingdom. The Jews believed the physical presence of the Messiah-King was necessary for this kingdom.

The Greeks viewed the kingdom of God as an ethereal heavenly existence.

The Romans viewed the kingdom of God as a state of present society. The idea that the image of Christ in the church can change the current society into the kingdom of God without the physical presence of Messiah-King.

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To the Americans, Jesus has a mixture of the Roman and Greek narrative, with a little splash of the Jewish narrative. The American Jesus narrative is heavier on the Roman narrative than the Greek. The American Jesus narrative places the major focus on Christians taking dominion over their society to make it more Christian. Most of the sermons are focused on Christian living and the lead message is ‘God loves you and has a plan for your life’ as the Roman narrative always has more of a present age focus than the age to come focus. The American Jesus narrative has also put extra emphasis on living your best life now with it’s focus on financial prosperity and comfortable living in the present age. The American Jesus narrative also aligns with the Greek narrative seeing Jesus as more of an escape from the material world to an ethereal heavenly paradise without much focus on the redemption of creation.

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With this presentation of these four different narratives described in one place, I’m sure you can see how much influence our individual society, ideology, and cultural backgrounds have in receiving a message in it’s original form. Regardless of who we are and where we come from all of us will filter a new message through our previous understandings.

God chose one people group and interacted with them for thousands of years as he elected them to be the divine administrators of salvation to the rest of the nations. His story of redemptive history was only given to the Jews. The Jews were the only people group that were elected to be responsible and have the privilege of carrying and administrating the oracles of God and the messages of the holy prophets. Messiah was a Jew and all of the Holy Scripture that we have was written by Jews except for the Book of Luke and Acts.

Think about that for a moment. God did not allow anyone else except the Jews to be responsible with his message. That can be a hard pill to swallow for a gentile.

Of course we gentiles now have the responsibility as ambassadors of his kingdom to go forth with the gospel, but only after the story of redemptive history was finalized in a written copy and the appearance of the Jewish Messiah had taken place.

This is a very hard truth to come to terms with when you’re not a Jew. It’s something I’ve known about for a couple years but I’m really just now coming to terms with it.

It makes sense to me why God chose the Jews and only the Jews to administrate the story of redemptive history and salvation to the other nations. Because we can see when other cultures get involved the narrative gets influenced by various other things. The Jewish story is the only correct story.

My opinion, we need to understand more of Jewish history. How do we do that? By reading the Jewish book, the Bible🙂