The Community of the Faithful: Jesus as a Personification of Servant Israel

By Arsh Khaira and Steven Muir

Based on an extension of the traditional Jewish theological interpretations of the texts of Daniel 7 and Isaiah 53, we can develop the perceptual lens that Jesus' role was to singularly personify the collective nation of Israel and to not only relive their history, but to carry out their ultimate destiny in a microcosm. The Jewish prophets spoke of a death and resurrection experience that Israel would have to undergo, and these took place in both the bondage and slavery in Egypt (death) and the subsequent restoration to the promised land (resurrection), and a second time in the exile to Babylon (death) and then restoration to the Holy Land and re-consecration of the temple by the Persians (resurrection). But this death and resurrection experience was actualized and finalized by Jesus himself, who singularly represented and personified his people, Israel. This act became the literal fulfillment of the prophetic Scriptures of the Old Testament and conclusively restored the House of Israel to their promised place based on the original covenant as extended to Abraham and his descendants.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Dec 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781666708318

Arsh Khaira

Arsh Khaira is a musician and scholar from Sherwood Park, AB., Canada. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies and a Master of Arts in Biblical and Christian Studies from Concordia University, Edmonton, as well as a MBA and PhD (Music) from the University of Alberta. He has taught courses in Religious Studies, Marketing, Management, and Music and remains active as a songwriter and performer of folk, pop and rock music. Arsh Khaira's scholarly work in Biblical Studies began in 2006 when he first started to study both the Old and New Testament in depth under the guidance of professors Steven Muir, Gerald Krispin, Adrian Leske, the Late Richard Kraemer and the Late Russel Nelson. Arsh is fluent in several languages including Dari/Farsi, Urdu, and Punjabi, and has also studied Biblical Hebrew.

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Opening Remarks

The Jewish prophets often spoke of their nation-community in a distinctive way—they described Israel as a person. They spoke of the requirements necessary for Israel to accomplish in order to reenter into a relationship with God, as their previous relationship with God had been broken. The prophets suggested that one of these requirements, or features, necessary for their nation to undergo was the experience of a death and resurrection. This death and resurrection sort of experience was understood as having happened twice before, once during Israel’s bondage in Egypt (death) and subsequent restoration to their land (resurrection); and the second time in Israel’s exile and bondage in Babylon (death), with the resurrection experience being their restoration by the Persians. The prophets often spoke of these experiences as being undertaken by a single person—whom Isaiah called the suffering servant, and whom Daniel called the son of man—when in actuality, these experiences were undertaken by their entire community. The individualized portraiture of the prophets gives vitality and poignancy to their predictions.

Jesus, as a son of Israel, understood what the prophets meant. He knew what the prophets had written about Israel, about their past, and about their future—he was aware of the prophetic tradition. The singular person that Israel used to describe themselves, although symbolically, came to be personified in Jesus. He came to be the lone individual who stood for an entire nation, not only symbolically, but literally, as the embodiment of true Israel, as everything that Israel was meant to be according to God’s plan. With this, and with his awareness of the prophetic tradition, Jesus lived in a relationship to God that was exactly what the relationship between Israel and God was meant to be. Not only was Jesus a son of Israel, but he was from the line of David. Jesus not only accepted his role as being that of true Israel, but he understood the requirements necessary for Israel to reenter into a relationship of obedience to God, the same requirements as spoken of by the prophets—a death and resurrection experience that not only Israel but all the nations would come to witness. In his own ministry and sacrifice, Jesus would actualize this death and resurrection experience in the purest way; he would suffer and die on behalf of his people.

In this way, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus became the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Jewish prophets, in particular the revelations of Isaiah and Daniel. Israel now, through faith in one of their own people—in a special way, their own son— could reenter into their covenant relationship with God. Every requirement necessary for them as a nation to complete as spoken of by the prophets had been completed by Jesus. As Jesus stood in an ideal relationship with God, now the people of Israel, through their own death and resurrection, stood in a fulfilled relationship of obedience and promise to God. The necessary element of this new relationship became faith in their absolution, by what their scapegoat—their son—had achieved. The death and resurrection experience of Israel, spoken of by the prophets, was in this way actualized by the person of Jesus. This in essence represented the commencement of the new covenant as explicated in Jer 31: 31–34.¹

The new covenant now becomes a relationship between faithful Israel and God, in which their ultimate vocation, as written in the original covenant relationship, becomes manifest in a growing universal reality, shown in the imminence of the kingdom of God—a universal certainty which follows a realizing eschatological scenario. In this way, Israel’s calling to act as a light to the nations finally and conclusively reaches its crescendo, as now Israel is joined by a universal community, bound together by the new covenant relationship which began in the works and miracles of servant Israel, Jesus. This is what I mean by Israel’s death and resurrection experience: their concept of themselves as an ethnically and geographically bounded, exclusive ‘people of God’ had died; and it was reborn in a new definition as a community of the faithful joined by brothers in faith who were universal in composition and location: the house of Israel.

Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, now not only are the faithful of Israel vindicated, but in the completion of the necessary experiences spoken of by the prophets—which would see the salvation of Israel and the return of their role to shepherd the nations to faith—the rest of the world can enter into the new covenant relationship with them as brothers in faith. This in essence sees the fulfillment of the promise to the house of David of everlasting dominion, as spoken of by the prophet Daniel in Dan 7:14: His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.² We may compare this with Luke 1:33: He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end. In essence, in the death experience of the Servant, the remnant of Israel which emerges as the faithful—as written in Isa 10:22, which we may compare with Rom 9:27—become the ones from whom the covenant promise is passed on to the nations, who enter into a relationship of discipleship and brotherhood as the house of Israel. Israel then returns in some ways to the original covenant promise of everlasting dominion, with a kingdom that has now extended to include the faithful of the gentile world who have joined them as brothers in faith.

Many prophets suggested that only a remnant of Israel would be saved from their burdens and doom: "Though your people, O Israel, be like the sand by the sea, only a remnant will return" (Is 10:22, emphasis mine). We see this concept also in Joel 2:32:

And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved; for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be deliverance, as the Lord has said, among the survivors whom the Lord calls. (emphasis mine)

Jesus’ followers came to understand that this remnant of Israel would place their faith in their absolution by their Messiah Jesus and become the righteous of Israel, the faithful few who were vindicated. They now stood in a perfect relationship to God, a relationship which had been actualized by Jesus (true Israel). Now, the covenant promise originally made to nation Israel would spread to others throughout the world by the works of discipleship in proclaiming God’s covenant relationship completed through person Israel (Jesus). The new Israel was then joined by believers from the gentile world as brothers in faith who felt that the story of Jesus and his vicarious sacrifice connected with their own lives and situations. They, too, became members of the house of Israel, and in this way, the community of the faithful grew and continues to grow today. Herein is the promise of the kingdom of God—not solely a future event or place but rather the historical and ongoing, true reality of Israel in a relationship of perfect obedience to God. The kingdom began with the life and sacrifice of Jesus, and now is in a continual state of realization, and will continue to grow until its full fruition in the future when the kingdom of Israel comes to serve the entirety of humanity. This community of faithful believers, then, assumes the symbolic physical presence of Jesus the Messiah in the new age. This is a significant point. Just as the person Jesus once personified and fulfilled the role of ‘people of God’, now the community of the faithful represents and continues the work started by the person Jesus. Jesus’ return from heaven has begun in the ongoing presence of his essence—through his word and gospel, and physically through his people, who heal, teach, and proclaim on his behalf.

It is this perspective which I intend to demonstrate in this book.

1

. Note that I will further explicate these ideas in the following research.

2

. This book will make use of the NKJV translations of the text unless otherwise noted.

Introduction

Traditional Christian theological interpretations hold to the view that the Jewish prophets of the Old Testament were granted revelations of a future messianic figure. From a Jewish perspective, in their own historical context the prophets spoke in a descriptive and predictive way about a future figure and often described him as being the one through whom a restoration of the relationship between Israel and God would be fulfilled. The traditional Christian view is that the prophets spoke of this messianic figure as the one who would come to absolve the people of the world of their sufferings—namely, estrangement from God and the will of God. In this way, the figure spoken of by the prophets in various contexts is understood by Christians to have been fulfilled by the person of Jesus.

I will demonstrate that while this interpretation is perfectly valid, there is another way to read and understand these scriptures with regard to the messianic figure spoken of by the Jewish prophets which supplements and deepens this view. In this interpretation, we can understand that the Jewish prophets were given insight by God into the nature of human community. Often, they would particularize this communal ideology with regard to their own nation of Israel, but at a more abstract level, we can see that they also spoke in a revelatory way about a society in its ideal state (regardless of ethnic or geographic boundaries). What they are describing is a society that would exist in full accordance with the will of God. The Jewish prophets would at times portray this community as a singular person—in other words, they personify the collective and idealized community as an individual. I estimate that here, the prophets were speaking in a symbolic and idealized way.

The early followers of Jesus understood him to have embodied the collective identity of the idealized community of which the prophets spoke. The personification of this community was found to have been fulfilled by the person of Jesus, a person of God standing in a symbolic relationship to the people of God. The reality of human existence in