Jesus the unexpected Messiah

Christians tend to assume that the OT clearly predicted Jesus’s suffering, death and resurrection. In the gospels, however, even Jesus’s disciples did not get that Messiah had to suffer. Prophecies recognised as Messianic in the OT set out a pattern of a future Davidic king who would establish peace and justice in Israel, not a suffering figure who was going to die. Just reading OT prophecies one would not have come up with Jesus as the Messiah. When He came, even those recognisably Messianic aspects remained hidden for most. His childhood in Nazareth obscured his birthplace as Bethlehem and his Davidic ancestry. Raised as Joseph’s son, his supernatural birth likewise remained unknown. This raises the question why God did not communicate His plans more clearly in advance or highlight relevant aspects more obviously in Jesus’s lifetime?

I offer here two tentative reflections, although I do so with some trepidation as, at the end of the day, who can know the mind of God? The first observation relates to the prophets to whom God’s revelation was given. When God inspired them, He did not take over their bodies and override their faculties. His message was always filtered through their thinking and personality. Thus, for instance, Ezekiel, as a priest (Ezek 1:3), uses a central concept of the priestly world, impurity, to describe the nature of sin (Ezek 36:16-21). Hosea’s most striking illustrations, on the other hand, come from relationships (not surprising given his unfaithful wife): sin is the betrayal of marriage vows (Hos 1:2), of a son’s loyalty to his father (Hos 11:1-3). God’s Word, then, comes to us through time- and culture-bound human words, which have limitations. God’s ways are also higher than our ways, so His thinking does not naturally align with ours. Perhaps then He could only reveal in part the mystery of Christ’s suffering and sacrificial death, so that the prophets caught fleeting glimpses of the salvation He would bring. Yet it demonstrates the amazing power of God’s Word that it is nonetheless sufficient to guide, challenge and transform lives.

The second point relates to the hearers of prophecies. Sometimes it is hard to hear truths that are unexpected. We filter out what we do not understand. Thus, Israel may have had selective hearing when it built up a picture of Messiah. Jesus in the gospels seems frustrated at times that even His disciples do not get what He was about. Given this partial understanding and distorted expectations, what enabled those who met Jesus in the flesh to identify Him as Messiah? Jesus connects the willingness to obey God with the ability to know that His teaching is truth (John 7:17). God reveals Himself to those who seek Him so that they recognise the Messiah in the unexpected figure of Jesus.

Conversely, the OT describes the strange quality of God’s wisdom, which makes no sense to those who reject God. Isaiah 29:9–12 illustrates incomprehension as blindness, as a drunken stupor or deep sleep, as trying to read a book without penetrating to its meaning. The passage then connects this to Israel’s attitude: they draw near with their lips, but their heart is far from God (Isa 29:13). Their refusal to seek God leads to spiritual blindness. Paul puts it similarly when reflecting on wisdom: the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are saved it is the power of God (1 Cor 1:18). It is only those who turn to God in trust who recognise the truth. Perhaps the hidden or unexpected aspect of God’s plan is a test of our motivations.