Jesus, the Refuge

Matthew 23:34-37

“Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!”

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 2)

The key to it all is the way in which, within biblical theology, Israel was called to represent the rest of the world before God. . . . Israel was to be God’s special people in order to be the light of the nations (Isaiah 42.6; 49.6).

But if the world remained rebellious and wicked—as it showed every sing of doing—what would his vocation then mean? Isaiah, once more, came to the stunning prophetic vision that Israel, in the person of the Servant of the Lord, would bear in his own person the guilt and sin of everyone else. The darkness of the whole world would descend upon Israel itself, so that it might be dealt with and the world might after all have light (52.13-53.12).

Jesus himself, and the gospel writers as they reflected on his achievement, saw this picture coming to fulfillment in himself. His vocation was to draw on to himself the destiny of Israel, which in turn was to be the focal point of the whole world (109-10).