Why the Jews Rejected Jesus - Free EBooks Library

Even his own sons turned against him. This is precisely why St. Paul contrasts David’s
repentance over against the Jews at large who did not repent and insisted that doing ‘works
of the law’ was the way to please God (cf. Rom. 3:28 to 4:8; Gal. 5:1-4). The upshot is this: it
is only through repentance of one’s sins and unfeigned faith in God that one can experience
the mercies of God. If one does not repent yet feigns faith in God by following a regimen of
external rituals, he is a hypocrite. He will receive no mercy from God. Law provides no
mercy. It is an uncompromising and exacting judge. If you do not follow its precepts to the
letter, it has no choice but to condemn you. Law, by itself, will condemn you for the
slightest transgression against its decrees. Law is impersonal. It doesn’t care whether you
almost obeyed or whether you were weak one day but tried your best. It has no room for
pity and mercy, nor can it have room. If one lives by the law, he will die by the law. Only a
personal being, who possesses mercy and compassion, could possibly forgive
transgressions.
44 cf. Rom. 2:17-29; 9:30-10:21; 11:5-11.
But personal beings don’t give their forgiveness cheaply. The transgressor must
show humility and repentance. And in the case of God, he is so very great that there must
first be a sufficient atonement to appease Him for all past sins so that He will be willing to
offer forgiveness. At this point Klinghoffer has another objection:
…the anonymous Letter to the Hebrews…An extended polemic against
Judaism, it asserted that ‘without the shedding of blood there is no
forgiveness of sins.’ God needed blood, as in blood sacrifice, foremost the
blood of the crucified Jesus, His sacrificed Son….the idea that penitence was
not enough would have comes as a surprise to the large majority of firstcentury
Jews, who lived in the Diaspora and therefore had no regular access
to the Temple rites. In not availing themselves of these rites at all times, they
were relying on scripture, which taught that forgiveness could be secured
without sacrifice. King Solomon had said that when the Jews were in exile
from their land, without a Temple, they ‘should repent…saying, ‘We have
sinned; we have been iniquitous; we have been wicked,’ and they will return
to You with all their heart and with all their soul…May You hear their prayer
and their supplication from Heaven…and forgive Your people who sinned
against you.’ [1Kgs. 8:47-50] (p. 111)
The first problem with Klinghoffer’s analysis is that he has made the exception into the
rule. Obviously, if the Jews are in exile they cannot do sacrifices, but Solomon, the very
king that did more sacrifices than anyone, is certainly not making the general rule that
“forgiveness could be secured without sacrifice.” In fact, the very first thing that the
returning Jewish captives from Babylon did was to reestablish the cultic sacrifices, since
that was the normal means through which sins could be atoned, at least temporally.
Second, the very fact that God may forgive them in the future is because Solomon prayed
this mighty prayer of intercession to God, which was based on the very Temple which he
built that offered sacrifices for sin. The same thing happened when Israel was about to
enter Canaan. Moses told them that it wasn’t for their righteousness that God was allowing
them to take possession, but because of the (a) wickedness of the nations in Canaan, and
(b) because He had made a promise to Abraham (Deut. 9:5-6). Along those lines, we don’t
even have an indication in the Hebrew Bible that the Jews in captivity had, indeed, called