Most of the time we Christians simply take it for granted Christ Jesus is the same religion we are. After all he founded the religion. He taught us who the Father is, taught us his interpretation—the proper interpretation—of the Law of Moses, voluntarily died for our sins so we can have new life, and he’s the king of God’s kingdom. He’s vital and central to Christianity.
But whenever somebody says out loud, “Jesus is a Christian”… well it just sounds weird.
’Cause Christian (which literally means “a little Christ”) means a Christ-follower. And Christ doesn’t follow himself. He does his thing, and expects us disciples to follow him. So technically no, Jesus is not a Christian: He’s Christ.
Where people start to go screwy is when they say, “Well… I guess no, he’s not a Christian. What religion does that make him? Um… well… I guess that’d be Judaism.”
Incorrect. The religion Jesus practices is the one he preached: Christianity.
The “Judaism” people assume Jesus interacted with and was involved in, is not at all the Judaism of today. Largely it was Pharisaism, which over the centuries, with heavy influence from the second-century Mishna and the medieval Talmud, evolved into what we nowadays call “Judaism.” It’s not the same “Judaism” Jesus encountered in synagogue and temple.
Sorta like today’s churches don’t look a lot like the first apostles’ churches. The cultural Evangelical Christianity I grew up in, looks way different than first-century Jewish in-home gatherings. Sunday morning worship services, one-year bibles, Christian radio, crosses and fish as decorations, preachers with big hair and suits and ties, bible quotes from Paul and John posted on Facebook. Yeah, doesn’t much sound like the Didache.
Well, describing Pharisaism as “Judaism” is like describing the early Christians’ activities as “Fundamentalist.” Wrong culture. Wrong era. Doesn’t fit.
Though Jesus clearly interacted with Pharisees most, and taught Pharisee children in Pharisee synagogues, he’s his own thing. “You heard it said,” he preached, quoting the Pharisee elders at first… and then he’d set aside their ideas and proclaim, “And now I tell you.” Which astounded Pharisees: He wasn’t teaching what their scribes did. He had his own religion.
Many people get this wrong. They insist Jesus was so a Jew. And when they mean Jesus is an ethnic Jew—a descendant of Abraham, Jacob, and Judah—they’re entirely right. Though sometimes they wrongly assume Jesus was white, kinda like white Jews in the United States, and imagine all sorts of white culture in his experience which wasn’t there. Jesus is brown. It’s the Europeans—the Romans and Greeks who once occupied his homeland—who were white.
Likewise when people mean Jesus is a cultural Jew—that he stuck to the Law instead of adopting Greco-Roman culture and traditions—they’re also right. But when they mean Jesus followed the Jewish religion, they’re imagining today’s Judaism, and that’s quite wrong. Jesus didn’t do Judaism. Not just because it hadn’t been invented yet; really Jesus really didn’t do Pharisaism either.