Was Jesus a Racist?
A few weeks ago, Reverend Brandan Robertson, Senior Pastor of Missiongathering Christian
Church in San Diego, CA, posted a video on TikTok in which he made the following assertions:
Is Reverend Robertson accurate in his assessment of Mark 7 – accusing Jesus of having held
onto, “prejudices and biases,” from which He needed to repent and grow?
There are two spheres in which I want to address Reverend Robertson: 1) the native context
of Mark 7 and 2) the pan-canonical implications of his interpretation of Jesus’ actions.
First, it is the consistent testimony of the Biblical text that the Messiah would be sinless.
In prophesying of the Messiah’s coming, Isaiah 53:9 states that, “…He had done
no violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.” The New Testament affirms this understanding
of Jesus as the Messiah. The apostle Peter quotes the Greek translation of Isaiah in
reference to Jesus in chapter 2, verse 22 of his first epistle. The apostle Paul concurs
stating,”He made Him who knew no sin to be sin in our behalf, so that we might become
the righteousness of God in Him,” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
The reason the Christian faith affirms Jesus as sinless is because it is upon His sinlessness
that He can serve as the all-sufficient sacrifice for those who put their faith and trust in
Him. This is why the new covenant is a better covenant than the old one. The old one could
not procure anyone’s salvation because the priest could not offer himself on behalf of
the people, as he himself was a sinner also. Jesus’ sinless life and substitutionary
death serves as the intercession offering He makes for His people.
His sacrifice is once-for-all – once for al time and once for all locations. It does
not matter when a person lives or in which part of the world someone lives. Jesus can
be found as a perfect Savior by any and all who would repent of their sin and put their
faith in Him as their sacrifice.
If, in fact, Jesus was guilty of sin in any capacity, the entire atonement is undone,
because Jesus would be like every other high priest who came before Him – needing an
offering outside of Himself for His right standing with God. A sinner cannot be saved
by another sinner; a sinner can only be saved by the One Who is sinless.
The consequence of this is that, if Reverend Robertson is correct in his assertion that
Jesus was a racist who needed to repent of His racism, the Christian faith is a lie and
nobody has found salvation – including the Reverend himself. Thus, the entire theology
of Christ’s atoning sacrifice rides on a proper understanding of the words He spoke
to the Canaanite woman.
Having established the relevance of Brandan Robertson’s charge, let’s now look at
Mark 7 specifically. The account of Jesus and the Canaanite woman is found in verses
24-30:
“Jesus got up and went away from there to the region of Tyre. And when He had entered
a house, He wanted no one to know of it; yet He could not escape notice. But after hearing
of Him, a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately came and fell
at His feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of the Syrophoenician race. And she kept asking
Him to cast the demon out of her daughter. And He was saying to her, "Let the children
be satisfied first, for it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to
the dogs.” But she answered and said to Him, "Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the
table feed on the children's crumbs.” And He said to her, "Because of this answer go;
the demon has gone out of your daughter.” And going back to her home, she found the
child lying on the bed, the demon having left.”
There is a parallel recording of this event in Matthew 15:21-28:
“Jesus went away from there, and withdrew into the district of Tyre and Sidon. And a
Canaanite woman from that region came out and began to cry out, saying, "Have mercy
on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is cruelly demon-possessed.” But He did not
answer her a word. And His disciples came and implored Him, saying, "Send her away,
because she keeps shouting at us.” But He answered and said, "I was sent only to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and began to bow down before Him,
saying, "Lord, help me!” And He answered and said, "It is not good to take the children's
bread and throw it to the dogs.” But she said, "Yes, Lord; but even the dogs feed on
the crumbs which fall from their masters' table.” Then Jesus said to her, "O woman,
your faith is great; it shall be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed
at once.”
The context of both Mark 7 and Matthew 15 is that Jesus has left Jerusalem after rebuking
the Pharisees over their vain traditions and the hypocrisy of their legalistic attitudes.
He and the disciples travel to the cities of Tyre and Sidon – Gentile cities in ancient
Phoenicia, north of Israel.
It is important to note the greater context in which Mark and Matthew have placed this
account; it is immediately following a rebuke of prejudice. (The legalism of the Pharisees
being the basis on which they looked down on other Jews and, especially, Gentiles.)
Matthew’s telling of the Canaanite woman’s approach reveals in verse 23 that the disciples,
even though they had witnessed Jesus’ rebuke, still held on to some of the same prejudices
regarding Gentiles when they asked Jesus to, “send her away.” (The idea being that
she wasn’t worth their time since she was a Gentile.) Jesus response to the disciples
in verse 24 is to say that, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
The natural response of the disciples to Jesus’ statement would be that He is in agreement
with them – that Jesus was only interested in national Israel, not anyone from the Gentile
nations.
With this in mind, the woman further implores Jesus, which then prompts Him to say in verse
26, “It is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.” The word
for dogs in this verse is κυναρίοις, a dative form of κυνάριον. Specifically,
this word is in reference to a pet dog. This is to be distinguished from the normative
word for dog, κύων (as found in Matthew 7:6, Luke 16:21, Philippians 3:2, 2 Peter
2:22 and Revelation 22:15). By contrast, κύων is the word used pejoratively among the Jewish
people of the time to describe Gentiles as unclean and unspiritual.
That Jesus uses κυνάριον rather than κύων is telling of what He is intending
to communicate. We can say immediately that His choice of words makes it clear that He
is NOT using a racial slur to describe this woman. But, if Jesus is not insulting this
woman, why does He refer to her as a dog? (Specifically, as a pet dog?) To answer this
question, we must consider the remainder of the story.
Returning to Mark’s account, he records Jesus in a slightly fuller way – "Let the
children be satisfied first, for it is not good to take the children's bread and throw
it to the dogs.” The reason that Jesus says it’s not good to throw the children’s
bread to their dogs is because the children have not yet eaten. The woman responds by
saying, “Yes, Lord; but even the dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from their masters'
table.” As a result, Jesus then states, “O woman, your faith is great; it shall
be done for you as you wish,” and her daughter is miraculously healed.
From this discourse, we see that Jesus turns the woman’s request for her daughter to
be healed into a euphemism about a pet dog waiting for a portion of the family meal to
be given to it. Like a pet dog coming to its master’s table seeking food, the Canaanite
woman has come seeking Jesus’ healing. If Jesus’ healing is the stand-in for the,
“children’s bread,” He is communicating that it is not yet time for His message to
be spread among the Gentiles. This is a play on the disciples’ prejudice that Matthew
recorded in verse 23. Remember though Jesus’ response to the disciples request to send
her away – “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
The pan-canonical testimony of the Bible is that Jesus came to save Jew and Gentile; people
from every tribe, tongue and nation (Revelation 7:9-10). God told Abraham that, “…in you
all the families of the earth will be blessed,” (Genesis 12:3). Paul would later write in
Romans 9 that,
“...it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who
are descended from Israel; nor are they all children because they are Abraham's descendants...it
is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are
regarded as descendants.” (Romans 9:6-8)
Being a national Jew does not mean anything regarding one’s standing with God. The Pharisees
were nationally Jewish, but they were outside of the new covenant because they did not have
faith in Christ. To be sure, Jesus will not save everyone; only those who share in the
new covenant. This is why He says in verse 24 of Matthew 15, “only the lost sheep of
the house of Israel,” Israel not being a people of ethnicity, but a people of faith.
Jesus’ response to the disciples here is a hint that He has come to save His people,
regardless of their ethnic or national background. He then uses the request of the Canaanite
woman as the basis to expose the prejudicial assumption the disciples had in asking her
to be sent away.
In saying to the woman that, “…it is not good to take the children's bread and throw
it to the dogs,” He is invoking her response to see if she will request that Jesus cease
His efforts to spread His message among the Jewish people (as the disciples would’ve
assumed) to help her as a Gentile. Her response undercuts the disciples’ assumption in two
ways: She acknowledges Christ as, “Lord.”
She does not request that Jesus cease His efforts to the Jewish people, rather that
He would only spare a moment to help her as Gentile (i.e. that He would let her, “feed
on the the crumbs,” that are falling from the table.)
This confession on behalf of the woman would have been a reminder to the Jews of the day
that simply because someone was a Gentile was not sufficient reason to consider them
an enemy of God. Like a pet dog waiting patiently for crumbs to fall from its master’s table,
the Gentiles God has called are waiting patiently for their redemption while Jesus is spreading
His message among the Jewish people.
This is reflective of what the apostle Paul would later write in Romans 1:16 – the gospel,
“is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to
the Greek.” God’s plan was to bring the Messiah into the world through the Jewish
people and from there to bring the message of His salvation to every people group of
the world.
Jesus’ granting of the Canaanite woman’s plea for her daughter to be healed was a first-fruit
of the revelation of the good news to the Gentiles. Rather than being evidence of racism
that He needed to repent of, this account is testimony to Jesus’ love for all people,
especially in the face of our own cultural assumptions and prejudices.
Reverend Robertson, my earnest plea to you is to please repent for the error of your
teaching. I do not say this with any hate or malice in my heart toward you. But, if
this is what you have been teaching those underneath your pulpit, you are putting their
salvation at risk, as well as your own. Christ is not an imperfect man who needed to find
repentance, He is a perfect Savior Who can satisfy all of our sin and wrongdoing if we
acknowledge Him as the Canaanite woman did – “Have mercy on me, Lord!”