Jesus did not come to save sinners from hellfire. Hell, He didn’t even come to start a new religion or build an institution. What He did come to do was extend the privileges of the Jewish people to the Gentiles—to open the gates of the covenant to those not born into Jewish culture.
His mission was inclusion: a radical expansion of belonging. Through belief in and connection to Him, non-Jews could become part of the Jewish family, receiving the same rites, benefits, and blessings—the full covering of the Jewish God. Jesus confronted the scribes and Pharisees, who found His claims scandalous. They could not fathom that fishermen like Peter and John—unlettered, lowly, without pedigree—could be called family, let alone chosen.
But Jesus preached that even they could belong.
Both Jews and Gentiles ultimately rejected Him, viewing His message as dangerous. Why? Because He dared to say that anyone—by following another Jew—could be brought into the sacred fold. That all could be Jews through faith, not bloodline.
It was never about founding “Christianity.” Jesus wasn’t building a new family—He was expanding the existing one. But what if I don’t want to be Jewish? What if I don’t care for their customs and laws? Must I still follow Jesus? Who decided the Jews are more chosen, more blessed, more privileged than anyone else? Why must faith in Jesus make me a “semi-Jew”?
The Jewish people, then and now, do not generally invite outsiders into their faith—Judaism is largely inherited, not adopted. So Jesus proposed a new kind of adoption: baptism by water, a spiritual rebirth that symbolically fulfilled the biological requirement. Still, many Jews refused this spiritual workaround, and Jesus’ followers, feeling rejected, formed their own identity: Christianity.
But in doing so, they may have undermined Jesus’ goal—not to create a new sect, but to bring all who desired into the household of Israel, to share in its covenant blessings.
Yet this was a privileged position. And Jesus, far from seeking privilege, sought to abolish its exclusivity. He wanted to expand the family—not to say Jews were better, but to say you belong too.
In the first century, Jews held dominance in the religious landscape of Jerusalem. Much like aspiring to Roman or American citizenship, becoming a Jew meant gaining access to something powerful. But the culture was exclusive, closed off to the outsider.
Jesus offered a new way in—not by force, but by love. Like marriage, He offered union between Himself and the stranger. Christians today claim Jewish inheritance through that union, though many Jews reject the claim. The house remains divided.
At its heart, Jesus’ mission was never about “salvation” in the way we’ve come to understand it. It was about family, belonging, and tearing down the walls of spiritual elitism. It was about saying: you are worthy, even if you weren’t born into it.
And maybe that was the most dangerous idea of all.
This article is available in another version in the Jamaica Gleaner by Renaldo McKenzie and will be available as a monologue via The Neoliberal Round Podcast and YouTube Channel.
By Rev. Renaldo McKenzie
Renaldo is the Editor-in-chief at The Neoliberal, Author of The Neoliberalism Book Series: Book 1: “Neoliberalism, Globalization, Income Inequality, Poverty and Resistance” published in 2021 and is available in all formats worldwide and via https://store.theneoliberal.com and book 2: Neoliberal Globalization Reconsidered, Unfair Competition and The Death of Nations” with contributions from Martin Oppenheimer available in 2026.
This article is also available in The Neoliberal Journals at https://theneoliberal.com/the-neoliberal-journals
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