Why is Antisemitism wrong?
Question 60109
Antisemitism is the hatred, contempt, or systematic hostility directed at Jewish people because they are Jewish. It has taken many forms across history, from casual slander to genocidal violence, and it has often found shelter under religious, political, and even Christian banners. For the Christian, the question of whether antisemitism is wrong is not complicated. It is wrong, fundamentally and without qualification, and the reasons for saying so reach into the heart of what Scripture teaches about God, humanity, and the gospel itself.
Antisemitism Contradicts the Image of God
Every human being is made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27). This is the foundation of human dignity and the first theological reason why any form of ethnic hatred is sinful. To despise a person because of their ancestry, their ethnicity, or the circumstances of their birth is to despise the God whose likeness that person bears. James 3:9 makes this explicit in the context of speech: we cannot bless God and curse people who are made in His likeness without fundamental contradiction. The image of God is not diminished or nullified by ethnicity. It is not more present in some peoples than in others. Antisemitism, like every other form of racial hatred, collapses at the first principle of biblical anthropology.
Antisemitism Violates God’s Covenant Commitments
God made unconditional covenant promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the Jewish people are the physical descendants of those patriarchs. Genesis 12:3 establishes a principle that echoes across the whole of biblical history: “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonours you I will curse.” This is not a casual piece of divine rhetoric. It is a standing commitment that God has honoured across thousands of years of human history, and it places anyone who positions themselves against the Jewish people in direct opposition to God’s own declared purpose.
Paul in Romans 11:28-29 makes clear that even in the present age, when a partial hardening has come upon Israel with respect to the gospel, the Jewish people remain “beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” To hate the Jewish people is to hate people whom God has declared beloved. It is also to deny the faithfulness of God, because antisemitism almost always involves some claim that God has finished with Israel, rejected them, or transferred their promises elsewhere. None of that is true. The covenant stands, and the people with whom it was made remain the beloved of God.
Antisemitism Rejects the Jewishness of Jesus
Jesus Christ was born a Jew, raised in a Jewish family, observed Jewish festivals, taught in Jewish synagogues, and died as a Jewish man under a sign that declared Him “the King of the Jews.” He said to the Samaritan woman, “salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22). The Messiah came through Israel, the apostles were Jewish, the New Testament was written largely by Jewish authors, and the Scriptures themselves are the inspired witness that emerged from the life of Israel over many centuries. Any form of antisemitism that attempts to distance Christianity from its Jewish roots ends up distancing itself from Christ. It is not possible to love the Saviour while despising the people He came from and to whom He first preached the kingdom.
The earliest church was entirely Jewish. Gentile inclusion came later and represented a remarkable expansion of God’s grace. Paul’s image in Romans 11 is of Gentile believers being grafted into a Jewish olive tree as wild branches. The natural branches have been temporarily broken off, but the tree and its root remain Jewish. To forget this, or to invert it so that Jewish people are seen as outsiders to a Gentile faith, is to misread the whole structure of redemptive history.
Antisemitism Is Built on False Witness
The ninth commandment forbids bearing false witness against one’s neighbour (Exodus 20:16). Antisemitism, in every historical form it has taken, is built upon lies. The medieval blood libel claimed that Jewish people murdered Christian children for ritual purposes. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forgery produced by Russian secret police in the early twentieth century, claimed to reveal a secret Jewish plot for world domination. Modern conspiracy theories about Jewish control of banking, media, and government recycle these same lies in new packaging. Christians are commanded to love truth and to refuse false witness. When antisemitic ideas reach believers through media personalities, political movements, or online content, the response is not polite curiosity but decisive rejection. A lie does not become more credible because it is widely shared.
The Church’s Shameful History
Honest engagement with this question requires acknowledging that much of the historical antisemitism in the Western world has come from people who called themselves Christians. The church fathers sometimes wrote cruelly about Jewish people. Medieval pogroms were often launched by crusading armies on their way to the Holy Land. Martin Luther’s late writings contained vicious antisemitic content that the Nazis would later exploit. Too many Christian leaders across too many centuries have been silent when they should have spoken, or complicit when they should have resisted.
None of this represents Christianity faithful to its own Scriptures. It represents Christianity failing its Lord. The proper Christian response to this history is not defensive denial but honest repentance, combined with a settled resolve not to repeat the errors of the past. Christians today are not personally guilty for what previous generations did, but they are responsible for whether they allow such patterns to continue or recur in their own time.
Antisemitism Undermines the Gospel
The gospel is for the Jew first and also for the Greek (Romans 1:16). Paul carried in his heart great sorrow and unceasing anguish for his Jewish kinsmen, longing for their salvation (Romans 9:1-5; 10:1). A Christian who despises the Jewish people cannot share Paul’s heart, cannot pray Paul’s prayers, and cannot understand Paul’s gospel. Antisemitism closes the mouth of the evangelist and hardens the heart of the believer against the very people for whom Christ specifically grieves.
At the end of the present age, Zechariah 12:10 describes the moment when the Jewish people will look upon the one they have pierced and mourn for Him. Romans 11:26 declares that all Israel will be saved. The Jewish people have a future in God’s redemptive plan that is glorious beyond description. Christians who treat them with hostility in the present age are at odds with what God Himself is working toward. Those who love what God loves will love the Jewish people, even when they do not yet share faith in Christ, because God loves them and has made promises concerning them that He will certainly keep.
So, now what?
Christians should recognise antisemitism in all its forms and refuse to give it any quarter. This includes the crude varieties that are easily identified and also the subtler versions that dress themselves in political commentary, conspiracy theory, or pseudo-theological argument. It includes the temptation to stay silent when antisemitic ideas are being shared by people whose other views may be congenial. Believers should honour God’s covenant people, pray for their salvation, speak against lies told about them, and stand with them when they are under attack. Loving the Jewish people is not a political position. It is a biblical obligation flowing from the character of the God who chose them and the Saviour who came from them.
“I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonours you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Genesis 12:3
