If you’re considered one of the very-online white nationalists who decided during Holy Week to say the hashtag “Christ is king” as an antisemitic troll, I’ve got what might sound to you to be each excellent news and bad news.
The excellent news: Christ is king. The bad news: He’s a Jew. The even worse news: He’s not the type of king you’re thinking that he’s.
This week commentator Candace Owens, recently fired by The Daily Wire for anti-Jewish comments, made news as she used the slogan online, allegedly as a response to Daily Wire cofounder, Ben Shapiro, who’s Jewish. The phrase was then amplified by so-called “Groypers,” the social media mob assembled across the white nationalist Nick Fuentes, whose singular mission appears to be to place the Mein back in Mein Kampf.
When some—corresponding to on-air talent and executives at Owens’s previous media platform—criticized the usage of the slogan, a lot of those using it identified that the words Christ is king represent basic Christian teaching. The words God and rattling are, after all, perfectly good biblical words too, but most of us can see that context can change the meaning.
I’m less involved in the nationalist-on-nationalist social media controversy than I’m within the much less recognized query behind it: Can “Christ is king” be antisemitic trolling? One could argue yes, and that the primary time we discover the words referenced as written down, they were just that.
The cross, in any case, got here with a label affixed to it. Above Jesus’ head were the words Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews, written not only in Aramaic but in Greek and Latin too (John 19:19–22). Many have speculated as to why the prosecuting governor, Pontius Pilate, who personally wrote this inscription, did so—and why he wouldn’t change it, when asked, to “This man said, ‘I’m the king of the Jews.’” What we do know is that the Roman system, of which Pilate was an official, used humiliation and intimidation as governing tools. After all, that’s what crucifixion is—a ghastly and shameful act of torture meant to impress fear in anyone who might challenge the Caesarean order and to dehumanize anyone killed that way.
The Gospel of Mark indicates that the sign’s inscription, “the king of the Jews,” was actually the charge against him (15:26). The “Jesus is king” language would have been self-evidently a type of joke, making fun of each Jesus and his fellow Jews under Roman occupation. As Frederick Buechner once said of that sign, “To get something closer to the true flavor, try translating the sign as an alternative: ‘Head Jew.’” The joke is that a king on the throne of David wouldn’t be drowning in his own blood, helplessly fixed to a Roman cross. To call him that will make a cruel point not simply to any future insurrectionist but to the hopes of Jewish people generally—No one is coming to eliminate us. Caesar is king.
The motives of Pilate’s soldiers in applying the “Christ is king” imagery was even clearer. The purple cloak and the crown of thorns were meant to be a parody—because the Roman soldiers sarcastically saluted Jesus, yelling, “Hail, king of the Jews!” (Mark 15:18). They mocked Jesus each for his alleged claim to kingship and for his Jewishness, each seen as being obviously beneath the majesty of Roman power.
Jesus, though, will not be a real and higher Caesar. His kingship is something altogether different. “The kingdom of God will not be coming in ways in which could be observed, nor will they are saying, ‘Look, here it’s!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the dominion of God is within the midst of you” (Luke 17:20, ESV throughout). Jesus was teaching, If you desire to see the dominion of God, stop looking around for what you expect it to be; here I’m.
That’s because the dominion of God will not be a capstone of the aspirations and power games of this present order; it’s a repudiation of them. If the dominion of God were about external conformity, tribal membership, or “winning” within the sense that we define it, Jesus could have embraced all of that from the crowds around him (John 6:15) or by teaching Peter to be a greater swordsman (Matt. 26:52–54). The kingdom of God can’t be understood or articulated without seeing that the Crucifixion will not be a plot obstacle on a hero’s journey. The way of the Cross is, actually, the Way—while the way in which of Caesar results in death.
One can’t be born again by Caesarean section.
The Resurrection itself was a “yes” and an “amen” to that way. As New Testament scholar Richard B. Hays points out, Jesus, after his resurrection, didn’t appear to Pontius Pilate or to his other opponents, but to his own disciples. What he entrusted to them was not a strategy to get and to make use of the identical type of power that had crucified him, but as an alternative a strategy to wait for the one type of kingship that ultimately matters, anointed by the Holy Spirit who breathes life into what was dead (Acts 1:6–9).
Be careful what you would like for. Christ as king, the way in which he defined it, will not be excellent news for individuals who wish to use Christ in an effort to develop into kings themselves.
Something dark is haunting the world straight away. The old gods of blood and soil are rustling. We have endured the identical before. But we must not allow them to claim the cross. The cry “Christ is king” is true. That’s why it must not ever be emptied with a satanic type of kingship. Abominations are on the planet around us until the tip, but Jesus warned us of a selected kind—the abomination that’s “standing within the holy place (let the reader understand).” Jesus says, together with the prophet Daniel, that that type of abomination—the sort that uses the holy things of God—results in “desolation” (Matt. 24:15). What we must fear essentially the most will not be that which might push us down but that which might hole us out.
If Jesus were an antisemite, he couldn’t save us. He could be a sinner similar to us. In addition, if Jesus were an antisemite, he could never read his own Bible and even look within the mirror. You cannot follow Jesus while sneering, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” You cannot claim the Messiah as Lord while hating his kinsmen in accordance with the flesh. You cannot say “King Jesus” while mocking who he’s and what he told us with purple robes and thorny crowns.
You cannot have each Jesus as Lord and Jesus as Caesar without twisting the cross.
A twisted cross is just one other swastika, and that’s no cross in any respect.
Russell Moore is the editor in chief at Christianity Today and leads its Public Theology Project.
Update (March 28, 2024): An earlier version of this text misstated Ben Shapiro’s position at The Daily Wire. We regret the error.
