A critical element in Christian thinking was (and is) that the Messiah promised and portrayed by God through his prophetic messengers has already appeared, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. We have seen this issue as key to late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century Christian pressures on the Jews of northern Spain and southern France. This Christian claim had profound implications for the Christian–Jewish debate. If Jews could be brought to acknowledge that Jesus had arrived at the time predicted in biblical prophecy for messianic advent and/or that he displayed key characteristics predicted for the Messiah, then such Jews would be in effect recognizing Jesus' messianic role and thereby accepting a critical Christian truth claim.

In addition, the notion of Jesus' advent as Messiah had potent ramifications. The simplest of these was that all biblical prophecies of hope were fulfilled in Jesus or – to put the matter negatively – Jews living with expectations of future redemption were woefully misguided. No such future redemption was in the offing, since salvation had already dawned. In a more detailed twist, Christians believed that the Jews of Jesus' own days, who spurned him, had occasioned thereby divine wrath and loss of their covenantal status. With the spurning of Jesus, according to this Christian view, Jews had been rejected by God and had been consigned to ongoing and everlasting degradation and misery.