Answering Jewish Objections
We often receive questions from readers asking for help answering Jewish objections to Yeshua as the Messiah. We have created a series of articles that answers each of those questions. Many of the questions we receive stem from an Aish.com article entitled Why Jews Don't Believe in Jesus. We answer those and other questions point for point.
Before we begin, we find it important to make three observations:
1) The mental exercise of answering a person's objections will not cause that person's heart to change.
In the story of Lazarus and the rich man, Abraham declares, "If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead." (Luke 16:31)
The primary reason Jews reject Jesus as the Messiah is because (as a whole) G-d has blinded their eyes (Romans 11:7-8) and hardened their hearts for a season to allow the fullness of the gentiles to come into G-d's kingdom. (Romans 11:25) This is part of G-d's sovereign plan of salvation and until G-d's timing is complete that national blindness and hardness will not change.
2) Salvation is G-d's work... not ours.
Believers are never given the responsibility of making converts or "getting people saved". Our job is to testify as witnesses to the work G-d has performed in each of our lives (Acts 1:8) and to make disciples (Matthew 28:19-20) among those G-d has saved by His choice (John 15:16) and His power (Acts 2:47). Please do not think you have any responsibility to "save the Jews". G-d saved them once during the Exodus from Egypt (Exodus 14:30) and He is entirely able to save them again when the time is right.
3) Jewish believers in Messiah do NOT cease to be Jewish.
We passionately affirm that Jewish believers in Messiah remain Jewish. We also affirm (as Messiah Himself did) that He did not come to "abolish the Law or the Prophets" and that G-d's Law, the Torah of Moses, is still in effect. G-d declares that, as part of the New Covenant, He will write the Torah upon the hearts of those who believe. (Jeremiah 31:31-33)
We exhort our Jewish brothers everywhere to walk in G-d's commandments... not to obtain salvation but because it is G-d's purpose for their lives:
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10)
Now, on to the objections... and the answers.