Who’s Really “Converting”?
What do we think of when we hear the expression, “Jewish people coming to faith in Jesus?”
Last week I had the privilege of attending a missions conference at our church. Missionaries serving in South Africa, Albania, Moscow, Togo West Africa, the Philippines, Canada, and various locations in the US attended.
The conference was a great time of refreshment for my wife and me. However, on the last day in a conversation with a new friend, I was reminded of a major theological error many Gentile believers have when thinking about Jewish people coming to know Jesus as their Messiah.
When my new friend, Ken, found out I am on staff with Life in Messiah International he said, “It must be exciting to convert Jews!”
That statement seems innocent enough and I have heard it in one form or another countless times over the years. But it is wrong on a couple of very fundamental levels.
First, as a representative of Jesus none of us “converts” anyone. Our responsibility is to spread the seed of the gospel and it is God’s responsibility to bring that seed to harvest.[1]
Second, at various times in history in “Christian Europe,” Jewish people were forcibly “converted” under threats of death or expulsion.
However, another problem from a theological standpoint is that when Jewish people come to faith in the Messiah, they are not “converting” to anything. They are simply realizing a fulfillment of all God promised them in the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament).
As one thinks through the Hebrew Bible, it becomes apparent rather quickly that God’s plan is to use the seed of a woman to crush the head of the serpent who brought sin into the world.[2] As we progress in the Scriptures, we see the story of the Seed passing through Abraham with the birth of the Jewish people and on to Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and David.
A deeper study reveals more detail about this coming One. In Micah we discover He is to be born in Bethlehem.[3] In Isaiah we find He is to set up a kingdom that will last forever.[4] Scores of other passages teach the details about the coming Messiah.[5]
All these facts from the Hebrew Bible point to the message of Jesus being very Jewish from beginning to end.
When we get to the Book of Matthew, we discover these words, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”[6]
What could be more Jewish than that? The son of David and son of Abraham!
However, interestingly enough, during Jesus’ physical ministry in Israel as described in Matthew, He had very little contact with people who were not Jewish.
In fact, Jesus tells His disciples to “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”[7] Later He encounters a Canaanite woman and says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”[8]
We can conclude that the message of the Messiah is a Jewish message, contained in the Jewish Bible and was, at least during Jesus’ earthly ministry, given almost exclusively to Jewish hearers.
So that should lead us to conclude that when a Jewish person comes to faith in Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, he/she is not “converting” to anything. Rather that person is coming to a completeness of his or her Jewishness!
But what about those of us who are Gentiles?
At the very end of Matthew Jesus tells His Jewish followers,
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.[9] (Emphasis mine)
That passage is called the Great Commission and most believers are familiar with it. However, it would do us well to put the Great Commission into context. It was given to a group of Jewish men who were told to take the Jewish message of the Jewish Messiah to the ends of the earth, i.e., to the Gentiles.
If we think historically about what those Jewish men were assigned to do, we come to realize they were to go to the pagan parts of the world to communicate about a God who cannot be seen and a Messiah of whom they had never heard.
For the Gentiles did not have Genesis, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Isaiah, Micah, and Zechariah since they didn’t have access to the Hebrew Bible. And they certainly weren’t looking for a “Gentile Messiah” for there was no such thing.
If Jesus isn’t the Jewish Messiah, He isn’t anyone’s Messiah.
If one puts all these facts together, one has to conclude it is not the Jewish person who converts to a new faith – Christianity. But rather it is Gentiles converting to faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through the Messiah Jesus.
It may be hard to grasp the concept that Gentiles are the converts in 2021 when there are multiple churches in every city and the gospel is on the radio and in books that saturate our culture. However, the reality is the message of Jesus is, and always has been, Jewish. As the result of God’s grace and mercy, Gentiles have been grafted into the rich root of Abraham. Here's how Paul, the Jewish apostle to the Gentiles, puts it:
But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you.[10]
Jewish people don’t “convert,” Gentiles do!
Those of us who are Gentile believers in the Jewish Messiah would do well to remember Paul’s words earlier in Romans 11:11:
So, I ask, did they [the Jewish people] stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather, through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous.
Jewish people don’t convert to follow Jesus, Gentiles do. And one of the purposes is to make Jewish people jealous!
It is my prayer that an understanding of this concept will result in humility among Gentile believers and the elimination of the word “convert” from our vocabulary.
Written by Winn, LIFE Staff
One of the challenges in communicating cross-culturally is learning to see and hear the world as others do. Words we commonly use in our own community may have a different connotation to others. For helpful vocabulary suggestions when sharing your faith with Jewish people, see our page Communicate with Sensitivity.
Interested in more tools for effectively communicating the gospel? Email us at office@lifeinmessiah.org or call 708-418-0020.
Endnotes:
[1] 1 Corinthians 3:6-7.
[2] Genesis 3:15.
[3] Micah 5:2.
[4] Isaiah 9:6-7: 11:1-12.
[5] For example: Deuteronomy 18:15; Psalms 2, 22, 110; Isaiah 52:13-53:12, Zechariah 9:9, 12:10 to name a few.
[6] Matthew 1:1. All scripture quoted from the English Standard Version (ESV).
[7] Matthew 10:5-6.
[8] Matthew 15:24.
[9] Matthew 28:19-20.
[10] Romans 11:17-18.