When you tell someone that you’re Jewish and a believer in Jesus, it can raise a lot of questions. If you self-identify with the label Messianic Jew, many aren’t really clear on what that means. Is it some minority branch of mainstream Judaism, or is it basically code for “Christianity with a Jewish veneer”?

Messianic Jews have two core poles around which our identity revolves.

First, we are part of the Jewish people by virtue of being born to Jewish parents. (And yes, most Messianic Jews accept that Jewishness can come through the father as well as the mother.)

Our faith is rooted in God’s promises in the Tanakh.

Second, we believe that Jesus is the promised Messiah of Israel and of the entire world. Our faith is rooted in God’s promises in the Tanakh as well as in the New Testament (which was written almost entirely by Jews).

Like other Jewish people, we are diverse in our degree of religious observance, political perspectives, and in where we choose to live. But there are some unifying core beliefs that Messianic Jews adhere to.

Here is a brief sketch of the most important ones.

We believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob

Most Jewish people in the world today no longer hold to traditional beliefs in the God of the Jewish people as he is encountered in the Tanakh. Even many observant Jews have abandoned aspects of traditional faith.

As Jewish followers of Jesus, we believe in the God who is described in the Torah and the rest of the Tanakh. We believe he exists and that he is personal. We hold that he is the Creator of the world, and that he established his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—and thereafter with the entire Jewish nation.

We believe that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel

Outside of Orthodox communities, not many Jewish people believe there is a Messiah to come. Although on Passover we open the door for Elijah, hoping that he will announce that the Messiah is not far behind, for most that’s just a nice tradition. Often, it merely represents a vague hope that things will get better.

Many believe that we will be our own messiah, that the only way for the world to improve is through our own efforts, with acts of tikkun olam. Hoping for some miraculous Messiah to suddenly appear is, some would say, a recipe for passivity and an excuse for inactivity.

As Messianic Jews, we believe there is a Messiah, an individual sent by God, and that Jesus of Nazareth is in fact that very Messiah. We base this belief on passages in the Tanakh that speak of a coming deliverer and what he will do, as well as on the accounts about Jesus in the New Testament.

From the Tanakh and the New Testament, we believe that the Messiah came to atone for our sins through his death and to initiate the first glimmers of a healed world. Jews have traditionally pictured the Messiah as a warrior who will destroy the enemies of the Jewish people and regather all Jews to Israel. We concur that the Messiah will indeed come in “warrior mode” to set all wrongs to right. But we understand that he first came to die and atone for our sins, thereby addressing the root cause of evil in the world. That belief comes from verses in the Tanakh.

Many rabbis have read the Bible as teaching us about two different Messiahs. But we understand it to mean that we have only one Messiah who has come and will return.

We believe Jesus rose from the dead

Jews traditionally believe in the resurrection. This is the idea that at the end of time, God will raise all people from the dead for blessing or for judgment. If Jesus rose from the dead in the first century, as opposed to at the end of history, that is a strange blip. Yet interestingly, some who started out to disprove that Jesus rose came to the opposite conclusion after having a look at the evidence.¹

But even if Jesus did rise from the dead, what difference would that make for Jews or anyone else in the 21st century?

Primarily, it helps show us that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, as it puts the capstone on everything that Jesus taught and did. Some have responded by saying that all it proves is that we live in a really weird universe where sometimes someone can just rise from the dead. We believe it’s more than just a random event; it holds meaning for us all.

We believe Jesus is God who came to us as a first-century Jewish man

At first, this idea sounds completely un-Jewish. Jews don’t believe that man can become God, that God can become man, or anything like that. Furthermore, God is one (a cardinal belief of Judaism, as stated in the Shema), not three or three-in-one or however you want to spin it.

Recent scholarship—Jewish writers included—are coming to another conclusion. Namely, that the Tanakh and later branches of Judaism are very comfortable with the idea that God can appear as or in some way become human. As Jewish Theological Seminary professor Benjamin Sommer put it in his seminal book The Bodies of God:

This study forces a reevaluation of a common Jewish attitude toward Christianity. Some Jews regard Christianity’s claim to be a monotheistic religion with grave suspicion, both because of the doctrine of the trinity (how can three equal one?) and because of Christianity’s core belief that God took bodily form.
What I have attempted to point out here is that biblical Israel knew very similar doctrines, and these doctrines did not disappear from Judaism after the biblical period….

The only significant theological difference between Judaism and Christianity lies not in the trinity or in the incarnation but in Christianity’s revival of the notion of a dying and rising God, a category ancient Israel clearly rejects [emphasis added].²

The idea that God is an indivisible unity comes not from ancient Israel or the Bible but from medieval sage Maimonides. Maimonides utilized Greek philosophy, specifically the thought of Aristotle, to argue that God must be a single indivisible unity.

To put something of a Jewish spin on the question, God is bigger than you or me. If he wants to be three-in-one or become a man, that’s his business.

We believe that non-Jews can also have reconciliation to God through Jesus

The Tanakh is centered around Israel, yet it contains promises that God will extend his blessing and redemption to all the nations of the world. In his very first conversation with Abraham, God promises that “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3).

It is God’s desire to redeem the entire world.

Then who can forget Isaiah 2:2–4? There it says that “all the nations” shall come eagerly to the house of Israel’s God:

Many peoples shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.”

This Scripture has influenced us more than we know. Part of Isaiah 2:4 is inscribed on a special wall near the United Nations.

It was always God’s desire to redeem the entire world. Today, there are many millions of people in China, India, Africa, and South America, as well as in Europe and North America, who believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We believe this is a cause for joy.

We believe that our Jewishness is greatly meaningful

All the above would not matter much if we thought that by following Jesus, we ceased being Jews. That is actually something we hear often from family or friends: You switched teams; you joined the oppressors of the Jews; you left the community.

Following Jesus is an act of loyalty to God.

We believe exactly the opposite. If Jesus is the Messiah of Israel, then following him is an act of loyalty to God and in fact honors our ancestors’ faith.

For this reason, most Messianic Jews do “Jewish things” in their lives and follow Jewish traditions to varying degrees. Most probably have a Seder and observe Hanukkah. Some choose to observe kashrut, the laws of kosher food. Many have all the Jewish holidays on their calendars or make a point of traveling to Israel. Some attend messianic congregations which embrace a synagogue-style way of worship; some go to churches where they will often bring Jewish experiences and perspectives into the lives of non-Jewish believers. Some attend Jewish community events or their local Chabad center activities. There’s no one way of being Jewish either among Messianic Jews or in the larger Jewish community.

We believe as well that the Jewish people are God’s people, that non-Jews who come to faith in Jesus come alongside and do not replace the Jewish people. We believe that God has a future for us and that he has promised to always preserve us in the face of antisemitism.

If you are curious to learn more and talk to a Jewish believer in Jesus from our staff, send us a message or chat with us live. Or find other ways to connect through our branches, coffee shops, and art galleries: Get Connected ›

Endnotes

1 For instance, read Who Moved the Stone? by Frank Morison. It was first published in 1930 and remains something of a classic.

2 Benjamin D. Sommer, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel (United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 135.