Can a Jewish person believe in Jesus and remain Jewish?
To believe in Jesus is to leave the Jewish people and join the religion that persecuted them for centuries. Christianity has its own scriptures, holidays and identity. A Jew who accepts Jesus has converted to another faith; Jewish communities and even Israel's Supreme Court have treated such a person as no longer part of the Jewish religious community.
— See David Berger & Michael Wyschogrod, Jews and 'Jewish Christianity' (1978)
Jesus, his apostles and the entire first generation of his followers were Jews who worshiped in the Temple and kept the customs of Israel. They saw faith in Jesus not as leaving Judaism but as trusting Israel's Messiah. The Church's later hostility to Jews was a betrayal of its own roots and must be confessed. In the New Testament, a Jewish person who follows Jesus remains a son or daughter of Abraham and part of Israel's story, not a deserter from it.
What Scripture says
20When they heard this, they glorified God. Then they said to Paul, “You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law.
James tells Paul there are many thousands of Jewish believers, all zealous for the Torah.
1I ask then, did God reject His people? Certainly not! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. 2God did not reject His people, whom He foreknew. Do you not know what the Scripture says about Elijah, how he appealed to God against Israel: 3“Lord, they have killed Your prophets and torn down Your altars. I am the only one left, and they are seeking my life as well” ? 4And what was the divine reply to him? “I have reserved for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” 5In the same way, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace.
Paul insists God has not rejected his people; Paul himself is an Israelite, part of a faithful remnant.
1I speak the truth in Christ; I am not lying, as confirmed by my conscience in the Holy Spirit. 2I have deep sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my own flesh and blood, 4the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory and the covenants; theirs the giving of the law, the temple worship, and the promises. 5Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them proceeds the human descent of Christ, who is God over all, forever worthy of praise! Amen.
Paul's anguish for his kinsmen, to whom belong the covenants, the Torah, the promises, and the Messiah.
17Now if some branches have been broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others to share in the nourishment of the olive root, 18do not boast over those branches. If you do, remember this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. 19You will say then, “Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.” 20That is correct: They were broken off because of unbelief, but you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but be afraid. 21For if God did not spare the natural branches, He will certainly not spare you either. 22Take notice, therefore, of the kindness and severity of God: severity to those who fell, but kindness to you, if you continue in His kindness. Otherwise you also will be cut off. 23And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. 24For if you were cut from a wild olive tree, and contrary to nature were grafted into one that is cultivated, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!
Gentile believers are wild branches grafted into Israel's olive tree and must not boast against the natural branches.
13When they had finished speaking, James declared, “Brothers, listen to me! 14Simon has told us how God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people to be His own. 15The words of the prophets agree with this, as it is written: 16‘After this I will return and rebuild the fallen tent of David. Its ruins I will rebuild, and I will restore it, 17so that the remnant of men may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by My name, says the Lord who does these things 18that have been known for ages.’ 19It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not cause trouble for the Gentiles who are turning to God. 20Instead, we should write and tell them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals, and from blood. 21For Moses has been proclaimed in every city from ancient times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.”
The Jerusalem council debates how Gentiles may join a movement that was then thoroughly Jewish.
17Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. 18For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
Jesus came not to abolish the Torah and the Prophets but to fulfil them.
31Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. 32It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt— a covenant they broke, though I was a husband to them, ” declares the LORD. 33“But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD. I will put My law in their minds and inscribe it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they will be My people. 34No longer will each man teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquities and will remember their sins no more.”
The new covenant is promised first to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
The case
A painful question
For many Jewish people, the idea of a Jew believing in Jesus is not just theologically wrong; it feels like betrayal. That feeling has deep historical roots, and Christians must face them honestly before saying anything else.
The Church's sins against the Jewish people
For much of history the Church treated Jews with contempt and violence. Crusaders massacred Jewish communities in the Rhineland in 1096. Jews were accused of killing Christian children, forced to wear distinctive dress, baptized under coercion and expelled from England, France and Spain. Martin Luther, late in life, wrote a vicious tract, On the Jews and Their Lies (1543), urging that synagogues be burned. Centuries of Christian teaching that Jews were "Christ-killers" prepared soil in which Nazi antisemitism could grow, even though Nazism was itself anti-Christian.
To many Jews, "becoming a Christian" therefore sounds like joining the persecutors. Churches have begun to repent: the Catholic Church's Nostra Aetate (1965) repudiated antisemitism, and in 2000 Pope John Paul II placed a prayer asking forgiveness in the Western Wall. Christians must continue to confess this history without excuses. These crimes were not faithful expressions of Jesus' teaching but betrayals of it.
The first followers of Jesus were all Jews
It is easy to forget that the Jesus movement began as an entirely Jewish one.
1. Jesus was a Jew
Jesus was circumcised on the eighth day (Luke 2:21), attended synagogue (Luke 4:16), went up to Jerusalem for the festivals (John 7:10), wore the tassels commanded in the Torah (Matthew 9:20; compare Numbers 15:38) and taught as a rabbi. He said he came not to abolish the Torah and the Prophets but to fulfil them (Matthew 5:17).
2. His apostles were Jews
All twelve apostles were Jewish. After Jesus' resurrection they continued to pray in the Temple (Acts 3:1) and proclaimed Jesus as Israel's Messiah, the one promised to Abraham, Moses and David.
3. The early church debated whether Gentiles could join
The first great controversy in the church was not whether Jews could follow Jesus, but whether non-Jews could, and on what terms (Acts 15). That question only makes sense in a movement that understood itself as Jewish.
4. Jewish believers remained zealous for the Torah
Around AD 57, James told Paul there were many thousands of Jewish believers in Jerusalem, "all zealous for the law" (Acts 21:20). Paul himself said, "I am an Israelite" (Romans 11:1), in the present tense.
Paul's olive tree
In Romans 11 Paul pictures Israel as an olive tree. Gentile believers are wild branches grafted in; Jewish believers are natural branches. Gentiles must not boast against the root that supports them (11:18). For Paul, a Jew who believes in the Messiah is not cut off from Israel but is at home in Israel's own tree. Christianity is not a foreign religion Jews must convert to; it is the faith of Israel's Messiah into which Gentiles have been welcomed.
Messianic Jews today
Today there are Jewish believers in Jesus around the world, including in Israel. Many identify as Messianic Jews, worship in congregations that use Hebrew liturgy, keep the Sabbath and festivals, and see Jesus (Yeshua) as the fulfilment of their Jewish identity. Mainstream Jewish bodies, from Orthodox to Reform, do not recognize Messianic Judaism as a form of Judaism. Christians should acknowledge that disagreement honestly rather than pretend it does not exist.
Why it matters
The question of identity is ultimately a question about Jesus. If Jesus is Israel's Messiah, then following him cannot be a betrayal of Israel; it is the deepest loyalty to Israel's God and Israel's hope. Christians who share Jesus with Jewish friends should do so with humility, aware of history, and with love for the people of whom, as Paul says, the Messiah came (Romans 9:5).
Word study
greek · “zealous ones for the law” · Acts 21:20
Zēlōtēs (G2207) means a zealous devotee. Decades after the resurrection, the Jerusalem believers in Jesus are described as 'zealots for the Torah'. Faith in Jesus did not make them less Jewish in practice or identity; Luke presents their devotion to the Torah approvingly.
“But what about…?”
Isn't someone Jewish by birth Jewish no matter what they believe?
Traditional Jewish law generally holds that a person born Jewish remains Jewish even after apostasy, reflecting a Talmudic principle that an Israelite who sins remains an Israelite (Sanhedrin 44a). But mainstream Jewish communities regard faith in Jesus as leaving the Jewish religious community, and Israel's Supreme Court in the Rufeisen ('Brother Daniel') case of 1962 ruled that a Jew who converts to Christianity is not a Jew for the Law of Return.
Didn't Paul abandon the Torah and start a new religion?
Paul called himself a Pharisee (Acts 23:6), took a Nazirite-style vow (Acts 18:18; 21:23-26) and observed the festivals (Acts 20:16). He opposed making Gentiles keep the Torah to be saved, not Jews keeping it as Jews. Scholars debate the details of Paul's Torah practice, but few now see him as rejecting his Jewish identity.
How can Christians speak of Jesus to Jews after the Holocaust?
With humility, repentance and love. Christians must listen to Jewish pain and never use Jesus' name to coerce. But hiding Jesus would also be a strange kind of love. Jesus is a Jew who wept over Jerusalem; sharing him rightly means honoring, not erasing, the Jewish people.
Do Jewish believers have to keep kosher and the Sabbath?
The New Testament neither requires Torah observance for salvation nor forbids Jewish believers from keeping it. Messianic Jews vary: some keep kosher, Sabbath and festivals as part of their calling; others do not. Christians differ on how to weigh these practices.
Where Christians differ
Go deeper
- book · 2005Postmissionary Messianic Judaism: Redefining Christian Engagement with the Jewish PeopleMark S. Kinzer
- book · 2013Introduction to Messianic Judaism: Its Ecclesial Context and Biblical FoundationsDavid Rudolph & Joel Willitts (eds.)
- book · 2011The Jewish Annotated New TestamentAmy-Jill Levine & Marc Zvi Brettler (eds.)
- book · 1992Our Hands Are Stained with Blood: The Tragic Story of the 'Church' and the Jewish PeopleMichael L. Brown
- book · 1978Jews and 'Jewish Christianity'David Berger & Michael Wyschogrod
- book · 1993A Rabbi Talks with JesusJacob Neusner
Sources (6)
- Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 44a: an Israelite, even if he sins, remains an Israelite
- Rufeisen v. Minister of the Interior, Supreme Court of Israel (1962): a Jewish convert to Christianity not a Jew under the Law of Return
- Second Vatican Council, Nostra Aetate 4 (1965): the Catholic Church deplores antisemitism
- Martin Luther, On the Jews and Their Lies (1543)
- Pope John Paul II's prayer of repentance placed at the Western Wall (March 2000)
- Jewish communities in the Rhineland massacred during the First Crusade (1096); expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492)
Related questions
Doesn't the Shema rule out Jesus being God?
Christians affirm the Shema completely. Jesus called it the first commandment, and the apostles never stopped confessing that there is one God. The question is what kind of oneness the Shema teaches. The Hebrew Scriptures themselves speak of the LORD appearing in human form, of a divine figure beside God, and of God's Word and Spirit acting as God. Early Jewish followers of Jesus did not abandon the Shema; they found Jesus within it.
Jesus didn't bring world peace—how can he be the Messiah?
The objection is right that Jesus has not yet finished the Messiah's work. But the Hebrew Bible itself describes the Messiah in two ways: humble and suffering, and glorious and reigning. Some rabbis also noticed this tension. Jesus fulfilled the first set of promises, opened the knowledge of Israel's God to the nations, and promised to return to complete the rest. A Messiah who comes twice is not a Christian evasion; it is how the scriptural portraits fit together.
Isn't Isaiah 53 about Israel, not Jesus?
Isaiah does call Israel God's servant, but he also describes a servant who is sent to restore Israel, who is innocent, who suffers silently and willingly for 'my people', dies, is buried and then lives again. Those details fit an individual who represents Israel better than the nation as a whole. Several ancient Jewish sources applied the passage to the Messiah, and Jesus fulfils it in remarkable detail.
This entry is a draft and has not yet been theologically reviewed.