Why Didn't More Jews Believe In Jesus?
Romans 9:1-5
9 I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit— 2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. 4 They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. 5 To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.
Sometime around A.D. 57 Paul sent the letter we now call Romans to the network of house churches in Rome that together made up the Roman church. The Resurrection of Jesus took place in either A.D. 30 or A.D. 33 (either of those two dates is possible), and in the first few years after the Resurrection, the church was primarily made up of Jewish Christians, i.e., people who had a Jewish background before they believed in Jesus. But as the Gospel spread around the Mediterranean—and the Apostle Paul was one of the missionaries and church planters who was most responsible for its spread—the church became more and more Gentile. As the decades went on, fewer and fewer Jews were coming to faith in Christ. When Paul sent his letter, the Roman church was made up of both Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians, but there was some tension between the two groups, and it’s likely that at the time Paul was writing that the Gentile Christians had come to make up a majority of the Roman church.
It seems that in the Roman church, the Gentile Christians were feeling superior to the Jewish Christians because so many of the Jewish people had failed to recognize Jesus as Messiah. In light of this fact, the Roman Gentile Christians believed that perhaps God has abandoned His chosen people and that they—the Gentiles—were the new chosen people: they had superseded—replaced—Israel.
Paul is going to spend the next three chapters dealing the following questions:
1. Why did so many of the Jews refuse to accept Jesus as Messiah?
2. In light of Jewish rejection of Jesus and Gentile acceptance of Jesus, has God replaced the Jews with the Gentiles as His chosen people?
3. Is there any hope that the Jews who previously rejected Jesus as Messiah might one day turn back and believe?
4. In light of all of the above, what is God up to?
Paul himself was a Jewish Christian, and the failure of so many of his people to recognize Jesus as Messiah was a source of pain for Paul:
2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh [Romans 9:2–3].
What happened? Why didn’t more Jews believe in Jesus? God chose the family of Abraham—Israel—to be His chosen people; the Old Testament is the account of how God worked through Israel:
4 They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. 5 To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen [Romans 9:4–5].
So, despite being the chosen people and having all the privileges and blessings of hearing directly from God (!), despite being the people from whom the Messiah came (!), the Jews in Paul’s day missed recognizing Jesus as Messiah. Why? What does their blindness to the Gospel mean? Did God forsake His people? Was God unfaithful to His promises to Israel? Have the Jews been replaced by the Gentiles? In chapters 9–11, Paul will give an answer.
An overview of Paul’s answer: No, the Jews have not been replaced by the Gentiles; rather, God is working His plan of salvation, and throughout history God has used certain people at certain times for the larger purpose of bringing salvation to all who will receive it. If the majority of the Jews are rejecting Jesus, somehow their rejection is being used by God to be part of His overall salvation plan, but His promises to Israel are still valid and will be forever—He has not given up on Abraham’s family.
In the meantime, I think it’s worth thinking through the idea of privilege in our lives. Paul lists all the privileges that the Jews enjoyed, and yet they missed Jesus.
What are we doing with what we have been given?
We know the Gospel—are we living as if we know it?
We have the Gospel—are we doing anything with it?