The main reason Christians are so zealous to convert Jews to their beliefs is to legitimize their faith. The fact that Jesus’ own people rejected him is a real problem for Christianity.

I have never met a single Christian in my entire life—and I have met many—who felt that their own faith would be legitimized if they could convince a Jew to believe as they did. If anything, since the Hebrew Bible indicated to us that most of our Jewish people would reject the Messiah when he first came, it does not surprise us that our people did, by and large, reject him and that they still reject him today. The main reasons Christians are often especially zealous to win Jewish people to their faith are:

(1) As followers of Jesus the Jewish Messiah, they have a special love for Jewish people;

(2) it is especially painful for them to think of the People of the Book missing the Messiah of that Book, of Yeshua’s own flesh and blood not recognizing him; and

(3) many Christians believe that at the end of this age there will be a widespread turning of the hearts of our Jewish people back to God and his Messiah, ushering in the Messiah’s return. Thus, they pray for this to take place and make every effort to help speed this process along by telling their Jewish friends and colleagues the good news about the Messiah.

I remember an incident that took place when I was traveling across the United States with my parents and sister in the summer of 1966. We went into a restaurant in Texas, and there on the menu was a steak advertised as a “New York Cut.” My father commented, “I’ve lived in New York all my life”—he was about fifty-two at the time—“and have never heard of a New York Cut steak.” He had to go to Texas to learn about it! Similarly, when I have been in restaurants elsewhere in the States and have seen a “Texas Cut” steak on the menu, I’ve wondered if Texans would know what this meant. I doubt it, simply because such a thing really doesn’t exist.

In the same way, I never once heard about followers of Jesus (be they Jew or Gentile) needing to win Jewish people to their belief system so as to validate their own faith. I learned about this charge from the anti-missionaries! It’s no more real than is the existence of a special New York cut of steak. ²⁶⁷

It is true that church leaders in the first few centuries were frustrated that more Jews did not put their faith in Jesus. This, unfortunately, only confirmed to these leaders that Jewish people in their day were no different than Jewish people in the days of Moses, the prophets, and the Messiah, consistently rejecting the messengers of the Lord (see above, 2.8). As a result, rather than this Jewish rejection of Jesus changing their views about the Messiah, it actually confirmed their views about the Jewish people.

Of course, when you are part of a minority group, especially one that is persecuted for its beliefs, if a learned or influential person from the community that has excluded you has a change of heart and believes just as you do, you will be encouraged by this. For example, if you were raised as a highly intellectual, secular Jew and became Orthodox at the age of forty—to the shock and even ridicule of all your intellectual, secular Jewish friends—it would bring you real encouragement if one of these people (perhaps the most brilliant of them all) became convinced that traditional Judaism was true, becoming religious himself (or herself).

In the same way, I’m sure that Christians and Messianic Jews are blessed and heartened when they learn that an Orthodox rabbi or a brilliant Jewish agnostic has become born anew (see John 3:3, 5) and been radically transformed through Jesus the Messiah. But this hardly confirms or validates their own faith. If it did, they would hardly deserve to be called believers in the first place!

Followers of Jesus around the world endure hardship, beatings, deprivation, imprisonment, torture, and even martyrdom rather than deny their Lord, and Jesus called his people to be faithful in spite of such suffering (see above, 2.6). He hardly countenanced a faith that would be so weak that it required the faith of other people (be they Jews or Gentiles) to confirm its reality.

Do many Christians especially try to reach Jewish people with the good news of the Messiah? Naturally, for the reasons stated above. In fact, there is a well-known anecdote involving Charles Simeon, a saintly leader at Cambridge in the nineteenth century and a great lover of the Jewish people:

Once at a missionary meeting Simeon had seemed so carried away with the future of the Jews that a friend passed him a slip of paper with the question, “Six million of Jews and six hundred millions of Gentiles—which is the most important?” Simeon at once scribbled back, “If the conversion [turning] of the six is to be life from the dead to the six hundred, what then?” ²⁶⁸

Thus, it is true that many Christians feel the return of the Jewish people to their Messiah is of real importance. Still, you must understand that of the vast majority of worldwide Christian outreach efforts, only the tiniest percentage of income and effort is expended on reaching the Jewish people. There are two billion people who have never even heard the name of Jesus, let alone the full message of his redeeming love. It is these people that receive special attention from Christian missions organizations, while the hundreds of millions of people who have only limited knowledge of the Messiah’s grace are also high on the priority list.

“Then what about the vast amounts of money Christians donate to Jewish evangelism? How do you explain that?” ²⁶⁹

Well, I did tell you that Christians are involved in seeking to reach Jews with the good news of the Messiah, and some money is given to this. But as far as “vast amounts of money” being donated by Christians for Jewish evangelism, where is it? Funds for Jewish ministry are notoriously scarce, and many Messianic Jewish congregations—in America and in Israel—run on shoestring budgets. The vast funding simply is not there. Once again, this is a myth.

I do, however, need to correct one last misconception, and that is the notion that Jews who become followers of the Messiah have converted to another religion and are no longer Jews (see above, 1.2–1.4). What do I mean? This example can speak for itself: When one of my Messianic Jewish friends was asked by a Christian how it felt to be a converted Jew, he said, “I don’t know, because it’s not a sin to be a Jew. I’m not a converted Jew, I’m a converted sinner!” I think you get the point.

²⁶⁷ Cf. the statement of Beth Moshe, cited above, introduction, n. 4.

²⁶⁸ Cited in Brown, Our Hands Are Stained with Blood, 24.

²⁶⁹ Such statements are quite common in anti-missionary fund-raising literature, and they are designed to put fear into the hearts of Jewish people, making them feel as if there is some vast conspiracy targeting them for conversion. There is even a myth that missionaries get special bonuses for every Jew they can convert (not to mention the ludicrous notion that someone is paying them “by the convert”!).

Brown, M. L. (2000). Answering Jewish objections to Jesus, Volume 1: General and historical objections. (196). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books.