In the Newer Testament, Romans 11 further explores aspects of this consummating purpose for the descendants of Jacob.  Romans 9-11 ends in a doxology of astonishment. Paul is astonished at the outworking of God’s consummating purposes.
    Who would have guessed that the people of Israel would turn down their Messiah when God sent Him?
    And who would have guessed that the pagan nations of the world would come to a living relationship with the God of Israel without having to become Jews first?
    And who would have guessed that at the end of history, God would bring the Jewish people back to covenant faithfulness through this same Messiah, with the Jews being regathered and renewed, in the power of the Spirit, and through the very same Messiah through whom the nations of the world turned to this same God, while for their part, not having been required to embrace Jewish life?
    How astounding! How miraculous! How unexpectedly and uniquely the work of God!

    Is it not clear that this is what is astonishing the Apostle? Or do we imagine that the best God can pull off at the end of history, when “all Israel will be saved,” is that vast numbers of Jews will become Baptists, Pentecostals, or Presbyterians?

    To just ask the question is to answer it.

    We must remember that in Romans 9-11, Paul is contrasting Israel and the nations as aggregates. He is not speaking of Gentile and Jewish individuals, but of these respective groups, the same dyad as is found throughout Scripture: Israel and the nations.  God’s final act toward the Jews will be directed to us as a people—he will bring the Jewish people to covenant faithfulness and to repentance/renewal through the one despised by the nation.42

    At the end of history God will clarify two realities, despite the widespread denial that has historically prevailed. Yeshua, whom Isaiah refers to as “the one despised by the nation,” the one “despised and rejected by men,” will be demonstrated to be everlastingly God’s beloved One, and Israel, the nation so long despised by the nations, will be demonstrated to be God’s beloved, His Chosen People.

Therefore the inreach responsibility of the Messianic Jewish Remnant includes the following:

1. Our inreach is accomplished as we serve as a sign that God has a continuing purpose for the Jews, a consummating purpose of renewed covenant faithfulness in obedience to Torah in the power of the Spirit through Yeshua the Messiah.
2. Our inreach is accomplished as we demonstrate communally that we are a demonstration of that purpose – a proleptic preview of that covenant faithfulness which
3.  Our inreach is accomplished as we catalyze and assist greater Israel toward this consummating purpose.

The sins of Messianic Jews and of all Israel are far more dire and extensive than simply the record of individual human failings. The sins of all Israel, including Messianic Jews, include and indeed are foundationally our failure to live in covenant faithfulness with Israel’s God.

Do Jews need the atonement Yeshua provides? Yes, by all means, yes, but for reasons deeper than we have yet realized and proclaimed.

Jewish missionaries and Messianic Jews have always called for other Jews to repent and believe. But we fail to ask, “Repent for what?” By default, we would say, “Repent for being a sinner, for your sins,” or perhaps, “Repent for not recognizing the Messiah whom God sent for us.”

But this will not do, for we finally only know what sin is when we compare our conduct with what God demands of us. We, the seed of Abraham and Sarah, whose ancestors, standing at the foot of Sinai, said 

“na’aseh v’nishmah—we will do and we will hear/obey—all that the Lord has spoken we will do”

—must repent not of being sinners in general, but of being Jewish sinners specifically. The sins of all Israel, including Messianic Jews, include continual and pervasive neglect of the covenant to which we are all obligated (Dt 29:10-15). 

Although we may confidently say “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Messiah Yeshua,” we may not say “there is therefore now no responsibility for those who in Messiah Yeshua.” “Yeshua paid it all,” but not that we might go back to each of us turning to his own way (Is 53:6). 

Surely, if our sin includes covenant violation, should not our repentance include not simply faith in the sin-bearer, but also a return to that covenant-faithfulness from which we departed? 

And is it of no significance that it is precisely to the restoration of this kind of obedience (communally) that God’s consummating actions are directed?

Obedience to God, “thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” is our fourth powerful motivation.

And even if this were the only one, it would be more than enough to drive us forward. We must speak to our people about Yeshua because we have been commanded to do so. 

Paul’s words apply to us:

“For if I preach the gospel that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” (2 Cor 9:16)

Cannot such a motivation drive us forward?  Of course it can! And beyond that, should we not be passionate to “bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of His name” among all the people of Israel, as was Paul’s passion for the nations? (Ro 1:5, 16:26)

Such a mighty missional motivation roars at the curbside like a Maserati, its door open, waiting only for us to get in the driver’s seat to go zero to sixty in five seconds flat. By comparison, the find-heaven-avoid-hell motivation seems like a donkey, energized by a carrot and a stick! I may be taking away our donkey, but our Father in heaven has given us the keys to the Maserati. Let’s take her out on the road!! *

* Johannes Verkuyl, writing thirty years ago, reached similar conclusions, naming six motivations for mission, including all four I identified. His list, in order: obedience; love, mercy and pity; doxology; the eschatological motive (where he makes mention of the Lord’s Prayer!); haste; and the personal motive— the arousing of ourselves through arousing others. Verkuyl was the pre-eminent missiologist of the mid- twentieth century (Contemporary Missiology: An Introduction. [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978]), 164- 168.