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 second phrase of the Lord’s Prayer, “Hallowed be Thy Name,” names what missional literature terms “the doxological motive,” for making Messiah known as a passion to see God glorified and worshiped. Contemporary scholars are nearly unanimous in emphasizing this to be the most powerful motive of all, able to drive us forward, and do it well.

In a related concept which Mark Kinzer and I highlighted in our flyer, “The Emerging Messianic Jewish Paradigm,” and not without controversy. We said this:

 Such outreach proclaims the Name of Jesus, not the neediness of Jews.

Sometimes mission approaches to the Jewish people include the assumption or even declaration of the emptiness and inadequacy of Jewish religious practice and faith. In contrast, the apostolic motivation for outreach to Jewish people was driven by the realization that in Yeshua, the long awaited Messiah had come.

 The oft-quoted passage, “There is no other name given among mortals by which we must be saved,” comes in a context where Peter and John were seeking to lift up the name of Jesus rather than put down the Jewish people: “for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:12, 20). We would do well to imitate their example and lift up the name of Yeshua without denigrating the holy things already given to the Jewish people (see Romans 3:1-4; 9:1-5). *

Sam Horn helps to silence outcries against our call to leave off a preoccupation with Jewish “neediness” and instead uplift the name of Yeshua.

At the heart of Biblical revelation is God’s self-revelation to man. Part of what God chose to reveal in the Scriptures concerns His primary motive for the activities ascribed to Him in the words of the Book. That motivation can be summed up in the phrase, 

“God does what He does for the sake of His name.” God’s primary motive in the salvation of lost men is doxological, “for the sake of His name” (Isaiah 63:7-14; Acts 15:14; Romans 1:5).

The Scriptures reveal God’s primary motive in delivering His children from their troubles is “the sake of His name” (I Samuel 12:22; Psalm 106:8). God’s primary motive in showing mercy to sinning people is “the sake of His name” (Isaiah 48:9; Ezekiel 20:44).

 God’s primary motive in dealing with the wicked is “the sake of His name” (Exodus 9:14-16; Romans 9:17). Finally, God’s primary motive in His dealings with saved men is “the sake of His name” (I John 2:12; Acts 9:16). **

* Stuart Dauermann and Mark Kinzer, The Emerging Messianic Jewish Paradigm (2005).

** Sam Horn, “The Heart of Biblical Missions” on his website Sharper Iron. http://www.sharperiron.org/2006/10/05/the-heart-of-biblical-missions/ Accessed September 2007.

Post-Enlightenment individualism corrupts our relationship with our people and our understanding of their status. Such individualism, endemic in our time, blinds us to the communal context of our gospel proclamation. Bosch strikes a necessary balance here, and we need to hear his critique of how individualism corrupts our perceptions and activities:

The gospel is not individualistic.

Modern individualism is, to a large extent, a perversion of the Christian faith’s understanding of the centrality and responsibility of the individual. In the wake of the Enlightenment, and because of its teachings, individuals have become isolated from the community which gave them birth. *

How many of us are isolated from the community which gave us birth? And how many of us preach a gospel which isolates Jews from the Jewish community? While at first we recoil from the suggestion, further thought should leave many of us shuddering with recognition.

We need to recover again or discover for the first time a deep sense of communal identity and responsibility, and of the communal nature of God’s eschatological purposes for Israel and the nations. This sense of the Jewish communal context is summarized nicely for us in Ezekiel 37:21-28, where five facets of God’s eschatological purpose for the Jewish people are named. In these times of transition, we can only faithfully serve God’s purpose among the Jewish people by treating each of these facets as a non- negotiable priority. Notice that they are all communal—good news for all Israel, not as individuals, but as a whole, communal good news.

Ezekiel lists the facets of this good news in this order: 

    ✓     The regathering of the Jewish to our homeland, Israel (thus,               Aliyah)
    ✓    The restoration of the unity of the people of Israel
    ✓     Repentance-renewal for the people as a whole
    ✓     Messiah reigning in the center of this gathered people
    ✓     Torah living as the communal life of this people

God is to be praised that each of these priorities is being widely reflected in the Messianic Jewish movement, although, in most cases in an inconsistent and rudimentary manner. Yet for others, this is no description of their current mentality, practice and message because they are infected with crypto-supersessionism and individualism. In broadest outline, this is the kind of gospel we should be proclaiming to the Jewish people, seeing Yeshua in his reigning role, bringing communal blessings to the whole people of Israel.

And God is calling us, infused with his Spirit, to vigorously, joyously and communally incarnate and serve these synergistic priorities. Anything less and anything other than this is at best someone else’s gospel.   Our people will rightly continue to find an individualistic message of soul salvation which fails to highlight God’s continued commitment and consummating purposes for the community of Israel to be stale, irrelevant, and foreign—far less and far other than God’s invitation to participate in the anticipated vindication and blessing of the seed of Jacob. We must repent and return to this perspective.


* David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1992),184-5.