Let’s be real. Jesus wasn’t God. He wasn’t the Messiah. He wasn’t God-in-flesh, God-incarnate, or any of that theological nonsense that later got imported from Greek and Roman philosophy into early Christian doctrine. Jesus was a Jew. A radical Jew. A Jewish reformer. And his message? Purely Jewish — intended for Jews.
Jesus Wasn’t Starting a New Religion
If you strip away the centuries of distortion, dogma, and deification, what you’re left with is a Jewish teacher — maybe a prophet, maybe a sage — but definitely not a divine being. Jesus taught Torah. In Matthew 5:17, he says explicitly, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” He walked around Galilee and Judea telling Jews to live more justly, to care for each other, to honor the heart of the Law rather than obsess over its minutiae.
Sound familiar? It should. It’s what Isaiah (Isaiah 1:17), Micah (Micah 6:8), and Jeremiah (Jeremiah 7:5-7) said. It’s what Moses said (Deuteronomy 10:12-13). It’s what many of our sages echoed through the ages.
Jesus taught in synagogues (Luke 4:16), quoted Torah (Deuteronomy 6:5 in Matthew 22:37), and affirmed core Jewish beliefs about God’s unity and the obligation of mitzvot. He wasn’t out to build churches. He wasn’t handing out salvation cards or preaching a gospel of faith in himself. He was telling Jews to do better as Jews — to return to the core of Torah.
Christianity Isn’t From Jesus – It’s From Paul
Let’s make a key distinction: Jesus didn’t invent Christianity. Paul did. Paul, also known as Saul of Tarsus, claimed to have received a vision of Jesus posthumously (Acts 9), and from that point forward redefined Jesus’ message. He downplayed Torah observance (Galatians 3:23-25), emphasized salvation through faith over mitzvot (Romans 3:28), and elevated Jesus to a divine status (Philippians 2:6-11).
Paul invented key Christian doctrines like Original Sin (Romans 5:12-19), salvation by grace alone (Ephesians 2:8-9), and the death of Jesus as a substitutionary atonement (1 Corinthians 15:3). None of these are in the Hebrew Bible, nor are they consistent with Jesus’ own words about repentance (Matthew 4:17), mercy (Matthew 9:13), or righteousness (Matthew 5:20).
From a Second Temple perspective, Paul’s theological innovations would have been unrecognizable to the vast majority of Jews. The sectarian divisions of the time — Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots — all operated within the Torah-based framework. No known Jewish sect at the time preached a divine human messiah, let alone the abrogation of Torah for Gentile converts. Paul’s message was something else entirely.
The Mishnah, compiled about 200 CE but reflecting earlier oral traditions, states: “He who says, ‘I will not wear tefillin,’ so as to transgress the words of the Torah, has no share in the world to come” (Sanhedrin 10:1). This reflects how seriously Torah observance was taken in mainstream Judaism. Paul’s dismissal of Torah puts him at odds with this deeply rooted worldview.
Jesus as a Jewish Reformer
What Jesus was really doing was calling for reform — a call that echoes throughout Jewish history. He opposed hypocrisy (Matthew 23:13-36), demanded ethical behavior over ritual (Mark 12:33), and sided with the downtrodden (Luke 6:20-21). He criticized the religious elite of his day, particularly the Pharisees and Sadducees, not because he rejected Judaism, but because he wanted a return to its authentic core.
He wasn’t alone. The prophets did it before him. The Dead Sea Scroll community (Essenes) did it too. Reform within Judaism is not new — it’s a sign of life and relevance. Jesus’ criticism of temple corruption (Mark 11:15-17) was not unlike Jeremiah’s in Jeremiah 7. He challenged authority when it conflicted with Torah — not to abolish Judaism, but to restore it.
The Talmud reflects similar internal critiques: “Not the study [of Torah] is the chief thing, but action” (Avot 1:17). Jesus echoed this same principle when he condemned those who spoke piously but failed to act righteously (Matthew 23:3).
Netzarim Judaism sees Jesus for who he was — a human being, a Jewish reformer, a man with a message for Jews, not a deity with a gospel for the world.
He Wasn’t the Messiah — And That’s Okay
Jesus didn’t fulfill the messianic prophecies outlined in the Hebrew Bible. He did not:
- Rebuild the Holy Temple in Jerusalem (Ezekiel 37:26-28)
- Gather all Jews back to the land of Israel (Isaiah 11:11-12)
- Bring universal peace (Isaiah 2:4, Micah 4:3)
- Reign as King over a united Israel (Jeremiah 23:5-6)
Instead, he was executed by the Romans, left no kingdom, and saw his followers persecuted and scattered. There is no prophecy in Tanakh that the Messiah would die, be resurrected, and return in a second coming — that is Christian invention, not Jewish tradition.
According to the Talmud (Sanhedrin 98b), one of the expected signs of the messianic age is that “all nations shall turn to worship the Lord together.” This universal transformation did not happen through Jesus.
Judaism doesn’t need a messiah to be valid. We follow God’s commandments because they’re right and good — not because we’re waiting for someone to do it for us.
Netzarim Judaism’s View
As a Netzarim Jew, I affirm radical monotheism. God is One (Deuteronomy 6:4). Indivisible. Not a trinity. Not incarnated. Not split across human avatars. The moment someone tries to tell you that God was born, suffered, and died — they’ve stepped out of Judaism and into something else entirely (Isaiah 40:18, 25).
Jesus was not God. He was not the Son of God in any divine sense. He was a man, born to human parents (Luke 2:7), who lived and died as a Jew (John 4:9). He observed Torah, celebrated Jewish holidays (John 7, Passover in Luke 22:8), and taught in synagogues (Matthew 4:23).
Jewish tradition preserves the idea of strict monotheism and warns against idolatry in subtle forms: “He who acknowledges idolatry denies the whole Torah” (Sifra Kedoshim 5:4). The deification of any human being, even one as revered as Jesus, crosses that line.
We can honor that reality without turning him into something he wasn’t. We don’t need to steal him back from Christianity. We just need to tell the truth, and let the facts of Scripture, history, and tradition speak for themselves.
