Jews
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14. Why did not the Jews recognize Jesus as the Son of God? |
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The answer
is simple: because according to the Jews, God did not have a Son. To a Jew,
to recognize Jesus as the Son of God was tantamount to saying that God was
not one, that is to say, that God was not a single person because He shared
His Deity with another God, which was unacceptable to Judaism, which forbade
the Jews to have other gods before the God of Israel (Exodus 20:3).
Therefore, according to Judaism, a Jew who recognized Jesus as the Son of God
was an idolater, had abandoned the faith in the only God, and consequently
was deserving of death (Deuteronomy 13:6-11). It suffices to consider how the
believing Jews of those days were persecuted by the disobedient Jews to
understand this. In addition to this, according to the Judaism of that time,
to recognize Jesus as the Son of God meant to recognize that human
sacrifices, which are condemned by the law, were lawful. Because to a Jew, to
say that God gave or offered His Son for the remission of our sins meant that
God was a cruel and merciless God. To sum up, therefore, to recognize Jesus
as the Son of God meant to insult God twice. |
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Today
things are exactly the same, for, to the Jews, to recognize Jesus as the Son
of God who died on the cross for our sins means to insult God twice because a
Jew by believing on Jesus denies the oneness of God and believes that God has
offered a human sacrifice. A Jew who believes that Jesus is the Son of God
has abandoned the true faith and is expelled not only from the local Jewish
community, but also from the world Jewish community, and according to some
Jews he is no longer a Jew. Such a Jew has committed the sin of idolatry,
which is a very serious sin, in that according to Judaism all those Jews who
become idolaters will not inherit the world to come (idolatry is one of the
sins which prevent a Jew from inheriting the world to come). |
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The Jews
thought and still think in that way, because Isaiah said: “He has blinded
their eyes and hardened their hearts, lest they should see with their eyes,
lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal
them” (John 12:40; Isaiah 6:10 – NKJV), and Moses said: “God has given them a
spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see and ears that they should not
hear, to this very day” (Romans 11:8 – NKJV; cf. Deuteronomy 29:4; Isaiah
29:10). |
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No wonder
that the Jews have rejected Jesus, therefore: their behaviour is the result
of the hardening in part which has happened to |