Tag Archives: messianic judaism

Blessings, Curses, and Works of the Law

August 15, 2013 James Pyles 5 Comments

…those who support the New Perspective on Paul, such as J.D.G. Dunn…and N.T. Wright…maintain that “works of the law” focuses on the boundary markers that separate Jews and Gentiles. The boundary markers, or identity badges, of Judaism were circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath. The problem with the Judaism in Paul’s day, then, was not legalism but exclusivism. “Works of law” highlights the nationalistic spirit of the Jews by which they excluded Gentiles from the promises of God. According to his interpretation, Paul does not indict the Jews for their failure to obey the law. Their fault was not inability but separatism.

-Thomas Schreiner from his book
40 Questions About Christians and Biblical Law
Question 5: What Does the Expression “Works of Law” Mean in Paul? pg 42

My previous review on earlier chapters of Schreiner’s book can be found in this morning’s “meditation,” Captured in the Glass. Please read that article before proceeding here.

It took me until this fifth chapter, uh…question to realize that Schreiner was writing this book primarily, or at least significantly, in order to refute the “New Perspective on Paul.” The New Perspective on Paul is actually a formal, academic interpretation of the writings of Paul, supported by a number of New Testament scholars. It also seems to dovetail nicely into the viewpoints of some commentators on Messianic Judaism, particularly those to support the distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish believers in Yeshua (Jesus) as Messiah relative to covenant signs (circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath).

But according to Schreiner, these scholars are dead wrong. I suspect that’s why my Pastor gave me this book. It really is a compelling book, but not in the way Pastor may have intended it.

Here’s Schreiner’s point of view on “works of the law.”

…”works of law” refers to the entire law and the actions that are required by the law. This is the most likely reading of Romans 3:20 (“For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin”) and Gal. 3:10 (“For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them'”).

-ibid

As noted above, I wrote about earlier “questions” in Schreiner’s book in my previous blog post and apparently the subsequent questions form the foundation for later parts of the text. Unfortunately so do the errors that were previously established as well. As I mentioned before, Schreiner himself states that observing the Torah mitzvot was a perfectly acceptable response to obeying God after He redeemed the Israelites from Egypt and apparently it was OK until the coming of Jesus.

Look up Deuteronomy 30, Psalm 19, and Psalm 119 as just a few of the many examples of how the Torah was upheld, esteemed, thought beautiful, a source of wisdom, on, and on, and on, how wonderful the Law of Moses was.

How did it get morphed in the late Second Temple period to be such a pain in the neck for the Jewish people?

Even Schreiner acknowledges that Paul sincerely believed that the Torah was the authoritative word of God for the Jewish people. So what’s Schreiner’s beef with “works of the law?”

A number of arguments support the idea that “works of law” refers to the entire law and the deeds commanded by it…”Works of law” most naturally refers to all deeds commanded by the law. There is no reason to think that it is limited to or focuses on only part of the law, or that it refers to “evil works,” or that it refers to legalism.

-ibid, pg 43

So what? So what if “works of the law” refers to the Torah as a whole? I still maintain that Paul was talking about Jewish and Gentile people who believed that one needed to keep the whole of Torah without error in order to be saved. If you believe keeping the mitzvot will save you instead of faith in God, then you’ve got a problem. I agree. No matter how many of the mitzvot you perform and no matter how well you perform them, those acts are not what saves you from sin and death. Abraham had faith and it was counted to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6, Romans 4:3).

If the mitzvot was a perfectly good response of obedience to God after Israel’s redemption in the days of Moses, why is it a problem in the days of Paul?

I know what you’re thinking. Schreiner thinks the same way.

For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.

–James 2:10 (NASB)

Schreiner’s argument from Question 7: Is Perfect Obedience to the Law Mandatory for Salvation? states that the law is impossible to keep perfectly and therefore no one can be saved by keeping the law. He’s rocketing toward the supersessionistic conclusion that in order to be saved, Jews must abandon the Torah (which he erroneously believes Paul did) and cling to Jesus and grace in order to be saved. He is correct in that God expected Israel to observe the mitzvot, but he forgets that God established provisions for the Israelites when they sinned. He uses examples such as Proverbs 20:9 and Ecclesiastes 7:20 to demonstrate how the “Old Testament” Jews couldn’t keep the law and of course, he uses Romans 3:10 to indicate how the “New Testament” Jews couldn’t keep the law either.

But he is building his argument on sand or rather, on a false premise.

Those who do not do everything the law commands are cursed.

–Galatians 3:10b

Schreiner’s problem is that he assumes it was God’s intention that Israel keep the law perfectly in order to be saved…salvation by works. Would God really expect that? He didn’t seem to in Genesis 15. He redeemed Israel before He gave the Torah at Sinai (see my review of the FFOZ TV episode Exile and Redemption for the actual, Biblical definition of “redemption,” which is much more than how Schreiner understands the term), so obviously that redemption or salvation was not based on the Israelites keeping the Torah, being obedient, or any other form of “works-based salvation.”

So what was Paul complaining about, then? What was his problem with the law? His problem was with people, both Jews and Gentiles, who erroneously thought just keeping the law would save them. That’s why he was against Gentiles converting to Judaism (see the Book of Galatians), since they were laboring under the false teaching that they had to keep the law in order to be saved.

That wasn’t Paul’s understanding of the law and it certainly wasn’t God’s.

But if Paul is saying that those who convert to Judaism and thus who are bound to the Sinai covenant and its conditions, the mitzvot of Torah, don’t keep the law perfectly, and not keeping the law perfectly doesn’t cause them to lose their salvation, what is this curse Paul’s talking about?

You’ll find the blessings the Israelite were to receive for observing the mitzvot and the curses they were to suffer from for disobedience in next week’s Torah Portion Ki Tavo: Deuteronomy 26:1-29:8. The actual actions that must be committed in order to be cursed are listed in verses Deuteronomy 27:15-26 and 28:15-19. So what are the consequences of being cursed?

The Lord will let loose against you calamity, panic, and frustration in all the enterprises you undertake, so that you shall soon be utterly wiped out because of your evildoing in forsaking Me. The Lord will make pestilence cling to you, until He has put an end to you in the land that you are entering to possess. The Lord will strike you with consumption, fever, and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew; they shall hound you until you perish. The skies above your head shall be copper and the earth under you iron. The Lord will make the rain of your land dust, and sand shall drop on you from the sky, until you are wiped out.

The Lord will put you to rout before your enemies; you shall march out against them by a single road, but flee from them by many roads; and you shall become a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. Your carcasses shall become food for all the birds of the sky and all the beasts of the earth, with none to frighten them off.

The Lord will strike you with the Egyptian inflammation, with hemorrhoids, boil-scars, and itch, from which you shall never recover.

The Lord will strike you with madness, blindness, and dismay. You shall grope at noon as a blind man gropes in the dark; you shall not prosper in your ventures, but shall be constantly abused and robbed, with none to give help.

–Deuteronomy 28:20-29 (JPS Tanakh)

That’s not the entire list, of course. You’ll have to read the rest of that chapter to find all of the curses. None of them says that the Children of Israel will lose their salvation and go to Hell when they die if they don’t keep the law perfectly.

Whenever Israel has been unfaithful to God and to their sincere, faithful obedience to the mitzvot, what consequence has God delivered to Israel? What consequence do we always see in the Tanakh (Old Testament)? What effects of these consequences do we see to this very day?

The Lord will scatter you among all the peoples from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods, wood and stone, whom neither you nor your ancestors have experienced. Yet even among those nations you shall find no peace, nor shall your foot find a place to rest. The Lord will give you there an anguished heart and eyes that pine and a despondent spirit. The life you face shall be precarious; you shall be in terror, night and day, with no assurance of survival. In the morning you shall say, “If only it were evening!” and in the evening you shall say, “If only it were morning!” — because of what your heart shall dread and your eyes shall see. The Lord will send you back to Egypt in galleys, by a route which I told you you should not see again. There you shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but none will buy.

–Deuteronomy 28:64-68 (JPS Tanakh)

War, famine, destruction of the cities of Israel, and exile to the diaspora.

What was Paul’s problem? Did he know what was coming? Israel was occupied by the Roman Empire. At a thought, the Romans could swoop down on Israel, destroy the Temple, raze Jerusalem, and remove the Jewish people from their Land. If you were born Jewish in the late Second Temple period, there must have been an exceptional sense of being responsible for performing the mitzvot, since they knew the consequences of failure. But how could Gentile believers and God-fearers who were only somewhat familiar with the Torah, truly understand he horrendous consequences of converting to Judaism, being bound by the Torah, and what would happen if they weren’t obedient? The lived memory of all of the previous disasters that had befallen Israel, including the destruction of Solomon’s Temple and the Babylonian exile, were imprinted on every single Jew. But how could the Goyim who had recently come to faith in Messiah even begin to understand?

Was this Paul’s motivation? Probably not entirely, but it must have factored in. The other motivation is that it simply wasn’t necessary for Gentiles to convert, since, as I’ve been trying to hammer home, keeping the law does not save you!!! Any Christian who states this as the reason Paul “rejected” the law is barking up the wrong tree. Not only does a Gentile converting to Judaism and taking up the mitzvot not save that Gentile (and it doesn’t save Jewish people, either), but it makes that Gentile and lots of others like him/her a loaded gun pointed at the head of Israel. A bunch of Gentiles who don’t know squat about a experiential Torah lifestyle abruptly converting to Judaism on the mistaken notion that it will save them (and that Jesus isn’t enough) means a whole pool of “newbies” have just been primed to lead Israel into the next disaster because they don’t realize the tremendous responsibility they possess.

As it turns out, that disaster happened anyway, but I can see Paul’s point in saying that anyone who doesn’t keep the law perfectly brings a curse upon themselves and Israel. No, one little screw up wouldn’t do it, but lots and lots of Jews (including converts) over a sustained period of time who were being disobedient always resulted in exactly those curses being delivered by God upon Israel (and please understand that after each exile, God always redeemed and restored the Jews to their Land).

When Paul said that anyone who does not keep the law is under a curse, it has nothing to do with salvation and going to Hell. It does not mean the Torah is bad. It does not mean Jews in Messiah should give up the mitzvot. It does not mean Jewish faith in God and performance of the commandments are mutually exclusive. Quite the opposite. Jesus gives the mitzvot their full meaning. He was the only Jewish person to ever keep the mitzvot perfectly. He’s the poster child for Torah obedience. He also takes away the curses of failing to be perfect and remember, even Jesus said, Be perfect for your Father in Heaven is perfect (Matthew 5:48).

Did Jesus expect his Jewish disciples to keep the law perfectly? How could he? We have a Biblical record that no one ever kept the law perfectly. What is being perfect? Works? Heaven forbid! What justifies us before God? Works? Not a chance. It’s faith. It’s always been faith. If a Jew keeps the law, no matter how imperfectly, are they instantly sent to Hell, are they sent to Hell when they die, or are they even instantly exiled from their Land? No. The consequences are for a faithlessness, corporate Israel, and faithlessness leads to lack of obedience. Lack of obedience is the symptom, the indicator of lack of faith. That’s the trigger for the consequences, the curses.

In Messiah, the curses are redeemed, removed, done with.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”— in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

–Galatians 3:13-14

Yes, if Jesus removed the curse of the Law, then why would believing Gentiles converting to Judaism be a threat? Because, as we see from Paul’s argument in Galatians, the Gentiles were under the mistaken impression that keeping the Law justified them. In the end, if Israel believed observance of the mitzvot also justified them apart from faith, then that’s the recipe for exile.

Jesus died to redeem us from sin. He paid the price. He died for us. As Paul told the churches in Galatia, Jesus opened the door so both Jews and Gentiles could come to faith and thus be justified before God. In his death and resurrection, he fulfilled that part of the Abrahamic covenant that says he is the “seed” that blesses all the nations.

But also, in Messiah, Jewish believers are free from the curses and the obligation to be perfect, for only in Messiah is anyone considered justified before God. In Acts 15:10 Peter called the law a “burden.” Why would he say that? On some level, maybe it was. Maybe part of what Messiah brings to the table for the Jewish people is the freedom from the curses of the Law so that they are free to observe the mitzvot without a “burden.” This sets the stage so the Jewish people can ultimately be returned to their Land, to Israel, by Messiah.

For the Jewish people, faith and observance go hand in hand, Jewish observance of the mitzvot is the outward response and indicator of faith.

I have to thank Schreiner and my Pastor for this book. My brain is still percolating, I’m shooting from the hip, and half-rambling in this blog post, but I think I’m coming to a better understanding of Paul, the law, and maybe even Galatians. I think I’m getting closer to the Christian puzzle of “the law is bad.” I hope as I continue reading Schreiner’s book that my brain will be opened up and God will provide more illumination. I feel like He’s flipped the switch. Maybe it’s just a night-light so far. But the dawn is coming.

For more on this, see the commentary “Blessings Over Curses” at JewishJournal.com.

The next review in this series is Schreiner’s Law of Torah and Sin.

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What Good is There in the Hebrew Roots Movement?

August 8, 2013 James Pyles 8 Comments

NOTE: I wrote this commentary a few days before my recent blog post, Can Jesus Inherit Lineage from his Adoptive Father Joseph?.

I’ve heard it said that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who define themselves by what they’re for, and those who define themselves by what they’re against. I know it’s really more complicated than that, but if you’ve spent any amount of time in the blogosphere, it might seem just that simple. I sometimes get the feeling that the Internet was created to assist the latter sort of person to quickly, easily, and sometimes anonymously express their opinions about who and what they oppose.

I try to define myself by what I am for and generally post blogs on whatever happens to be rolling around inside my skull at any given point in time. I also have participated in debates about the relative merits of Christianity, Judaism, Messianic Judaism, and Hebrew Roots (I’m using these terms in the most general way possible). I want to talk about some of the differences between certain groups, primarily Messianic Judaism and Hebrew Roots but first, I’d like to provide some links that quickly define Christianity and Judaism just to be able to set them to one side.

The next set of definitions are based on well over a decade of experience in the Hebrew Roots movement. Not everyone is going to agree with me, but as I’ve suggested, that’s the nature of the blogosphere and probably human nature as well.

Nearly a year ago, I wrote a blog post called What is Messianic Judaism, so you can refer back to that for additional details, but as far as a thumbnail sketch goes, the following should serve fairly well.

Messianic Judaism, in its ideal form, is a stream of Judaism that operates alongside the other branches of Judaism such as Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and so on. It’s principle difference is the belief by the Jewish adherents within that stream that Yeshua (Jesus) of Nazareth, as we see him in the Apostolic Scriptures, is the prophesied Messiah, who came once to redeem humanity from sin, and who will come again to liberate Israel, restore the captives to their Land, and usher in an era of worldwide peace.

In its current form (again, I’m speaking generally), the majority of members of Messianic Jewish congregations are non-Jews who have chosen to come alongside the Jewish believers while maintaining the distinction between Jews and Gentiles worshiping within a Jewish context. Messianic Jewish groups are led by the Jewish membership, and established by and for Jews in Messiah. Additionally, like other Jewish streams, many traditional and cultural practices are upheld, such as common halachah observed by many religious Jews. Both Torah and Talmud are studied, the traditional festivals are observed, observance of a Saturday Shabbat is practiced, and worship services are what would be found in any synagogue setting.

Hebrew Roots is a general umbrella term defining groups of primarily non-Jewish believers in Yeshua (Jesus) who adopt some Jewish/Hebraic religious practices and traditions to varying degrees. There are a number of sub-sets within Hebrew Roots, the two primary groups being:

One Law: This group tends to practice what they call “Messianic Judaism” and believes that the New Testament supports Jewish and non-Jewish believers having no distinctions in identity and practice. In the ideal sense, it makes no difference if the groups are organized and operated by Jews or Gentiles, although the vast majority of One-Law groups are almost always Gentile driven. One Law groups distinguish themselves from Messianic Judaism and the other Judaisms by a general dislike if not disdain of anything that isn’t “written Torah,” although it is impossible for them to practice any religious, synagogue-like service without borrowing heavily from Jewish tradition. One Law groups also tend to dislike if not disdain the traditional Christian church and claims that Christians are universally “anti-Judaic” and even apostate.
Two House: This group tends to believe that non-Jewish people who are attracted to Judaism and the Torah are the descendants of the “lost ten tribes” of Israel and that God has supernaturally inspired them to return to a Jewish/Hebraic worship practice and lifestyle. They do not believe that non-Jewish Christians have the same obligation to the Torah as Jewish people do, but they believe that, because they are “Israelites,” they are not truly non-Jewish, and therefore are part of the modern Jewish people. A different stream of two-house doesn’t literally believe that they are the biological descendants of Israel, but that they are spiritual descendants and thus not really Gentiles.

I want to make clear that my definitions are extremely general and within those two groups, there are multiple (probably hundreds) variations of belief and practice. Also, “Hebrew Roots” can include any congregation of Christians (though most won’t claim that particular label), that incorporate some “Jewishness” in their religious lives. This could include church services that use certain Hebrew words, keeping a “kosher-style” diet based on Leviticus 11, wearing kippot and tallitot during services, but not necessarily believing that the full yoke of Torah is incumbent upon them, let alone any significant number of traditions. The one element that unifies all Hebrew Roots groups is the belief that something went wrong in traditional Christianity, usually its historic rejection of the Jewish/Hebrew identity of Jesus and his teachings. The label “Hebrew Roots” is used to separate this group of non-Jewish believers from what they see as the flawed theological, doctrinal, and cultural identity typically associated with the “Christianity” label.
Just to give you an idea of how some Hebrew Roots groups define themselves, I culled the following comments from a One Law blogspot:

As for Seventh-Day Adventists…don’t know much about them except they are Christian and, therefore, anti-Judaic.

In short, the Christian message to Jews is anti-Judaic: “Stop practicing Judaism!”

Yeshua kept the Law, but not any form of Judaism.

Christians believe that the Sinaitic Torah has been abolished; Messianics believe it is valid. Christians believe that the New Testament is anti-Judaic; Messianics believe that the Apostolic Writings are pro-Judaic. And there are divisions with the system of Christianities and also within the Messianic movement. These are all caused by certain convictions.

Are these convictions worth dividing over?

I believe so. We can’t build Messianic communities in the same way that Christians build their communities.

Admittedly, these comments were taken out of context (I added the emphasis because it was apparently missed before), but as you can see, they communicate a less than complementary attitude toward any form of Christianity and sometimes Judaism (although arguably, each and every one of the non-Jewish followers in this movement are Christian by definition).

To be fair, I should mention that at times, there is a positive and supportive connection between Hebrew Roots and the Christian church.

Now that I’ve got all that out of the way, what good can I say about Hebrew Roots? It’s not a matter of whether or not I agree with their basic doctrines. What we all share is faith in Jesus Christ. In that sense, Christianity, Messianic Judaism, and Hebrew Roots have a common Messiah and thus a common bond. Where we differ is how we conceptualize the meaning of the Messiah in our lives and what we believe our response should be to him and to the human beings around us. Probably thousands if not tens of thousands (or more) books, blogs, and websites have been created and dedicated to waging the “war” between Messianic Judaism vs. Hebrew Roots, or Hebrew Roots vs. Christianity, or Christianity vs. Messianic Judaism. I don’t want this to be another blog post carrying on the battle.

I’m not saying I won’t complain again, but I want to take this opportunity to say that in spite of our different outlooks, we must admit that we have things in common as well…all of us who claim the name of Christ, though others call him Messiah.

We believe in the God of the Bible. We believe that all of the Bible is “inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). We believe that Jesus (Yeshua) is the Messiah spoken of in the Jewish prophesies, that it was necessary for him to come once to redeem us from sin, and that he’ll come a second time to establish the Messianic Kingdom and bring world-wide peace. We believe that Jesus taught from the Torah and the Prophets, and that we all have a responsibility to follow teachings such as feeding the hungry, clothing the unclothed, visiting the sick, comforting the grieving, and performing many other acts of kindness as “the weightier matters of the Torah.”

Hebrew Roots folks also uphold the “Jewishness” of Jesus and his Apostles, the continued authority of Torah, the continued Jewish practice of Paul, of Paul not teaching against Torah, the continued vital importance of the Jewish people and Israel in God’s plan. Traditional Christianity isn’t as good at recognizing this and although some of the details between Messianic Judaism and Hebrew Roots differ, we all should recognize what we hold as common beliefs.

But as long as we continue to define ourselves by who we oppose, we will always be stuck inside our little silos and the only people we will ever talk to is ourselves. One of the reasons I chose to return to a church worship setting is that I didn’t want to get stuck in a silo. I wanted to talk to people who didn’t always think like me, in order to build bridges, share information, and contribute to mutual learning “across the aisle.”

Given my regular meetings with my Pastor and some other relationships I’m nurturing within the church I attend, I think I’m headed in the right direction. Nothing is perfect, and sometimes I become frustrated and discouraged, but overall, I’ve been able to express a number of my opinions and beliefs and not only have I not been given the boot yet, but some people seem authentically interested in continuing our dialog.

That wouldn’t be possible if I took the attitude that anyone who isn’t like me or who doesn’t think or believe as I do must be “bad.”

I once heard President and Founder of First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) Boaz Michael say (this isn’t an exact quote) that hitting someone over the head with a Torah scroll won’t give them a different insight into the Torah. We can’t just beat people up with our beliefs. Plenty of atheists complain that Christians are hitting them with their Bibles in their evangelical efforts and guess what? Hostile or aggressive behavior doesn’t change people. You can’t yell at someone as an effective method of convincing them your position has merit. You certainly can’t inspire someone to listen to you if you call them names and denigrate their faith and their worship context.

But we all do that all the time.

While I agree there are some lines in the sand I am not willing to cross, I also must admit that it is important to acknowledge good in someone when you see it, even if you don’t agree with that person on other occasions. In the blogosphere, we all get caught up too much in being theology police. Building the road to accepting each other as members of the body of Messiah requires a willingness to talk to people who are different than you, and to listen to them as well. You may never come to a place where you will always agree on everything, but you may build a place where two people who both love Messiah can get together and share who they are with each other. Once you do that, who knows what you could end up learning and building upon the foundation you’ve started?

Every person you meet has a wellspring deep inside.

If you can’t find it, your own wellspring needs clearing.
Remove the rust from your shovel, sharpen its blade, and dig harder and deeper.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Dig Deeper”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe, Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

Addendum: August 8, 1:15 p.m. Mountain Time: Peter, the person who commented below, chose to take our conversation back to his blog. To be fair, I thought it was important to display the continued results of our dialog which can be found in the comments section. I see we have a long way to go.

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FFOZ TV Review: Son of David

August 7, 2013 James Pyles Leave a comment

Episode 05: In Jewish thought one of the most important titles for Messiah is “Son of David.” Episode five will explore the title “Son of David” in depth. Viewers will learn that the term “Son of David” is a title for the promised messiah, the anointed king, who will come from the house of David. Jesus needed to be of the line of David because if he was not, he could not qualify to be Messiah. By the Scriptures referring to Jesus as the Son of David it solidifies that he is the promised messiah.

-from the Introduction to FFOZ TV: The Promise of What is to Come
episode 5: Son of David

The Lesson: What Does the Title “Son of David” Mean?

As you might expect if you’ve read my previous reviews of the earlier episodes of this series, Episode 5 builds on the material that came before it. Today, Toby explores the Mystery of the “Son of David,” investigating the meaning of this title.

Jesus was called by a wide variety of names and titles, but none more commonly than “Son of David.” People from Prophets to the demon-possessed referred to Jesus this way. But why? What does it mean? Why is it significant to understand?

In ancient and even sometimes in modern Judaism, a male is known by his father’s name. A Jewish man named Jacob who had a father named Abraham, would be known as “Yaakov ben Avraham.” This name would be commonly used when calling Jacob up for a Torah reading in synagogue on Shabbat. Otherwise, he might be known as “Jacob Silverstein” or “Jacob some other last name”. However in the days of Jesus, men were commonly referred to by their given name and then by their father’s name.

But Jesus would have been known by the name Yeshua ben Yosef, since most people would commonly believe Joseph was his biological as well as legal father. Why call him Yeshua ben David? Interestingly enough, Joseph was also known as Yosef ben David, even though his father was actually named Jacob. Why would this be? The answer comes later in the program with Aaron Eby’s portion.

Toby begins by addressing the genealogy of Jesus starting in Matthew 1:1 as read from the DHE Gospels:

The book of the toledot of Yeshua the Mashiach, son of David, son of Avraham.

If the Hebrew words threw you, here’s the same verse from the NASB translation (when Toby isn’t reading from the DHE Gospels, he uses the ESV Bible):

The record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

The mention of Jesus as the Son of Abraham summons the connection between the Messiah and a promise God made to Abraham as part of the covenant between them.

And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

–Genesis 12:3 (NASB)

Hopefully, that part is obvious. Messiah is Abraham’s “seed” through which the nations are blessed. But why “Son of David?”

The question introduces the “mystery” that Toby presents the audience and of course, we now proceed to seeking “clues.”

Toby introduces a problem with the genealogies of Jesus, particularly comparing Matthew 1:6 and Luke 3:31. While Jesus’s family line is traced back to David, Matthew traces it through Solomon and Luke traces it through Nathan. How can both be right?

There are a number of theories about what is happening here. Toby presents an explanation I’ve heard before but repeatedly forget. I’ll offer a clue to the answer to you at the end of my review (to find out the complete solution, you’ll have to watch the episode), but it’s an important piece of information, because without being able to accurately show that Jesus is from the Davidic line, we cannot establish him as Messiah.

Clue 1: Yeshua was a direct descendent of King David.

The lineage of Jesus to David is connected to the title “Son of David,” but as we have seen, even though Jesus is described as the Son of God, his human legal father was Joseph. How can Jesus be Son of David?

The answer lies in part with Aaron Eby in Jerusalem.

He describes the complexities involved in the Hebrew word for son which is “Ben”. I won’t describe everything he said, but the key part is that “Ben” doesn’t just mean “Son of” your immediate biological father, but it describes the connection to any of your male ancestors. My father’s father’s name was Jesse, so even though my father’s name is James, I could also be known as James, son of Jesse. If I had a male ancestor hundreds or even thousands of years removed, let’s say his name was Samuel, I could also be known as “James, son of Samuel.” The person doesn’t have to literally be my Dad as long as he’s one of my male ancestors from whom I am directly descended.

But so what if Jesus is descended from the line of David?

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, For He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people, And has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of David His servant—As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old…

–Luke 1:68-70 (NASB)

Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, is talking about the Messiah being equivalent to the Son of David.

And that’s the next clue:

Clue 2: Son of David is a title for Messiah.

But Zechariah also gives us the final clue with which we can solve the mystery.

Clue 3: It was prophesied that the Messiah would come from the line of David.

It’s like I said before, if we can’t establish that Jesus is a legitimate heir of the line of David, it’s impossible for him to be the Messiah.

Toby reads from a list of various prophesies establishing that the Messiah must come from the tribe of Judah and the family of David including Genesis 49:10, 2 Samuel 7:14-16, and Jeremiah 33:22. However he shows the viewers where we hit a bit of a snag in scripture and in history. Samuel speaks of there always being a descendent of David on Israel’s throne forever, but Jeremiah is prophesying at a time when there was no Davidic King on the throne. Israel had been exiled to Babylon, and although the Davidic line continued, Israel had no King. Was Samuel wrong? How could he be wrong?

The answer is found in Isaiah 11:1-2, and 11:10 in the phrase “stump of Jesse.” Out of that cut off stump, a Davidic King would one day rise who would be Messiah, a King who would rule not just over Israel, but over the entire world. Messiah would be Israel’s King forever.

But although Messiah has come, his physical reign is yet to begin. That is the promise of what is to come.

What Did I Learn?

It’s more what did I remember? I had heard the explanation about Yeshua’s lineage through two different sons of David but I don’t always retain the details. This time, I’ve got access to a video recording of the explanation to help cement it in my brain, or at least a place to go when I need a reminder. However, none of us would have even that if, as Toby said, we didn’t have access to an oral history from Yeshua’s family in the Galilee which explains it to us.

This is important information, as I said, because by linking Jesus to his “father” David, we see he is eligible to be Messiah. This is an answer not only for Christians but for any critics who deny that Jesus could possibly be the Messiah because of a poorly understood meaning of scripture. Jesus is Messiah and is worthy to rule and reign is King of Israel and King of the World. May be come soon and in our day.

I’ll review the next episode very soon.

Addendum: I found a question that directly relates to Toby and Aaron’s teaching about the “Son of David”: Can Jesus Inherit Lineage from his Adoptive Father Joseph?

Uncategorized

The Gentile Believer’s Obligation to the Torah of Moses Revisited

August 5, 2013 James Pyles 27 Comments

At the same time, believers sometimes assume that HaShem’s Torah applies only to Jews and not to Gentile disciples at all. Nothing could be further from the truth. Despite the fact that the apostles “loosed” the Gentiles from these sign commandments, for the most part they are bound to the rest of the Torah’s mitzvot. It should be emphasized that Gentiles in Messiah have a status in the people of God and a responsibility to the Torah that far exceeds that of the God-fearer of the ancient synagogue and that of the modern-day Noachide (Son of Noah). Through Yeshua, believing Gentiles have been grafted in to the people of God and become members of the commonwealth of Israel. While membership has its privileges, it also has its obligations.

-by Toby Janicki
“The Gentile Believer’s Obligation to the Torah of Moses”
Messiah Journal
Issue 109/Winter 2012, pg 45
First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ)

That’s how I started my previous review of Toby’s article eighteen months ago. I mentioned on Friday that I would be “re-reviewing” Toby’s write-up on non-Jewish obligation to the Torah. This is also something of a consequence of my review of Boaz Michael’s “Moses in Matthew” seminar (I didn’t attend the 2011 event, but I did listen to an audio recording on CD). Boaz very aptly presented the Bible, specifically the Gospel of Matthew, as a densely packed document that contains far more information than what a surface reading of the text would suggest.

That’s how I feel about the entire Bible including the Torah, and specifically that’s how I feel about this:

“Since we have heard that some of our number to whom we gave no instruction have disturbed you with their words, unsettling your souls, it seemed good to us, having become of one mind, to select men to send to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. “Therefore we have sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will also report the same things by word of mouth. “For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these essentials: that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication; if you keep yourselves free from such things, you will do well. Farewell.”

–Acts 15:24-29 (NASB)

This is generally known as the “Jerusalem Letter” which contains what we call “the Four Prohibitions:”

Things Contaminated by Idols
Sexual Immorality
Things Strangled
Blood

Seems like a pretty anemic list. I won’t go into the whole process of James and the Apostolic Council issuing the halakhic ruling regarding the admission of Gentiles in to the Jewish movement of “the Way.” I already covered that in some detail in my six-part series Return to Jerusalem. I do want to communicate why I think studying the Torah is as vital to Christians as it is to Jewish people.

For Moses from ancient generations has in every city those who preach him, since he is read in the synagogues every Sabbath.”

–Acts 15:21 (NASB)

This is probably one of the most deeply misunderstood sentences in the entire Bible, especially by those in the Hebrew/Jewish Roots movement. Even I used to believe that this single string of words provided not only permission but the commandment for Gentile believers to learn and observe the Torah of Moses in a manner identical to the Jewish people (nevermind that even observant Jews don’t always agree with each other about how to observe the mitzvot).

Actually, the sentence doesn’t directly say that Gentiles must attend synagogue and learn Torah but it’s heavily implied. Here’s Toby’s explanation for this.

At first glance it appears that the Gentiles have very few commandments to deal with, but upon closer examination each of these four prohibitions becomes, in a sense, an overarching category which contains many sub-category commandments. This may be one of the reasons the Apostle James adds the phrase about Moses being read in the Synagogue every Sabbath. The new Gentile believer would need to attend the local synagogue to learn how each of these four prohibitions plays out practically in everyday life.

-Janicki, pg 46

Actually, those Gentiles we call “God-fearers” were already attending the synagogue and were indeed learning Torah. We see an example of such a synagogue of born-Jews, righteous converts, and God-fearing Gentiles in Pisidian Antioch as recorded by Luke in Acts 13:16-52. However, as the Messianic gospel message continued to reverberate outward from Jerusalem and into the furthest corners of the diaspora, an increasing number of pagan Gentiles would hear the message and turn to the Messiah. These pagans, like the men and women we read about in Acts 14:8-18, would have no knowledge of Torah, Judaism, or ethical monotheism, and the message of the good news that makes so much sense to modern Christians (though most get only a truncated version) would likely be completely misunderstood without a basic knowledge of the teachings of Torah to provide context. New Gentile believers, having just recently been worshiping in pagan temples, would not only miss the meaning of the lessons of Jesus, but they would have no idea how to lead a Holy life or why they should even do so.

As far as the Four Prohibitions are concerned, many have suggested that these are just starting points for new Gentile believers, designed to facilitate “table fellowship” with Jews until the Gentiles learned the full extent of the mitzvot and how to become completely observant. Except that describes a Gentile on the fast track to converting to Judaism, not a God-fearer or (recently) former pagan transitioning into becoming a Gentile disciple of the Jewish Messiah.

The “unpacking” of the Four Prohibitions can be compared to the “unpacking” of what is known as the Seven Noahide Laws. These laws, as we understand them today, didn’t exist in Paul’s day (though it is debatable if some version or versions were being circulated even then) but they are derived from Genesis 9 and the covenant God made with Noah:

Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant. Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. Surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And from every man, from every man’s brother I will require the life of man.

“Whoever sheds man’s blood,
By man his blood shall be shed,
For in the image of God
He made man.

“As for you, be fruitful and multiply;
Populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it.”
Then God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying, “Now behold, I Myself do establish My covenant with you, and with your descendants after you; and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you; of all that comes out of the ark, even every beast of the earth. I establish My covenant with you; and all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood, neither shall there again be a flood to destroy the earth.”

–Genesis 9:3-11 (NASB)

Only seven laws were extracted from the text but again, that number is deceptively small. The link I provided above from auburn.edu/ actually extracts a longer list of laws from each individual prohibition. A total of sixty-seven laws are presented at this particular source and I’ve heard of other sources that have created even longer lists based on the so-called “seven laws.”

The website AskNoah.org is dedicated to providing information and services to modern “Noahides” who worship alongside observant Jews in Orthodox synagogues.

I don’t say all this to directly compare Noahides with non-Jewish disciples of Messiah. Far from it. I only bring this up to say that, just as the Seven Noahide Laws actually make up a much longer and more complex list of mitzvot, so too, do the Four Prohibitions of Acts 15. That’s Toby’s whole point. He wrote fifteen heavily footnoted pages in a magazine format to just scratch the surface of the meaning of the Jerusalem Letter and to unpack its contents so we could understand that who we are as Christians is so much more than a four bullet point list of “Torah” directives and tons and tons of “grace.”

In January of 2012, I was caught off guard by the article and started wondering if some change in philosophy had come over FFOZ. Boaz graciously commented on my original review to say that nothing had changed in their intent.

On the contrary, from the outset (Messiah Journal 101), we made it clear that the “invitation” and non-obligatory type of language applies only to the specific sign-commandments and markers of Jewish identity: “specifically to aspects of the Torah which comprise Jewish identity: circumcision, dietary standards, festivals, calendar, Sabbath, etc.”

Toby’s article simply continues the process of fleshing out and defining the apostolic position regarding Gentiles and Torah. The only new material here involves the logical application of Acts 15 which is where we have been pointing people all along. Toby already presented some of this material in HaYesod.

A lot of this was just starting to gel after I attended FFOZ’s 2012 Shavuot Conference in Hudson, Wisconsin and it’s been steadily percolating within me for the past fifteen months or so. I realize that just as Boaz said his ministry has progressively been “fleshing out and defining the apostolic position regarding Gentiles and Torah,” this type of steady progression is what I’ve been going through as well, within my thoughts, spiritual development, and self-study.

I’m not writing this to re-review the actual content of Toby’s article, but rather how I am receiving its meaning, comparing the person I was a year-and-a-half ago to who I am now. As I said nearly two weeks ago, I’m Not Who I Was. Hopefully, none of us are. Hopefully, we are all striving to move forward, to learn, to experience, to draw nearer to God by the study of His Word.

Bible scholarship is always moving forward. Like any other type of academic endeavour, research and investigation never stops. Theologians, linguists, historians, archaeologists, and other professionals in their fields continually produce new insights into our understanding of God’s Word and how it is to be applied in our lives. As believers, we have a responsibility to also continue to study, to learn, to strive for a more refined understanding of the available information as guided by the Holy Spirit.

Luke only gives us a summary of the Acts of the Apostles, so while the Bible may be sufficient, that doesn’t mean it’s exquisitely complete. We can’t simply read Acts 15 once and say we understand it. We can’t read our favorite interpretation of the meaning of Acts 15 a month ago, a year ago, or a decade ago, and say we are sticking with that understanding, ignoring newer information that might modify our comprehension in important ways. The original text is unchanging, but how we read and understand it isn’t.

Who are we in Christ? What was the original intent and impact of the letter sent out to the believing Gentiles by James and the Council of the Apostles? How does that affect our lives as Christians today? What is a Gentile believer’s obligation to Torah? What does “Torah” even mean in our modern lives?

I can’t definitively answer all of those questions for you, but if you start by downloading and reading Toby’s article and continuing to unpack and unfold the text and your understanding of it, I’m hoping and praying you’ll find out. I pray we all discover who we really are in the pages of God’s Word and then live out the lives God intends for us.

Torah Portion

Re’eh: Seeing to Learn

August 2, 2013 James Pyles 3 Comments

See, this day I set before you blessing and curse: blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I enjoin upon you this day; and curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn away from the path that I enjoin upon you this day and follow other gods, whom you have not experienced. When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter and possess, you shall pronounce the blessing at Mount Gerizim and the curse at Mount Ebal.

–Deuteronomy 11:26-29 (JPS Tanakh)

These words are spoken to the entire Nation of Israel, at the very end of a forty-year term in the desert. Two distinct mountains were on open display. Mount Grizim is plush, rich, and flowering with the promise of life. Mount Eivil in stark contrast is conspicuously barren and empty. This visual aid is employed to etch into the psyche of the assembled the lesson of remaining loyal to the task and mission of Torah and Mitzvos. In the recording of the event Moshe refers to that day as- “today”. What’s so special about that day? Every day he spoke was also a “today”. Why was that day worthy of a title for all time “today”?

The Ohr HaChaim answers that that day they were capable of understanding his lesson based on the statement of the sages, “A person does not stand on (truly grasp) the knowledge- opinion of his teacher until after forty years” (Avodah Zara 5B).

That means that now after forty years they can begin to truly comprehend what Moshe had told them back then. Why does it take forty years? Were these not brilliant people?

-Rabbi Label Lam
“See What Can Be Seen”
Commentary on Torah Portion Re’eh
Torah.org

Nearly a year and a half ago, I reviewed Toby Janicki’s article “The Gentile Believer’s Obligation to the Torah of Moses,” published in Messiah Journal #109/Winter 2012. I remember at the time being a little surprised at even the title, since my understanding back then was Messianic Judaism was striving for pretty much total isolation between Messianic Jewish and Christian/Messianic Gentile religious practice, at least publicly.

I happened to recall my review the other day when I noticed in the analytics for this blog that someone had viewed it.

I went through the original review and realized that my perspectives have changed in the last eighteen months or so. My fuzzy understanding of the Torah of Moses and its connection to the Gentile believers in Messiah is a little bit clearer. This isn’t to say I have everything “dialed,” so to speak, about the Bible and how it works, but I think it’s fair to say that I’m capable of learning and growing intellectually and spiritually.

While the quote from the Ohr HaChaim speaks to the necessity of the passage of time for learning, I’m not going to take it too literally (in forty years, I’ll either be nearly 100 years old or dead). But I am inspired to re-read Toby’s article and to re-review it as processed through the brain I have now vs. the one I had at the beginning of 2012 (I can only imagine that Toby will chuckle because I continue to wrestle with something he understands so clearly).

There has been a tremendous struggle between Messianic Judaism and Hebrew Roots relative to who “owns” the Torah. That’s an overly simplistic statement, of course, but the surface perception is that the Jews in Messiah get to keep the Torah for themselves while the Hebrew Roots people want them to share. On top of that, traditional Christianity says that we don’t need the Torah at all, just the grace of Jesus Christ.

Like I said, I’m being overly simplistic, so don’t take what I’ve just said too literally.

The truth of the matter is that we all need the Torah. Even before the Christian Era, I believe that the Jewish people saw themselves as a “light to the nations” (Isaiah 49:6) and that we would all learn from the Torah as “the Law went forth from Zion.” (Isaiah 2:3). How does one learn the ethical, moral, and holiness standards of God apart from the Torah, the teachings of God? We don’t.

However, that concept has been misunderstood to mean (at least in certain circles), that we Christians must learn and observe every single mitzvot in the Torah (or at least the ones that can be observed without the existence of the Temple, the Priesthood, and the Sanhedrin) in exactly the same way as the Jewish people.

Acts 15 shoots that concept down in flames (I know this is debatable but then again, everything is) as I painstakingly chronicled in my review of D. Thomas Lancaster’s commentary on the matter, but Toby Janicki picks out of the ashes, the “phoenix” of Torah that applies to the non-Jewish believers.

And it’s a lot.

I don’t think we ever got a chance to really see the results of the Jerusalem Letter in action. We don’t see a detailed report in the New Testament of how those declarations were understood and practiced in early Christian congregations, the ones that would have existed during Paul’s lifetime and soon after. More’s the pity, because a document providing such details would answer a lot of questions and solve a lot of problems.

Once you rocket through history much past Paul’s death, the wedge between believing Jews and Gentiles was already being pounded into place, and by the time we get to the third and fourth centuries CE, we’ve been split apart and any recognizable form of “Torah practice” among non-Jewish believers had gone the way of the Dodo bird (I’m not quite sure how much help the Didache would be since it’s dated to the late first or early second centuries, but I guess I could buy a copy and find out).

What all this means is that you can expect my review of Toby’s 2012 article sometime next week. If anyone can suggest which copy of the Didache I should purchase from the list presented at the above-link, that would help, too.

In a way, I don’t really blame Hebrew Roots folks for finding the Torah beautiful, praiseworthy, and desirable in study and practice. I’m attracted to it as well. I really don’t understand Christian aversion to “the Law” as something horrible, and awful, and too terrible to even consider but then again, that’s what most churches teach. It isn’t that I think Christians should don tallitot and lay tefillin and try to look like Jews, far from it. But we should admit that we need the Torah for two basic reasons: The first is that it defines our relationship with Jesus and with God the Father through the Abrahamic covenant. The second is that every ethical, moral, and spiritual principle that we live by as Christians is found in the Torah. The Torah was taught by Jesus. Without an understanding of the Torah and the Prophets (and this should be huge in Christianity), we have no hope of understanding anything Jesus ever taught!

That’s actually true of Paul and any of the other Apostles, so in my opinion, the first class that any newbie Christian should ever attend is Torah 101. Starting new Christians in the Gospels and the Epistles sounds nice but it’s almost next to useless. It’s like trying to teach a four-year old Calculus before they’ve even learned how to count to ten. It’s why I think First Fruits of Zion’s (FFOZ) Torah Club volumes are tremendously important. Not only do they teach Torah, but in a way that is very “Christian friendly.”

From all those who have taught me I have gained wisdom.

–Psalms 119:99

The Psalmist is telling us that he learned from everyone, that everyone was his teacher. From some, he learned what to do; from others, what not to do.

If we learn from others’ mistakes, we need not make our own.

Just as we can learn from every person, we can learn from every event. Positive experiences are obvious sources of learning, because each positive act we do adds to our character and prepares us to better face the next challenge in life. Negative experiences can be valuable, too, but only if we are sufficiently alert to learn from them.

The list of lessons that we have learned the hard way may be long, but each one has taught us what not to do and thereby it becomes a positive experience. Indeed, the Talmud states that when people sincerely regret their mistakes and change themselves for the better, the wrongs that they did become actual merits (Yoma 86b). Only when we fail to learn from our mistakes and, rationalizing and justifying, obstinately insist that we were right, do our misdeeds remain deficits.

We have the capacity to make life itself a tremendous learning and growth experience.

Today I shall…

…try to look for lessons from everyone and everything, whether my teacher is positive or negative.

-Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski
“Growing Each Day, Kislev 17”
Aish.com

I don’t think the problem is dealing with positive vs. negative teachers but just with “unanticipated” teachers. For traditional Christians, I think Jewish teachers or teachers very familiar with the Jewish (especially Messianic) perspective on Torah and Messiah are important. Jewish teachers aren’t necessarily a problem for Hebrew Roots people, but often, Christian teachers are. Many people in Hebrew Roots no longer see themselves as affiliated with anything called “Christianity” and sometimes they even define themselves by a completely new religious identity in order to separate themselves from the “crimes of the church,” real and imagined. “The church” is something they’ve “come out of,” like a Jew might have escaped the Soviet Union in the 1960s or one “comes out of pagan Babylon,” a den of iniquity and sin.

Oy.

I’m hardly what you would call a traditional Christian, but I must say that I’ve learned a tremendous amount in my conversations with my Pastor. For Hebrew Roots folks, at least some of you, it might not hurt to find a Christian to connect to and even “embrace” on some level if, for no other reason, than to overcome what for some people I’ve personally met, is a phobic response to Christians and Christianity. Really, we’re not all that bad and in my time in church (in spite of my meditation of yesterday morning), I’ve met a few very kind, gentile, and Holy people.

Remember what Rabbi Twerski said about everyone being a teacher? That means Everyone, not just the people you are attracted to as teachers.

Whether you call yourself a Christian, a Hebrew Roots person, or something else, you…we all have a blessing and a curse set before us as well. We can accept the blessing and choose to learn the Torah as it was intended for us and to take upon ourselves teachers we never thought we’d share a classroom or corner of the blogosphere with, or we can choose to isolate ourselves in our own comfortable little silos, and learn only what we want to learn, which means in that case, very little and nothing new and illuminating.

It may take some time before it all begins to sink in. Like me, you might have to wait awhile and then rediscover something that didn’t quite make sense before but comes into crystal clarity now. That’s OK, too. Just as long as you’re willing to open your eyes and see what God has set before you this day.

Good Shabbos.

54 days.

Uncategorized

Wednesday Night in My Pastor’s Office

August 1, 2013 James Pyles 4 Comments

What then? Are we better than they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; as it is written, “There is none righteous, not even one; There is none who understands, There is none who seeks for God…”

–Romans 3:9-11 (NASB)

There is no person on earth so righteous, who does only good and does not sin.

–Ecclesiastes 7:20

Reading the suggestions for ridding oneself of character defects, someone might say, “These are all very helpful for someone who has character defects, but I do not see anything about myself that is defective.”

In the above-cited verse, Solomon states what we should all know: no one is perfect. People who cannot easily find imperfections within themselves must have a perception so grossly distorted that they may not even be aware of major defects. By analogy, if a person cannot hear anything, it is not that the whole world has become absolutely silent, but that he or she has lost all sense of hearing and may thus not be able to hear even the loudest thunder.

In his monumental work, Duties of the Heart, Rabbeinu Bachaye quotes a wise man who told his disciples, “If you do not find defects within yourself, I am afraid you have the greatest defect of all: vanity.” In other words, people who see everything from an “I am great/right” perspective will of course believe that they do no wrong.

When people can see no faults in themselves, it is generally because they feel so inadequate that the awareness of any personal defects would be devastating. Ironically, vanity is a defense against low self-esteem. If we accept ourselves as fallible human beings and also have a sense of self-worth, we can become even better than we are.

Today I shall…

…be aware that if I do not find things within myself to correct, it may be because I am threatened by such discoveries.

-Rabbi Abraham J. Twersky
“Growing Each Day, Av 25”
Aish.com

Iron sharpens iron, So one man sharpens another.

–Proverbs 27:17 (NASB)

Last night I met with Pastor Randy for the first time in several weeks. He has been away in Southern California as part of his Ph.D program and just returned late last week. Prior to our meeting, he sent me two PDFs as email attachments, one was a chart he had drawn as a graphic representation all the covenants, and the other was a text description of the covenants. I have to admit, I was intimidated. He was responding to something I had blogged earlier in the week. I wasn’t sure what to expect.

In response and to prepare for the meeting, I sent him a link to my blog post Abraham, Jews, and Christians, since I suspected we’d be discussing the differences between how Jews and Christians are connected by covenant to God and specifically why I believe that the Torah, the conditions pertaining to the Sinai covenant, still apply to the Jewish people today.

I hadn’t slept well the night before, so I was running on three hours rest and as much chutzpah as I could summon. All I wanted to do was to go to bed (our meeting was scheduled for 6:30 p.m., so as you can imagine, I must have been really tired), but I wanted to have this meeting, too. Armed with my hardcopy printouts and my Bible, I went to church.

Actually, it was a blast. I had a great time. When we started talking, I forgot completely about being tired. Pastor gifted me with Thomas Schreiner’s book 40 Questions About Christians and Biblical Law, which I’ll start as soon as I finish the Septuagint book. I suspect Schreiner’s book is going to be a “challenge” to me, but that’s almost always a good way to learn. During our conversation, he suggested half a dozen other books for me, which I’m not going to reference here, so I suspect my reading list has been reserved for the next few months.

We actually agreed on most of the details of the covenant connection Christians have through Abraham and why that results in the Gentile church “bypassing” the Sinai covenant, but following a series of links from Abraham, to the New Covenant, to the “Last Supper,” to Paul’s commentary on Abraham in Galatians 3:16. The only link we Christians have through the Abrahamic covenant is stated in Genesis 12:1-3 which is the Messianic blessing on all the peoples of the earth. This was stated before the portion of the covenant requiring circumcision (which links the rest of the Abrahamic covenant directly through Isaac, through Jacob, and then to Jacob’s sons, the Patriarchs, and then the twelve tribes of Israel, and ultimately the Jewish people).

Where we disagreed was familiar territory: the duration of the Sinai covenant. Pastor believes that it should have ended at the cross with a “transitionary period” lasting until the close of the Biblical canon. My opinion is that it extends much further, well past our current age and through the Messianic Era, finally terminating at what we could consider “the end of time” as we understand it.

I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. In the daytime (for there will be no night there) its gates will never be closed; and they will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it; and nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

–Revelation 21:22-27 (NASB)

As long as there’s a Temple in Jerusalem or the promise that it will be rebuilt (which we have in the promise of Messiah’s return), then the Torah cannot pass away from existence and neither can Israel and the Jewish people (Jeremiah 31:35-36, Matthew 5:17-19). The best one can say is that certain portions (the Laws pertaining to the Temple, the Priesthood, the Sanhedrin, and certain other ordinances regarding the Land of Israel itself) go into abeyance, a state of being temporarily set aside. When Hebrews 8:13 talks about the “Old Covenant” passing away, it describes the process of currently passing away, not having already passed away. I just happen to think that “passing away” process doesn’t end until the coming of New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:10).

We also agreed on one thing that will make a lot of Christians a little nervous. We agreed that the New Covenant isn’t yet a “done deal.” In other words, not all the work was finished “on the cross.”

“But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

–Jeremiah 31:33-34 (NASB)

Pastor used another term, but the way I see it, God’s finger is still in the process of writing the Law within us and on our hearts. If He had already finished it with the first coming of Messiah, we would all “Know the Lord” and we don’t yet. The moving finger has not yet “writ” and thus has yet to move on. Link the still writing finger of Jeremiah 31 with the slowly passing away of the Old Covenant in Hebrews 8:13 and I think you’ll see the Torah as it currently exists will be with us for quite some time.

We still went ’round a bit on the purpose and reason for the Law and finally agreed that how it is applied is largely situational (which I mentioned a few days ago). Pastor again tried to tell me that the Torah was given to show the Israelites that it was too hard for anyone to obey His Law and that they needed Messiah. I pointed to Deuteronomy 30, and he replied, Romans 4. I pointed out that one part of the Bible doesn’t cancel another and that only certain parts of Torah have been temporarily set aside as I mentioned above. I also referred back to Psalm 19 and Psalm 119 to illustrate that the Israelites didn’t experience Torah as a burden or a hardship but instead, their foremost joy.

He says the Torah does not provide salvation. I know that and I agree. It never did. When Israel violated the conditions of Torah they were ultimately exiled. And they were ultimately called back to God and restored to their Land. Why? Because of God’s love and grace. He never let them go. In that, we Christians are no different, though the nations are not corporately linked to God as is Israel. When we are disobedient, we are not abandoned but instead disciplined. When we become humbled and cry out, God brings us back, even as He has Israel. The Torah doesn’t save. It works as a specific set of conditions indicating the Jewish people are set aside for God, and the conditions apply to them alone on top of the obligations Torah applies to we Gentile believers.

Like I said in the quotes above, no one is righteous, no not even one. The Torah doesn’t confer righteousness, only our faith and God’s grace does that.

I don’t think he’s convinced, but I did the best I could to illuminate my end of the conversation. Part of the problem is Pastor’s perception of “Rabbinic Judaism,” but right then, I was only trying to show that during New Testament times, Torah continued to apply and the Torah moves forward across history. I didn’t want to even comment about the post-Biblical Rabbinic period until I created a bridge that started at Sinai and moved past the crucifixion, burial, resurrection, and ascendance, with the Torah moving across that bridge and forward, spanning the history of the Jewish people. Jesus didn’t just observe the Law because he was born on the “wrong side of the cross,” he did so because that’s the obligation and the joy for all Jews under covenant. His death didn’t change that.

Boaz Michael puts things is proper perspective, I think:

This may sound counterintuitive to many, but the gospel—the story of Jesus’ first coming, his earthly life, his death and resurrection—is not the fulfillment or even the climax of Israel’s story. It does not complete or resolve the narrative that begins with the call of Abraham in Genesis 12. It does not fulfill God’s promises to David in the books of the early prophets. It does not fulfill the promises of the later prophets concerning Israel’s final destiny. It does not even fulfill the Torah itself, in which God promises certain things to his people Israel after their return from exile.

The completion or resolution of Israel’s story does not and will not occur until she is redeemed from her exile, planted firmly in the land God has promised to her, and returned to a state of loving obedience to the Torah under the leadership of the Son of David, Yeshua the Messiah.

I mentioned the example of 19th century Rabbi Isaac Lichtenstein who came to faith in Yeshua past the age of sixty; a person who was wholly Jewish before and after coming to Messianic faith who found that Torah was illuminated, expanded, and possessed of great joy by the Messiah. When Messiah “fulfills” the Torah, it doesn’t end, but it is shown to be truly perfect in Moshiach! Observance goes on for the Jewish believers, but it is Torah observance with much greater meaning, something that as a Gentile Christian, I can hardly even imagine.

Pastor surprised me a bit. My opinion has been that the population of Jews in Messiah dwindled more or less steadily past the Biblical period and finally extinguished completely sometime between the fourth and seventh centuries CE, and then finding a slow resurgence in the past several centuries.

Pastor contradicted me and said he believes that across the past two-thousand years, there has always been a remnant of Messianic Jews. I’d love to believe that but I need to see some evidence. He pointed me to a book called Our Jewish Friends by Louis Goldberg, which I’ll certainly have to read to see the validity of such a claim and how it could possibly be substantiated. Does Goldberg mean Jewish converts to Christianity? To me that’s not the same thing as people who live fully Jewish lives realized in Messiah. Now that would be a thrill to discover.

In many ways, last night’s talk was one of our most productive conversations, at least for me. We won’t be able to meet again for another couple of weeks, but I’m looking forward to it. I mentioned to Pastor that the following day’s “meditation” would be called On Being a Good Christian and was based on his sermon from last Sunday. That led to my angst on ever being able to officially join a local church and the dilemma of “denominationalism” for me. We know that Paul frowned on such divisions in the church (1 Corinthians 1:10-17) but he told me (surprising me again) that we can’t anachronistically apply Paul to our modern church.

We agreed that at the heart of all disciples in Messiah, we must all contain a set of core beliefs, without which, we cannot call ourselves “Christians” (which in this case, would include “Messianics”). Beyond that, denominations provide additional dimensions based on social, cultural, and sometimes even ethnic similarities. I had a brief epiphany and said that denominations were not unlike the evolution of the different streams of ancient and modern Judaism including the addition of elements of culture and tradition. I don’t think Pastor expected that comparison and hopefully it will be food for thought in subsequent conversations.

But since I opened the door, our next conversation in two weeks will be on the differences in Christian denominations. I actually need this since my grasp on the topic is extremely weak. I don’t know if I’m learning to be a better Christian, but I hope I’m growing and learning to be a better child of God.

Blessings on my Pastor for his patience, his intelligence, his passion, and his friendship.

"When you awake in the morning, learn something to inspire you and mediate upon it, then plunge forward full of light with which to illuminate the darkness." -Rabbi Tzvi Freeman