Tag Archives: sin

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The Non-existent Scar

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Impeached witnesses are not considered guilty until they have impeached themselves.

-Makkos 5a, Rabbeinu Chananel

When someone says something uncomplimentary to us, we are of course displeased. The intensity of our reaction to an unkind remark, however, depends upon ourselves.

A former patient called me one day, sobbing hysterically because her husband had told her that she was a poor wife and a failure as a mother. When she finally calmed down, I asked her to listen carefully to me.

“I think that the scar on your face is very ugly,” I said. There was a moment of silence. “Pardon me?” she said.

“I spoke very distinctly, but I will repeat what I said. `The scar on your face is repulsive.’

“I don’t understand, doctor,” the woman said. “I don’t have a scar on my face.”

“Then what did you think of my remark?” I asked.

“I couldn’t understand what you were talking about,” she said.

“You see,” I pointed out, “when I say something insulting to you, and you know that it is not true, you do not become hysterical. You just wonder what in the world it is that I am talking about. That should also have been your reaction to your husband’s offensive remarks. Instead of losing your composure, you should have told him that he is delusional. The reason you reacted as extremely as you did is because you have doubts about yourself as to your adequacy as a wife and mother.”

-Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski
from “Growing Each Day” for Sivan 30
Aish.com

Sorry to start of today’s “morning meditation” with such a long quote, but I think it was worth it. R. Twerski’s therapeutic intervention was absolutely brilliant (I have a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a Masters in Counseling and formerly was a family therapist and Child Protective Services social worker). It’s so simple and yet so profound, and it speaks not only to this one woman’s situation but I think to all of us in our lives.

I couldn’t help but relate this article to recent events in my online life. After all, I’m human and I have doubts just like any other man. When someone calls me on my issues, real or imagined, I have to pause and consider whether they could be right about me, and if so, to ask if this is a “call to action” for me to make changes.

despairMany times, especially online, but also in “real life,” we are insulted, accused, harassed, and maligned, often by the people we love and care about, the people we’re most vulnerable to. As we see in R. Twerski’s example above, a woman was insulted by her husband about her poor performance as a wife and mother. Nothing could cut deeper to her heart than those statements and the person making them.

How we react should depend on whether or not the allegations are true, but that’s not how most of us typically respond. It’s like driving down the road and having someone suddenly cut us off in traffic, honk their horn, and then give us “the finger.” They’re not only being aggressive but behaving as if we’ve done something wrong.

How do we react to that? Either we get scared or angry…or both. Incidents of road rage start this way.

But what if, assuming we’ve done nothing wrong, we were to respond with bewilderment? “What the heck set that guy off,” we might ask ourselves.

And if someone blows up at us on the web or in person, again, assuming what they’re saying isn’t true about us (we don’t have a scar on our face), what prevents us from also simply becoming confused but not experiencing anger or pain?

Because we fear that there really is something wrong with us. I think that’s the result of sin and guilt.

Face it. You’re not perfect. Neither am I. Far from it in fact. We have sinned. Chances are we will sin against God and other people today. It is very likely that we will sin again tomorrow…or we fear that we will.

feverIf a person goes around always worried about who they are, their past failures, their fear of future failures, and whether or not their shortcomings are obvious to everyone around them, then it’s easy to respond with anger or pain when insulted. We’ve already primed ourselves to go off half-cocked when someone gives us a reason.

But for most people, most of the time, the issues they worry about are more imagined than real.

It’s like the woman in Rabbi Twerski’s commentary. She didn’t have an ugly scar on her face, and R. Twerski at least implies that she’s not a bad mother and wife either. She only reacted as if she were because she feared that this was the truth of her existence, even when it wasn’t.

All the elaborate proofs, all the philosophical machinations, none of that will ever stand you firmly on your feet. There’s only one thing that can give you that, and that’s your own inherent conviction.

For even as your own mind flounders, you yourself know that this is so, and know that you believe it to be so. It is a conviction all the winds of the earth cannot uproot that has carried us to this point in time, that has rendered us indestructible and timeless.

For it comes from within and from the heritage of your ancestors who believed as well, back to the invincible conviction of our father, Abraham, a man who took on the entire world.

The doubts, the hesitations, the vacillations, all these come to you from the outside. Your challenge is but to allow your inner knowledge to shine through and be your guide.

Inside is boundless power.

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

revenge-and-happinessKnowing yourself is very helpful for a number of reasons. If you know who you are and what you are about, then whenever someone accuses you of something that is untrue, you cannot be hurt. Even if the person who is upset with you is very dear to you, if they are wrong about you, it may injure you somewhat, but not in the same way as if what they said were the truth. If you are accused of being a failure, if you really aren’t, how does that affect you vs. how you react if you fear being a failure?

Also, knowing yourself helps you recognize when you have sinned and reveals to you your own faults. This is an opportunity to make corrections, to improve yourself, to repent, to return to God, to make right the wrongs you’ve committed against others, to make the person you will be tomorrow better than the person you were yesterday.

Stealing is abhorrent to most people. They would never think of taking something which does not belong to them. Still, they may not be bothered in the least by making an appointment and keeping the other person waiting for a few minutes. Rabbi Luzzato points out that this double standard is a fallacy, because stealing others’ time is no less a crime than stealing their possessions.

Moreover, stealing time is worse in one aspect: stolen objects can be returned, but stolen time can never be repaid.

-Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski
from “Growing Each Day” for Sivan 29
Aish.com

Worry, guilt, and self-recrimination are thieves. They steal your time and your peace of mind. If someone steals your money, that can always be returned, but once a moment in time has elapsed, you can never get it back. Also, even if you achieve peace of mind in the future, you have wasted time worrying in the past (and in the present) needlessly, when you could have been devoting that time to improving yourself, to helping others, to serving God.

Which is more important: five minutes or five cents? Everyone will say that “time” is more important. But still we throw it away more often than money. And in Jewish consciousness, killing time is suicide… on the installment plan.

“Relax”
from the “Ask the Rabbi” column
Aish.com

Rabbi Twerski also writes:

If someone has wrongfully infringed on our time, it is proper that we should call it to his or her attention. As with other offenses, we should try to sincerely forgive if the offender changes his or her ways. If we have infringed on someone else’s time, we must be sure to ask forgiveness and to remember that teshuvah consists of a sincere resolution not to repeat the same act again.

If someone points something out to you that needs correction, something you may have been unaware of or something you’ve been avoiding dealing with, they’re doing you a favor. Assuming their intent isn’t malicious and their attitude isn’t hostile or condescending, they are acting as an agent of change and providing you with the opportunity to improve.

soaring_hawkIf, however, a person’s intent is hostile or vindictive, and their desire is to injure you, perhaps because they feel you’ve injured them…if their allegations are wholly untrue, then you should ask yourself, “Why are they acting this way? What could have prompted this outburst?”

That’s certainly better than responding by feeling guilt or shame or by lashing out at the other person, perpetuating the cycle of “You hurt me, now I’ll hurt you.” Every time you give in to that temptation, you are stealing time from that other person and wasting your own. You’re also destroying your peace of mind and their’s and stealing our time and service from God.

“Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.”

-Soren Kierkegaard

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Sermon Review of the Holy Epistle to the Hebrews: Repentance from Dead Works, Part 2

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More thoughts on repentance from dead works as an essential part of the gospel and one of the elementary teachings of Yeshua. Evangelism is not like making toast. Discipleship and evangelism entails an ongoing process. Includes excerpts from a blog in which an Evangelical pastor explains why he does not preach repentance. Does repentance mean to “change your mind” or to “turn from sin”?

-D. Thomas Lancaster
Sermon Nineteen: Repentance from Dead Works, Part 2
Originally presented on June 8, 2013
from the Holy Epistle to the Hebrews sermon series

Initially, Lancaster took a detour from delving into the deep meaning of the Epistle to the Hebrews to take a closer look at the six elemental principles of our faith as outlined in Hebrews 6:1-3. Since teaching the first principle last week, repentance from dead works, he takes a further detour, traveling a greater distance away from his source material in order to illustrate how far the Evangelical Church has drifted away from the essentials of the Bible.

After his recap of “the milk,” the very, very first thing the Hebrews writer thought that any person needed to know when starting out as a wet-behind-the-ears disciple of Yeshua (Jesus), that is, repentance from sin and turning to God, he tells his audience how difficult the journey of becoming a disciple actually is:

Then a scribe came and said to Him, “Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go.” Jesus said to him, “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” Another of the disciples said to Him, “Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Follow Me, and allow the dead to bury their own dead.”

–Matthew 8:19-22 (NASB)

Notice how Jesus doesn’t make it so easy for someone just to follow him? He seems to push people away. Maybe that’s because being a disciple of the Master is a difficult thing to do. It has many advantages and God wants all people to turn away from sin and return to Him, but it’s not like taking a walk in the park.

And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.”

–Luke 9:23 (NASB)

Repentance and salvation isn’t as simple as “Come as you are, believe in me, and you’ll go to Heaven when you die.” Rather, it’s as if Jesus is saying, “Come as you are, pick up your cross, follow me, and prepare to be persecuted.”

This isn’t a terribly popular message in Evangelical Christianity which is why, according to Lancaster, it isn’t preached very much in churches. How does Lancaster know this? He Googled it. No kidding, that’s what he said.

He came across a blog (the link is at the top but I’ll present it again) called EscapeToReality.org owned and operated by someone named Pastor Paul Ellis.

Pastor Paul Ellis
Pastor Paul Ellis

Lancaster said that Pastor Ellis’ blog just came up in the search results and Lancaster doesn’t know a thing about this person except he’s a blogger. Lancaster’s opinion is that if you blog and your material is available on the web, you’re just “asking for it” (which is why Lancaster doesn’t blog and isn’t even on Facebook).

I guess I must be asking for it, too. I’m not sure I’d ever want to have Lancaster comment on my blog given the following, but then again, I hope my content is more doctrinally sound. Lancaster referenced a blog post written by Pastor Ellis in November of 2011 called 3 Reasons Why I Don’t Preach on Repentance (“Turn from Sin”).

Religious people often complain that we grace preachers don’t emphasize repentance sufficiently. It’s true. I hardly emphasize it at all. But then neither did the Apostle John. You’d think if salvation hinged on our repentance then it would be in the gospels but John says nothing about it. Not one word. Neither does he mention repentance in any of his three letters. I guess John must’ve been a grace preacher.

I’d never heard of a category of preachers called “grace preachers” but I guess they stand in opposition to people like Lancaster who do indeed preach repentance.

Lancaster pointed out a couple of things about Ellis’s quote. First, he only draws from the Gospel of John and ignores Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Second, he’s wrong about John.

Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

–John 8:34-36 (NASB)

Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him. Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.

–1 John 3:4-10 (NASB)

Apparently, Pastor Ellis missed a few key portions of John’s writings.

And just in case you missed it (as perhaps Ellis has), Jesus really did preach on repentance. It was his central theme:

From that time Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

–Matthew 3:2, 4:17, Mark 1:15

You may have to return to Lancaster’s previous definitions of sin and repentance or look at my own series on Teshuva for the following to truly make an impact:

  1. Repentance means to turn from sin
  2. Repentance means to change your mind

Ellis also says:

It (repentance) means different things to different people. But Biblical repentance simply means “change your mind.” You can change your mind about anything, but Jesus called us to change our mind and believe the good news (Mk 1:15).

Your definition of repentance will reveal whether you are living under grace or works. In the Old Testament, sinners repented by bringing a sacrifice of penance and confessing their sins (Num 5:7). But in the new we bring a sacrifice of praise and confess His name (Heb 13:15). We don’t do anything to deal with our sins for Jesus has done it all.

In other words, just sitting around in church is good enough and you don’t even do that. Jesus does it all and we’re saved. No personal accountability is required.

Oh, the three reasons Ellis doesn’t preach repentance. I’ll give you the raw list, but you’ll have to go to his blog to read the full content:

  1. It puts people under the law
  2. It doesn’t lead people to salvation
  3. We’re called to preach the gospel, not repentance

It’s hard to believe Pastor Ellis has even read the whole Bible. He’s saying that repentance just puts people “under the law,” repentance doesn’t lead to salvation, and we are only supposed to preach the gospel as if the message of repentance isn’t at the gospel’s core.

I’m sorry if this sounds snarky or arrogant on my part (and I’ve had a problem with arrogance from time to time), but Ellis’ blog should be named “EscapeFromReality.org.”

Lancaster also has three points, but in this case, they’re three points on why he does preach repentance:

  1. The gospel message calls us to repent (Matthew 3:2, 4:17, Mark 1:15)
  2. Repentance is defined by the Bible as turning away from sin and turning (or returning) to God
  3. Sin is defined by the Bible as a violation of the commandments of God

under the lawI could add a fourth point and I think Lancaster would agree: The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).

But how do you preach this message? Actually, Lancaster’s question reminded me of one I asked myself about a month ago. How do you evangelize from a Messianic Jewish point of view?

Lancaster drew a somewhat humorous example to prove his point. Imagine a couple of people from his congregation going door-to-door in the neighborhood:

“Excuse us. We’re from Beth Immanuel just down the street. Can we have a few minutes of your time? Are you a sinner? Do you practice sexual immorality? If so, we have good news for you?”

I don’t think anyone with a message like that would be invited inside for coffee and cookies.

Actually, Lancaster answered his own question, citing a series of teachings he recorded called What About Evangelism (also available in MP3 format), discussing how to evangelize from a Messianic Jewish perspective (and I’ve definitely missed that one).

He made a point that it’s not just the lost who need this message, but the saved. How many “Christians” in churches think they are saved, think they are walking the path of righteousness, but who don’t have a clue about the actual gospel message of the Bible and who, if they’ve repented at all, did so only once when they first came to faith in Christ?

For some people, that could be years or even decades ago.

Lancaster used a “toast” metaphor, but for the sake of time and the length of this blog post, I’ll suggest you read about it in his book Elementary Principles.

Lancaster, by the end of his sermon, seemed satisfied that everyone listening to him had “gotten down” this first foundational principle of faith, this first glass of “milk,” so we can move on to the second one next week.

What Did I Learn?

I learned (I guess it should be obvious) that in some ways, Lancaster remains very Evangelical. He’s a passionate believer in missions and evangelizing the lost. He wants to get the message out to everyone because “God so loved the world.” The fact that he took one additional sermon just to emphasize the desperate importance of continual, ongoing, daily, repentance, constantly picking up our crosses, and following our Master, seems proof of that.

I also wondered, thinking about recent events, if this is one of the reasons for the whole Tent of David mission, which is not just to illuminate Evangelical Christianity on the merits of a Messianic Jewish view of the Bible, but to witness to the “found,” so to speak, who may never have heard the message of repentance of sins before.

what about evangelismLancaster cited something Boaz Michael mentioned to him once about a broadcast interview of the famous megachurch Pastor Joel Osteen (in an earlier version of this blog post, I misquoted Lancaster as saying “Rick Warren”). According to what Lancaster said Boaz told him, Pastor Osteen was asked about the secret of his success, to which Osteen replied, ”The secret to my success is that I never preach about sin.”

But if you don’t preach about sin and repentance, and Lancaster made this very clear, you are misleading your flock and probably condemning them as well. Is that grace?

I thought I’d share some of the comments on Pastor Ellis’ blog post about not preaching repentance, just to emphasize the problem:

Repentance does not save a sinner. If you believe repentance does save, but after seeing the truth and you change your mind, because you realized that it is the blood of Jesus that saves, * then you have repented

Repentance does not forgive sins. If you believe repentance does forgive sins, but after experiencing true forgiveness and you change your mind,because you realized that you have been forgiven and “the blood of Jesus cleanses (continuously)” you of all sin * then you have repented grace and peace

–savedbygrace

Thank you! Contemporaries who believe man is dead until regenerated still want to preach repentance to him.

–Dean O’Bryan

You know what is interesting is that when I used to preach repentance as a turning from all of your sins was to have another thought nagging me, “How can you say that salvation is apart from works when you are asking man to do something to be saved?”

You rightly pointed out that John never preached repentance, but neither did Paul in the entire book of Romans that had much to say about salvation.

I used to preach Luke 13:5 as proof that one must turn to be saved, but when I read the context was when I realized that being saved from sin was nowhere in the context at all. It was addressing a nation, and not some death, burial and resurrection gospel to be believed. Does not matter what angle you approach Luke 13 from as nothing there is about stopping sins to be saved.

What is sad is how religion will preach the verse that says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved” and will change the meaning into, “Believe on the ((((((LORD)))))) Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” They will always shout the word “Lord” and then pause a moment before reading the rest of the verse. They want you to think that Paul was stressing a surrender to the sovereign Lordship of Christ to be saved, as they will claim that Jesus cannot be your Lord until you give up your every sin first.

–Dave

In response to one comment, Pastor Ellis said in part:

It starts off in innocence but before you know it you’re listening to talking snakes. Choose life. If saying sorry and making amends brings life and healing, do it (Jas 5:16). If reviewing your sins brings death, suffering and condemnation, don’t.

despairThere are many more such statements but I think you get the point.

I learned that as much as I can experience frustration in the church I currently attend, Pastor does indeed preach repentance of sins and returning to God. If I attended Pastor Ellis’ church, I don’t think I’d do very well there at all.

How many churches out there are preaching “grace” and avoiding “sin” and “repentance” at all costs, including the costs of the souls of their members? Out of some misplaced since of “mercy,” how many “grace preachers” are preventing the people in their churches from repenting and actually returning to God? How many of these believers are still suffering needlessly in their sins or worse, believing that they’re just fine and don’t need to repent at all?

Addendum: I re-read all of Pastor Ellis’ blog post plus a good many of the comments (there are tons of them), particularly comments Ellis wrote. It’s not that he opposes repentance as such, and he even praises repentance, but he gives a rather (in my opinion) simplistic view of what repentance means in terms of our relationship with God through Messiah.

While I believe he is sincere, caring, compassionate, and loves Jesus, I think that like so many Evangelicals, he tends to be “works-phobic” and sees obedience to God by performing the mitzvot (including repentance) and God’s grace as polar opposites rather than co-existing elements in a life of faith.

The comments on that one blog post stretched for over a two year span and they were comments similar to those I’ve experienced on other religious blogs, that is, plenty of strife and theological posturing to go around.

Having read the many opinions expressed in the blog’s comments section, in the end, I don’t believe we’re mere robots who sit around having faith in Jesus and being saved and that’s the extent of our lives as Christians. I believe God wants us to be active participants in our relationship with Him and with each other, including being accountable for our behavior. I don’t think that once we come to faith, it is impossible for us to ever sin again and that we can just “change our minds,” which is a gross over simplification of the concept of Teshuvah (turning from sin and turning to God), and then it’s all good.

God is gracious and He always has been. It wasn’t an invention of Jesus, it’s been God’s nature forever and He’s always been gracious and compassionate to human beings.

Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin…”

–Exodus 34:6-7 (NASB)

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Sermon Review of the Holy Epistle to the Hebrews: Repentance from Dead Works, Part 1

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What are the basic teachings of Messiah mentioned in Hebrews 6:1-3? Discover the meaning of “repentance from dead works” in this eighteenth installment of sermons on the epistle to the Hebrews.

-D. Thomas Lancaster
Sermon Eighteen: Repentance from Dead Works, Part 1
Originally presented on June 1, 2013
from the Holy Epistle to the Hebrews sermon series

Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits.

–Hebrews 6:1-3

I recently finished reading Lancaster’s book Elementary Principles: Six Foundational Principles of Ancient Jewish Christianity (It’s also available free through a special offer through June 3rd), so I’m getting this material both in the audio recordings from last year’s sermon series and in writing. In fact, yesterday, I read all of the material in the book that I listened to this morning (as I write this), so it’s all been reenforced.

But maybe you haven’t heard the audio or read the book, so I’ll be glad to review this for you.

Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. And he sent out his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding feast, and they were unwilling to come. Again he sent out other slaves saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited, “Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fattened livestock are all butchered and everything is ready; come to the wedding feast.”’ But they paid no attention and went their way, one to his own farm, another to his business, and the rest seized his slaves and mistreated them and killed them. But the king was enraged, and he sent his armies and destroyed those murderers and set their city on fire. Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the main highways, and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast.’ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered together all they found, both evil and good; and the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests.

“But when the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw a man there who was not dressed in wedding clothes, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes?’ And the man was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.”

–Matthew 22:1-14 (NASB)

I’ve never understood what the wedding clothes this fellow lacked had to do with anything, so I was glad yesterday (more than a week ago as you read this) when Lancaster answered that for me.

But first things first.

Lancaster says this parable of the Master is pretty easy to understand (except for the clothes part). A father is holding a wedding feast for his son and invites many guests from all walks of life. In the parable, the father is God and the son is Messiah. The banquet is the Kingdom of God, the Messianic Age. But the wedding clothes?

We’ll get to that.

Lancaster paused to do a brief summary of last week’s sermon about the rather anemic gospel preached by much of the Evangelical church and how what Lancaster preached last week would require a major paradigm shift for most Christians (Lancaster referred to himself as a “recovering Evangelical”).

Although the Church typically preaches salvation through grace, often they miss the very first elementary principle in the Gospel: repent!

The first elementary principle cited in Hebrews 6 is to repent from “dead works.” What are “dead works?”

From an Evangelical point of view, that’s easy. Dead works are works of the Torah. Easy answer and dead wrong, based on a two-thousand year old mistake made by the ancient “Church Fathers” which, according to New Testament scholar Magnus Zetterholm, may not have been a mistake at all but a set of deliberate acts designed to separate Gentile Jesus-belief from its Jewish counterpart and create a wholly new and separate religion called “Christianity.”

TorahSo it stands to reason if the basic foundation upon which our Christian theology and doctrine rests is an effort to make a faith stripped of its Jewish origins and original meaning, then we’ve probably got it all wrong.

So what is Messianic Judaism’s answer for “dead works?” After all, the Jewish writer of the Hebrews epistle addressing Hellenistic Jews in and around Jerusalem who were in danger of apostasy and falling away from faith in the Jewish Messiah could hardly be expected to increase their faith by being told to repent of observing the mitzvot of God, could they? Would that have made any sense at all? Did Jesus replace the Torah of Moses with a truncated gospel of “believe in me and when you die, you’ll go to Heaven?”

So if dead works aren’t works of the Law, what are they?

Sin.

For the wages of sin is death…

–Romans 6:23 (NASB)

Repent, not from works of Torah, but from works of sin because they lead to death. It was the Master’s central message.

From that time Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

–Matthew 4:17 (NASB)

In Christianity, we are taught that we will die, not because of our own sins, but because of Adam’s. If we do nothing at all and never come to faith in Christ, we will die, be condemned by Jesus at the final judgment, and go to Hell forever.

Lancaster says in Judaism, there is a close association between human mortality and sin as well, but not Adam’s sin.

“Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers; everyone shall be put to death for his own sin.”

–Deuteronomy 24:16 (NASB)

Lancaster also uses Numbers 27:3, Ezekiel 18:20, Romans 5:12, and Romans 6:16 to expand on this point. We are all, each and every one of us, responsible for our sins, and the Law of sin is death. The only thing this has to do with the Torah is how we define sin.

Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.

–1 John 3:4 (NASB)

So according to John, the law (Torah) isn’t bad at all, and in fact, those who disobey the Torah practice lawlessness, which is the same thing as sin. Violation of Torah or lawlessness equals sin. Conversely, observance of the Torah mitzvot, as they apply to us (and they apply differently for Jews and Gentiles in Messiah), equals obedience to God.

How the Torah does and doesn’t apply to different groups is beyond the scope of this discussion, but know, as I’ve just said, that lawlessness or disobedience to God’s covenant conditions is equal to sin and we are required to repent from lawlessness (sin) as the absolute first step in responding to the true Gospel message. “Repenting” from the Torah, that is, forsaking observance of the commandments (as Evangelical Christians believe Hebrews 6:1 should be interpreted), for a Jew, believer or otherwise, constituted sin in the days of the apostles, just as it constitutes sin for Jewish people today.

I found it interesting, in mentioning his childhood and being raised in an Evangelical Christian home, that some of the “sins” Lancaster was taught to avoid were smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, dancing (presumably with girls), and going to the movies.

You can’t find any of those actions prohibited in the Bible.

But…

D. Thomas Lancaster
D. Thomas Lancaster

…but Lancaster, though he made fun of these prohibitions as a teen, sees them now as “fences.” Christians often criticize Rabbinic Judaism for putting “fences around the Torah,” which means taking the basic prohibitions we find in the Bible and adding more prohibitions around them. For instance, Biblically, Shabbat begins at sundown on Friday night, but Rabbinically, it begins a certain number of minutes before sundown. Why? Because if people are taught it starts sooner, they won’t be tempted to “push the limit,” so to speak, trying to get one more thing done before the sun goes down, and thus avoid accidentally continuing to work when Shabbat actually arrives.

So smoking, drinking, dancing, and movies aren’t inherently sinful, but Lancaster can see, especially for young people, how each of these activities could potentially lead to actual sins. It’s an interesting principle to me, mainly because we see Christianity of a generation ago behaving just like Judaism.

Today, we often see almost no difference between the behavior of a Christian and a secular person. We go to the same movies, engage in the same recreation, do the same things pretty much, and except for going to Church on Sunday and maybe a Bible study on Wednesday, most Christians are exactly the same as most other people.

But aren’t we saved by grace? Who cares what we do? We aren’t saved by what we do, only by what we believe. Is that what the Bible says?

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

–Galatians 5:19-24 (NASB)

But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints; and there must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

–Ephesians 5:3-5 (NASB)

Don’t worry. Lancaster isn’t saying that we save ourselves by what we do, but look at this. Paul isn’t saying “just believe and you’ll be righteousness.” Oh no. He’s saying if you do these things you’ll be considered righteousness. If you don’t, you have no inheritance in the Kingdom of God.

It all sounds so legalistic. But that’s what Jesus taught.

So what must we do to be saved? Repent. Without repentance, we have no part of Jesus or the Messianic Kingdom.

No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.

–1 John 3:6 (NASB)

Derek Leman
Derek Leman

Our righteousness isn’t “filthy rags” at least the way we have typically been taught. You might want to read Derek Leman’s commentary on the matter.

OK, repentance isn’t exactly an unknown process for many Christians and I bet a lot of believers repented of their sins when they came to faith. But for some people, that was a long time ago. If you repented once in 1976 or in 1998, what does that mean? Have you sinned lately? For some people, they repent only once a year, on Easter or Yom Kippur. Have you sinned recently?

And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. (emph. mine)

–Luke 9:23 (NASB)

Lancaster mentioned the example of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak in his audio sermon, but I’m going to take the quote from the Elementary Principles book to make sure I don’t leave out anything:

The famous Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev used to repent every night before saying his evening prayers (Maariv). Every evening, the rabbi of Berditchev examined his heart, what he had done on that day, and repented over every flaw he discovered. For each sin that he discovered, he said, “Levi Yitzchak will not do this again.” Then he chided himself, “Levi Yitzchak said exactly the same thing yesterday!” And he added, “Ah, but yesterday, Levi Yitzchak did not speak the truth. Today, he does speak the truth.”

-Lancaster, pg 41

Many Christians have been taught a false gospel, one that says they only have to believe and they will be saved. Evangelical Christianity is good about teaching us what to believe but not what to do. The Church has experienced a significant and even (eternal) life-threatening mission drift, failing to make the much-needed course corrections for the past twenty centuries since we were first set upon this journey as the body of Messiah by the Jewish apostles and disciples of our Master.

I’ve written a great deal about repentance lately, and I don’t think enough can be said on this. Neither does Lancaster, even though repentance should be a pretty elementary teaching of the Church. It was in the Messianic synagogue in the mid-first century, but much of that Jewish doctrine has been lost.

The path of repentance leads to joy. “I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7). The rabbis said, “Better is one hour of repentance and good deeds in this world than the whole life of the world to come.” In his book Love and the Messianic Age, Messianic Jewish pioneer Paul Levertoff says, “The sinner, in whose soul the light of the divine fire has been quenched, is greater, when he repents, than the righteous who have no need for repentance.” The place of the penitent sinner is even greater than that of the righteous person who does not need to repent, because the sinner throws himself entirely into the arms of God.

-ibid, pg 45

Now what about those wedding clothes?

“Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready.” It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. Then he said to me, “Write, ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’”

–Revelation 19:7-9 (NASB)

The brideThe wedding clothes are the righteous deeds of the saints, the tzadikim. One who enters the banquet without wedding clothes can be compared to one who attempts to enter the Kingdom of God without repenting of sin, turning to God, and doing good in his life.

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’”

–Matthew 7:21-23 (NASB)

The words of the Master recorded by Matthew make so much more sense when put in their proper context, don’t you think?

Repentance and salvation cannot be separated. One does not receive salvation unless they repent and repent often.

Some think life is all about doing good and keeping away from evil.

To them, struggle has no purpose of its own—to have struggled is to have failed. Success, they imagine, is a sweet candy with no trace of bitterness.

They are wrong, tragically wrong. Struggle is an opportunity to reach the ultimate, when darkness itself becomes light. In the midst of struggle, an inner light is awakened. Light profound enough to overwhelm the darkness, encasing it and winning it over.

But if darkness never fights back, how will it ever be conquered?

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman

Although this is the end of the chapter in Lancaster’s book, in the sermon series, Lancaster isn’t finished with the topic of “repenting from dead works.” He presents the second part next week…and so will I.

What Did I Learn?

I learned about wedding clothes and the close connection between sin, repentance, forgiveness, a life dedicated to God, and the joy, not only of someday entering the Kingdom, but of (in some ways) entering the Kingdom right now.

It’s easy to forget to repent. I know that sounds strange. Maybe that admission on my part makes me sound like a terrible person. Maybe all of you reading this, like Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, repent daily and on a regular evening schedule. Frankly, by the time I’m ready to end the day, my brain and attention span isn’t worth much. Some nights, I can barely recite the last few paragraphs of the Bedtime Shema.

But as you know if you’ve been reading this blog regularly, repentance is something I’ve been focusing on a great deal, not only in my writing but in my life. I can’t say that I’m really good at it. For some things, even approaching the idea of repenting feels threatening and scary. I don’t know what I’m afraid of exactly. Who’d be afraid of getting closer to God? But we’re all afraid of change, even if the change is beneficial.

What I learned, though, is that I won’t get into the banquet without dressing for the occasion, none of us will. That’s more than just saying “I’m sorry” to God. That’s more than just changing my mind about something. Repentance is a dedicated and detailed process that like any skill (yes, I think it’s a learned skill), takes practice, practice, practice.

hopeBut then, so does establishing and maintaining any relationship, especially as a bride to the groom, especially in the intimacy of a child to a Father.

I fall down and go ker-splat dozens of times a day. Thank God at the end of each day (or several times a day), I can turn back to my Father and turn my heart inside out, spilling all the regret, anguish, pain, and sorrow at His feet and in my own way say, “James will not do this again,” but “James said exactly the same thing yesterday! Ah, but yesterday, James did not speak the truth. Today, he does speak the truth.”

Today, let me repent and let me speak the truth, and let me continue to speak the truth as the day ends and the shadows gather. For in repentance, the shadows are swept away and in joy, there is light.

 

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Repentance and Negativity

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The Torah teaches us that it is never too late to change.

Changing for the better is called doing teshuva. The Hebrew word teshuva, which is often translated as repentance, actually means to “return.” Return to God. Return to our pure self.

How do people become interested in self-improvement?

People have faults. The faults they have cause them to suffer in some way or another. This suffering limits an individual’s freedom and is often painful. Hence, people want to change… to improve. To be free once again.

How does one change for the better? How does one do teshuva?

There are four steps of teshuva.

-Rabbi Mordechai Rottman
“Four Steps to Change”
Aish.com

Leaving Negativity Behind

This is the second step in making teshuva (we covered the first step, regret last week).

Here’s Rabbi Rottman’s description of this step.

Imagine a drug addict who arrives at a rehab center for detox treatment. His parents leave him at the entrance and wish him luck after a tearful but hopeful goodbye. Little do they know that their addict son’s suitcase is lined with enough cocaine to send a hippo to heaven.

It’s not that our addict does not want to change. He really does! He just has not “let go” of the very things that have brought him to the negative state he is now in.

Did you ever learn bad habits from a particular roommate and decide that you want to stop being like that? Did you ever try doing it without changing roommates? It’s nearly impossible.

“Leaving the negativity behind” means staying away from all of the paths that lead to that negativity. This includes crafting your environment to prevent temptation. And it means staying away from even mere thoughts, which can lead to the obvious next step — action.

That’s not really what I expected. I expected what he wrote as a much shorter definition on the Aish.com page:

Leaving the negativity behind. To stop dwelling on the transgression in thought and action.

To me, leaving negativity behind means to stop beating yourself up over your sins and struggles with temptation. It’s pretty easy to keep clobbering yourself, especially when trying to break a long-term cycle of sin. It’s probably an all too familiar pattern to “throw the book at yourself,” so to speak, to say how no good you are, how hopeless the situation is, and if you’ve gone this far down in sinning, you might as well go the whole way.

Following that line of thought only leads to self-destruction and totally abandoning any relationship with God.

In reading the longer explanation, it seems to me that the Rabbi is saying to make a complete break with anything that connects back to the sin or sins in question. It’s like you are a smoker and so is your spouse. You decide to stop smoking but (s)he continues with the habit. How long do you think you’ll be able to keep your resolve as long as your spouse continues to smoke?

flightSo leaving negativity behind means completely changing your flight pattern as it relates to your sin. If your sin is associated with specific places, you have to avoid those places. If your sin is associated with certain people, then you have to avoid those people.

But the one person you can’t get away from is yourself and your own thoughts and feelings. If you keep telling yourself that you are a person who does this sin, then you’ll identify with that definition. That’s who you are. In this case, you are what you think. Even if you soar away, leaving all other negative people and circumstances behind you, you always have to take yourself on the journey.

Unfortunately, many people are not yet committed to the idea of refraining from negative speech. If you are in the presence of someone as they malign or slander someone, come to the rescue. Have the courage to speak up in defense of the person being spoken against.

This isn’t always easy. Build up the strength of character and courage to stop negative speech.

-Rabbi Zelig Pliskin
“Stop Negative Speech”
Aish.com

Rabbi Pliskin is referring to a person who is witnessing another individual verbally insult someone. The recommendation from the Rabbi is for you to come to the victim’s rescue by stopping the offending party from making further negative comments. But what if the person making the negative comments is you and what if you are making them about yourself?

You have to come to your own rescue. You have to see what you are doing, recognize it for what it is, and then stop your behavior. That’s going to be tough because it’s tied to your habitual sin. It’s a habit, both the sin and what you tell yourself about the sin. It’s a habit to tell yourself that you are worthy of being condemned and unable to pull yourself out of the mud.

To leave negativity behind, you have to repeatedly rescue yourself from your own negative speech. Rescuing yourself, and finding a new way to talk to and identify yourself has to be the new habit that replaces the old habit of sinning and then slamming yourself (metaphorically) against a brick wall because of the sin.

But what about God?

My own worst enemyIt’s not just what we tell ourselves about our sin and our character defects, it’s what we believe God thinks of us, too. The Bible is full of God hating sin, smiting sinners, exiling whole populations, exterminating whole populations, all because of their sin. God isn’t soft on sinners and we have to believe that He punishes sin, if not in this world, then in the next one.

Who can stand before His indignation? Who can endure the burning of His anger? His wrath is poured out like fire And the rocks are broken up by Him.

–Nahum 1:6 (NASB)

But the LORD is the true God; He is the living God and the everlasting King. At His wrath the earth quakes, And the nations cannot endure His indignation.

–Jeremiah 10:10 (NASB)

So if you tell yourself that you are a hopeless, low life, scum ball sinner and that God hates your guts and can’t wait to send you to hell without and electric fan and pitcher of ice water, then that takes away any hope of repentance, atonement, forgiveness, and reconciliation. If God hates you, you might as well hate yourself.

But while the Westboro Baptist Church may think God is a “hater,” there are other opinions:

To the prophets, sin is not an ultimate, irreducible or independent condition, but rather a disturbance in the relationship between God and man; it is an adverb not a noun, a condition that can be surmounted by man’s return and God’s forgiveness.

The divine pathos is like a bridge over the abyss that separates man from God.

–Abraham Joshua Heschel
“The Theology of Pathos” (The Prophets II), pg 9
The Prophets

Man in covenant with God is in relationship with God. Heschel believed that what we do affects God and that God deeply, personally cares not only about humanity in general, but about each and every individual human being. For Rabbi Heschel, being Jewish and observing the mitzvot wasn’t being part of a “religion of dead works,” but rather, participating in a loving and intimate interaction between himself and His Creator, as a wife might dance with her husband.

chuppahChristianity calls itself “a relationship, not a religion,” but when God embraced Israel under the Sinai covenant, they entered that intimate relationship together just as a Jewish man and women enter marriage under the Chuppah. I say all this to illustrate that even if you denigrate yourself in every conceivable manner, God does not and will not.

“For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In an outburst of anger I hid My face from you for a moment, but with everlasting lovingkindness I will have compassion on you.”

–Isaiah 54:7-8 (NASB)

Of course this is God addressing Israel through the prophet Isaiah, so I have to be careful in taking a statement out of one context and pasting it in another, but I’m confident that God not only turns away from Israel for just the briefest of moments, but He also is just as brief when (it seems) He turns away from us as well.

The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

–2 Peter 3:9 (NASB)

This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

–1 Timothy 2:3-4 (NASB)

Sin is a barrier that inhibits a close relationship between you and God. Even in sin, the relationship exists, but it’s strained and distant. Even when the Israelites were exiled by God, He was still with them. He was with them in Egypt, He was with them in Babylonia, and He was with the Jewish people, even in their deepest suffering and despair.

I believe that even when we “fall off the wagon,” so to speak, and we lead a life that takes us away from God, He is still there waiting “anxiously” for us to repent and turn back to Him. Luke 15:11-32 chronicles the parable of the Prodigal Son which is a wonderful example of how sin takes us away from our Father but when we’re ready and return in repentance, the Father does not shun us or shame us for our mistakes and willful sins, but joyously welcomes us back home, in great celebration.

So the only one “badmouthing” you is you.

Well, that’s not quite true. If others are aware of your sins, especially family, it’s very possible that the pain of enduring your sins is affecting them and their response could be anger.

That’s a tough one. Instead of living with a spouse who is smoking while you’re trying to quit smoking, you are living with a spouse who constantly nags you for smoking while you’re trying to quit. Your loved one may be the person saying how lousy you are and how you’ll never change, and what a hopeless jerk you are.

Hopefully that doesn’t describe your situation, but if it does, you’re not alone.

separationAs unpleasant as it is to endure, it’s a consequence of your sinful behavior and how it has hurt others. That kind of negativity is difficult to escape and in the case of a marriage, something like couples counseling might be necessary to support you in leaving negativity behind and to make teshuva, and by helping both you and your spouse to find alternatives to “negative talk.”

I know I mentioned this last time, but as you can see, making teshuva is incredibly involved. Even a single step in the process may require weeks or months. Even if you are convinced that God loves you and wants a closer relationship, and even if you can remake your negative comments and thoughts about yourself into positives, you may never be able to contain literally every single environmental factor (especially other people) in your life.

In that case, when you encounter someone or something you can’t avoid and that threatens to drag your soul into the darkness again, returning to God through the Bible and prayer may help balance the scales. If you know for certain that God loves you and you can read that in the Bible and meditate on those words, making them your new habit to replace negativity can be your shield against what you otherwise must endure.

Successfully eliminating negativity leads to the next step in teshuva. Continuing to live with negativity in thought and word leads to negativity in action: back to sin.

This isn’t an easy choice, but it is a choice that you can and must make.

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For Redemption is Not Yet Complete

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But I have been persuaded by Professor Edward Greenstein to read this story existentially rather than critically. The death of Aaron’s sons was not the result of a miscue in the prescribed choreography of the Tabernacle. Their fate conveys the far deeper and more unsettling truth that no amount of elaborate, awesome, and precisely executed ritual should ever leave us with the illusion that we have brought God under human control. The very moment the Tabernacle comes into service, Israel is taught the sober lesson that God’s will remains free and inscrutable, God’s wisdom unfathomable. The religion of the Torah is not a set of magical techniques to get God to do our bidding, but rather a quest to invest our lives with meaning. To rein in the erratic and destructive passions of the earth’s most intelligent animal, that is the Torah’s desperate mission.

-Ismar Schorsch
“Enduring Life’s Setbacks,” pg 411
Commentary on Torah Commentary Aharei Mot
Canon Without Closure: Torah Commentaries

So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard.

–Genesis 4:3-5 (NASB)

I’ve read a couple of different commentaries on the death of Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu (Leviticus 10:1-3) recently. Both said that the “strange” or “alien fire” they offered was fire of their own making. These commentaries said that when God first ignited the fire upon the altar, only that fire was to be used in making offerings to God. A rather simple explanation for a question that has stumped scholars for thousands of years.

No, we can’t make a sacrifice to God of any sort that somehow brings Him under our control or provides Him with something He lacks. Nothing we make, say, or do will manipulate God into behaving or performing in a manner differently than is His intention.

Like prayer, we don’t turn to God with anything that will change Him. The purpose of the sacrifices, the mitzvot, and prayer is to change us.

Likewise the cup that was given to the world’s greatest tzaddik.

And He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and began to pray, saying, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.”

–Luke 22:41-42 (NASB)

It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour, because the sun was obscured; and the veil of the temple was torn in two. And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.” Having said this, He breathed His last.

–Luke 23:44-46 (NASB)

As I write this, I just read a commentary about Passover and atonement which said in part:

“Suffering and pain may be imposed on a tzaddik (righteous person) as an atonement for his entire generation. This tzaddik must then accept this suffering with love for the benefit of his generation, just as he accepts the suffering imposed upon him for his own sake. In doing so, he benefits his generation by atoning for it, and at the same time is himself elevated to a very great degree. Such suffering also includes cases where a tzaddik suffers because his entire generation deserves great punishments, bordering on annihilation, but is spared via the tzaddik’s suffering. In atoning for his generation through his suffering, this tzaddik saves these people in this world and also greatly benefits them in the World-to-Come. In addition, there is a special higher type of suffering that comes to a tzaddik who is even greater and more highly perfected than the ones discussed above. This suffering comes to provide the help necessary to bring about the chain of events leading to the ultimate perfection of mankind as a whole. … Beyond that, the merit and power of these tzaddikim is also increased because of such suffering, and this gives them even greater ability to rectify the damage of others. They can therefore not only rectify their own generation, but can also correct all the spiritual damage done FROM THE BEGINNING, FROM THE TIME OF THE VERY FIRST SINNERS.” (emphasis mine) .. (Derech Hashem, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, translation by Aryeh Kaplan Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 1977, pp 123-125)

If you are a Christian and unfamiliar with Jewish texts, this may seem strange or even startling to you. If you are Jewish and not a believer, this will seem like a gross misappropriation of the writings of the sages, bent in an unintended direction for a mistaken purpose.

The Death of the MasterI’ve written about just such an interpretation before, both in The Death of the Tzaddik and The Sacrifice at Golgotha. God is not pleased by unauthorized offerings, strange fires, and certainly not by human sacrifice, which we Christians sometimes are mistakenly accused of condoning.

And yet, sometimes God does ask that we put our soul on the altar so to speak, not because human struggle and suffering is His desire, but because we need to learn that as servants of the Most High God, our lives are subject to Him, not to what we want. By offering sacrifices, whether it be a lamb, a prayer, or our time and energy in performing deeds of kindness and charity, we aren’t giving to God something that changes Him, but we are doing what changes us in the manner God desires us to change.

And even that desire of God’s is not for His sake but for our own.

At the last second, God terminated the Akedah or the Binding of Isaac (Genesis 22) to spare the life of Isaac and to spare Abraham the death of his only son, the son of inheritance, the son who would carry forward all of the promises God made to Abraham, so they might be sent into the future with Isaac’s son Jacob, with Jacob’s twelve sons, with the tribes they would found, and with all of Israel, today’s Jewish people.

And because God wasn’t asking Abraham for a human sacrifice on the altar by killing his son, He was changing Abraham and changing Isaac, and the result of those changes reverberate down through history in both Judaism and Christianity.

To rein in the erratic and destructive passions of the earth’s most intelligent animal, that is the Torah’s desperate mission.

-Ismar Schorsch

I might have worded that sentence a little differently, but it’s a sound statement. The Word of God exists to change us, mold us, refine us (like a precious metal in fire if necessary) so that we might become a more spiritually pure product over time.

Rabbi Kalman Packouz in his Passover commentary said the following:

The Midrash tells us that the Jewish people had the same problem in Egypt. Only 1/5 of the Jewish people were on a high enough spiritual level to leave Egypt — and they were on the 49th level of Tuma, spiritual degradation — and were within a hair’s breadth of being destroyed.

Yet, what is amazing is that in the next 49 days they raised themselves to the spiritual level to receive the Torah at Mt. Sinai! Each day we climbed one step higher in spirituality and holiness. Many people study one of the “48 Ways to Wisdom” (Ethics of the Fathers, 6:6 — found in the back of most siddurim, Jewish prayer books) each day in the Sephirat HaOmer period between Pesach and Shavuot — which will be explained below — as a means to personal and spiritual growth. This is a propitious time for perfecting one’s character!

PrayerSome of those terms may seem a little odd to some of you but the principle behind them should be clear. We want to change. We want to be a little better tomorrow than we were yesterday. But even as believers and devout disciples of the Master, that’s easier said than done, at least for me (especially for me). Rabbi Packouz suggests Rabbi Noah Weinberg’s series 48 Ways to Wisdom, working through one “way” each day between the start of Passover and the arrival of Shavuot.

Jesus didn’t die just to be a human sacrifice since God abhors the desecration of human life. But if a great tzaddik can atone for the sins of his generation, how much more does the death of the greatest of all tzaddikim atone for the sins of the world, across the vast panorama of human existence?

But there’s nothing we can offer God that changes God. Every sacrifice, every lamb, every bull, every prayer, every mitzvah, and the death of the tzaddik, the Master, exists to change each of us and to bring us a little closer to God. Empty sacrifices are less than useless however. What we do is important but why we do it is crucial. Simply giving a can of soup to a hungry person feeds that hungry person, which is good, and it may temporarily elevate ourselves, at least in our own eyes, which may not be bad either. But if the act doesn’t reveal a little bit more about God to us, and if we don’t become just a little more dedicated and compassionate as God’s servants because of it, then all we’ve done was given one small meal to one single person.

And they’ll be hungry again in a few hours. So much for our “sacrifice.”

It only really, really matters on a vast and even cosmic scale, if it brings us to a greater realization of who is above us:

“Consider three things and you will not come to sin: Know what is above you: an eye that sees and an ear that hears, and all your deeds are recorded in the Book.”

-Pirkei Avot 2:1

Jesus will have died for nothing if we don’t follow him as a result, if we aren’t changed by the crucifixion and resurrection, if his act of inaugurating the era of the New Covenant did not begin to turn our heart of stone into a heart of flesh.

Run to do good. Shun evil. Pray for God to soften you, to change you, to refine you.

Examine me, O Lord, and try me; test my mind and my heart.
For Your lovingkindness is before my eyes, And I have walked in Your truth.

–Psalm 26:2-3 (NASB)

Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.

–Acts 20:28 (NASB)

Looking upPlease don’t think me vain if I start by praying for myself. It has been all too easy for me to rest for an extended period of time on a spiritual plateau and it’s all too difficult for me to overcome inertia and begin moving again. Going up means I have to overcome gravity, but going down is not the direction I want to take. Like a boat without oars in a river, standing still is just another way of going backward.

Our love of God is not to collapse even when our soul is shattered.

-Ismar Schorsch, pg 412

For redemption is not yet complete.

–A Passover Haggadah, Ed. Herbert Bronstein, pg 34

The King is coming, but there’s still time for each of us, you and me.

“Life gets mighty precious when there’s less of it to waste.”

-Bonne Raitt

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Without Faith and Grace

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leaving_edenJudaism and Christianity parted company over how to read these few spare chapters in universal history. For the Church, the Garden of Eden became the soil for the doctrine of original sin. In their waywardness, Adam and Eve, and all their descendants, fell hostage to the domain of the devil. The narrative bespoke the immutably depraved condition of human nature. To know the Torah was not sufficient to do it. In the words of Paul, “In my inmost self I delight in the law of God, but I perceive that there is in my bodily members a different law, fighting against the law that my reason approves and making me a prisoner under the law that is in my members, the law of sin.” (Romans 7:22-23) Not human willpower then but divine grace alone in the person of God’s own Son who had died on the cross could hope to break this vicious cycle of human malice.

-Ismar Schorsch
“Teshuvah in Place of Original Sin,” pp 34-35 (October 16, 1999)
Commentary on Torah Portion Noah
from the book Canon Without Closure: Torah Commentaries

I know we’ve already read Torah portion Noah this year, but as I’ve been working through the commentaries in Schorsch’s book each week, I’ve been taking notes of the more compelling articles. For each Torah Portion, there is a small but powerful collection of Schorsch’s writings which he composed over a number of different years. Going over this collection is like opening his mind and listening to Schorsch musing on how he encountered each Parashat across each annual reading cycle over time.

I’m also grateful that this book includes his thoughts on Christianity and comparisons to Judaism, not because I’m trying to “shoot down” Christianity (or necessarily Judaism), but it’s helpful to have an intelligent mind discuss my faith from the “outside.” Like my conversations with my Pastor, it hones my ability to look at my own beliefs, especially when they’re challenged, and discover if I truly know and can explain why I have the faith I possess in Jesus as Messiah.

It’s a steep learning curve sometimes and I can hardly claim to have all of my ducks in a row, so to speak. However, I can say that the ducks are lining up in a somewhat more orderly fashion than they have in past years.

Original sin vs. the Jewish understanding of “the Fall” makes for interesting reading. Judaism in all its different modern streams, is not going to consider the need for a spiritual savior (though Moshiach is considered the redeemer of national Israel in Jewish thought, generally speaking). The Torah is accepted as sufficient, and always has been, to negotiate the Jewish relationship with a perfect God.

That’s hard for me to believe since no man can obey the commandments perfectly, and the Tanakh is a blatant record of that fact. The New Covenant promised in Jeremiah 31 starting in verse 27 promises that the covenant once written on stone tablets and scrolls made of animal skin will, in future times, be written on the heart, thus the “disconnect” between the desire for Holiness in man and the imperfection of living out that Holiness will cease to exist. Man and God will have a far more intimate relationship in those days than we enjoy in the present, or at any point in the past.

Gateway to EdenBut for Christianity, Jesus is the arbiter of that covenant, the gatekeeper, the doorway, and only by a profession of faith in him and the resultant transformed life, can man access the New Covenant of God. After that perfect writing of the Torah on a circumcised and human heart of flesh, can man perform the mitzvot with complete fidelity and with true justice and righteousness. Prior to that event, Christian or Jew, no man obeys God in the manner God desires, or for that manner, even in the manner we ourselves would wish.

In my own approach to a closer walk with God, I find myself slowly moving in a direction, but then, the tether that binds me to the habits of the past snaps me back like a rubber band that has been stretched just a little too far…and it stings.

It is not until we come to the late and marginal Book of Jonah that we first confront in full view the idea of teshuvah, repentance, as efficacious. Nor is it an accident that we read all of it in the synagogue on Yom Kippur afternoon, for Jonah encapsulates the essence of the day: that atonement, resolve, and initiative can get us beyond the impediments of our past and ourselves.

-Schorsch, pg 35

For all of the prophets of Israel we see in the Tanakh (Old Testament) who implored that nation of God to abandon her sin (which she regularly failed to do), only the Gentile city of Nineveh heeded a reluctant prophet and turned away God’s “evil decree.” It wasn’t permanent, of course, and later down history’s road, Nineveh sinned and fell, but consider how many times (if you can) that Israel too listened to the words of the prophets and averted disaster.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. Behold, your house is being left to you desolate! For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’”

–Matthew 23:37-39 (NASB)

The Master’s commentary on the matter is plain and dismaying. And yet, I heard one person tell me that if Israel had turned away from their sins and returned to Torah and God in the days that Jesus walked the earth, the Messianic Age would have come and flourished even in that very instant.

The world is waiting for Israel’s national repentance, without it, Messiah will not come and both Israel and the nations continue to suffer from our own folly.

Schorsch would say that the story of Jonah and Nineveh tells us that human beings can, in and of ourselves, hear the warnings of God, repent in sincerity, and the result is that God’s promise of destruction will be averted. But without Messiah, how were Nineveh’s sins forgiven? They certainly weren’t Israelites. History doesn’t record that they sent representatives to Jerusalem to offer the appropriate sacrifices for guilt and sin (and we know that the sacrifices of Gentiles were accepted in the Temple, even in the days of Jesus).

Jonah's KikayonOnly God’s grace can explain why Nineveh survived when they repented. God is an “either-or” engine or sorts. “Either you repent and I will spare you, or you keep sinning and I will destroy you.”

This may also explain why, when they were faithful, when they did obey God, when they did perform the mitzvot, however imperfectly, and offered the required sacrifices, that is required by God, in the Temple in atonement for that imperfection, God chose to respond to sacrifices and the blood of goats and bulls, by sparing Israel, forgiving the apple of His eye, cherishing His often wayward bride.

On the basis of this small book, the Rabbis softened their understanding of the divine-human relationship with a large dose of compassion. God stood ready to forgive and humans had the capacity to grow. Thus Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus in the early second century proclaimed:

“Repent one day before your death.” When his students asked him how one might know that day, he replied: “Then repent today for you might die tomorrow.” (Avot DeRabbi Natan, ed. Schechter, page 62)

In other words, each and every day, and not just Yom Kippur, was suitable for repairing one’s ties to God.

-Schorsch, pp 35-36

Such is true of the Christian as well, and more so, since we do not have a traditional day in our religious calendar set aside specifically for repentance and “repairing one’s ties to God.” If anything, we are rather casual about the whole affair, for we are taught that once we were saved at some altar call or camp meeting, our place in Heaven is assured. We can never again fall from God’s hand.

My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”

–John 10:27-30 (NASB)

That’s quite a promise, but I still say we should not rest on our laurels so comfortably, for the Master also said this:

“Then they will deliver you to tribulation, and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My name. At that time many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another. Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many. Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved.

–Matthew 24:9-13 (NASB)

FallingTo “fall away” means we must have some place to fall from, in this case, from our faith in God (and I didn’t fail to notice that those “falling away” did so during the great tribulation). This does not seem to be the illusion of faith or describing those people who are not among the elect (for the Calvinists among you), but those who were in the Father’s hand at one point, who will fall away because lawlessness increased, their love grew cold, and they listened to false prophets.

We must always be alert and cautious. Like Nineveh, when we see the warning signs and hear the voice of God calling to us to beware lest we perish, we should respond immediately and “don sackcloth and ashes,” so to speak, declare a time of fasting and mourning, even if it is only with our own individual soul, and turn back to God, rather than risk falling from His hand down to the depths of despair.

In short, the rabbinic concept of teshuvah rested on deeds rather than on faith, on the discipline of Torah rather than on divine grace. Its implicit optimism about the correctability of human nature tempered the near fatalism that darkened the original meaning of Genesis.

-Schorsch, pg 36

I couldn’t disagree more.

First of all, Nineveh was redeemed for a specific time, but we have no indication whatsoever that it never returned to sin (and knowing the nature of human beings, I believe it must have returned to that dark place) and was forever redeemed as a city before God. Repentance, teshuvah, is not a single act that once accomplished, is accomplished forever. We have Christ’s warning that we can fall away. True, no one can snatch us out of the Father’s hands, but that doesn’t mean we can’t “bail out” on our own accord. We cannot be dragged unwillingly from the presence of God, but we can wantonly walk out of our own free will, thumbing our nose at the Divine in a suicidal gesture right before our final exit.

Schorsch says that human beings have pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and effectively refrain from sin, but again, the Tanakh is the witness against him (and against us all). Also, if the Covenant of Moses was sufficient forever in an unratified form, why does God promise a New Covenant, with the Torah not written externally, but inscribed internally across the fabric of our hearts (and please keep in mind that the content of the previous covenant remains unchanged, only the “material” upon which it is written does)?

I don’t know if I completely buy the classic Christian interpretation of the events in Eden, but I do believe that no amount of human effort, all by itself, will ever pay the debt we owe to God for our willful rebellion. From Adam in the beginning and down across each generation, we have failed God, and laughed at God, and denied God again and again. Even the best among us falls short, as Paul said (referencing Psalms 14 and 53), there is no one righteous, not even one of us…ever (Romans 3:10-12), apart from the Master himself.

dust-and-ashesWith much respect to Schorsch and his commentaries, which I enjoy very much, we cannot possibly walk the walk without both faith of the heart, and the grace of a most merciful God. Without both faith and grace, our repentance would be a faint and temporary glimmer in the dark, and we would all meet the ultimate fate of historical Nineveh well passed Jonah’s intervention, and the fate of all the “great cities” that have risen and crumbled to dust across the vast corridors of time.

Divine grace is certainly necessary, and no human being can even come close to “meeting God halfway,” so to speak. But we are still required to change directions, to face away from our sin and to turn toward God. Once that’s accomplished, often with God’s insistent “prodding,” then and only then do we have life, and the will to live it in obedience.