Torah, torah, torah

Well, it's been a while since I wrote anything here ( life does that to you sometimes ).  Our family has seen major changes in the last 6 months, both geographically and spiritually as a result of moving to Charlotte, North Carolina (yeah seasons!) and coming into a different understanding of the applicability of the old testament to new testament believers that is very different than what we previously understood. 

 

For me, as I dug deeper and deeper into this new understanding, I had to root myself in a few foundational principles to [re]build on:

 

1a.  God and his word are eternal and do not change:  "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever." So, when God says "Forever", it really means "Forever" and when He says "Never", it really means "Never".

 

1b.  Context, context, context:  The events of the new testament Gospel accounts happened between 3BCE and 30CE (or 3Bc and 30AD if you like).  The remainder of the New Testament canon all were written before 100CE.  The New Testament writings were not canonized (or combined) until around 393CE.  So.... when some new testament writing refers to "scripture", they are not talking about the new testament (see below for how this is relevant to this discussion).

 

1c:   This does not seem as important as the two above but the distinction between a Jew and a Hebrew is important:  Jews are Hebrews who belong to the tribe of Judah; A Hebrew is any offspring of Jacob, including those of his son Judah.  All Jews are Hebrews but not all Hebrews are Jews.  The nation of Israel divided itself into two kingdoms after King Solomon died; a Southern kingdom composed of the tribes of Judah ("Jews") and Benjamin and the Northern kingdom of Israel with the remaining 10 tribes.

 

So, back to the original issue: what does the bible teach about the Old Testament applicability to a "New Testament believer"?  If it sounds like I'm teaching something, please forgive me; I am not qualified to teach this to anyone.  This is my attempt to communicate where I've been so far in this journey to better understand God's plan for my life.

 

Without having ever heard this taught or said explicitly, it appears that the Christian church generally holds to replacement theology, the idea being that the Jews rejected Jesus as messiah so God "replaced them" as his chosen people with a new group, Christians/the Christian Church.  To get salvation, to "get to heaven", Jews and the rest of the heathen mass have to put their faith in a Christian Messiah named Jesus (who happens to be Jewish).  

 

Of course, in Romans 11, we find this "I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means!".  Another possibility then is Separation Theology which is similar in that it divides the church from national Israel, each with their own future role to play in God's plan.   Of course, this means that God has 2 standards, one for the Jews and one for the rest of us.  That's even harder to swallow than God rejecting Israel.

 

If you belong to a church that does not hold to this and/or similar theologies, please ignore the rest of this post.

 

A lot of Jews have and continue to actively reject Jesus as Messiah because the Christian church teaches that Jesus introduced "a new law", doing away with "the law and the prophets" or Tanakh, the Old Testament teachings God gave them starting with Moses.  The issue with this of course is that God instructed the Jews to avoid anyone that taught them to turn away from his instructions, his Torah, and what would happen if they did turn away.  In fact, a lot of the Old Testament is dedicated to prophet after prophet giving Israel warnings about how their waywardness would have dire consequences.  Both the Northern and Southern kingdoms of Israel were eventually taken away into captivity because of their disobedience to God's Torah.  While the Southern kingdom of Judah returned after 70 years, the Northern tribe's idolatry was so great that they have yet to return!  So imagine the Jews great reluctance to accept a messiah that is presenting a "new covenant" that abandons the authority of the Tanakh.

 

If you asked a somewhat knowledgeable everyday Christian when God introduced this "new law", they might point to Jeremiah 31:31-34, the "New Covenant" passage:

 

31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. 33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

 

A few points:

 

1. God says "I will put my law within them".  He did not say "I will put a new law within them" but "…my law…".  What law would that be exactly in the time of Jeremiah if not the law given to Moses?  Is this really an important distinction?  Is "new law" different than "new covenant"?  Reread it again.  The reason God the author of the covenant gives for needing a new covenant is that the houses of Israel and Judah broke the covenant he made with them through Moses, not that the law needed replacing or updating (if you are struggling with this, go back to 1a above and stay there until you've got it)!  This new covenant would see God writing the same laws again but this time the writing would be on their hearts, tablets of flesh not stone.

"And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh."

 

2. This passage is specifically written to "the house of Judah and the house of Israel", not to Gentiles!  How can a Christian claim that this passage is for us?  Is there something in the bible that somehow links Christians to either of the houses of Jacob or Israel? (spoiler alert: Yes)

 

Remember, Jesus was born a Jew, lived his whole life as a Jew, died as a Jew, and was resurrected as a Jew.  The church acknowledges all this and at the same time says that Jews have to become Christians through faith in a Jewish messiah to obtain salvation.  Huh?  When did Jesus ever teach that Jews had to abandon "Moses and the Prophets" to obtain salvation?  Jesus never taught anything that diminished the authority of the Tanakh.  He said himself that he came to fulfill every aspect of the Law and the Prophets.  It is so easy to think he was saying "old bad, new good" in the many passages where Jesus says "you've heard it said, do this, but I say, do that", etc.  Remember though, from the same passage where he says he came to fulfill all, he warned "Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven".  Did God the Father say that Jesus was least in the kingdom of heaven or did he say that he was well pleased in him?

 

I had totally bought into the idea that the Old Testament did not apply to Christians, you know, that whole "law of sin and death" thing.  But the bible clearly links the Old Testament Tanakh with salvation through Jesus Messiah:  take this passage from 2 Timothy 3?

"14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom[a] you learned it 15 and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work."

Did you catch it, how Paul couples Timothy's knowledge of the "ancient writings" with "salvation through Christ Jesus"?  Read it again: "...the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through Christ Jesus".  How did I ever skip over that and not just stop and say "Whaaaaaaattttt"?  Just to be clear, 2 Timothy is believed to have been written somewhere around 67CE, so Paul would not have been referring to New Testament writing as scripture.

 

This is also a great example of how God's word speaks to the present and the future.  In this case, the scriptures in 67CE were just the Tanakh but it was also a foreshadowing for us in the 21st century applying to the New Testament as well.

 

There is more to this that I'll discuss in a future post, specifically the Old Testamanet referenes to "sojourners"; Romans 11:11 and gentiles being "grafted in"; and Ephesians 2 and gentiles being reconciled to the "commonwealth of Israel" and "the covenants of promise".

 

In the end, God will hold each of us accountable for what we did with his commands to us, all of them, and not what our pastors and teachers taught us.