Torah – Snapshots

To Fulfill

Christ our Messiah didn’t come to destory or abolish Torah, the Mosaic Law, He came to fulfill it. (Mt 5:17) Fulfill comes from the Greek play-ro’-o, meaning to fill up, make replete, cram; it’s used in many places in scripture to indicate a fulfillment of prophecy by bringing to pass what was predicted. (e.g. Mt 1:22, 2:15, 17, 23, 4:14, etc.) Christ certainly fulfilled hundreds of biblical prophecies as God used Him to accomplish what they foretold.

Another way in which Christ fulfilled the Law and the prophets was by His perfect obedience to Torah, and to all the godly precepts and principles which the prophets have derived from Torah. (Mt 3:15) It was necessary for Christ to live like this, to be perfectly righteous, in order to suffer for our sins: He had to be innocent, pure and holy in every possible way so He could become a proper substitute for the ungodly (Ro 5:6), that He might bring us to God. (1Pe 3:18)

Yet many presume that since Christ has kept God’s law for us, we don’t have to keep it; He has obeyed Torah for us, on our behalf, so we are free break it. But since God defines sin as the violation of Torah (1Jn 3:4), this is equivalent to claiming that since Christ died to save us from our sins we are now free to sin. In other words, since He is our Great Physician, we are now free to be sick; since Christ has set us free from the bondage of sin we are now free to be slaves of sin (Ro 6:16); since Christ is our Resurrection and our Life, we are now free to pursue death. It’s a contradiction on such a basic level only the reprobate mind can tolerate it. (Ro 1:28) Nothing could be farther from the truth. (2Ti 2:19)

Clearly, Christ did not come to save us so we can persist in our sin, delivering us from sin’s lawful penalty so we could go on living in disobedience without consequence. No. Christ also came to set us free from the power and dominion of sin (Ro 6:14), to work godliness and holiness within us as a manner of life. (He 12:14) We are elect unto obedience (1Pe 1:2), created in Christ unto good works, which God has preordained that we should walk in them. (Ep 2:10)

We might think this settles the matter, yet most Christians still ignore Torah and use this idea that Christ fulfilled the law as justification. The claim is that much of Torah was temporary in nature, either applicable only to Jews to distinguish them as God’s chosen people until Christ came or foreshadowing what Christ would accomplish in His ministry. The assertion is that though Christ did not actually abolish any of Torah, in completing His ministry He fulfilled or completed certain types of laws such that they are no longer useful or binding; they have served their purpose and are therefore now obsolete.

To support this claim, ever since the mid-second century, post-Apostolic Christianity has been cleverly partitioning Torah into moral, civil and ceremonial laws, and claiming the civil and ceremonial laws are fulfilled. So, while the moral law is still valid (clearly, we’re not free to murder, lie, cheat and steal, etc.), Sabbath, dietary law, God’s feasts and the like are no longer applicable. This avoids obvious absurdity and may seem reasonable on the surface, but no justification is ever provided for the partition itself; it is taken for granted.

However, dismissing certain parts of Torah as obsolete plainly violates the immediate context, in which Christ states (as clearly as it can be stated) that every single detail of Torah will remain relevant in God’s kingdom until every single prophecy has been fulfilled, until Heaven and Earth pass away. (Mt 5:18) He emphasizes and affirms that anyone breaking any of the least of Torah’s commands will be considered least in God’s kingdom, and whoever does and teaches all of Torah will be considered great in His kingdom. (Mt 5:19) It is difficult to imagine how Christ might have been more explicit, or how He might have stated this more clearly.

As we consider the rest of scripture, we find no indication how to partition Torah into sections we might ignore; Torah is consistently treated as an integrated whole, like a mirror (Ja 1:23); breaking any part of it makes one a law-breaker. (Ja 2:10) Each command elaborates on how to love God and our neighbor (Mt 22:40), so dismissing any part of Torah diminishes and corrupts this biblical revelation of love.

Apart from having no biblical precedent for a formal Torah partition, actual attempts to classify Torah this way, sorting commands into these arbitrary classes, are rare and deeply problematic (for example, why classify Sabbath as civil instead of moral?). Rather than discarding parts of Torah, this entire man-made paradigm should be discarded; it is evidently a lie and should be scrapped entirely. Each of God’s commands outlives the universe. (Lk 16:17, Ps 111:7-8, 119:44, 152, 160)

Even so, post-apostolic Christianity persists in discarding the bulk of Torah and ignores it as God’s perfect standard of righteousness for today (Ps 119:172), leveraging numerous Pauline passages to effectively abolish the supposed civil and ceremonial laws. Paul does write many things which are hard to understand; those who take him out of context in an unlearned and ignorant manner, as they do the rest of scripture, do so to their own destruction. (2Pe 3:16) This should concern any earnest soul; we may not choose between Christ and Paul, we must reconcile them.

In my experience, we won’t get much help from organized religion, and this should be no surprise. Yet if we are prayerful, persistent and careful, taking each passage in context, we find Paul’s new, godly nature loves Torah (Ro 7:22); he affirms and validates Torah as God’s definition of sin (Ro 7:7); he sees no inconsistency between faith in Christ and strict Torah observance (Ro 3:21), and he never encourages us to break it. (Ro 6:1-2) We find what we should expect to find: there’s no inconsistency between Paul and Christ; Torah is the law of God’s eternal kingdom, and if we love Him we should be obeying all of it that we can. (1Jn 5:3)

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Get Understanding

I am intrigued by the idea that Nicodemus, an earnest Pharisee living in ancient Israel, in the epicenter of God’s chosen people, having memorized the entire Tanakh (Old Testament) and trained himself to teach its core principles (Jn 3:1), could be clueless about eternal salvation and how to be reconciled with God. (10) Similarly Paul, also a Pharisee in all good conscience before God, thought he was serving God by persecuting Christians, profoundly ignorant of justification by faith (1Ti 1:13), until Christ Himself taught him the Gospel. (Ga 1:11-12)

This begs a profound question: why has God written His word the way He has, with the gospel itself being so elusive, hidden and mysterious? Even if we’re intimately familiar with scripture, we still might be missing its primary message. It’s as if God is hiding the truth from us and doesn’t want us to find it very easily.

We know God cannot be pleased in our ignorance because He is supremely loving, to the point of self-sacrifice for anyone who will turn to Him, and He is infinitely wise and good; He did not design His word the way He did by accident; ultimately, He must have some merciful and gracious purpose in mind. (Ro 11:33)

Perhaps God is acknowledging that mankind as a whole will persist in unbelief no matter how clear He explains the gospel, and is hiding the truth so He might have mercy on us all. (32) God is acting as if no one will be receptive to the truth even if He does make it obvious (2Ti 4:4), as if everyone will refuse to be reconciled with Him (Ro 3:11), and so by hiding the truth, purposely making it difficult to find, He is in a sense giving us all somewhat of an out, an alibi to lessen our condemnation. Perhaps God is hiding the truth so He can be a little bit more merciful to those who willfully refuse to seek Him.

Evidently, as there are levels of reward in Heaven (Mt 5:19), it stands to reason there are also levels of punishment in Hell. (Ro 2:5) Perhaps God is dealing with the fact that no one will seek Him on their own; nearly everyone is voluntarily headed for eternal destruction. (Mt 7:13) Perhaps God is providing room for a little bit of mercy to lessen the severity of damnation for all those who neglect to pursue a relationship with Him.

And for His elect, in whom He mercifully intervenes and softens our hearts, it may very well be that in earnestly searching out the truth when it is so hard to find, this very process not only strengthens us (Php 2: 12-13), but makes the truth itself that much more precious to us when we do find it. (Mt 13:45) This is evidently very good. (Pr 25:2)

We should all seek God earnestly so we may know Him (Je 9:24), so we may walk with Him in spirit and truth. (1Jn 1:3) The fact that the truth is hidden is no issue; God has promised to give understanding to all who seek it. (Ja 1:5-6) So, it is not a matter of whether we can ultimately come to understand the truth (Mt 7:7-8), it’s more a question of how God chooses to get us there, how we must invest in doing so: it does cost us everything. (Lk 17:33)

God tells us to commit our all to Him in this pursuit (Mt 19:21), to value Wisdom and Understanding above all else. (Pr 4:7) There is nothing more important than walking out a practical knowledge of God, grounding ourselves in spiritual reality (Php 3:8-9), putting on display what He reveals to us about Himself as we seek Him.

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A Ransom

Every ancestral heritage is a mixture of light and dark, good and evil; while our ancestors are imperfect they offer us valuable lessons. (1Co 10:1-4) We should be thankful for what we learn from them, yet discerning: our responsibility is to embrace what is noble and good, and let go of the rest. (5-6)

As we embody the godly virtues of our ancestors, we ought not seek our identity or security in their legacy; they cannot heal our broken relationship with God or give to God a ransom for our souls. (Ps 49:7)

We each do need a ransom because we have all sinned against God by breaking His law, the Mosaic Law in the Hebrew scriptures, the Torah (Mt 5:19), which makes Him very angry with us. (Ro 1:18) No mere mortal, dead or alive, can help with this because we all have the same problem: we are all sinners. (Ro 3:10)

The penalty we all deserve for our sin is eternal, spiritual death. (Ro 6:23) Justice must be served: we either need to suffer eternally for our own sin or find someone else willing to take our place and suffer on our behalf, someone who does not also deserve to die. But who could do such a thing for us? And who would do so, even if they could? (Ro 5:7)

Yet our biggest problem isn’t the fact that we deserve God’s wrath because of what we have done; our biggest problem is that without God’s help we will keep on breaking Torah; we don’t want to be governed by God and obey His commands; in our natural state we are at enmity with Jehovah God and we cannot submit to His Law. (Ro 8:7)

It’s impossible for us to be in right relationship with God like this (Ro 8:8), but it’s how all of us are when God lets us go our own way. So, we not only need to be saved from the penalty of our sin, but also from its power, from our very nature which causes us to violate Torah; in other words, we actually need to be saved from ourselves (Ro 7:23-24): we need a miracle from God. (Jn 3:5-7)

There is only one Man who is willing and able perform this miracle for us: the Son of God, the God-Man Jesus Christ. (1Ti 2:6) Christ is not a sinner, so He doesn’t deserve to be punished for sin, yet He is willing to be punished for us, to reconcile us to God by dying in our place, to be punished on our behalf so He can reconcile us with God. (2Co 5:19)

And Jesus Christ is also able to save us from ourselves, to give us a new, divine nature, new hearts that love Him and want to obey Him (2Co 5:17), and write His laws into our minds and hearts. (He 8:10-12) He is both willing and able to transform us from rebels into His own likeness and righteousness. (Ro 8:4)

Even so, most of us will naturally keep on looking for some other way to be reconciled with God (Mt 7:13-14); we won’t give ourselves over to God and let Him save and heal us. We want to do things our own way, so rather than searching for the evidence God has graciously provided to show us His way, we make up religions that make us feel good, which maintain our sense of control and give us what we want, and so we trample underfoot the Son of God. (He 10:29)

Though we can do nothing to save ourselves, finding our salvation in God will indeed cost us everything; if we are unwilling to give ourselves entirely up to Him, hanging on to our old life, we will be lost. (Mk 8:35-36) But we have no excuse (Ro 1:19-21), no way to escape if we neglect so great an offer (He 2:3); we’ll just be storing up wrath for ourselves against the day God’s righteous anger is revealed. (Ro 2:5-6)

So, how do we find our eternal salvation in God? We receive His Son Jesus Christ by faith as our Eternal King and Savior and believe on Him (Jn 1:12-13), submitting to Him as Lord, trusting and knowing He has died in our place, has been raised again from the dead, and reconciled us to God, and that He is transforming us into His image. This faith in Him is a supernatural work of God in our hearts wherein He reveals to us what Christ has already done to save us and gives us His spiritual life. (Ro 3:25-26) We cannot make this happen through an act of our own will; it is the work of God. (Ja 1:18)

Until we experience this supernatural work of faith in our hearts we should continue seeking it from God, turning away from all which displeases Him, earnestly obeying Torah as well as we can, in every way that we can, and meditating on what He has revealed to us about ourselves and His Son in the Holy scriptures. (2Ti 3:15) We should also ask others to pray for us, working out our own salvation with fear and trembling (Php 2:12), surrounding ourselves with those who have found Him and are seeking Him, and continue pursuing God until we find Him, and He rewards us with faith in His Son. (He 11:6)

Good News

The word gospel means good news, but our idea of good depends on what we value, and this is informed by our world view, how we’re engaging reality. Who or what do we position at the center of Life itself, and why? What drives our sense of value?

By nature, we each put ourselves at the center of reality, as if we’re gods, and define good by what serves our personal interests. Yet we did not create the universe: so, obviously, we are not the center of reality. To have a coherent world view we must look beyond ourselves for our sense of value.

We need not look very far at all (Ac 17:24): the most verifiable fact of all human history is that Jesus Christ, the first-century Jew Who claimed to be Jehovah God of the Hebrew Scriptures (Jn 8:58), died by Roman crucifixion and then rose again from the dead. (Ac 17:31) We rightly engage reality by acknowledging Jesus Christ as Creator God, King of the Universe, and living this out in our conscious behavior; there is no other way.

A central claim of Christ our King is that Mosaic Law — Torah — is the law of His eternal kingdom (Mt 5:17-19); Christ will personally tread down all who break His laws (Ps 119:118) and trample them in His fury. (Is 63:3)

The bad news is that we all deserve to be destroyed by Christ because we’ve all broken His laws (Ro 3:19): we all need deliverance from His wrath. (Lk 3:7)

The Gospel, or good news (Ac 13:32-33), is that if we want to keep Jehovah’s commandments and walk in fellowship with Him, He has made a way for us to be reconciled to Himself through Jesus Christ (2Co 5:19), Who died on behalf of sinners like us (1Jn 2:2) to rescue us from our enmity against Himself and His laws (Ro 8:7) and deliver us from the wrath to come. (1Th 1:10)

By faith we can seek Him (He 11:6) until He we believe on Him (1Jn 5:13), until we know we’re redeemed (He 10:22), resting in what He has done for us (Ro 3:25), confident He has given us a new nature that loves Him and delights in His law (He 10:16-17), and we have become His children. (Jn 1:12-13)

But those who wish to continue breaking Torah, neglecting God’s incredible offer of salvation, are choosing to store up unfathomable eternal misery for themselves (Ro 2:5-6); there will be no escape. (He 2:3)

Religion may offer us false hope by telling us we aren’t so evil, or that if we follow their man-made rules we’ll make it, or by offering us a savior who abolished Torah (2Co 11:4), accepting us as we continue on in willful sin, but these lies won’t stand in the day of Judgment. (Mt 7:21-23)

A very common misconception is that we can be reconciled with God merely by asking Him to save us after we’ve checked some theological boxes and sincerely decided to follow Him. But God never tells us this; it’s just table stakes, how we start seeking salvation. We must continue seeking Him until we become convinced Christ has reconciled our souls to God by dying in our place. Until this becomes the supernatural reality within us, producing true rejoicing in our salvation, we should continue asking God to help us believe on Him until we are absolutely sure, sure unto joy. (2Pe 1:10)

We truly can be saved from ourselves, but we must be willing to give ourselves over to God and let Him have His way with us in order to be set free. (2Ti 2:25-26) If we love our lives we will lose them forever, but if we lose them for His sake, we will find them in Him. (Jn 12:25) If this sounds like good news, then come! The door is wide open; God turns no one away who truly seeks Him. (Re 22:17)

The words of the God-Man Jesus Christ will try us all (Mt 7:26-27) and they will damn nearly everyone for eternity. (Mt 7:13-14) Extremely few will be saved (1Jn 5:19), not because we have no choice, but because we neglect to lay hold of what God is offering us. (1Ti 6:19) There’s absolutely nothing worth going to Hell for (Mt 5:29-30) so we should each work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. (Php 2:12)

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Any Other Gospel

The Four Spiritual Laws is likely the most popular gospel tract ever written, the most widely distributed of all time, likely over 2.5 billion. It summarizes basic Gospel truths in four simple points:

God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. (Jn 3:16; 10:10)
Man is sinful and separated from God. (Ro 3:23; 6:23)
Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for man’s sin. (Ro 5:8; 1Co 15:3-6; Jn 14:6)
We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. (Jn 1:12; Ep 2:8-9; Re 3:20)

The tract ends with instructions to “receive Christ” by praying a prayer inviting Him into our heart and committing our life to follow Him, assuring us that if we prayed sincerely we’re now a child of God regardless how we feel.

While each of these four laws is scriptural on the surface, the actual gospel (or good news) presented in this tract — that if we sincerely ask Christ to forgive our sins and come into our heart and save us, that He will — is not. In fact, it is so vastly different from the Biblical reality it amounts to another gospel (2Co 11:4), a false one. It distorts each of these four spiritual principles and encourages an unbiblical response to them.

While the Bible equates receiving Christ with supernatural rest in the Person and finished work of Christ (He 4:3), this false gospel substitutes a mechanical “sinner’s prayer” technique, and also incorrectly defines every key term: repentance, sin and faith. It even explicitly normalizes unbelief by discounting the primary evidence of saving faith: assurance of salvation. (1Th 1:5)

The true Gospel is that Christ delivers those who believe on Him from their violations of His law: Torah. (Mt 1:21, 1Jn 3:4) As we trust Him to do so, He saves us from both the penalty we deserve for breaking Torah by dying for us in our place (Is 53:11), and He also saves us from our tendency to break Torah (Ro 6:14) by writing His laws into our minds and hearts. (He 8:10)

When God changes how we think about deliberately breaking Torah and gives us hearts fully submitted to God (repentance: 2Ti 2:25), and reveals to us that His blood has paid our sin debt in full (faith: Ro 3:25), that Father God has now made His Son Jesus Christ to be sin for us (2Co 5:21), we cannot rightly pray and ask Jesus to save us… because we will confidently know that He already has.

This supernatural knowledge will be accompanied by several significant changes within our hearts: we will love Jesus Christ (1Co 16:22); we will start obeying Torah (1Jn 3:9); pleasing God will become the most important thing to us; we will be willing to forsake anything and everything to follow Him. (Lk 14:33)

So long as any of this evidence of saving faith is missing, we should not be assured of salvation (2Co 13:5); rather, we should diligently continue seeking God, asking Him to reveal Himself to us and give us repentance to acknowledge and rest in the truth (2Ti 2:25) until He gives us faith and a new heart, assuring us of our eternal safety. (He 11:6) We should strive to enter the narrow gate into salvation (Lk 13:24), examining ourselves and systematically proving it to ourselves (2Co 13:5), diligently making our calling and election sure (2Pe 1:10), until doubting our salvation the tiniest bit is entirely foreign to us. (1Jn 5:13)

But this tract, rather than encouraging us to wait on God until we experience this deep, supernatural, inward change in what we are trusting in as the basis for our salvation, shifting entirely away from dependence on ourselves and our own works to the finished work of Christ — which is the only act that can save us, and experience how this change in our faith system is transforming our hearts to love and obey Christ from the moment this first appears within us, we are told we are now a child of God even if our beliefs about Christ and salvation have not changed and we feel no different since we started reading the tract.

In other words, this gospel assures us of eternal life simply because we asked for it, regardless what we actually believe or how we feel. This teaches us to depend on the act of praying sinner’s prayer for our salvation rather than on Christ Himself and His finished work, and it positively affirms the reality of our salvation even if we have no evidence of this faith at all, no true faith in Christ.

So, what this tract is actually doing is inoculating us against the true Gospel by offering us false hope of Heaven based upon our own work: our act of sincerely praying the sinner’s prayer.

This framing of the Gospel implies Christ has died for everyone but that His death saves no one, that believing on and resting in the atonement of Christ is insufficient, that faith does not save us, that we must do something else besides believe.

The message effectively presents Christ’s sacrifice as ineffectual: not actually saving us as we believe, only making it possible for us to save ourselves by deciding to pray the sinner’s prayer and “receive Christ”. So, in trying to distill the Gospel for us, it explicitly denies Christ’s atonement as the divine act which saves us when we rightly receive Christ and believe on Him. (Jn 1:12-13)

While presenting Jesus as the only bridge to God, this false gospel lies to us about how we cross this bridge; it deceives us about how Christ truly accomplishes our salvation: by dying for us as we believe in Him and manifesting the reality of this faith in our hearts. It leads us up the path to the narrow gate (Mt 7:14), offers us a cheap substitute for entering in through this gate, and then turns us away, assuring us we have entered in and that all will be well as we continue on down the broad road to destruction. (13)

There is only one true Gospel; trusting any other gives false hope of Heaven, which may be the most dreadful possible state we can ever be in — thinking we’re eternally safe when we’re not. God’s curse upon those who willfully participate in such deception is evidently just. (Ga 1:8-9)

After so many millions have been misled by this shallow, evangelistic travesty, is it any wonder Christ Himself prophesies of the many who will come to Him expecting open arms, only to hear Him say, “I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.” (Mt 7:22-23)

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The Whole Law

During the apostolic era, Christians were viewed as members of a Jewish sect, a subset of Judaism; the Twelve Apostles and their disciples were passionately Torah-observant (Ac 21:20), including the Apostle Paul. (24) As the Holy Spirit lead them to delight in Torah as the law of God (Ro 7:22), the early church remained Torah-centered; except for their love for Messiah, they looked and acted Jewish.

The distinct religion which we now call Christianity began to emerge late in the 1^st century, distinguishing itself from Judaism by rejecting Torah as God’s Law. Though Christ plainly warns against this (Mt 5:17-18), and though Paul anticipates this type of apostasy (2Ti 4:3-4), desperation to escape the devastating Fiscus Judaicus, the additional tax imposed by Rome upon all Torah-keepers, beginning shortly after the destruction of the temple in 70 CE and continuing for hundreds of years, opened the door wide to deception. The relentlessly crippling financial burden — imposed simply for being Torah-observant — drove post-apostolic leadership to wrest key Pauline passages (2Pe 3:16) to decouple the burgeoning, predominantly lower-class gentile Christian population from its biblical foundation. (Ps 11:3)

Since no reasonable soul would believe all of Torah has been abolished, especially laws such as Do Not Kill, Do Not Commit Adultery, etc., key figures such as Justin Martyr and Ireneus began to arbitrarily partition Torah into moral and civil or ceremonial laws, claiming ceremonial commands were temporary shadows fulfilled by Christ and civil laws were only for Jews. They started encouraging believers to cease sabbath observance, abandon God’s feasts, ignore dietary laws, leave their children uncircumcised, etc. Conveniently, as it turns out, they began teaching precisely what suffering believers were desperately wanting to hear: how to stop being identified as Jewish and avoid debilitating taxation without renouncing their faith in Christ.

Thus the “itching ears” predicted by Paul a few decades earlier played itself out in the churches (2Ti 4:3-4), corrupting the faith and starting yet another false religion. The burdensome tax continued right up until just before this new religion, Christianity, was officially recognized as the state religion under Constantine (380 CE). Evidently, this is no coincidence, but calculated extortion and deception. In retrospect, we should expect as much; as God further reveals Himself (1Co 2:8) Satan strategically creates the clever counterfeit. (2Co 11:13-15)

Yet the trained soul perceives that dismissing parts of Torah as civil or ceremonial openly contradicts the plain teaching of Christ Himself (Mt 5:17-18) and changes the very definition of sin (1Jn 3:4), amounting to a radical departure from the faith which was once delivered onto the saints. (Ju 3) We know Torah is spiritual (Ro 7:14); it is all good if we use it lawfully. (1Ti 1:8) Rejecting this arbitrary partition of Torah collapses the entire superstructure of Christian dogma like the proverbial house of cards and exposes Christianity as a massive fraud. (Mt 7:26-27)

Even so, most Christians accept this artificial classification of Torah as a given, mentally substituting whatever definition of the law they happen to prefer in any biblical context. They instinctively dismiss the parts of Torah they despise while thinking they are respecting God’s law as a whole, and they do not even seem to realize they are doing so. (I certainly didn’t.) Pointing it out and challenging this key step might be a gamechanger for the elect: challenge them to show from scripture where and how God partitions His laws like this. When we stop doing so, Torah-relevance becomes an all-or-nothing proposition (Mt 22:40), as it should be (Is 8:20), exposing biblical objections to Torah observance as inherently inconsistent: they simply cannot stand. (2Ti 3:16-17)

The reality is that deliberately and routinely breaking any part of Torah defines one as a lawbreaker. (Ja 2:10-11) Intentional, willful disobedience is the defining characteristic of Satan and his own. (1Jn 3:8)

Yet God’s mercy towards sins of ignorance (1Ti 1:13) is evidently graciously extended to those who remain blinded by the enemy (2Co 3:14), who literally cannot see what they are doing. It is no small thing to acknowledge this level of deception and repent; it effectively amounts to following another Jesus, a very different one, evidence that the Jesus preached in Christianity since the 2^nd century is not the Jesus of the Bible. The same language is used, but the actuality is quite different.

Preaching Christ as Messiah offering to save us from breaking Torah, equipping and enabling us to live in obedience to Torah (Ro 8:4), reveals who is willing to receive the true King and who is content to follow the counterfeit. (Ro 8:6) The foundation of God stands sure, having this seal: Jesus Christ knows those who are His (2Ti 2:19), and He is saving us from our breaking of Torah. (Mt 1:21)

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King of Kings

Jehovah God, as revealed in the Tanakh (Old Testament), is King of the Universe. (Ps 103:19) His beloved Son Jesus Christ, as revealed in the New Testament, is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. (Re 19:16) They are One. (Jn 10:30)

Jehovah God, as the King, has a kingdom: the Kingdom of Heaven. (Mt 4:17) He also has a set of statutes (Ps 119:34), commandments and laws by which He governs the nations. (Is 2:3)

Jehovah’s laws are embodied in Torah, the Mosaic Law (Mt 5:19), which He has openly proclaimed (De 4:5-6); they are readily available to all who will obey Him. (Ro 3:19)

Breaking Torah is the definition of sin (1Jn 3:4), and there’s no excuse for doing so deliberately (Ro 1:20); defiance makes both Jehovah God the Father and Jesus Christ His Son very angry. (Ps 2:12)

If Jehovah were to let us all go our own way, we would all defy Him, violating Torah as a manner of life, and thereby reject Him as our King, and His kingdom would be empty. (Ro 3:12) So, He chooses some of us to be His people (Ep 1:4) and comes to save us from breaking Torah (Mt 1:21), delivering us not only from the penalty we deserve for breaking it (Ro 6:23), but also from the very practice of habitually doing so. (1Th 5:23)

Jehovah saves us from the penalty we deserve for breaking Torah by paying this eternal penalty Himself on our behalf (Is 53:11), and He saves us from our very tendency to violate Torah by writing Torah into our minds and hearts. (He 8:10)

Jehovah gives us assurance of His ability and willingness to save us from our breaking of Torah by raising Jesus Christ from the dead. (Ac 17:31)

All those who desire to be saved from breaking Torah may come to Jesus Christ for deliverance (Jn 14:6); He gives us a change of mind about breaking Torah and sets us free from our inclination to sin. All those who wish to continue breaking Torah as a manner of life will be trodden down by Him. (Ps 119:118)

The above truths expose all world religions as false, counterfeit, darkness: they each radically depart from The Way; they’re not even close. Judaism rejects Messiah as Savior from sin, trying to deserve Heaven by keeping Torah (Ro 10:1-4); Christianity rejects Torah as God’s eternal Law (Mt 5:18), proclaiming another Jesus (2Co 11:4) which abolishes Torah and invites us to break it as a manner of life. (Is 8:20) Every other religion is even farther from the truth.

The road to Destruction is paved and guard-railed by religion, false prophets promising life while leading us to death, and most everyone is coasting comfortably along for the ride, trusting they’re in good company. (Mt 7:13) Yet the way of Eternal Life is narrow, found by very few (14): it’s only one Person wide. (Jn 14:6)

Seeking God starts by seriously exploring what He Himself actually says (Mt 5:17), rather than trusting others to interpret for us. (2Ti 3:15) The King Himself calls upon us to search the Tanakh for ourselves, for it testifies of Him. (Jn 5:39) If the Tanakh does not persuade us nothing else will. (Lk 16:31) He tells us to strive to enter His Kingdom (Lk 13:24), so we seek God until we find Him (Je 29:13); we lay hold on eternal life (1Ti 6:12) until we know we have it. (1Jn 5:13)

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Great in the Kingdom

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Jesus tells us there’s a hierarchy in Heaven, a ranking or metric whereby some believers are counted great and others least in God’s kingdom. (Mt 5:19) Though salvation is by grace and not by works (2Ti 1:9), works are evidently very important. (Ro 2:9)

Jesus Christ explains the standard by which He will measure us all to define this eternal ranking in His kingdom; He lays it out very plainly: “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt 5:19) Jesus is talking about Torah, the Mosaic Law; (17-18) He will evaluate everyone in His kingdom based on how we have respected Torah, His Law, the Law of God. Did we do our best to keep all of it as a manner of life and teach others to do so? Or did we break certain parts of it and encourage others to do so?

So, Jesus will give every one of His saints a grade in Heaven based on how we keep His Law, even the least of His commandments: the seemingly obsolete and obscure laws He laid out for us in the Old Testament in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Do we love them (Ps 119:97), delight in them (Ro 7:22), and try our best to love and honor Him in keeping them? (Jn 14:21) Or do we ignore some or all of them? (Ro 2:8-9)

Jesus mentions two grades in His Kingdom: Great and Least: in other words, we’re evidently either getting an A+ or an F.

Clearly, those trying to convince us God’s Law is just for Jews, if they’re in God’s kingdom at all, are ignorantly aiming for an F, and they want us at the bottom as well. Not smart.

We don’t even know what sin is apart from Torah (Ro 7:7); how can we strive against sin (He 12:4) if we have no clue what it actually is?

Jesus’ focus on obedience to the least of His commandments tells us they’re all important. He wasn’t careless or arbitrary in giving us His Law; if we break any of His commandments on purpose, we expose ourselves as lawbreakers (Ja 2:10), those who despise His Law and trample Him underfoot. (He 10:28-29)

Those who don’t yet know Jesus Christ as Judge, don’t yet know Him as He is. (He 10:29-31) Those of us who do, serve Him with fear and rejoice with trembling. (Ps 2:11, Php 2:12)

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The First Month

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God has defined a series of interconnected rhythms which harmonize and synchronize our lives with His and with each other. There’s the daily cycle of morning and evening, the weekly sabbath, the monthly and annual cycles, the 7-year sabbatical / debt-release and the 50-year jubilee. Like a master symphony, each of these rhythms interweaves within and among the others to define a godly life mosaic.

The daily pattern is clear: evening followed by morning, night then day, define a recurring pattern of rest, sleep, work and celebration. (Ps 104:20-24) Realigning our thinking with God’s here may be richness well worth exploring: beginning with rest rather than work may improve both.

Ending the day at sunset, beginning our day with an evening of restful reflection and thanksgiving, recounting the blessings and trials of the prior day as we begin another, equips us to rest with intention, purpose and hope as we prep for the next day. Rest before work; we begin by entering into His rest (He 4:3), abiding in Him, committing our plans to Him up front, sleeping on them first, for without Him we can do nothing. (Jn 15:5)

Remembering the sabbath day, to keep the seventh day holy (Ex 20:8), resets our vision on God’s handiwork in Creation (11), that He is Lord of all. It also requires us to commit the prior week to God; if we are laboring in and for Him, we trust that what has been accomplished is sufficient. We can let it go in communion with the saints as we enjoy our weekly fellowship together (Le 23:3), encouraging and edifying one another in preparation for the coming week.

The monthly cycle helps us anticipate and celebrate God’s feasts, knowing which month it is and where we are in God’s annual cycle (Ex 12:2), so we can explore the recurring themes of His prophetic timeline as they are repeatedly played out before us. (Co 2:17) But which month is first? When does it start?

In these daily, weekly, monthly and annual cycles, the earth, sun and moon combine in various ways to show us the general patterns, but they don’t reveal exactly how to segment the flow of time, to identify the transition points between periods of time. When does a day or month begin, exactly? When does a year start? Further, how to start the week, or even the concept of a 7-day week, would be impossible to discern merely from Nature: God has to tell us explicitly about these rhythms and how to observe and align them or we’ll be guessing blindly.

It may seem unimportant to get the details right, but we should note that we’re dealing with foundations of life, family and communal relationships here, as well as with the revelation of a divine game plan. This is no small thing. God has given us specific instructions where we need them, on defining the week and the year, and reasonable hints at the rest if we’re interested in walking with Him in these mysterious and beautiful rhythms.

As precious and important as this all is, it should not come as any real surprise that the god of this world has re-defined every single one of these natural rhythms. Our cultural markers for days, weeks, months and years are all corrupted; none are based in God and His revelation.

Maybe it would be good to rediscover God’s divine rhythms and enjoy them as He intended. When all else fails, read the instructions. It might not be so easy, given all the corruption that’s crept in, but perhaps the effort would be fruitful; even if we don’t get it perfect, maybe we can at least get closer, and God will be pleased to help us along the way.

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Repent of Uncleanness

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Living in willful uncleanness as a manner of life evidently grieves God (2Co 12:21), yet we may not even be aware of this type of sin. What is uncleanness? How do we avoid it and repent of it?

Though there are about a dozen New Testament references identifying those living in uncleanness as inherently evil, having no inheritance in God’s kingdom (Ga 5:19-21), these passages provide no definition of uncleanness; we find this only in Torah.

Leviticus describes several types of uncleanness: chapter 11 says touching an animal carcass makes us unclean; chapter 15 says having any oozing from the skin or genital area (2), including nocturnal emissions (16-17), sexual activity (18), menstruation (19), or coming in contact with an unclean person, related fluids, or anything they have touched makes us unclean.

So, the biblical concept of uncleanness doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with becoming dirty, as after a long day in the field when one is covered in dust, grime and sweat; it relates more to the kinds of biological contamination which leads to infection and disease when left to accumulate and decay over time.

The proper response when we become unclean is to wash ourselves and all contaminated clothing and wait until the evening before engaging in any temple-related activity. (5-7, 11, 16-18, 31) Cleansing from oozing that continues over time (a running issue, including menstruation) requires a full week after the oozing stops and a small sacrifice at the temple. (13-15, 19, 28-29)

Numbers 19 describes a different level of uncleanness due to touching (11) or being in an enclosed space with a corpse. (14) This type of uncleanness requires being sprinkled with water containing the ashes of a red heifer sacrificed at the temple. (17-19)

Deuteronomy: 23:12-14 tells us how to properly dispose of bodily excrement so we don’t become unclean: bury it in a dedicated space well away from our living area, which modern toilets conveniently and effectively accomplish for us.

Since the earthly temple is inactive for now, and since it is not necessarily sinful to become unclean, washing ourselves, contaminated clothing and other objects comprises a godly protocol when we do. This is natural for most in first-world countries and should be routine for believers.

Certain types of uncleanness are intrinsic to human nature, such as the female menstrual cycle and marital sexual activity; they’re good and wholesome, designed by God and part of the natural rhythm of life. (He 13:4)

Uncleanness becomes sinful when we neglect to follow God’s prescription for dealing with it as well as we can and maintain lifestyles free of unnecessary uncleanness. (1Th 4:7) Wanting to live in a state of uncleanness, as an end in itself, is certainly contrary to the spirit of Torah and characterizes the spiritually corrupt. (2Pe 2:10) Such a lifestyle is not Love (Ro 13:10); it’s rooted in selfishness and indiscretion.

Repenting of uncleanness evidently requires a change of mind about the spiritual aspects of physical cleanliness, making it a point to become familiar with God’s instructions and obey them. Perhaps there’s wisdom in the old adage, “Cleanliness is next to godliness.”

And as with most all of God’s instructions related to physical things, there are spiritual principles embedded within them. As we live in a world of spiritual darkness and uncleanness, we invariably react in ways which are misaligned with Torah; unholy feelings and attitudes ooze out from our fleshly nature, and we cannot help but become spiritually contaminated. (Ro 7:18)

As we reflect on our lives (Ps 119:9), we can often identify areas or instances where we have become spotted by the flesh. (Ja 1:27) The remedy is to regularly bathe our hearts, minds and spirits with Scripture, asking God to sanctify and cleanse us with the washing of the water by the Word as we meditate on His Way (Ep 5:26), displacing uncleanness with truth as God speaks the Word into us by His Spirit. (Jn 15:3) We should be doing this daily, not letting spiritual uncleanness accumulate, harden and fester within us.

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