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Jesus Did Not Say That He Had Come To Do Away With The Law

Apologetics, , ,

JESUS DID NOT SAY THAT HE HAD COME TO DO AWAY WITH THE LAW

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, no the last stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear for the Law until everything is accomplished. (Matt 5:17-18)

It all depends, you see, on what Jesus meant by “the Law and the Prophets” and “fulfil”. The Greek-thinking, western-orientated, philosophically-minded thinker (that’s most of us) understand His words differently from a Hebrew-thinker, especially the contemporaries of Jesus. The Law, according to Hebrew understanding, which is what our Bible translators have called the Torah or the first five books of the Bible, is not about commandments like those which are issued by a military commander to his troops, or by the government of a country to its citizens, (and any infringements of these commandments is punishable by appropriate measures).

The Torah was God’s directions for the journey through life which His people were to follow in order for them to reach their appointed destination. In the Torah, God taught them in very practical and detailed terms, how to relate to God, to their fellow Israelites and to the foreigners who chose to live among them. His purpose was to teach them how to live in such a way that the nature of their God would be reflected in their everyday lives as a witness to the surrounding nations that their God was loving but also holy.

God sent His prophets to help them understand the Torah, not as a set of rules and regulations to control their behaviour but as directions for living to guide their hearts. Their kings were supposed to lead the way by living and governing their people according the instructions of God’s Torah. It was also the responsibility of parents to teach their children how to live according to God’s Torah.

Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching (torah). They are a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck. (Prov. 1: 8-9)

Unfortunately God’s people both misunderstood His intention and rebelled against His instructions. Instead of understanding His directions in the light of God’s character, their sages hedged the Torah around with hundreds of additions so that, by the time of Jesus, the spirit of God’s Torah was obscured by burdensome rules which were never God’s intention.

“Jesus claimed that His purpose was to “fulfil” Torah. This was the technical term for interpreting the Scripture so that it would be obeyed correctly. To “destroy” Torah was to misinterpret Scripture so that it would not be obeyed as it was intended. This was Jesus’s intention, to interpret and obey Torah correctly as a model for His disciples to follow. By His words and actions He would show them that the right attitude and motives of the heart were as important as the right actions.” (Learning to be a Disciple, Luella Campbell, Partridge Publishing, © 2015, page 54)

“Since Jesus was steeped in the teachings of God as a faithful Jew and a recognised rabbi, His textbook would be the Torah. Instead of simply passing on the opinions and interpretations of the ancient rabbis, preserved in the Talmud, He would teach them His own interpretation of the Torah based on His yoke of mercy and compassion. As a rabbi with s’mikhah, authority, He could permit (loose from restriction) and forbid (bind to a restriction) what His yoke represented, based on its Torah-compliance. (Learning to be a Disciple – page 77)

“What is the relevance for us today? God’s Torah is, in its broadest sense, the expression of His nature. It is timeless and indispensable. It is His way to live in order to arrive at the destination He has set for us. If we support and uphold His teaching by obeying Him, we walk in His way ourselves and we keep the path open and blaze the trail for others to follow.

Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfil them. (Matt. 5: 17)” (Learning to be a Disciple – page 28)

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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Who Needs A Guardian?

Bible Study, , ,

WHO NEEDS A GUARDIAN?

“Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave not free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus, If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” Galatians 3:23-29.

Interesting how Paul wove Jewish history and Roman culture together to help his readers understand why they were not obligated to obey the Law of Moses! Having explained that the law was given for the purpose of teaching God’s people what sin is, that He is a holy God, and they could not approach Him without sacrifice and a mediator, he went on to explain how the law acted as a guardian until Christ came.

In a Roman household, little children were cared for by a paidagogos, a slave whose task was to care for and teach the children until they reached the age when the sons were “adopted” by the father and the daughters by the mother. The sons would don the toga virilis, the toga of manhood, and take his place at the father’s side to learn the father’s business. For the Jewish son, it was his bar mitzvah which was his rite-of-passage to manhood.

The law acted as a custodian for the people of God. They were like spiritual children who needed rules and regulations to spell out how God wanted them to live. Rules are what children understand best, even if they don’t obey them. Another way to understand the law is to see it as a boundary fence, so that those who live inside the boundaries are safe. One does not open the gate for a toddler to play in the street. He does not understand how to keep himself safe in a dangerous place

When Christ came, instead of boundaries, God gave His children direct access to Himself through Jesus, and the Holy Spirit who lives within the believer as a personal Paidagogos, a companion and guide, steering the believer from within to live in the safety of God’s ways. The law was only meant for immature children, to keep them from destroying themselves. When a person reaches maturity, he no longer needs the do’s and don’ts of the law because he is mature enough to make the right choices through his childhood training.

An immature child is nothing but a slave, but when he reaches maturity, he sheds his slave status and becomes a son. So it is with us. When Jesus came, He rescued us from being slaves to the law and restored us to being sons and daughters in God’s family. When we receive Him by faith, He moves us from slavery to sonship and puts the Spirit of sonship into our hearts. He transfers us into a new family that is made up of people from every group on earth, Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free.

That means that no one is better than anyone else. All are on the same level and have the same status – children of God. Why, then, should Gentiles be forced to accept circumcision as a pre-requisite for faith in Jesus and entrance into God’s family? In fact, why should any requirement except obedience to Jesus’ commands – to be baptised and to remember His death – be a requirement for participation in the family of God?

The argument is futile and foolish and based on a complete misunderstanding of the gospel. The gospel is good news about Jesus, what He had done to set us free from every “yoke of bondage” that demands that we need to obey rules to gain God’s acceptance, and to be yoked with Him because He did it all for us.

Children in a family do not have to perform to gain their father’s love and approval, He loves them because they are his own flesh and blood. We are Jesus’ “flesh and blood” because He bought us back from Satan and made us His own again.

“In bringing many sons to glory it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect though suffering. Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of one family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.” Hebrews 2:10, 11.

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

Torah!

Bible Study, , , ,

TORAH!

“Why, then, was the law given at all? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come. The law was given through angels and entrusted to a mediator. A mediator implies more than one party; but God is one.

“Is the law opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law was given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. But Scripture has locked up everything under the control of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Christ Jesus, might be given to those who believe.” Galatians 3:19-22.

Wow! This is a mouthful! What was Paul getting at? Let’s unpick this passage bit by bit and try to understand what he was explaining.

Why did God give His people the Law? We must understand the word torah, which is translated law, from God’s point of view. It does not mean law in the same way as we understand it from a western point of view. Torah means teaching, rather than a rigid set of rules. Through the Torah, God was teaching them how to live the right way in line with who He is.

We must remember that, for 430 years, the descendants of Jacob lived in Egypt under Egyptian rule. When they finally left Egypt, they were an undisciplined bunch of slaves who had lived under the whip of Egyptian taskmasters. Once they were free from their cruelty, they had to learn how to live with one another under a different set of rules. It was not okay to do to one another what the Egyptians had done to them. But who was going to set the standards and tell them how to live?

Firstly, then, the Torah defined for them what was right and wrong and how to put right what they did wrong. Paul said it was because of transgressions. Sin is sin, but we don’t know what sin is until we are told what it is. That’s what the law does. For example, how do we know it is wrong to steal unless we are told that it is wrong and what to do about it when we do steal?

Secondly, God’s people had to learn that they could never reach His perfect standard by obeying His teaching. There was always a pull towards doing wrong and, just like little children, as soon as they were told not to do this or not to do that, they did it because of their natural bent towards rebellion. No amount of rules would keep them on the right way. They needed a change on the inside and no law could do that.

Thirdly, the Torah was intended to develop a culture that would prepare them for the coming of the Messiah. The sacrificial system with its different kinds of sacrifices, many reasons for offering sacrifices, and rituals they had to observe, were all intended as visual aids to show them and prepare them for the coming of God’s perfect sacrifice, the Lord Jesus Christ.

They had to understand what sin was, a falling short of God’s holy standards, and what it did, making the sinner unclean; hence the need for the death of an animal and the offering of its blood, not only as a substitute for the sinner but also to cleanse the offerer from the pollution of sin.

The priestly system taught them that they could not bounce into the presence of a holy God because sin separated them from Him. He was unapproachable except through His appointed mediator, the high priest and the offering of the prescribed sacrifices. When Abraham’s “seed”, Jesus, came, He fulfilled all the pictures the law painted of the right way to approach God.

So, the Torah was not opposed to the revelation of God’s grace through His Son; it was a preparation for His coming. Without the Law, who He was and what He did would have made no sense to His people. But when He came, and when He died on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for all the sin of all the people for all time, there was no need for anyone to obey the law as a way of approaching God any more. The priesthood and the sacrificial system were fulfilled and done away with in Christ.

God does not need human mediators to stand between Him and His people. Jesus is the perfect Mediator because He is both God and man. God does not need animal sacrifices to teach us how terrible sin is – that it demands the shedding of blood to be forgiven. His own Son shed His blood, a once-for-all sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins, not just for Jews but for the whole world.

Why would Gentiles need to be circumcised, then? They do not need a physical sign to set them apart as God’s children. The Holy Spirit in them is the sign of God’s ownership. Doing all the things that the law demands and that are only pictures of what Jesus came to do is a foolish backward step. God did away with all that by sending His Messiah and now all we have to do is receive Him by faith and He takes us right into the presence of the Father, forgiven, clean and acceptable to God.

And He changes our nature and puts His Spirit in us so that we live according to His torah, not because we have to but because we can.

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

Either Or, Not Both And…

Bible Study, , , ,

EITHER OR, NOT BOTH AND…

“For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.’ Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because ‘the righteous will live by faith.’ The law is not based on faith; on the contrary it says, ‘The person who does these things will live by them.’

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole. He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.” Galatians 3:10-14.

The Judaizers were trying to convince Gentile believers that salvation was a “both and…” situation. In order to have Christ, they had to obey the law as well. “No way!” said Paul. It is not “both and” but “either or” because they are mutually exclusive. You cannot have law and grace because they are opposing principles. The one automatically cancels out the other.

Let’s see why. Those who rely on their own attempts to obey God’s law perfectly (and anything that is less than perfection is automatically disqualified), and fail, are under a curse and have to pay the penalty for disobeying God’s law. Since death is the penalty for sin, and everyone is born into the world with a dead spirit – unable to connect with God’s Spirit because of his sin nature, everyone comes into the world already under a curse.

No amount of trying to satisfy God’s righteous standards will make them alive because they all begin with a spoiled record before they ever choose to sin. Sinning is automatic. Take the two-year-old who throws a tantrum because he can’t get his own way. What is that? It is the self-demanding to be in charge. He doesn’t even need to choose. He just does it because it is in his nature to rebel. No amount of trying will cancel the sin already present from birth.

There is only one way to get rid of the penalty of sin – if someone else pays the debt who has no debt of his own. That’s where Jesus comes in. He is the only alternative because He was placed under a curse by being executed on a pole (a euphemism for being put to death as a criminal), as a substitute for every sinner who deserves to die because he is already spiritually dead.

Now the alternative is – not trying to keep God’s commandments because it doesn’t work, but trusting in Jesus because God is satisfied with what our Substitute did. What is the outcome of Jesus’ sacrifice? God restored the Holy Spirit to everyone who believes in Jesus. Why do we have to have the Holy Spirit resident in us? Because, without Him we have not link with the Father.

God breathed His breath into Adam in the beginning and gave him life, that is, a connection with Himself that made him fully human and therefore fully alive, able to have fellowship with God because he was one with Him. When Adam rebelled, the Spirit of God withdrew and Adam died to any connection with God. He was on his own, just as he had chosen to be, and he had to make up his own rules. We know the result.

Only when rebellion was dealt with and we are reconciled to God through the death of His Son, can God give the Holy Spirit back to us. We are reinstated as His sons and daughters with a new nature of loving submission to the Father.

Who wants to keep on trying to please God by fruitless keeping of rules when He offers a free pardon for our sin, a new nature and all the benefits of being His children simply by accepting His gift? How foolish to think that we can do both!

It’s no wonder Paul became angry with the Judaizers for their poisonous teaching. It was like telling the Gentiles to go back to jail after being given a free pardon just to make sure that justice has been served.

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

Dead, But Alive

Bible Study, , , , ,

DEAD, BUT ALIVE

“But if, in seeking to be justified in Christ, we Jews find ourselves also among the sinners, doesn’t that mean that Christ promotes sin? If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker.” Galatians 2:17, 18.

This is quite complicated reasoning. If the Jews who believed in Jesus, no longer meticulously kept all the minute details of the law in order to satisfy God’s righteous requirements, but trusted in Christ’s righteousness given to them through God’s grace, didn’t that mean that Jesus was deliberately causing them to be disobedient to God? Wasn’t Jesus making them “sinners”?

No, quite the opposite! God gave His Son as an atoning sacrifice for sin so that those who believe in Jesus and what He did to restore us to God, no longer need to work for acceptance with God by trying to obey His laws. Jesus fulfilled the law, and then died as though He were a sinner, in our place. To go back to law keeping as a way of satisfying God’s requirements would make us law-breakers because Jesus Himself did away with law-keeping as a way of being acceptable to God. We would be defying God’s instruction and setting up our own way to gain acceptance with Him.

Let’s use an Old Testament illustration. God gave the Israelites a promise. He said He would give them the land of Canaan as an inheritance. When they reached the border of the land. He instructed Moses to send in twelve spies to check it out (Numbers 13:1-3). Ten of the spies came back with a good report of the products of the land but put fear into the hearts of the people by describing the Canaanites as giants whom they could never overcome. They refused to believe God’s promise and incited the people to rebel against God and Moses.

Instead of trusting God and obeying His command, they complained against Him and against their leaders in spite of encouragement from Joshua and Caleb that God would help them overcome the Canaanites. God was angry with them because of their refusal to believe His promise and to take the land. They would not be allowed to enter the land He had promised to them. They would all die in the desert and their children would take possession of Canaan.

When they heard this, they mourned and decided they would go up and fight the Canaanites in spite of God’s instruction that they were not to go because He was not with them. Once again they disobeyed God, went into Canaan and were soundly defeated in battle. They had disobeyed God’s instruction twice – first to go, but they refused, and then not to go, and they went.

God gave His law to His people but they did not obey it. Then He sent Jesus who fulfilled and did away with the law as a way of salvation. Now Peter and his companions were wanting to go back to keeping the law as a way of pleasing God when God had given them Jesus to replace the law. That would make them law-breakers all over again.

“For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God for, if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” Galatians 2:19-21.

Paul concluded his discussion with a compelling argument. Once he was dead because of the law; now he was dead to the law. All the law did for him was to reveal just how much of a sinner he was. Through faith in Jesus and the righteousness He gave to Paul, he was now joined to Jesus in a faith union which made him perfectly acceptable to God without having to do anything except trust and obey Jesus.

What was the point of Jesus’ coming to earth and dying on the cross if people could be righteous by their own efforts? For Paul, Jesus was all or nothing. Either Peter and those who were influenced by him, trusted Jesus for acceptance with God or they ignored Jesus and tried to do it on their own. They could not have both.

The same truth applies to us today. We are either joined to Jesus by faith and live our lives in union with Him plus nothing, or we abandon Him altogether and work hard to satisfy God’s holy standards by trying to keep rules. There is no middle road. As soon as we add rules to the mix, we cancel out grace, faith and righteousness and go back to slavery to fear because we will never know whether we have done enough or not.

Jesus said, “Follow me.” That’s all!

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.