BETWEEN THE LINES
RETHINKING CHRISTIAN TRADITION ABOUT 'DEATH' OF THE LAW
Exclusive: Joseph Farah asks, 'Where is the evidence for that in scripture?'
Many if not most of those who call themselves Christians today have been taught and willingly accept that they are no longer “under the law” – meaning, presumably, the Ten Commandments and other teachings of the Torah.
How did they come to this conclusion? Who taught them this principle? Where do they find it in scripture?
Jesus clearly taught in the gospels that He did not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it. What did He mean by that? Has the law been fulfilled to the point of irrelevancy?
In my new book, “The Restitution of All Things: Israel, Christians and the End of the Age,” I deal forthrightly with the question of whether the law is dead since the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus.
Before we begin to ever-so-briefly examine this question here, we must define the law. In the beginning, at the time of Adam and Eve, the law was simple:
- “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” (Genesis 1:28)
- “And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” (Genesis 1:29)
- “And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” (Genesis 2:3)
- “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17)
That was the totality of the law as we know it from the revelation of Genesis.
But, tempted by the serpent, Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – and death entered into the world. The prefect paradise they were created to live in was corrupted.
They were banished from the Garden of Eden and kept from eating of the tree of life, which would have sustained them forever. As a result, not only did Adam and Eve die before they reached the age of 1,000, but they experienced a spiritual death the very same day in which they ate of the forbidden tree. The good news was they were promised a Redeemer.
What was the temptation offered by the serpent?
“For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:5)
In other words, Adam and Even succumbed to the temptation of being as gods. Keep that in mind for later.
The first children of Adam and Eve were Cain and Abel. By their time, it is clear a system of animal sacrifice had been instituted as an atonement for sin, probably immediately after the fall because God replaced the first couple’s makeshift fig-leaf clothing with animal skins.
For Cain offered a sacrifice to God in the form of fruit, while Abel brought a sacrificial lamb.
God was displeased with Cain’s sacrifice, but pleased with Abel’s. As a result, in jealousy, Cain murdered Abel and was banished from the presence of the Lord.
As a result of the fall of man, the world grew ever more evil and within six generations God chose to destroy the earth in a flood – all except Noah and his family. It’s clear that God had laws in place for mankind. Both Abel and Noah and other righteous people who walked with God knew the difference between clean and unclean animals, for instance. And for the world to be judged with a cataclysmic flood, good and evil had to have been defined.
Genesis 6:5 tells us: “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”
Note all of this took place before Abraham’s covenant with God, before God etched in stone tablets the Ten Commandments and before Moses wrote the rest of the Torah – which includes all of God’s teachings or laws for an abundant life.
Through the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, God created the line for the coming Redeemer and chose one people to be a light to the rest of the world through their keeping of the living Torah, “the lively oracles,” as Stephen called them in Acts 7:38 before being stoned at the feet of Saul, who would later become known as the Apostle Paul.
Is that the Torah that is dead?
Is that the law that Jesus fulfilled and did away with?
Where is the evidence for that in scripture?
We know that Jesus never transgressed the law, for He could not have fulfilled His calling to lay down His life as the perfect atoning sacrifice, nor His mission as the Messiah (Christ, in Greek). So what did he say and do?
“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil,” He said plainly in Matthew 5:17. What does the word “fulfill” mean? Even today the dictionary tells us it means to “carry out,” “to perform,” “to obey,” “to satisfy the obligations.” The Greek word behind “fulfill” is pleroo, which normally means “to bring to its intended meaning or interpretation.”
I make the case in my book, “The Restitution of All Things,” that clarifying the intent of the Torah, or law, was one of the principle missions Jesus fulfilled. Think of how many times in the gospel accounts He disputes with the Pharisees, for instance. What is this about? Look more closely and you will see the Pharisees, the forerunners of today’s rabbinic Judaism, were adding to the law and the commandments through their oral traditions of men.
In effect, they were repeating the sin of Adam and Eve – succumbing to the temptation to be “as gods” by adding to the law for their own empowerment.
Note that Jesus never contradicted what we call the “Old Testament,” the Hebrew scriptures that remained the principal body of holy writ for most of the first century believers, including the Apostles, all the early church, including what the resurrected Jesus taught from on the road to Emmaus.
Yet, when you challenge most Christians on this point, they refer to certain teachings of Paul, which even Peter describes, in 2 Peter 3:16, as “some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.”
Do we want to lean on teachings that are “hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction”? Or do we want to lean on the totality of scripture, which, by definition, cannot be in contradiction with scripture?
I raise the question in my book as to whether much of Christianity is not also succumbing to the same temptation of Adam and Eve by persuading themselves that they are no longer under the law because they are now, thanks to the sacrificial atonement of Jesus, “as gods.”
Watch the book’s trailer:
The Hebrew scriptures are what Jesus and the Apostles taught from. They never contradicted them; otherwise, they would never have been successful persuading all early believers – all Jews – to follow Jesus (Yeshua) as Messiah. Likewise, Jesus and His Apostles all followed the Torah commandments, observing the Sabbath, God’s prescribed holy days, dietary laws, etc. Somewhere, during the history of the church (and I show you where and when in my book), these practices stopped, were changed, abandoned – with others put in their place.
But, when we examine messianic prophecies that point to the return of Jesus, the Torah and the law is very much back in place.
Here’s just one of those passages – from Isaiah 42:1-4:
“Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law.”
Here we see the returned Messiah bringing back His law (the Hebrew word there is “Torah”). Do we believe Jesus destroyed the law despite insisting He would not? Do we believe His closest, chosen, anointed disciples discarded the law? Or, is it more likely the law was lost through the traditions of men after their time? Could it be there is a fundamental disconnect in today’s Christianity – much like there was a fundamental disconnect among Jews at the time of Jesus’ first coming?
When Jesus came the first time, many of His brethren did not recognize Him as Messiah.
When He comes the second time, will many of those who call themselves by His name recognize Him?
I wrote “The Restitution of All Things” with this in mind, because it’s time for some prayerful scriptural reflection.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/12/rethinking-christian-tradition-about-death-of-the-law/#kITiHg7OfchOG0w5.99My comments: The Law of Chrsit is summed up by Christ: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the First and Greatest Commandment. And the Second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two Commandments.' This leaves the Law of Moses and all the Commands of God Intact. And the Law of Christ can only be lived out by Chrsit living In and Through a person. That is why there is but One Hope in all that exists: 'Christ In us our Hope of Glory." (Colossians 1:27)
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