OK. Now for those examples I promised of the Jewish believers in Christ NOT relinquishing their Jewishness.
1) Even after Pentecost, Peter and John still went to the temple to pray alongside the unsaved Jews at one of the "appointed" hours of daily prayer, the ninth hour (Acts 3:1) - a decidedly Jewish thing for a Spirit-filled Christian to do.
2) In case you think they were doing that only so that they could reach the unsaved Jews, we find Peter doing this very Jewish thing yet again, this time alone (not for the benefit of saving others) on his rooftop, praying specifically at the sixth hour, when suddenly he received the vision of the great sheet filled with both clean and unclean animals as meat to eat (Acts 10:9-15); this scripture is the one that Gentile Christians use to demonstrate that not only we Gentile believers, but even our Jewish brethren no longer need to observe the dietary "laws" when, in fact, it was a vision that God chose to use symbolically, not literally, to instruct Peter to receive Gentiles as well as Jews into the fold – it never was about Peter actually eating unclean animals. I don't see any biblical evidence that Peter ever ate pork or shellfish, even though he sat at Gentile tables (well, sometimes he sat at Gentile tables, other times he avoided them like the plague…until Paul helped him get his priorities right…Galatians 2:11-14). And as far as Peter's inability to abide by that law because it was a yoke around his neck, and his fathers, and so on, he himself states directly to God that he had "never eaten anything that is common or unclean." Never! Even before he had the power of the Holy Spirit in him to help him be obedient! Further evidence that what Peter is talking about concerning the yoke is NOT the law of Moses. If you have followed this blog for quite some time you might recall the term "hedge laws" which we will get into a bit later….this is the "yoke" that Peter talks about. The "hedge laws" were not God's law, but man's and they were VERY burdensome indeed, contrary in every way to what a loving Father would ask of his children.
3) Then there is Paul, who at the request of the Jerusalem brethren (James and the elders) performed a Jewish purification ritual in order to eliminate false rumors and assure the Jewish believers who remained "zealous for the law" that he, Paul, was NOT going around teaching Jewish believers to forego Jewish customs, in other words, to disobey the law (Acts 21:17-26). If the law had been replaced by grace, why would Paul go to such efforts to prove that he was not dissuading folks to ignore the law? Paul was very bold. Wouldn't he have corrected their theology, as he did Peter's, making sure that they knew that "grace" had replaced "the law"? But he didn't do that at all, did he? Perhaps it is because grace had NOT after all REPLACED the law, contrary to our modern-day theology.
4) Paul also made great efforts to be in Jerusalem in time to observe the Jewish Feast Day of Pentecost (Acts 20:16); a day that is now observed in varying degrees by both Jewish and Gentile believers alike. Yet most Gentile believers today do not observe any of the other biblical Jewish feasts, even though Paul continued to observe all them, even as Jesus Himself did. Was Paul just a Jew who couldn't let go of his Jewishness enough to become the "completely liberated from the law" Christians that we Gentiles are today?
Or was Paul being true to his understanding of the words of Jesus:
"Do not think that I came to destroy the law [literal translation: the Torah, meaning "instructions from Elohim"1] or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, til heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law [the Torah] until all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven." (Matthew 5:17-19)
If you spent a little time in the King James contemplating the scripture from the last posting (Mark 12:29-31), you should have discovered (as one reader did and commented on) that the two great commandments were not meant to be the ONLY commandments, as though the rest of the law had been done away with. Jesus simply said they were the "greatest" or most important. It is clear that giving attention to those two commandments would affect our ability to more easily fulfill ALL the other commandments. But never were we to ignore the rest of the law in favor of just these two.
In light of that understanding, the scripture above from Mark should confirm for us that Jesus did not come to "destroy" or "do away" with the law. He came to "obey" the law (to "fulfill" its requirements of obedience as well as to fulfill the prophecies that the law pointed to concerning Himself), demonstrating to us that all we need to obey the law of Moses is to be a believer who loves the Father (and his neighbor) MORE than himself (Mark 12:29-31). THERE is the meaning of the "greatness" of these particular two commandments.
Why does the scripture in Mark end with the warning against anyone who "teaches men" to break even the smallest commandment, even as they themselves are breaking the law? Could it be that sufficient intensity was required to demonstrate, yet once more, how strongly God STILL feels about obedience to the law?
How then might He feel that so many modern-day Christians have REPLACED the" law" with a form of "grace" that God never intended? How has incorrect teaching about "grace" (what Dietrich Bonhoeffer described as "cheap grace"2) "taught" men to break God's commandments by NOT teaching them the law at all...by ignoring or neglecting it completely and by not placing enough emphasis on the importance of obedience to the commandments of God...after all we're all covered by "grace." No worries? I don't think so.
If we can agree that we Gentile believers ARE to observe the law along with our Jewish brethren, then what does that look like for us?
In tomorrow's posting we will begin to discuss the law, addressing it by its proper name of the Torah.
1 The Law and Grace, by Todd D. Bennett
2 The Cost of Discipleship, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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