Yeshua is the fullness of Torah

• breytonhartge

  5 Jan 07, 23:51

  As long as theological statements have been codified, the Torah has been viewed against Grace. This phenomena has colored the perception and understanding of many generations of people regarding Torah. People who have seen the world through the Christian worldview have, along with the many advantages, accepted a distorted view of Torah. To them, the Torah is bad, the Gospel is good. Gospel is life and freedom; Torah is seen as slavery and death. With this view as their starting point, it would have been impossible to avoid the inevitability of a negative view of the Law.
  
  With the birth of the Messianic movement, Jewish believers began to have a new self-perception in which their Jewishness was something good and positive and not something to be "saved from." Yet the misperception of Torah persisted as that which was, at best, a "schoolmaster to lead one to Christ" and, at worst, "the temptress who seeks to seduce its victims from salvation by grace through the lure of a salvation of works righteousness."
  
  The real problem with the Torah is not the Torah but the human misunderstanding of Scripture. The Torah was given by G-d at Mt. Sinai. Yeshua was more than a latter born Moshe. He is the Word who was in the Beginning, through whom the world was created. He is the G-d of Israel, the G-d who gave the Torah to the sons of Israel through the hand of Moshe. The commandments of the Torah are Yeshua's commandments, not an arbitrary set of rules or rituals. They are a revelation of the heart of G-d; they are a reflection of Yeshua's heart. They cannot be understood to be G-d's lesser commands. Yeshua's teachings do not permit such a view. Those who wish to be more like Him must follow the Torah's teachings because they are His very heart. This is the true meaning of the Torah as a schoolmaster to lead us to Messiah. The Torah is not a divine introduction service, arranging blind dates, after which its usefulness is completed. It is a schoolmaster, a teacher -- to guide and train us to become more like Him because this was how He lived and what was in His heart.
  
  The Torah is not a lesser revelation of Yeshua, like an uncompleted puzzle. Simply attaching an addendum to a prayer or commandment does not make it any more complete than it was prior to the addendum. The mitzvah is already complete in that it reflects the heart of Yeshua. When a mitzvah is completed as it was intended when given, it reflects the heart of G-d. Our goal should not be to amend every prayer, commandment, and ritual with Messianic nomenclature. Rather, our goal should be to follow Torah, having faith and a desire to connect with G-d through the act of following. Surely, this was the life Yeshua lived and the life He desires His people to live. Every act of observance is an opportunity to connect with Him. He is the fullness of Torah. Our lives should be so full.
  
  
• breytonhartge

  6 Jan 07, 17:35

  THE MEANS IS NOT THE END
  
  In Yeshua, we see everything that it means to be made in the image of God: "He who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). This is humanity at its finest and most complete. This is Jewishness defined and perfected. When, to our shame, we have imagined (and insisted) that Jews need to become like us Gentiles in order to follow their Jewish Messiah, we have erred greatly.
  
  "It is enough for the student to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master, " said Jesus (Matthew 10:25). The great racial irony of Christian history is that it is we Gentiles who, as disciples of Rabbi Yeshua b. David b. Adonai, are on the way to becoming as Jewish as it is possible to be!
  
  If we have mistaken our roots, we have often, perhaps for connected reasons, misrepresented the nature and scope of the Gospel. All too often, we restrict and devalue salvation by equating it with "getting saved." It is wonderfully true that Yeshua is our Savior. To have our eyes opened by the conviction of the Holy Spirit, to see our great need of forgiving grace, and to discover His redeeming love as we reach out to Him in repentance and faith is rescue indeed (Colossians 1:13). He does save those who call out to Him. But the means is not the end. Rescue is not God's goal for our lives-it is the means by which we can start towards the goal. Thus the New Testament speaks not of "getting saved," but of "being saved." Solomon too understood this principle: "The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day" (Proverbs 4:1.