THE PROBLEM OF MESSIANIC JUDAISM

PART 18

 

A TRAIL OF MESSIANIC ISSUES, CONT.

 

 

4. The Meaning of the Restored / Fulfilled Torah

 

- Jeremiah’s Prophecy of the Restored Torah

Messianics believe God will restore the Mosaic Torah. In what is perhaps their premier prophecy-based issue, they particularly draw on Jeremiah’s prophecy (31:33) that the Lord will “write His law (torah) on their hearts” to prove an inherent oneness between the New and Old Covenants. The apparent meaning of this prophecy is that the Lord will write the Law of Moses on the heart of the New Testament believer in Christ.

But again, according to the Spirit of regeneration, the obvious conclusion drawn about a prophecy’s meaning is not necessarily the true or intended conclusion to be drawn. Serious problems exist with the conclusion that the New Covenant torah written on our hearts is the Torah of Moses.

First of all, Jeremiah himself tells us that the future covenant to be made with the people is “not like” the covenant made with the forefathers (31:32). This means the Torah to be written on the heart is not like the Mosaic Torah and therefore cannot be the Mosaic Torah.

Why? It is because the old covenant and the Law are the same. The Law was the essence and embodiment of the Old Covenant such that the two are identified as one. The Law is repeatedly referred to as “the book of the Covenant.” Therefore, as the future covenant to be made is entirely unlike the first covenant, so the Torah to be written on the heart can only be a new Torah entirely unlike the Mosaic Torah.

Second, Paul’s teachings contradict the notion. If Jeremiah’s prophecy refers to the Mosaic Torah, Paul could never have asserted that believers are “no longer under” the law, are “dead” to the law, are “freed” from the law, etc.—all of which oppose the Messianic interpretation of Jeremiah’s meaning. Paul could not have spent the bulk of his ministry disproving the believer’s direct connection to a Torah that Jeremiah’s prophecy intended to establish in our hearts.

Paul knew the Hebrew scriptures better than anyone. He wrote in full knowledge of Jeremiah’s prophecy. Yet he made his statements about the Law in spite of it. This means he had to know that the “obvious” meaning of Torah in Jeremiah’s prophecy was not the correct meaning. He knew that Jeremiah’s New Covenant Torah (Gk: “Nomos”) to be written in our hearts did not and could not refer to the Torah of Moses.

To what then is the “torah” in Jeremiah referring? What is the torah to be written on the heart of the New Covenant believer? The Spirit through Paul tells us that Yeshua, as the “end ⁵¹ of the Torah” (Rom 10:4), is Himself the Torah to be written on our hearts:

   

Forasmuch as you are manifestly declared to be the epistles of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart. II Corinthians 3:3

 

Paul’s words here exactly track Jeremiah’s prophecy! Moreover, not only does Paul cite Christ as the Torah written on our heart, he specifically disavows the idea of the Mosaic Torah by contrasting Christ to the tables of stone. If Jeremiah’s prophecy referred to the Torah of Moses, Paul would have not made this contrast, but would have affirmed here the “essential oneness” between the Torah and the New Covenant as Messianics put forth.

The same truth is revealed in Hebrews which makes two references to the Jeremiah prophecy (Heb 8:7-13 & 10:16-17). In both contexts, they are contrasts to the Torah of Moses and the Old Covenant, not affirmations of it.

Third, when we read other New Testament descriptions of the Law of Christ written on the heart, writer after writer refers to it as the Law of Love. This fits with Yeshua’s word that the entire Torah is fulfilled in the Law of Love (“on this hang all the law and the prophets.”) Even James echoes by saying the Torah is fulfilled in the royal law of love, alias the law of liberty.

Paul, Peter and John perpetually speak of agape love itself, never “the Torah,” as the measuring stick of all faith and practice. If as Messianics claim the Torah is somehow still the direct measuring stick consciously written on our hearts, all these writers would have said so. They do not. And they do all this—as Jews—in full knowledge of the Old Covenant prophecies of the restoration of the Torah.

Fourth, like the truth of Gentile engrafting, the New Covenant “torah written on the heart” must be an already established reality in the church since the New Covenant’s inception 2000 years ago.  The Covenant could not have been established without its torah. Therefore it is not a torah yet to be “restored,” but one abundantly evident in the church everywhere in every believer from the beginning. The question then is, does the Mosaic Torah fit this description?

Except for a prevalent awareness of the Ten Commandments in the hearts of most believers worldwide, there is very little awareness of the overall Mosaic Torah in the heart of the average New Covenant believer. And even those believers who advocate return to the complete Torah must study diligently to be aware of all it says, and even then can’t remember all its details!

Beyond this, while knowledge of the Ten Commandments is prevalent in literate societies, some parts of the world have received only the gospel message, do not have the Scriptures, and have never heard of the Ten Commandments. These believers know only Christ and the law of agape.

The general worldwide ignorance of the larger Mosaic Torah by all except the most scholarly (and the Messianics), and the fact that some believers in Yeshua in the world have virtually no knowledge of the Torah at all, proves that the Torah God said He would write on the heart of the New Covenant believer cannot be the Mosaic Torah.

 

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What then about the prophecies that say that in the glorified age, the “Law will go forth from Jerusalem?” 

As observed at the end of the first treatise, “in that day and at that time,” the Law will be the very dictates of Yeshua Himself as the One True Lawgiver. It will be the Living Law in glorified flesh to which the Mosaic Torah pointed. But it will not be the Mosaic Law. At that time, the entire human relationship to “law” will be entirely regenerated, and will not have the appearance of what has been recognized as law in the preceding ages, either under Moses or under Gentile mismanagement of the New Covenant.

Messianics are correct to emphasize the unified consistency of the word of God across the ages. But that cross-age consistency may not legitimately be interpreted to prove an intrinsic oneness of the covenants by which the word is expressed. The Word of God is one, yes. But our relationship to it, first through the Torah, then later directly through Christ, the Living Logos-Word, is not one.

The first relationship was abolished and replaced by the second for all peoples of all times and lineages. That is the only reason for two covenants at all (Heb. 8:7). If this is not so, then the New Covenant must be rejected, for this is what it claims about itself. All who claim to believe in Christ, be they of Gentile or Jewish origin, are deceived to believe they can embrace the New Covenant while reinterpreting it to believe they can still embrace the Old Covenant as well.⁵²

 

NEXT – PART 19: YESHUA’S EXHORTATION ON THE LAW’S FULFILLMENT

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