THE PROBLEM OF MESSIANIC JUDAISM

PART 21

 

A TRAIL OF MESSIANIC ISSUES, CONT.

 

 

6. Messianic Concept of “Faith Under the Law”

As New Covenant believers who must acknowledge salvation is only by faith, and not works under the Law, Messianics know they must prove how a restoration of the Mosaic Law, including its sacrificial system, is entirely compatible with faith in Christ alone for salvation. To achieve this, they rely on two lines of argument; one regarding the Law in general, the other regarding the sacrificial system in particular:

 

- “Salvation under the Law was always by faith”

Messianism’s general argument on behalf of restoring the Law is that Old Covenant salvation was “always by faith,” never by the works of the Law—so a return to the Law can only be complementary of faith, not contrary to it. Messianics feel they can portray the Law as a compatible “partner” in promoting the righteousness of faith because, in their view, keeping the Law was (and is and will be) an evidence of faith in Yahweh rather than a means to salvation.59

But in order to advance this, Messianics must intentionally sidestep the picture of law / faith incompatibility drawn by Paul to build a case that a) ignores what the Law says about itself relative to salvation, b) misrepresents the dynamic between the Law and faith under the Old Covenant, and c) fails to distinguish the natures of Old and New Covenant faith and salvation.

 

·        Paul’s Contrast of Law and Faith

While Paul agrees that salvation was indeed “always by faith,” he paints the Law as a self-contained standard of righteousness that acted as a silent obstacle to faith, not as a compatible promoter or fruit of it:

 

Rom. 9:31 NKJ—But Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness. 32 Why? Because they did not seek it [righteousness] by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law.

Gal. 3:10 For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse; for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, to perform them." 11 Now that no one is justified by the Law before God is evident; for, "The righteous man shall live by faith." 12 However, the Law is not of faith; on the contrary, "He who practices them shall live by them."

 

Obviously, the fact that “salvation was always by faith” was not something most of Israel understood or believed, even though it was true. But the question for Messianism is, if the Law truly promoted faith, why was this the case? Why was an entire nation pursuing righteousness by works, and only a remnant aware that salvation was by faith? And why would Paul feel the need to reinforce that salvation was by faith, and feel compelled to do so in contrast to the Law?

 

o       What the Law Said of Itself

Here is why: Paul quotes Lev.18:5 to show that the Law itself says (presuming it were possible) that salvation is found in practicing the Law,⁶⁰ while it says nothing about “faith.” The Law pointed to itself. It did not point to faith.

In offering itself as the standard of God’s righteousness for salvation, the Torah a) presented a standard it knew no one could keep, yet b) did not tell the people its righteousness and salvation was unobtainable by attempting to keep it; and c) did not proactively preach on the faith toward God necessary for walking in its righteousness and obtaining its salvation. The Torah simply presented itself as the standard for righteousness and salvation, period, without further comment.

So people only naturally believed they could keep the Law for salvation (“Why else would the keeping of the Law be presented as the means of salvation if we couldn’t keep it?”). It also meant then that to actually find inward saving faith in God, one had to find God in some way outside of the Law.

 

o       The True Dynamic between Law and Faith

Just how then was faith in God Himself to be known under the Law as the true means of salvation? Answer: The only way one could find saving faith toward God under the Law was by an indirect process of inner discovery born of futility in trying to meet the Law’s impossible requirements for salvation.⁶¹ It took a work of the Spirit outside of the Law’s presentation to lead the frustrated seeker into casting oneself upon God in saving faith to find His righteousness.

So it was that saving relationship with God by faith was kept as a mystical secret behind the Law that could only be found in spite of the Law’s self-presentation, not because of it. The dynamic between Law and faith thus was not one of direct promotion, but of “inadvertent precipitation.”

By its overt self-promotion coupled with its silence on faith, the Torah worked to shield from faith, not to directly foster it. It’s in view of this situation therefore that Paul contends the Law itself is “not of faith” but “contrary” to it.

While then Messianics are technically right that salvation under the Law was “always by faith”—the implication they spin around that fact—that the Law was a compatible partner leading to that faith—is utterly bogus.

 

·        Conclusive Permanent Separation of Law from Faith

Finally, according to Paul, the basic incompatibility of the Law and faith finally necessitated the revealing of faith entirely apart from (ie, outside any reference to) the Law:

 

Rom 3:21 But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested—22 even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; 28 For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.

Gal. 3:23 But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. 24 Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.

 

Here, Paul cements his contrast of the Law and faith into a complete separation, citing them in terms of mutually incompatible eras. He describes the Torah era as a time in which faith was “shut up,” ie, hidden away and disguised behind the Law.

“Shut up” defines the meaning of the Torah’s “tutorship” in vs. 24. This verse by itself (and joined out of context with vs. 21) ⁶² is erroneously used to show the Law as a “helpful tutor” promoting faith. But the preceding words “shut up” tell us otherwise.

In harmony with what we described above, the Torah’s role as a tutor toward faith was not a positive promotional one, but a silent indirect tutorship of discovery through trial and error based on the hiding (“shutting up”) of faith. It was a tutorship in reverse where attempting to keep the Law for salvation taught one how not to find righteousness, thus forcing the earnest seeker by process of elimination to find God through an inward heart trust. 

The phrase “before faith came” deserves special attention. Paul has already agreed that Old Covenant salvation was “by faith” (Gal. 3:11), yet here says, “before faith came...” This contrast indicates that, however faith saved men under the Law, there is something so superior about the faith in Christ “that has now come” that it renders void all further relationship to the Law where the previous faith did not. (We’ll explore this difference further below.)

So Paul concludes that the new faith era replaces the Torah era altogether. We are “no longer under” it. And if we are “no longer” under it, then we are “never again” under it. So, the fact that salvation under the Law “was by [hidden] faith” has no bearing on the fact that under the “now faith,” believers are not and never again will be under the Law—including Messianics.

 

·        David’s Life of Faith Under the Law

Without facing Paul’s contrarian teaching however, Messianics turn instead to the life and testimony of David to make their case in support of the Law’s positive role toward faith. The argument goes something like this:  

 

“If the Law was such an ‘obstacle’ to faith, what then about David’s description of the Law as a ‘sweet delight’ capable of ‘restoring the soul?’ (e.g., Ps. 1:2; 19:7,10; 119:15, 103, etc.) Doesn’t David’s praise of the Law prove the Law was a positive partner in promoting the righteousness of faith? Doesn’t David’s own life as a faithful lover of God under the Law prove that the Law and faith are compatible? ”

 

Wow! This is an impressive question and can’t be ignored. Indisputably David serves as the model worshipper for believers under both covenants. Given his display of passionate faith toward God—that he knew it’s the heart (not sacrifices) that counts—it would seem David’s life of faith under the Law indeed proves that faith and Mosaic Law are compatible.

Not only so, but given that New Covenant believers worldwide have always sung his Psalms (including those extolling the Law) and that we now even use David as our model for prophetic worship, it would seem our adoption of “Davidic worship” also proves God is working to “restore” us all to the same devotion to the Law that David had! (A very compelling argument, indeed.)

But there is one “small” problem with this. Once we start using David’s Psalms to circumvent apostolic teaching on one point, there is no place to stop. For instance, David’s words “Thy Law is within my heart” (40:8) and “Let Your good Spirit lead me” (143:10) also easily “prove” that there is really no difference at all between an Old Testament and New Covenant believer—despite the new birth Yeshua said He came to minister. (Are not the truths of the “law written on the heart” and the “leading of the Spirit” the distinguishing marks of the New Covenant?)

Once apostolic constraint is breached, using David’s faith under the Law to prove Law/faith compatibility quickly morphs into the proof that the “new” covenant is but a “renewal” of the Mosaic covenant as David knew it; that there is no unique, other spiritual “new birth” beyond what David had; and consequently, Yeshua accomplished nothing uniquely effective for the Jews and mankind by dying. His coming was really unnecessary! All one really needs is what David had—“saving faith in Yahweh under Moses!”63

See, if Messianism can use David to prove Law/faith compatibility contrary to Paul’s teaching, Judaism itself can use David’s saving faith under the Law to ultimately prove the sufficiency of Judaism—contrary to Yeshua. This means a fatal flaw exists in Messianism’s interpretation of David’s testimony regarding his faith and salvation experience under the Law.

 

o       Mistaking the Limited Nature of Old Covenant Faith and Salvation

Messianism’s undoing by Judaism at the hands of its own reasoning exposes the root fallacy of the “salvation was always by faith” argument. The fallacy is Messianism’s failure to discern the substantial difference between Old and New Covenant faith and salvation. Indeed, the salvation by faith David experienced in cooperation with the Law under its confines is not the same salvation by faith as has been brought forth by Yeshua apart from the Law as exposited by Paul.

Under the Old Covenant, faith was a provisional power hidden behind the Law that delivered and preserved the soul from destruction. That preservation was the definition of Old Covenant salvation. But this soul preserving faith did not produce the eternally saving new birth available only since Yeshua’s coming.⁶⁴ New Covenant Faith is of an entirely different life-producing—not merely soul-preserving—class, entirely outside and beyond the Law.    

Confusing the two classes of faith and salvation between the covenants, Messianics ignorantly project backward upon David’s Psalms the reborn New Covenant realities they experience today in Yeshua, believing that is what David experienced—and so on that basis can justify the reciprocal importing forward of David’s devotion to the Law into our reborn relationship with God today. 

But the soul preserving faith David had in God under the Law cannot be equated or compared with the life-creating Faith we have today in Christ entirely free and apart from the Law, even though David’s testimonies and experiences in worship sound very similar to ours.

David’s faith was not the inborn faith we have today. It was a provisional faith under the weight of consciousness of sin exposed by the Law he otherwise loved. David’s relationship with the Holy Spirit was accompanimental, not indwelling as is ours. Thus the “restoring sweetness” of the Law which David extols cannot answer to the restoring sweetness we associate today with the Holy Spirit’s indwelling revelation, conversion and restoring via Scripture today. (Ditto for his testimony of the “Law in his heart” and his “leading of the Spirit.”)⁶⁵

 

o       The Law’s “Sweetness” in New Covenant Perspective

In what way then could David genuinely find the Law to be sweet, and how does it relate to the contrarian view of Law and faith painted by Paul, especially the sense of the Law’s bondage that Paul magnifies?

Under the Old Covenant, given the limited soul-preserving nature of salvation available through faith in Yahweh, the Law did possess certain “soul anchoring” qualities for those who first came into a relationship with the Lord by discovering the secret of provisional faith hidden behind it. Those soul-stabilizing qualities were “sweet” and “restorative” in their ability to temporarily preserve the soul against its tumultuous waters as long as a man embraced them studiously in his heart and mind. But the Law could not actually “calm the seas” of the soul as only faith in Christ for new birth can, nullifying the need for the anchor altogether.66

So it is the Old Covenant relationship with the Lord through the Law was one of “love-hate,” or as one might say, one of “co-dependence.” The Law both frustrated the heart, hiding it from faith, but also provided a measure of stability to the heart it frustrated, once that heart had found faith in Yahweh. In this way, the Law’s sweetness really carried the “sweet-sour” flavor of a gherkin pickle, i.e., “sweetness under bondage.”⁶⁷

It is in this context that Paul and David find harmony. Paul entirely agrees with David on the Law’s sweetness. But Paul shows us the limited nature of the “goodness” and “delight” of which David writes, putting it into fuller New Covenantal perspective:

 

Rom. 7:14 NKJ For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. 16 If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. 22 For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man.

 

Here we see that Paul found in the Law the same sweetness as David. His delight in the Law after the inward man answers to everything David said about the Law in Psalms 19 and 119. But in the bigger picture, despite its limited sweetness to the soul, the Law only exposed Paul’s own inadequacy to him—the same inadequacy to which David’s Psalms also bear witness. It is in fact the overall bondage to this sweet-sour relationship to the Law that Paul laments and over which he cries out for complete deliverance altogether through Yeshua!

Thus, when understood in context of the differing natures of faith and salvation between the covenants, David’s positive embrace of the Law cannot be used to contradict New Covenant apostolic teaching as to the Law’s essentially contrarian relationship to faith.

 

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From all the foregoing, we are able to see that the Messianic appeal to “faith under the Old Covenant” as a basis for justifying Mosaic Law restoration is utterly misplaced.  Because the Law did not promote faith but obscured it, and because the soul-preserving faith under the Law was of an inferior quality to life-creating faith apart from the Law since Yeshua, all argument supporting prophetic reconstruction of the Law based on the Law’s supposed support for and “compatibility” with faith is proved unfounded.

 

NEXT – PART 22: ANSWERING “THE JEWS DID NOT BELIEVE SACRIFICES TOOK AWAY SIN” ARGUMENT

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