Based on Acts 15 Should Christians Keep Kosher?

Your second question was should Christians keep kosher based on the decree in Acts 15?

Many people are tempted to read scripture like it is a rulebook. I don't think that this is appropriate. We need to understand the context in which scripture was written and then derive principles from it. In Acts 15, the council is dealing with gentiles coming to faith and then living in largely Jewish communities. One of the main issues here is table fellowship. If gentile believers are eating with Jewish brethren, then they need to be considerate of them and their obligation to eat kosher food. This is the crux of the ruling. They were trying to find a minimum standard that would be acceptable to all.

So given this viewpoint, we should not expect Christians to keep kosher on a regular everyday basis because most modern-day Christians don't live in predominantly Jewish communities. If, however, you were to be visiting or attending a Messianic synagogue, or visiting a friend's home then you should take care to respect their practices.

Notice that the ruling in Acts does not forbid the eating of non-kosher foods such as lobsters, birds of prey, insects, etc... It only forbids food sacrificed to idols, blood (which most likely means meat with blood in it), and meat of strangled animals. (When an animal is strangled its meat is infused with blood).

It should also be noted that this list is very similar to what Rabbinic Judaism calls the Seven Noachide Laws. These are laws that God gave to Noah and thus are incumbent upon all humanity. They consist of six prohibitions and one requirement; idolatry, murder, theft, sexual immorality, blasphemy, eating flesh torn from a living animal, and to establish courts of justice.

Clearly lists like these were circulating around in Yeshua's day. The early church is basically saying that the minimal observance for Christians to to follow the commandments incumbent upon all humans.

How Much Torah?

My email friend sent back a couple of more questions, here is the answer to the first one...

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Hi M,

Your next question was how much of the Law are Jewish Yeshua-followers expected to keep and is there new covenant grace for Jews trying to keep Torah.

Let me answer the second part of the question first. It is important to understand first of all that the Torah was not given as a means of salvation. You did not infer that in your question but it is such a common misconception that I wanted to mention it. God, out of His grace, chose and redeemed Israel from Egypt. Once that was done, He gave them His teachings (Torah means teaching not law) on how to live as His holy people. So to use Christian theological terms, Torah is about Sanctification not Justification.

God knew that Israel, as imperfect humans, could not possibly keep the Torah. He therefore included in His Torah the means by which one could restore the relationship. This is the sacrificial system. It is by God's grace that He accepts the offering and forgives the person.

If you read the text carefully you will discover that there are only offerings for unintentional sins. There is no sacrifice for one who intentionally violates Torah. The assumption is that an Israelite is attempting to live in fidelity to Torah. This caused much concern on the part of the rabbis, for clearly people do at times deliberately sin. What to do? Their conclusion was that if a person sincerely repents of deliberate sin, God changes it to be as if it was an unintentional sin and therefore can be atoned for. A rather clever way to address the issue. Yeshua becomes the ultimate sin offering that brings forgiveness to Israel and all of humanity. So we as Messianic Jews and Christians can see that this is also covered by his atoning sacrifice.

So I guess this is a long winded answer to say that grace existed within the Torah, indeed it is one of its foundations! Grace also, of course, exists with the new covenant as well. Yeshua's offering of himself is merely an intensification and perfection of grace, as this is no longer the blood of animals, but the blood of the Son of God (see Hebrews 9). So there was grace for Jews who failed to follow Torah prior to the advent of Yeshua, and there is a more perfect grace with Yeshua.

Let me also point out, as this is another common misconception, that the sacrifices were for more than just sin. Only 2 of the 5 types of sacrifices have to do with sin. The others are voluntary offerings expression devotion and fellowship with God. And of the 2, they do not cover all sins, just ones that are considered particularly offensive to God such as vain oaths, misuse of Temple objects, etc. But this is a topic for another time.

Now to the first part of the question. This is a more complicated issue. Some folks reject the rabbis and attempt to harken back to what they call "Biblical Judaism". Their argument is that Rabbinical Judaism was largely a development after Yeshua by Jews who had "rejected" him, and therefore we should not follow their laws. There are two problems with this. First, the Torah as given assumed a society of Jews living as a theocracy. Since Israel does not exist as such a community any more how could we even do this? And are we going to start stoning people again and such? Second, as Jews we are part of all of Israel, not just the parts that we agree with. Therefore, we have to at least wrestle with and take seriously rabbinic tradition as it is an important part of our inheritance.

And the reality is that many of the laws cannot be followed even by Orthodox Jews as they have to deal with things like living in Israel and the Temple. I think that I read somewhere that the maximum number for Jews living outside of Israel is like 124 out of 613 commandments.

A group of rabbis within our movement have formed a rabbinical council and have started to define Messianic halacha (Jewish law). They have taken a sensible approach in accepting that many in our movement come from little or no Torah observance. So they have defined what they consider to be a minimum, expecting folks to start there and move their way upwards. (This is a very similar approach to Conservative Judaism). You can look at their site at www.ourrabbis.org.

So how much Torah should Messianic Jews keep? Well, certainly a starting point would be to focus on key identity markers such as keeping kosher, observing Shabbat, life cycle events, holy days, etc... Ultimately, it would be nice to have a movement that was very similar in its level of observance to that of the Modern Orthodox, but we are probably a few generations away from that developing fully.

Should Christians Keep the Torah?

I was asked in an email about this issue and here is my response. I thought that some of you might like to read it.
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Hi M,

I would be happy to answer your question. When I am teaching about this topic I point out to people that there are two things to keep in mind when reading the New Testament. 

First, it would have never occurred to the early Jewish followers of Yeshua (Jesus) that God would expect Jews to stop obeying the Torah. Why would the God of Israel expect Israel to stop its faithfulness to the Sinai covenant? It does not make sense. In fact, we see quite the opposite. There was an expectation, or maybe assumption, that gentiles coming to faith in Yeshua would also convert to Judaism, because this was their paradigm. The radical and momentous decision made in Acts 15 is that God was doing something new with the gentiles and therefore they should not require gentiles to take on Torah observance. 

I am convinced that this was the reason for the giving of tongues. The Jewish followers needed a clear and outward sign from God that the gentiles were saved without first becoming Jews. This is why you see the repeated reaction of surprise (Acts 10:45; 11:18)

Paul, therefore, seems to argue against the Torah but what he is really arguing against is expecting gentile Yeshua-followers to take on these practices. He argues that if this is required then you are saying that the cross did not have efficacy to save; clearly in his view a great distortion of the Besorah (Good News).

Second, the traditions and rules of the Pharisees was a novelty in Yeshua's day. They had not been around for very long. They were very popular with the people, however, especially in Judea. What the Pharisees did was brought the ritual practices of the Temple to ordinary everyday Jews. Their argument was that all Jews were priests since Israel was a kingdom of priests and therefore all of life needed to be treated as holy, not just the priestly activities in the Temple. Their ideas were not held by all and there was much controversy about these practices. Consequently there is a mix of practices by first century Jews and hence among first century Jewish followers of Yeshua. Notice that Yeshua is asked why some of his followers do not wash their hands before they eat. This implies that some did, and it also implies that Yeshua did!  

Paul, therefore, seems to be arguing against Torah laws when in fact he is dealing with these issues of ritual purity in the context of a community made up of Jews from varying types of backgrounds and practices and gentiles. When he talks about clean and unclean food he is not debating whether Jewish believers should eat pork not, but whether people of these various backgrounds can come together in communal fellowship when some a very stringent in their table purity practices and others are not.

It is my contention, along with most in our movement, that Christians are not expected to take up Torah observance; in fact to require it would be against God's will. But neither are Jews free from this covenant. Christians are certainly free to take up some of the practices as long as they see that they are doing this out of freedom and desire to relate to their Jewish brethren and not out of obligation.

I hope that this brief explanation helps. If the book you are reading is by David Rudolph it is a good resource. I have not the read the book but have studied under him and he is very knowledgeable. Another book that I would highly recommend is "Post-Missionary Messianic Judaism" by Mark Kinzer. He lays these issues out in much more detail than I have done here.

Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.

Shalom,

isaac

How to Discern Bad Messianic Teaching

A friend recently asked me what I thought about a “Messianic” leader who is a very public figure. I had never heard of him but a quick search convinced me pretty quickly that he was probably a nut job. My wife called me on the carpet about being too uncharitable, and she is right. (She is going to make a great rebbetzin whether she thinks so or not!). But the reality is that there are numerous “Messianic” teachers out there who get a lot of attention from the church and they seem legit, when they really are not. These teachers prey on sincere Christians who don’t know any better. So I promised my friend that I would try to put together a list of items that are red flags for me when I encounter such folk. Hopefully this will be helpful to anyone who reads this.

 

Not all Messianic Jews would consider these to be red flags, so I am expressing views based on what I consider to be a mature Messianic viewpoint.

 

1. Teach that Christians should keep kosher, Jewish holidays, worship on Saturdays, etc…

Messianic Judaism holds that Jews who are followers of Jesus are still under the Mosaic covenant and are obligated to Torah observance. Christians are not. This was the decision in Acts 15 that Gentiles did not have to become Jews to join with Israel. Christians are certainly free to take on Jewish practices as a way of wishing to express solidarity with Israel, but they are in no way obligated to live as Jews. In fact, we applaud Christians developing their own traditions and practices that express their love of God in their own ways. Worshipping on Sundays, having Christmas trees, etc… are totally fine. Occasionally we get visitors to our synagogue who express this viewpoint and I tell them that they are thinking that they are being Jewish by holding such a position, but in fact they are the opposite. Judaism is an orthopraxic faith, and the traditions are valid if accepted and practiced by the community. Jews continue saying “mazel tov”, congrats, despite the fact that it comes from astrology (it means literally “lucky stars”). It has become an accepted phrase. Christians in like manner, should feel free to enjoy Christmas trees despite their pagan origins.

Some people of this persuasion will even tell Christians that they ARE Jews. This is categorically wrong and anti-biblical.

 

2. Dress like they live in Biblical times or just got off the boat from Eastern Europe.

There are a few, very few, Hasidic Messianic Jews. The vast majority of MJs come from Conservative, Reform, or entirely secular homes. Usually when people dress like this they are Gentiles who have become enamored with Jewish things and have no real concept of what it means to live as a Jew. (I was at a conference years ago where a guy dressed like a Hasid was eating a cheeseburger at McDonald’s!) It is because of this reality that some MJ leaders in our movement specifically do not sport beards in order to make the point. If you see someone dressed in these ways, you should be instantly suspicious.

A corollary to this is people who use Hebrew names like Nechamah or Yeshayahu. Unless they are from Israel, this should be a warning, especially if coupled with the above mentioned dress choices. Some sincere and level-headed MJs take on Hebrew names or Hebrew versions of their names. But all too often this is not the case. It is more due to a desire to sound “authentically Jewish”. This is one of the reasons that I prefer to go by “izi” instead of “Isaac”. (I am keeping my beard but am willing to modify my name!)

 

3. Excessively focused on End Times

Jews by and large are not focused on End Times. This is a signature Christian preoccupation. If a Messianic teacher is going on and on about End Times, they are either coming from their own Christian background or are catering to Christian interests. This is an immediate red flag for me.

 

4. Militantly Missionary

If a Messianic teacher is very focused on missions work, especially to Jews, this is a red flag to me. Messianic Judaism is not Jews for Jesus. The latter is a missionary organization that is focused on coverting Jews. Messianic Judaism is a congregational movement seeking to establish a home for Jewish followers of Jesus. These missionary groups are very appealing especially to evangelical Christians because of the focus on getting Jews “saved”. Much damage has been done by these groups because of their approach. MJ seeks to be an example of how to live both faithfully to Torah and to Yeshua (Jesus). Our message is that Jews can and should remain Jews as followers of Jesus. These missionary groups have little regard for the Mosaic covenant; many even teach that it is wrong. They are operating out of what we would call a “Hebrew Christian” mindset, rather than a Messianic Jewish one.

 

There may be some other ones, and I could go into more detail into each of these…