This topic has been on my mind lately so maybe someone out there will benefit from me discussing it. I may have discussed it before, so if I am redundant, my apologies.
A number of years ago a lady came up to me after a talk that I did on the Mosaic Law and asked me why God started down the path of legalism to begin with. This question is rooted in a widely held belief that God intended for Jews to earn their way to heaven by following the Law. Once the Messiah had come and died for our sins, the way of Grace had arrived and replaced the old “works-righteousness” model.
What I explained to her is that this is based on a false understanding of what the Law is about. There is essentially no reference or mention to earning your way to heaven in Jewish literature. The traditional interpretation of scripture throughout the ages is that God, by grace, chose the people of Israel and brought them out of Egyptian bondage. It was only then that He gave them the Law to show them how they were to live no that they had agreed to become His kingdom of priests. Torah is usually translated as “law” but it actually comes from the word “to teach”. Torah (or the law) is God’s teaching on what it means to be holy.
Notice that this parallels exactly with the event at Golgotha. Yeshua offers Himself up in Grace as an offering for the whole world. It is after this that we have teachings through Paul and the apostles that basically teaches us how to live as His followers. This is the same pattern. God redeems (from Egypt, from sin) and then teaches how we should live holy lives as followers of Him. In fact, many of these teachings are primarily targeted to Gentile believers who do not have the background of the Torah to teach them how to live. Recall that these were people coming out of a harsh pagan culture. Many of the concepts about compassion, orderliness, humility, etc… were just not assumed knowledge.
So far from Jews earning the right to heaven through following the Law, they were simply living by the standards that a gracious God gave them. To put it in theological terms, the Law has more to do with sanctification not justification.
The term for sacrifice itself points to this. In Hebrew it is referred to as Korban. This comes from the root word meaning “to draw closer”. Sacrifices did have an atonement aspect to them but they also had another aspect of being a way to draw back into this relationship with God now that the person has repented. It can be looked upon in the same way as a husband bringing flowers to tell his wife that he acted in a bad way and wants to restore the relationship. In fact, there is no sacrifice in the Bible for someone who has not already repented. This is because there is no way to restore the relationship with God if you are not contrite and sorry for your sin.
In like manner, Yeshua’s death has not only an atonement quality to it but also a sense of bringing us closer to God, restoring our broken relationship with Him. This is how His death continues to be efficacious for us today. As His followers, we still sin and need a way of drawing closer to Him when we repent. His sacrifice acts as that perfect Korban, in doing so. We, in effect, bring the “flowers of Yeshua” to God and tell Him we are sorry and wish to restore the relationship.
Torah is about grace, just as Yeshua is. There is no dichotomy here between the Old and New Testaments. God in His grace redeemed Israel and taught them the way to go. This was a foretaste, first-fruits as Jeremiah calls it, of those who from the nations would also be redeemed in Messiah Yeshua and be instructed by the apostles.
Quotable Quotes
“If one believes in the lovingkindness of the Creator there are no questions. If one does not believe, there are no answers.”
-- Rabbi Yaakov of Radzimin
“The sages say that each person is like a world in miniature. This means that if one is a world in his own eyes, then he can be considered a miniature. And if one is miniature in his own eyes, then he can be considered a whole world.”
--Rabbi Noah of Lechovitz
“As children we learn to speak. As elders we learn silence. And this is the great fault that we have, to learn to speak before we learn to be quiet!”
--Rabbi Nachman of Breslov
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