“For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.” (James 2:10, NKJV)
The Biblical foundations of the New Judaism are currently being examined.
Without rehashing all the arguments we’ve already discussed, it is of great importance to just quickly again point out that it is not possible today (even for Jews), to keep the 613 laws of the Torah, as both the temple and the priesthood that are supposed to facilitate the bringing of sins before God, are lacking. Sacrifices are also lacking, as there is not a place or sanctioned person who can handle them. Because of this Torah-observant groups are very selective in their beliefs about what parts of the law needs to be kept. For most this mostly entails an emphasis on the holy days, the feasts and the shabbat, what is eaten or not eaten, etc. Without these groups realising it, they are actually all individually engaged with an own interpretation of various Rabbinical traditions. To a great extent this is also rather random personal interpretations of the Torah, an own concoction presented as truth. For instance, these groups do not send their men to Jerusalem three times a year to appear before the Lord, as Ex. 23:17 requires, nor do they stone disobedient children (Deut. 21:18-21). The apostle James, in chapter 2 verse 10, makes these implications clear: “For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.”
What would then be the point of trying to keep all these laws? This Torah-observance largely leads to a certain distinctiveness, a greater holiness before God and man, a deeper spirituality than other believers? In my opinion the New Covenant requires far greater, more radical obedience than the Old Covenant ever did. Jesus refers to this law-abiding consciousness a number of times, which He argues rapes the greater function of God and his righteousness – and Matt. 23:24 makes a graphic example of this: “Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!”
There is often a very selective usage of Scripture. Much is for instance made of the fact that the Old Covenant is supposed to stand “forever”, as is noted in Ex. 31:16, but then explicit Scriptures are conveniently ignored, like Heb. 8:13: “In that He says, ‘A new covenant,’ He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.”
For this reason it is of the greatest importance that we emphasise Rom. 14:5-6 in the argument concerning any Jewish tradition, practice, holy day, etc: “One person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord; and he who does not observe the day, to the Lord he does not observe it. He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks; and he who does not eat, to the Lord he does not eat, and gives God thanks.”
In other words, anyone is free to appropriate certain Jewish practices, but should not render it into a law for himself or for others, and it should not lead to a new Jewish acculturation. We cannot erect a furnace of tradition in the land of Promise, nor can we submit to upholding the Jewish practices with a new spiritualised gloss. This is wrong. In Gal. 4:9-11 Paul warns: “But now after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire again to be in bondage? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I am afraid for you, lest I have labored for you in vain.”
Col. 2:16-17 makes it undeniably clear: “So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.”
Most of the practices, like the celebration of the Jewish feasts, are mere shadows, as Thayer suggests: “shade caused by the interception of light; an image cast by an object and representing the form of that object”.
If you come to know the fullness of God, the various practices can be beautiful to celebrate, but it is not nearly as fantastic as living and moving in His fullness (Acts 17:28). In his book, From Shadow to Substance, in which he points out the typological meaning of shadow-images in the Scripture at the hand of the letter to the Hebrews, Roy Hession notes, “But the shadows are at best only shadows, with no substance to them.” (p. 9).
Jesus is both the beginning and the ending of the Torah. The Beginning – as Giver of the Torah on mount Sinai, and thus the Origin thereof; the End – as the telos, the goal of the Torah, that toward which the Torah aims in fulfilment. If the Living Torah became flesh, He is the manifestation of the Torah. The Torah became flesh and lived among us … and when we see His glory and walk in his ways, we are changed, day by day, into His image. May the Living Torah become flesh in all of us.
Dough Fortune (in his article http://www.dougfortune.org/a257.htm) notes the following: “Christ is complete (perfected), that is, the corporate BODY of Christ is brought to the ‘goal’, as the preeminent Head is joined to the body in whom the ‘likeness’ has been fully restored.” The third day ekklesia need to move away from a mentality of DOING (based on the law and a religion of works), to a mentality of BEING (a mentality of relationship).
To conclude: The New Judaists garner their legitimacy from an inaccurate understanding of how the Bible needs to be read and handled. What needs to be clear is that the entire Old Testament, which stretches from Genesis until the resurrection of Jesus, is specifically written to the Jews. This is the sum total of the Old Covenant, and can thus only be read by believers of the New Covenant in the light of its fulfilment in Jesus Christ (Matt. 5:17). In 1 Cor. 10:6 (DBY) Paul states that the entire Old Testament “happened as types of us”. And in verse 11 this is discussed further: “And all these things as types did happen to those persons, and they were written for our admonition, to whom the end of the ages did come …” (YLT). Many deceptive teachings and corrupted Biblical perspective, including the New Judaism, is based on a misunderstanding of the Old Testament as typology for New Testament believers.
- Selah: Explain Dough Fortune’s statement (mentioned above) to someone.
- Read: 21-24; 1 Pet. 3-4.
- Memorise: 1 Pet. 3:15.
- For a more in-depth understanding: Read Dough Fortune’s article above.