Congregation Shema Yisrael

As believers in Messiah Yeshua (Christ Jesus), we long to respond to his words and to follow him wholeheartedly. We seek to do his will with all our hearts, and to walk in the path he has laid out before us. But if we truly intend to live our the life he would have us lead, what must we do?

If you love me, you will obey what I command. -John 14:15

Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me…” -Mark 8:34

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the Torah, tested him with this question: “Rabbi, which is the greatest commandment in the Torah?” Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’All the Torah and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” -Matthew 22:34-40

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” -Matthew 28:19-20

I’ve written a number of articles in this blog on obedience and attempting to define what commandments Yeshua actually wants us to obey. When Yeshua directs his Jewish disciples to make disciples of all the non-Jewish nations, “and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” the short definition of what Yeshua is telling his disciples to teach the Gentiles to obey is Torah. This is the commandment that the Messianic movement has taken up and attempted to live and to teach others. The downside of our Torah focus is that, in some cases, it can at least make us appear as if we’re legalistic. In fact, some of us end up becoming legalistic. Let me explain.

Most people, both Gentiles and Jews, come into the Messianic movement from a church experience. It is very unusual for someone to directly “transition” into Messianic worship, either from a completely secular background (whether Jew or Gentile) or from a traditional Rabbinic Jewish lifestyle. With that in mind, the majority of people encountering Messianic worship and teaching, look at the Torah as “the Law” and work to overcome the traditional teaching of the church that says “the Law is dead”.

For those who endure in our movement, we have been able to see that neither Jesus nor Paul taught that the Torah was done away with. However, in our zeal for Torah, we tend to make it a cause unto itself, elevating our “obedience” to the Torah above our compassion for the secular world around us, and above our church-going brothers and sisters. The “mechanics” of Torah obedience, at least for some people, become more important than why we obey the Torah.

This is one of the criticisms that First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) has leveled against the Messianic community it educates, and one of the reasons their organization has determined that Gentile “obedience” to Torah has resulted in “bad fruit”. This is FFOZ’s term, and I don’t agree that the desire to obey God’s Torah automatically makes Gentile believers -but not Jewish believers- bearers of “bad fruit”. All that said, Boaz Michael’s latest blog, Voiding the Torah is on this very topic, and Boaz makes some very good points.

In short, motivation for obedience is the key, and without love for God and love for people being behind our actions, we are “only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal”, to quote 1 Corinthians 13:1. Boaz’s article indeed quotes other portions of Paul’s writings from 1 Corinthians to make this point. Regardless of our efforts in obedience, even if we produce amazing miracles, if our motivation for doing so is not based in love, what we do means nothing.

Certainly criticising people for working on the Shabbat, eating non-kosher foods as per Leviticus 11, and worshiping on Sunday instead of Saturday are not actions based on love. What did the Master say? “If you love me, you will obey what I command”. What did he command? What are the two greatest commandments?

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the Torah, tested him with this question: “Rabbi, which is the greatest commandment in the Torah?” Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’All the Torah and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” -Matthew 22:34-40

This statement is the cornerstone of our obedience. The first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and being (the Greek for what the NIV translates as “with all your mind” is literally “with all your very, very”, which could be more accurately translated “with everything you’ve got” or “with every fiber of your being”. The primary motivation for obeying God is because you love Him to the very extent of your abilities. The secondary motivation is the second greatest commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” I recently wrote an article on this point called But What if I Don’t Love Myself, since loving your neighbor, as Yeshua defines it, is treating the people around you the way you want to be treated. Ideally, we want to be treated very, very well.

Putting the two commandments together, we obey God because of our intense love for Him (assuming we have an intense love for God), and out of that love, we express our obedience in terms of loving Him and loving other people (neighbors, brothers…). When you love someone, it’s unlikely that you’ll go around acting like you’re superior to them. I love my eight-month old grandson, but I don’t go around being all superior with him because I can walk, talk, and have enough teeth to chew my food. He hasn’t gotten that far in his development yet. Part of my expressing love for him is to be with him where he’s at in his young life, helping him to grow, rather than being critical because he still eats baby food.

Yeshua also said “All the Torah and the Prophets hang on these two commandments”, which means that, wrapped up in these two commandments, are all the other commandments that you find in the writings in the Torah and the Prophets. The two greatest commandments aren’t Yeshua’s declaration that all the Torah is excluded except for these two. Rather, these two commandments can only be expressed by responding in love to all of God’s Word.

Now apply all that to being Torah obedient and Messianic. If you believe that the Messianic lifestyle is part of being close to God and obeying His commandments, is it loving to put down those around you who don’t have the same perspective? I don’t mean to say, based on my prior example of my grandson, that I think Messianics are superior to other believers, but if we do believe we have something to offer in terms of an understanding of Messiah others may lack, how can we communicate that if we are being critical of people who are not like us?

While I don’t go to a traditional church anymore, I do recall that there are people I met in the church who have a great love for Jesus and a tremendous desire to walk in his footsteps. While we may not see the path from the same perspective as they, if their love, and how they act towards others out of that love, is greater than our own (even though we have “Torah obedience”), then who actually is obeying the words of the Master and the intent behind the words?

In the Gemara Gem commentary for Bava Basra 60 from Daf Digest, we see that:

Rabbi Avraham Yafen notes that Bilaam (see Numbers 24) was indeed an evil person. He was jealous of the successes of others, and he craved and coveted money that was not his. The Mishnah (Avos 5:17) expounds upon the depraved character of Bilaam – “an evil eye, a haughty spirit, and an insatiable soul”.

If we obey the Torah out of a “haughty spirit”, we are not being obedient at all. In fact, we are disobeying the words of the Master and what he intends for our lives. We can’t be a light to the world, if all we are giving off is spiritual darkness. Going though the motions of Torah obedience brings nothing into the world that’s from God. Unless we have love for God and love for people behind our actions, our actions are nothing. In that sense, many of our so-called non-Torah obedient Christian brothers and sisters, who mow their lawns on Saturday and eat pork chops for dinner, are more obedient to Jesus and his words of Torah than we say we are.

Before you pick up your Tanakh again; before you don your tzitzit; before you begin another prayer in Hebrew; before you do anything that makes you think you’re Torah obedient, check your heart. Check out why you are doing what you are doing. If it isn’t out of love, then put down all the “Jewish” stuff, and pick up the Bible. Learn to love God and to love your neighbor. Pray that God will remove your heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh. Then, if your love leads you back to worshiping, praying, and teaching from a Hebraic perspective, giving honor and glory to God and to Yeshua, you’ll be on the right track. If you obey the two greatest commandments, you are responding to everything taught in “…all the Torah and the Prophets.”