I was listening to the Podcast of Greg Koukl and the Stand to Reason radio show from January 28. There was a question about tithing. I found the answer to be interesting and unfortunately the reasoning didn’t stand up for me. The caller quoted Malachi chapter 3:10, and regarded the need to tithe as well as the verse challenging one to “test G-d”. I did not have a problem with the first part of the answer, which was that the testing the verse refers to is not a test that would be in contradiction to the command not to test the L-RD your G-d, but one in which G-d keeps His promises if the believer keeps theirs. It is more a test of G-d’s faithfulness that having G-d prove a point for us, like some kind of trick.
However, then Greg used the fact that the verses were written to the Jews, and it is part of the covenant between G-d and the Jews, so it has nothing to do with a Christian today. He then went on to point to Yeshua in Matthew 23
and the council in Acts 15. He even uses the term a Gentile follower of Christ under the New Covenant. What of a Jewish follower of Messiah under the New Covenant? He does not elaborate. Maybe he has never thought of the possibility of a Jew believing in Jesus. Not sure.
However let’s reason a little bit about what he said. If you get the mp3 or podcast the call is 30:25 into the show. First lets look at some of the verses:
23 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.
Was Yeshua speaking to the Jews of His day, certainly, was He not also speaking to Jews when he said almost all His quotes from the Gospels? Does that mean that virtually every quote from Yeshua is not intended for Gentiles? I think not. When he speaks of the two most important commandments, does this not have relevance to the Gentile as well as the Jew? When He tells a Jewish Pharisee, Nicodemus that he must be born again, does this not have application to Gentiles as well? Of course it does and so does this passage. Note what Yeshua says in the passage. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. He was telling the Pharisees that as well as follow the letter of the Torah, they should also meet the overriding purpose of the Torah, to love the L-RD and love one another. This applies to Gentiles as well as Jews. Many Christians actually seem to take this verse and switch it around to say, “You should have practiced the latter and ignored the former”, however that is not what it says.
Now for Acts 15. It starts off like this:
1 Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers: “Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.”
So the question here is not how a Christian should live their lives, but what does it take to become a Christian. For someone who speaks about reading the whole context, Greg has missed it there. To be fair, most Christians do miss this point. The Law is not about salvation, and I don’t think it ever was. Paul states that the Law is unable to save. He goes on that we would not need a Messiah if the Law could save us, so Jews are not and have never been saved by keeping Torah. It is not enough. The sacrifices of bulls and goats is not enough, and never was. Many both before Yeshua, during and after have tried to teach that and I truly believe that New Covenant verses about the Law are referring to this misuse of the Law rather than the Law itself.
Let me ask this. Does not Romans 11 speak of the Gentiles being grafted in to the rich root of Israel and becoming part of that goodness? And does not Galatians speak of there being no difference between Jew and Gentile? Then why does the dividing wall go up only when Yeshua is speaking to the Jewish people? It is funny that it does not go the other way. Things spoken to Gentiles throughout Scripture are not supposed to be ignored by Jews. Greg used the phrase that the Tanakh (Old Testament) should be read as if you are reading it over the shoulder of a Jew. Should I as a Jew read much of Paul’s writings as if over the shoulder of a Gentile, in other words, that it is not for me? This is a dangerous line of thought and one that I thought Greg and what I had seen at Stand to Reason would not fall into.
Loading ...
2 responses so far ↓
1 Shoshana // Mar 4, 2007 at 10:06 pm
The conversation in Acts 15
is probably one of, if not the most controversial incident in the Brit Chadasha. It seems that every organization and congregation have a different interpretation of what Torah is and isn’t, who it is and isn’t for, and what it does and doesn’t do.
Experential knowledge leads me to believe that both Christians and Jews dislike the idea of believers as a whole practicing Torah, because living a Torah observant lifestyle in faith as a believer requires the ultimate relinquishing of human control over your spiritual identity. To Jews, the Torah is the covenant that identifies who we are as a people; allowing outsiders to come in and practice alongside us, no questions asked, no differences made, is a huge blow to the ego. To grafted-in believers, being handed 613 laws and told to understand them and adhere to them through faith in Messiah Yeshua is like asking a leopard to change its spots- again, another huge blow to the ego.
There’s a reson Yeshua instructed us to treat each other like family and to serve one another in love. A successful believing body requires that kind of humility, grace, and adoration from and for one another in order to survive, lest bruised egos get in the way.
2 B Z // Mar 4, 2007 at 11:20 pm
It is true that ego is one of the most damaging things to the body of Messiah and to us as individuals. Ego is what drives one denomination to hate another. Unity of all the believers is important. I have always been told that there is the way of salvation, which are beliefs that a believer hold firm to. Then there are other things outside of that that as a body we can agree to disagree on. Things like Spiritual gifts, speaking in tongue, etc. fit in this category. Torah observance fits in there as well. However it is ego for one to feel that everyone must do this practice or else they are not really believers, where the truth is much more likely to be that a believer that does not walk in the perfect will of G-d, but instead walks in the permissive will of G-d, is missing out on some blessing, but not on salvation.
I do think we are called to “relinquish human control” over all our lives. Being a bond-servant certainly means that we are supplanting our ego and letting our Master control every part of us, for His glory. The wonderful thing about that is that what our Master commands of us is always better that what we would have chosen for ourselves. That is why for me, the ways of G-d, which include Torah are good and they are good for me, and I think for most all believers, in some form. I think that is why it hurts me to see many who knock the Torah. It is not that they are knocking my heritage that hurts, for that heritage did not mean anything to me until I met Messiah, but they are knocking the Word of G-d and twisting G-d is ways that just can’t really make sense.
I think as we become believer whether Jew or Gentile, we have a great deal to learn. We need after salvation, discipleship. It means to learn to throw off our old ways as a non-believer. It means that some of the things we did before are not the things we should do as ambassadors of the Most High G-d. Whether we are Jew or Gentile, we need to set our ego aside and accept the teaching of the Word and start to walk in it. I think that is part of Acts 15
. Salvation is of faith, not works, but once a believer we are called, by grace, to do good works, not to continue in our sinful ways. And sinful ways are sinful ways whether it is in following the teachings of the Rabbis or the teachings of the pagans.
Leave a Comment