The Journey

The Journey

Life is a journey. It is not static. Things change. People change, their understanding of the world changes, they mature, the see new things in the old, or see them from a different perspective. This is also true of the Christian walk. We see things differently; we see new truths we hadn’t noticed before; we mature in the faith and gain deeper insights. 

I hadn’t grasped it in 50 years, but when I did, I could hardly understand why it had taken so long! And then I couldn’t understand why others failed to see it, especially when confronted with what I now believe to be the truth about Torah observance.

What is ‘Torah Observance’? 

Simply put, Torah observance is the practice of following God’s commandments as set out in the first five books of the Bible, also known as ‘the Torah’. The word ‘torah’ means ‘instruction’. Torah observance is central to Judaism, and is practised in several different ways by Christians too. Most Christians hold to the ten commandments only, dividing up the law into moral, civil and ceremonial, where only the moral law still applies, while some follow what they call ‘the Law of Christ’ which they say is different from the Law of God, while others, particularly those in Messianic Judaism and similar movements, follow Torah much as Jews do. Who is right? Is there, in fact, a right and wrong? 

Marcionism 

The conflict began with a man called Marcion of Sinope. He lived in the early half of the second century CE. He went to Rome in around 135CE where he was accepted into the church there. He gave the church a lavish gift of 200,000 sesterces, which was worth more than 100 years’ wages. However, he was excommunicated (put out of the church) for heresy in 144CE and his gift was returned to him. Interestingly, the whole church (becoming disparate with different factions) was united in condemning him. 

His main heresy was that he did not accept that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament as revealed in Jesus Christ, were one and the same God. He taught that the Old Testament God was harsh and unforgiving, wrathful and full of nothing but vengeance, while the New Testament God was loving and full of grace. As a result, he rejected the Old Testament in its entirety and reduced the New Testament to a shortened version of Luke’s Gospel and some edited versions (edited by himself) of Paul’s letters. In short, he was the first truly ‘antinomian’ – against any form of Law in God’s economy. 

“For him, there was a fundamental contradiction between law and love, righteousness and grace. Marcion thought that true Christianity was flawed by the incompatibilities at the heart of its teaching. His solution was radical. Nothing less than a restatement of faith would do, and for Marcion that restatement had to focus on what for him was the essential gospel: the love, mercy and compassion displayed in the life and teachings of Jesus. This, for him, was all that was necessary, it was the blueprint for a new and pure humanity. There was no other truly Christian foundation for belief or morality.” [Angela Tilby in Heresies and How to Avoid Them (edited by Ben Quash and Michael Ward)] 

Although he was condemned as a heretic, he was very influential, setting up numerous congregations throughout the world. And his influence extends even today – many in the churches have a disconnect between the God of the OT and the God of the NT; they reject judgment and speak only of love and mercy; and they throw out the law, in favour of ‘grace’. God has no hard and fast rules/laws; instead He gives principles that we can interpret for ourselves and live as we see fit within what we perceive to be ‘the will of God’.

So what changed? 

At the beginning of 2016, I started to read my New Testament in chronological order by event. I looked out a ‘harmony of the Gospels’ which listed all the events of the New Testament in historical order, with the references from the Gospels next to each event. It meant a lot of flicking from one part of the Gospels to another, but it was worth the effort and I enjoyed reading how it all happened. I was struck by just how Jewish it all was!

At the end of that, I wanted to find a Bible or a book that wrote the life of Jesus, using the information from all the Gospels in chronological order, and set within the cultural and historical timeframe of first century Israel and the surrounding nations. I found one that had been written in 1867 or thereabouts; it was a struggle to read it and was very wordy – a common method of writing in those days. But I was hard pressed to find another, more up to date version. So, because I enjoy writing, I set about researching the details and writing one of my own (it is still to be finished – watch this space!) Again, because the life of Jesus did not happen in a vacuum, it became apparent how much a man of His time and culture Jesus actually was. 

Finally, I also read a book, ‘The Master’ by John Pollock, which is a life of Jesus, based on the Gospel of John. My first surprise was in his opening sentences. He referred to John as a cousin of Jesus. I presumed he was writing about John the Baptist. But then he mentioned John’s parents – Zebedee and Salome. I thought, ‘Hang on! We know John’s parents were Zechariah and Elizabeth. Where do you get Zebedee and Salome from?’ That sent me scurrying for my books and the computer to discover that yes indeed, John and James were probably cousins of Jesus; their father was Zebedee and their mother was Salome, who was probably the sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Pollock hadn’t been referring to John the Baptist at all. I began to realise how many hints we are given throughout the four Gospels of when and how events took place and who was involved. I had ‘matured’ in my way of approaching the Bible – check the details was my new watchword and also, check the accounts as given in all the Gospels, not just one at a time.

What happened next was sudden and comprehensive. 

The first thing I noticed was that Passover and Easter were a whole month apart. Now that made no sense to me at all – surely Easter was the Christian equivalent of Passover? We all know from the Bible that Jesus died at Passover, so why were they separated by a month? Further delving into the origins of Easter showed me that it was something the church had more or less invented – they had taken the dates for Passover but then fixed them so that Easter Sunday fell on the first Sunday after the spring equinox, regardless of when Passover occurred. Did they have the authority to do that? If God sets a date, can the church just change it to suit themselves? Well further study showed that it was part of an attempt (which was ultimately a successful attempt) to separate Christianity from Judaism. Constantine detested the Jews, blamed them for ‘killing Christ’ and considered them lazy (Sabbath observance meant they took a day off work each week). So at the Council of Nicaea, he and those with him, established a new date for Easter and thus Easter became separated from Passover. 

I decided then and there I would celebrate Passover, as the earliest Christians had done in the New Testament era. I cleaned out the leaven and made a lamb stew (the lamb ought to be roasted and not boiled in water like in a stew, but I was trying to honour God, so I trust He accepted my clumsy first attempts). It was a mere three weeks between understanding that I ought to keep Passover and actually celebrating it. 

Three more weeks and.... 

I had what I can only describe as a ‘revelation’. I had been studying and while I was thinking about what I had been reading, it dawned on me – ‘we even worship on the wrong day’. The words were out of my mouth (out loud) before I even realised it. If Jesus worshiped on Saturday and He is ‘Lord of the Sabbath’ as He said, then surely Sabbath (on the seventh day, not the first – ie Saturday) is the day we should set aside as special and in honour of God. Okay, so that was Passover, then Sabbath.

Another three weeks passed. I had wondered if having missed those two major items, what else was I missing? Was there anything else I ought to be doing – or not doing? But, as I said, again out loud – at least my bacon’s safe; after all, Jesus declared all foods clean, didn’t He? After looking into that in more detail, I discovered no, He didn’t say any such thing (more on that in a later post) and so I stopped eating all pork products. There were one or two slip-ups, like I was eating haribos without realising they had pork gelatine in them – this was going to be harder than I thought. This time, I didn’t say anything out loud; I just stopped bringing pork, bacon, ham and other pork products into the house. A family member asked ‘Are we not eating pork any more then?’ and at every opportunity thereafter ate pork, pastry with lard in, jelly etc, until one particular day. We were ordering a meal for an event we were attending and they usually served a ham salad. I asked if there was an alternative and I was told I could have chicken instead. A voice over my shoulder then said ‘Make that two’. That family member hasn’t knowingly eaten pork or related products since, either. 

Thus my studies had led me to understand just how Jewish the whole New Testament really was. I had long thought (and frequently said in the past) that Christianity is much more Jewish than we in the west give it credit for, but I had never really studied that. In fact, I had relied on pastors and teachers, thinking they were educated in these things, so knew best and I had followed them without even thinking about it. In short, I was not a good ‘Berean’ – those people who had listened to Paul speaking in Acts 17 and had then gone away to see for themselves if what he had said matched with what the Scriptures actually said. I really should have been more diligent, but then I’m just the same as 99.9% of other Christians out there who blindly follow their pastors and teachers too. 

As far as I was concerned at the time, it didn’t actually much matter. I am a 21^st Century Christian, living in the western hemisphere – why did the fact that Jesus and the Apostles were Jewish actually matter? The answer is: Context is everything! Understanding the New Testament hinges on understanding the culture and history, the politics and religion at the time the words were spoken. Knowing Hebrew idiom helps us understand what Jesus was actually saying. I used to think that putting the Bible into its first century context was a pretext for saying it doesn’t apply to us today. For instance, the issue of women’s head coverings for prayer is often said to have been something cultural for that day, time and place – therefore we today do not need to comply. For that reason, I had been hesitant to accept anything that called for cultural context, in case the next step meant we were going to be told to abandon whatever teaching it was. I now understand clearly that context really is everything! Looking at the Gospels in their proper cultural setting does not mean we must abandon the teachings contained therein; rather it enhances our understanding. For instance, Jesus said ‘I have not come to destroy the law…I have come to fulfil it’. That is Hebrew idiom (did you know? I certainly didn’t!) To destroy the law means to teach against it; to fulfil the law means to teach its proper observance – which makes perfect sense when we know that on the end of that particular bit of teaching, Jesus added ‘Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew 5v19). And this reflects the Old Testament teaching (and remember, Jesus and the Apostles didn’t have the New Testament!) in Deuteronomy 27v26: 

Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them. And all the people shall say, Amen. 

See how knowing the cultural, religious and historical context actually aids our understanding? 

My final ‘revelation’ was to realise the Lord and the Apostles really didn’t have a New Testament! That might seem obvious, but it came as a ‘revelation’ in that we always interpret the teachings of Christ in the light of what is written in the New Testament – the writings of Paul and Peter, the Gospels and so on. And we evaluate the words in the Old Testament, in light of the New. But Jesus and the Apostles actually only had the Old Testament – which meant that all the teachings of the New Testament can be found and understood with only an Old Testament in our possession! Wow! That was a real eye opener!

However, it wasn’t all plain sailing – After becoming Torah observant, I found I was ostracised by churches and Christians alike, even being asked to leave one place. I was laughed at, ridiculed, told I was being a ‘legalist’, that obedience was no longer necessary, and even told I was ‘denying Christ’. 

Marcionism is truly alive and well and living in the modern church, even evangelical ones. When did it become seen as a sin to be obedient to God's laws?

So my journey started along the path to understanding the Hebrew origins, the Jewish origins of our Christian faith. And the journey continues….