Christians & Torah: A Christian Understanding of Messianic Judaism

  Mark 7 and Matthew 15 Revisited   Introduction Recently I received a comment about my article ‘ Jesus Declared all Foods Clean – or did He? ’ which made me realise that I had failed to address Jesus’ own teaching to His disciples explaining what had occurred. In that earlier article, I had endeavoured to show that Jesus did not in fact declare that all types of animal meat was now on the menu and you could eat anything you wanted with a clear conscience, but rather the issue at hand was ritual cleansing of the hands before eating. However, in both Mark 7 and Matthew 15, Jesus does not stop after rebuking the Pharisees, but goes on to explain the matter to His disciples: it is not what you eat that makes you unclean, but rather it is the sinfulness of the human heart that defiles people, for “nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him unclean (Gk. koinoi – see below for an explanation of this word), for it does not go into his heart but into his stomach” ...

  Broma vs Trophe I can do no better than point you to another blog post, a couple of quotations from which appear below:  “When we read the word “food” our English manner of thought automatically defines it as “things that are eaten”. The Greek word that conveys that is  #5160 “ trophe ” From  trepho ; nourishment (literally or figuratively); by implication, rations (wages) — food, meat. Fish food, cat food, guinea pig food. Its all food. Worms eat dirt. vultures eat dead things. For them, thats food. They eat it and it provides the nourishment they need to thrive. When we contrast that with the other Greek word that is often translated to “food” in English, we find that it is much more specific.  #1033 “broma” From the base of  bibrosko ; food (literally or figuratively), especially (ceremonially) articles allowed or forbidden by the Jewish law — meat, victuals. The Jewish Law agrees with the Law of God about which meats are clean and which...

Romans 14v14 (part 5b)  Paul is addressing three issues, all relating to food and holy days: ·         Those who eat anything vs those who eat only vegetables (see v 2-3) ·          Those who consider a day holy vs those who think all days are alike (see v 5-6) ·         Those who eat anything vs those who abstain (see v 6) Then he adds a comment that most people believe is a summary of the whole passage: “I know – that is, I have been persuaded by the Lord Jesus Christ – that nothing is unclean of itself. But if a person considers something unclean, then for him it is unclean”  (v 14) We have already addressed v2 in association with 1 Corinthians 8-10, here [ https://christiansandtorah.blogspot.com/2025/11/should-christians-follow-dietary-laws.html ]. In this post I hope to cover the remaining issues and also look at the matter of ‘personal opinions’. ...

Romans 14: ‘Nothing is unclean of itself’ Definition: ‘Torah’ is used here to denote the laws of God as given through Moses and recorded in the first five books of our Bibles. The widely accepted view of Romans 14 is that Paul was hereby abolishing the Sabbath and feast days and was saying that what God had called ‘unclean’ and therefore not to be eaten, was now clean. To support this view, two verses in particular are used, namely v5 (‘all days are alike’) and v14 (‘nothing is unclean of itself’). Another view is that we can eat what we like and worship on any day we like, as long as it doesn’t cause a (weaker) brother to stumble. In this post, I hope to show you that this is not what Paul is saying at all. The chapter is not about Sabbaths or festival days and is not about declaring all meat clean. Introduction Before we look at the passage in detail, we ought to do a recap for the benefit of those who have not read earlier posts. First, the word for ‘food’ is ‘broma’ (Gk) ...