You Cannot Keep the Law!

You Cannot Keep the Law!

There are more Jewish Israeli’s turning to Yeshua than ever before. Some estimate there are 30,000 of them. Do not, however, expect all of them to understand that Messiah Yeshua means for us to observe Torah. Many don’t. It seems Eitan Bar does not. “You cannot keep the Torah!” This is the message of Eitan Bar in an article on the oneforisrael website. His arguments sound strangely similar to anti-Torah Evangelical Christians in the United States. Sadly, the Torah observance of many “Messianic Jews” in Israel is largely cultural, and it seems has little to do with the fact that the Almighty commanded his people to keep his laws. This sad fact has a lot to do with the false teaching of anti-Torah Christian Churches that sent anti-Torah missionaries to Israel in the past. The Church’s false translations of Paul and many other passages also has a lot to do with it.

Eitan starts with an analogy in which there have to be strict rules for their small kitchenette for their employees. But they wanted a full kitchen. The point he makes is when they get the full kitchen then they can change the rules. He dovetails this analogy into his argument that the new covenant supercedes the old covenant. An analogy is great for illustrating a point. It is no good for proving the point is valid in the first place.

Eitan continues, “Basically, Keeping the Law Has Become Impossible! But what if you really wanted, with all of your heart and mind—just for the sake of argument—to keep the Law (be “Torah observant”)? Well, it is simply impossible. There is no priesthood, no temple, and no sacrificial system”. The answer is simple: you keep the part of the Law that it is possible to keep. Messiah requires us to do no better than what is possible. As for the Law that it is not possible to keep, it is still the Law! The question is really whose fault is it for the part of the Torah that cannot be kept? The Torah says that if the priests mess up the Almighty’s commandments concerning the Temple, then they will bear their iniquity, and not the people. They messed up so badly that he took it away from them until the day they repent. When they repent, then the prophets promise us that the Temple system will be restored. Israel has been through this before. Jewish Israel was exiled for 70 years. Was the Torah changed? No. But there was no Temple system. When they returned, the Temple was rebuilt. During the exile, the Almighty expected faithful Jews to do no better than what was possible! And the same is true today. He expects us to do no better than what is possible.

A second point is due here. The Torah makes a distinction between sins of ignorance, or circumstance, and sins of rebellion against the Almighty. Also, the Torah classifies only a limited number of capital offenses. Ignorance of the law is truly a valid defense in the Torah. If a person is truly ignorant of his offense, and it is not a captial crime, then his guilt is not the same as in the other cases. We see this distinction made by the John in 1st John. He speaks of a sin that leads to death, and a sin that does not lead to death. There is a lot of ignorance about the Torah, because false teachers are misrepresenting what it really says.

Eitan tries to pile it on with application of Torah to modern life, “If we were to establish a new nation today, we would give its people laws and rules (traffic, family, taxes, torts, civil, labor, etc.) according to their situation, lifestyle, era and location. However, many of Moses’ laws are practically impossible to keep in our day and age, due to the current reality in which we live: for example, issues concerning slavery or purification rituals are no longer relevant.” First let me point out that Eitan is picking on a minute problem of application and missing the big issue. Modern civilization is not inherently an impediment to Shabbat observance, or the keeping of any annual Shabbat, or the keeping of clean and unclean laws, or ritual purity, or food laws.

What Eitan implies is that traffic rules somehow violate Torah. No they don’t. The principle of a fence around one’s roof so that someone will not fall off is the same as the principle of a stop sign. It is there to protect you from danger. Then Eitan mentions taxes. Yes, taxes are not legislated in Torah, but this situation is not new. The Almighty told Israel if they asked for a king, then the king would tax them. Did these taxes remove the obligation to keep Shabbat or the feasts or purity laws or food laws? Of course not. The Torah will go forth from Zion in the future, and however life is then, it will adapt to Torah, and Torah will be extended to cover the new situations based on the principles that are already in it. I don’t think this is what Eitan is saying though. He seems to be rejecting an obligation to possible observance as well.

Eitan next drops the trillion shekel word on us: justified, “In modern terms, asking if someone can be justified by keeping the Law is like giving someone an old laptop without its motherboard or processor and asking them to live their lives with its assistance.” Of course he should know that what Evangelical Christians think this word means was defined by the Reformation to mean “declared righteous” before the Law as in an acquittal. It is certainly not what Paul meant when he used the word. I have written other articles on this. There are some who might seek an acquittal by keeping Torah, say good deeds pay off bad deeds. The Church did this with the “treasury of merits.” The Rabbis taught the same doctrine via “zekut,” which is the merits of the ancestors. But doing the best we can in keeping Torah is based on love of the Almighty. We are not seeking justification (an acquittal), because we were already found guilty of sin, and have forgivness in Messiah Yeshua. He only expects us to repent and do the best we can.

The Almighty never expected perfection of his people in the Torah, in the covenant in order to reap its blessings. The whole idea that perfection is required is based on the false idea that salvation requires perfection. NO IT DOES NOT. Nowhere does the law say that. In fact, forgiveness would not be offered or promised if that were the case. Messiah paid the penalty of our sin. Therefore we are free to observe the Torah without feeling like we will be LOST if we cannot manage perfection. This whole idea of perfection being required is a straw man argument to enable anti-Torah teachers to win their arguments. Do not buy into their assumptions.

Furthermore, those who make the perfection argument, themselves, have a theology of justification that amounts to acquittal and not a pardon. Or if not that, they have mixed their message with that.

Eitan warns us, “there really is no such thing as “Torah observant”, as most of the 613 commandments are impossible to keep even if we wanted to try.” I should point out that only about 150 of the commandments actually apply to the ordinary person, as Paul Manual, Pastor of the German Seventh Day Baptist Church pointed out. If you are not a farmer, there is a whole bunch of laws that do not apply. Some laws only apply to women. Some laws only apply to men, priests, kings, prophets, or levites.

Mr. Bar then goes on to inform us certain laws that cannot be kept. For example, “ Do you keep your diet 100% animal fat free, as in accordance with Leviticus 3:17?” Let me tell you that this only applies to internal organ fat that can be separated from the meat, i.e. the fat that is offered to the Almighty anyway. So Mr. Bar is guilty of misinterpreting Torah.

“Do you stone your children if they curse you, as in accordance with Leviticus 20:9?” To say the least, Lev. 20:9 does not refer to children as such in English. Literally, it says, For a man, a man, which will make to be cursed his father or his mother.... The Rabbis thought that the divine name must be used also, but this is an addition to Torah. All we need to note is that this does not apply to minor children who have just lost their temper. Then we must ask the question of who should enforce this law if it is really broken. The answer is the community, but the community does not now enforce it. In fact the community prohibits it. So this law is not possible to keep now. Only someone seeking justification by the law would have a problem with laws impossible to keep. We do not, because we are not trying to be justified (acquitted) by keeping the law. An adult child cursing his parents is really a rare and unnatural thing in the first place.

“Do you never shave your facial hair, as in accordance with Leviticus 19:27?” You can always win an argument by exaggerating what the Torah says. Orthodox Judaism teaches that an electric shaver is permitted because it does not pull out the facial hair. It only makes it very short. I think this ruling is correct. Only priests were required to wear well trimmed beards. Lev. 19:27 does not actually use the word for “cut”; it uses a word meaning “mar” or “destroy.” This certainly prohibits the practice of plucking out the hair roots so that a beard cannot be grown. But what if the Almighty had wanted all men to grow full beards? Then there would be good reason to do so. So what I am saying is that I do not like Eitan Bar’s attitude toward what the Almighty commands.

“Do you support the killing of gays and lesbians, as in accordance with Leviticus 20:13?” Now really this is the politically incorrect question. There actually is no death penalty in Torah for lesbians! (To be sure, it is still a perverted sin). Just as there is none for postitutes either. But there is for girls who fornicate while in their father’s house. So with that cleared up, let us address the question of gays. Israel did not enforce this law even in ancient times, and what happened when the gays in one town violated a woman and killed her? Israel was forced to go to war against that town to stop the spread of lawlessness. You can read about it in the book of Judges. Many died on both sides and the tribe of Benjamin was nearly wiped out. This was all because the problem was not stopped at the beginning. Whether such a law is to be kept or not is a community decision, and the consequences of that decision will be upon the community also. There is a warning in Revelation. Jerusalem will be called Sodom and Egypt in the end of days. Of course what the individual Torah observer thinks is irrelevant so long as the community does not consent. The Almighty had good reason for his laws. If you run the wrong kind of culture in your country, then that culture will destroy it.

Mr. Bar asks, “During the Shabbat, do you not drive or BBQ? (and if you lived before the nineteenth century, will you not turn on lights nor start the heating in the winter if you are cold?), as in accordance with Exodus 35:3?” On the driving question we are talking about Rabbinical rulings to new situations. It was permitted to ride an animal on Shabbat in ancient times as this was not deemed putting the animal to labor. There is an example of it. So it has nothing to do with transportation. The Rabbinic objection seems to have to do with the creative energy of a chemical change, which is how they see the lighting of a fire. The spark plugs do it. Same thing with light switches and elevators. But these are new rulings on new situations. We do not have to agree with the Rabbis. Exodus 35:5, interestingly, does not say “houses.” It says “dwellings” or habitations. The prohibation seems to have to do with starting a fire. It also seems to be limited to the wilderness, where they had the pillar of fire by night for warmth. If that was the case, then the purpose of fires then would have been to cook. And that was the real aim of the commandment. I do not think the object of the command was for people to freeze to death or spend the Shabbat in misery because it was freezing cold. So again, we have a new situation in those places where temperatures get very low. If the Shabbat temperatures were 35 or 40+ (such as it might be in Israel) I would be reluctant to start a fire. A house will keep to 55-60 degrees all day if it was heated the day before at those temperatures. But here in Wisconsin we keep the fire burning all the time in winter. It is a major chore and semi-disaster if it goes out when the temperature is down to 0 degrees. New situations require new rulings. And whatever situation the Torah did not rule on must be determined on principle. The Scripture says, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice!” On the BBQ question? Of course we do not do that. Cooking is only excepted for feast day requirements such as Passover.

“Do you always wear only one kind of fabric on your body so not to mix between linen and wool, as in accordance with Deuteronomy 22:11?” Eitan Bar seems to be a little mixed up here. The commandment is not to wear fabric mixed of linen and wool. No we don’t buy anything mixed like that. How is that hard to keep? But to interpret the command to mean we can only wear one kind of fabric, i.e. as if cotton and wool were prohibited is an interpretation. Let everyone do as they see fit. We have a new situation with modern synthetics, and I think many have already figured out that much of it is bad for their health.

“Do you never buy fruit in the supermarket as their producers do not wait until the 5th year to start selling them? (not to mention the fact that the majority of today’s supermarket food products includes corn or soy), as in accordance with Leviticus 19:23-25?” Well this is a problem. But the Torah and its principles still apply. This is in part a community issue. In the nations, of course, it is not always possible to keep some laws. The circumstances of exile prevent it. The Almighty only requires loyalty to Him through Messiah. If something is not possible, then it is not a question of loyalty. Now we have GMO products! New situation. How is Torah to be applied to that? I say GMO should be banned in principle based on Torah because man is tampering with the order of creation. I also think hybrids that revert to separate kinds in the next generation do not meet Torah requirements either. The bans on these things appear to be focused on the producer and not specifically on the consumer who is the victim.

I thing Eitan Bar has with the last can of worms touched on a very big problem, and that is corruption of the food supply. What do we expect with artificial corporate persons created by law that are in a fascist relationship with the government? Their goal is money, and human health be dammned. Such entities are not permitted in Torah, but every person is responsible for how his business affects the health of others, and therefore should keep it small enough that it does not get out of control. When Messiah has his way with Israel, it will not be setting things up like other modern nations. It will be making room for sabbatical and jubilee year observance. And the people will not be hostage to what the producers do to their food.

Eitan Bar’s false theology rings loud in his next statement, taken right out of the anti-Torah apologetics book of Christianity, “These are only 7 examples of the hundreds of Sinai commandmends, and remember, if in Yeshua we still under the authority of the Sinai covenant, we can’t just keep some commandments, we must keep them all: “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.” (James 2:10)” The Rabbis had a converse saying: “Whoever keeps one point of Torah, it is as if he has kept it all.” The point was that if a convert has loyalty to the Almighty to keep one command, then he will have the loyalty to keep them all even if he does not know how yet or is less than perfect. Ya'aqov's point is the converse. Whoever is disloyal to the Almighty so as to show hypocritical favoritism is committing a serious sin, a transgression, serious enough that one should question their loyalty to the Almighty in the first place. It is as if he has broken all the commandments. Hypocrisy in justice is taking the Almighty’s name in vain. James is right. Such a person is not held guiltless.

What Bar is doing is not what James meant. Bar is saying that if one keeps any of the Torah then if one cannot keep one point then one is totally guilty. This is nonesense. Torah does not advance this position at all. It is simply the straw man of perfectionism and the assumption that the Almighty requires perfection to be saved. But he gives grace and mercy for mistakes. Just look at the lives and stories of people in the Torah. None of them were perfect, yet the Torah was still the Law, and yet they were still saved.

Bar’s interpretation assumes that someone is keeping Torah to earn the zekut or merit the merit from the treasury of merit so that if say he mistakenly eats a strip of bacon when the waiter mixed up the order, then he is guilty enough not to make it, because to be sin free one has to be perfect. The Almighty does not require us to be free of all sins of ignorance. He only requires us to be transgression free to remain in the covenant. Remember the 1st John pasage I mentioned about sins leading to death? Bar seems to still live in the Christian fantasy world of a demanding and unforgiving Old Testament God. Well that is not what the Torah teaches about the Almighty. It is only the way Christians imagine how the God of the Old Testament is, because they need an excuse to ignore it. And this sin of misrepresenting the Almighty is the real transgression.

The Renewed Covenant

Bar finishes his argument off by misquoting Jeremiah 31:31-33. Bar quotes, “It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors;” one should always beware of translations made by Christians with a history of lawlessness when the translation seems to say what they want it to say. What it really says, according to the Hebrew is, “not according to the covenant which I cut with their fathers in the day of my seizing them by the hand to make them go out from the land of Egypt, WHEN they had broken my covenant, AND I was master against them, declares YHWH.” The word WHEN may also be translated BECAUSE. So why is the covenant renewal not according to the first time around. Because the first time around they broke it and the Almighty judged them (as a nation). They received the curses instead of the blessings. Now there were exceptions of course. This judgment speaks of the end of Israel and Judah when they were exiled into Assyria and Babylon. It does not speak of the times during the Judges when they were serving the Almighty. Both the curses and the blessings are “according to the covenant.” But if the covenant renewal results in blessings and not curses, then the blessings are not according to the covenant when Israel broke it.

So you see, those Messianic Jews who call it a renewed covenant are exactly right.

My Commandments

Bar states, “Some in the Hebrew roots movement appeal to John 14:15 to support their position that Yeshua’s followers are obligated to keep the Law. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15; see 14:21, 23-24). There is absolutely nothing in the immediate context, however, which would lead one to conclude that “my commandments” refers to the Law.” There does not have to be. But we are expected to heed all Scripture. The question is when did Messiah’s commandments stop being “my commandments”? Messiah appeared on Mt. Sinai. See Exodus 24:9-11. Messiah is Ben Elohim (the Almighty Son) who is one with the Father, who is the only kindred Almighty (John 1:18). He is the giver of Torah as much as the Father. But all things are in parables so that the hearing will not hear, and the seeing will not see, but if we compare Scripture to Scripture then we may see, repent, and be healed. If John did not explain everything in the immediate context, it is because it is explained elsewhere in Scripture. See for example Mat. 5:17-20; 28:18-20.

Romans 13:8. Whoever loves completes the Law. But really, the love commandment was given from the beginning. Did loving then somehow fulfill the law without actually keeping the commandments which define love in their situations. If that were the case, then none of the other commandments would have been necessary. So either Paul (and certainly Eitan Bar) takes the love commandment out of context, or Paul meant something different. What Paul means is that love fills the Law up to the top. Therefore, “completes” is a better translation. Everything done with love in mind fills the law to the top. Even judging enemies does, because this act saves the faithful from destruction.

Is Eitan Bar tossing out the Torah?

Of course he is! He calls it inspired Scripture, and quotes “for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16-17), but he has dinged a good many laws as impossible for training in righteousness. There is a difference in Mr. Bar’s anti Law polemic than the usual. He has not taken aim at Shabbat or Passover, or any other biblical high holy Day. Why is this? Because he knows to do so will polarize the Messianic Jews in Israel with regard for the Torah from those Messianic Jews in Israel who reject a good deal of it. Love requires us to put a stop to the the re-invetion of traditional lawless Christianity in Israel. Because if it succeeds, then the condition of Deut. 30 will not be met, and the Almighty will have to judge them along with the rest of Israel.

FAQ

Bar quotes from Hebrews and Galatians. I address Hebrews first. This book was added to the Christian canon in the 4th century by Augustine who added serveral other non-canonical books at the same time. Like many Jews and Christians up to the 4th century, we do not accept this book. So Eitan Bar has nothing here on us. Bar then cites Galatians. The problem here is not canonicity. It is the translation he uses, “the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith.” A more literal translation is, “What was customary was our guardian until Messiah came so that we might be administered justice by [his] faithfulness.” I explain this in the Good News of Messiah. It would take too long to explain it here, because there is so much wrong with the traditional translation that the reader would need a whole education to understand just what. Bar touches on some other points, but this post is long enough.

Epilogue

“Eitan Bar is a native Jewish-Israeli who was born and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel (1984). Graduated with his B.A. in Biblical Studies from Israel College of the Bible (Jerusalem, 2009), his M.A. in Theology from Liberty University (2013) and is now pursuing his Doctorate with Dallas Theological Seminary.” This explains much. Dallas Theologial Seminary is the head of anti-Torah dispensational theology. Liberty University is the fountainhead of baptist fundamentalism. Both schools are virulently anti-Torah.