And now, back to topcat:
And what about a person like myself, who, neither out of ignorance nor neglect, but out of a careful study of Scripture rejects seventh-day sabbath keeping, the pagan judaizing origins of messianic holy day observance, gentile circumcision, and all the cultic laws of old Israel?
Given that you have yet to demonstrate any of the above from the Scriptures alone, and in fact keep accusing me of solo Scriptura (meaning, I suppose, that I take the Scriptures too seriously), I don't see how you came to those conclusions from a "careful study of Scripture." Indeed, you have not even attempted to show a Scriptural basis for a Sunday Sabbath, just to pick one issue between us.
But to get to the heart of your question: "Let each one be fully convinced in his own mind" (Rom. 14:5). Beyond that and beyond the Lord's warning not to teach others to break His commandments, even the least of them (Mt. 5:19 again), I don't judge you. I think you're wrong, but I'm not arrogant enough to pretend to be able to see where you stand with the Lord.
What I have endeavored from the first is to get you to stop seeking to pass judgment on me. You can't quite seem to grasp that concept.
Does that mean I don't love Jesus?
Not at all. If you are following His commandments to the extent of your understanding of them, you are loving Jesus. You and He know whether you are honestly doing that; I do not.
In order to do this you need to invent an category of "voluntary" laws that may be kept optionally by both Jews and gentiles.
My friend, there are very few commandments that I would term "voluntary." Kosher happens to be one for Gentiles, and again, I can demonstrate that from the Torah itself. Once you understand that something is God's will, I believe as a Christian we have a sacred obligation to carry it out.
You need to adopt the regulations promulgated by post-temple rabbis . . .
Well, let's get into that one, insofar as it addresses your objection in post #361 that in observing the Feastdays, I am following traditions of men.
Yes and no.
The essential core of the Feastdays, using this as an example, is distinctly given by the commands of the Torah. This remains true even with the necessity of setting aside the sacrificial components for lack of a Temple and/or NT amendment of the sacrificial law by Yeshua's High Priesthood (I'm going to sidestep that issue for the sake of this discussion). For example, we just celebrated Rosh Hashanah. According to the Torah, it is a day for a solemn assembly and a teruah, a great blast (i.e., from a trumpet) or shout.
Now, it is true that the nature of that teruah is not distinctly specified by Lev. 23--it could be a trumpet or just a shout by the people. The rabbis and priests understood the sound to be that of a shofar, a ram's horn, and drew that understanding from the numerous Psalms which speak of the teruah of the shofar (i.e., Ps. 27, which has always been associated with the Feast of Trumpets). In other words, associating the shofar with this day didn't just come out of the air, but out of Scriptural exegesis. I happen to know this because instead of merely dismissing all rabbinic traditions and arguments, I have been taking the time to read them and see how they applied the Scriptures. Sometimes they're completely off (like that blind spot concerning Yeshua), but they weren't dumb.
In like manner, because the day is associated with Yom Kippur and Sukkot on the calendar, they associated the three days with a cycle of being called before the Lord, repenting and being atoned for, and then entering the great celebration that was the Feast of Tabernacles.
The traditional prayers that are said on this day by observant Jews are, for the most part, entirely Biblical (and indeed, quote Scripture directly). As Messianics, we see not only the Scriptural tradition inherant in Rosh Hashanah, but also it's NT import: In Mt. 24:29-31, 1 Th. 4:15-17, and 1 Cor. 15:51-52, the sound of the trumpet is associated with the Second Coming of our Lord and our Resurrection and Rapture (catching up) to go meet Him in the clouds of the sky. In fact, you can see the parallels in many of the Psalms that are traditional to sing on this day. Indeed, "the last trump" is used by some early Jewish sources to refer to the final trumpet call of Rosh Hashanah, and Sha'ul's use of that technical term here seems to be confirmation that this Feastday is in view.
In my earlier post, I said that with Luther and all Christian tradition, I seek to chew up the meat and spit out the bones. As Messianics, we seek to do that with all human tradition, rabbinical as well as ecclesiastical. We're not the first; other Christian scholars, primarily Evangelical, have been doing the same for some decades; I am greatly indebted to Chuck Missler and Robert Van Kampen for first provoking my interest in the Tanakh and the Feastdays, in fact.
So do we use tradition? Absolutely. But we do not continue tradition where it directly contradicts Scripture, or which cannot be shown to be deeply rooted in Scripture. Interestingly, some traditions cannot be found in the Tanakh, but were upheld in the NT. As I pointed out before, the drinking of wine at the Passover dinner is never specified in the Torah--but Yeshua not only honored that tradition by keeping it, He invested it with new meaning.
Now, one can certainly study the pattern that God set down in His appointed times without participating in them. I did for many years. I can tell you from experience however (and I've said this before), it's one thing to hear or read about the types of the Messiah in the Passover, and quite another thing to eat them. Likewise, it's one thing to read about the blowing of the shofar at Rosh Hashanah, but so much more amazing to hear it for yourself.
That's why, when I speak of these matters, I don't run around chastizing people for eating pork, not wearing tzitzit (tassels), or not being "Jewish" enough. What I have always said and continue to say is that one should avail themselves of participating in the Feastdays that God Himself gave us--not as a burden, but as a gift--just to have the experience and the learning.
Likewise, when I say that the Torah is still valid (and all the NT agrees with me), I'm not doing so to enslave anyone. You yourself would agree (and in fact did agree earlier) that the Ten Commandments are still binding (though for some reason you want to exclude the fourth). You would also agree that the laws against occultism, sexual immorality, and theft are still binding.
So the issue between us is not truly whether the Torah is still an expression of God's will. The issue is how we should apply it. As I've pointed out before, the common priest was not held to all of the commandments that the High Priest was, nor was a Levite to a priest, or an Israelite of another tribe to a Levite. Nor was the alien in the land held to every law that an Israelite was until he became circumcised; an alien could eat meat that an Israelite could not, for example.
Now, if you want to try to place a wedge between the "moral" and "ceremonial" commandments, that's between you and God again. For my part, I don't, for three reasons:
First, because the Torah itself makes no such distinctions.
Second, because doing so amounts to keeping the commandments which teach us how to love our fellow man, but treats the commands on how to love God as beneath we mighty New Covenant believers.
Third, because Yeshua kept them, and I want to be like Him far more than I want to be like Martin Luther. "A disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he is like his master, and the servant like his lord" (Mt. 10:24-25).
I want to be like Yeshua. I want to love and care for the poor and downtrodden with His gentleness. I want to love my enemies like the one who said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" I want to heal the sick and drive out the Adversary as He did, by His authority.
I also want to eat only what He would eat, and Yeshua was kosher. I also want to celebrate the holidays that He celebrated, wear the tassels He wore (and healed a woman with), pray the prayers He prayed, and yes, keep the Torah that He kept in the way that He kept it.
I'm not there yet. But by His grace I get a little closer each day, in matters both great (loving my enemies) and small (not eating pork).
And if that doesn't make sense to you "in the context of the new covenant," tough. It makes perfect sense to me, for the very essence of the New Covenant is to have the Torah written on our hearts; indeed, to have Yeshua, a Torah-observant Jewish guy, living in our hearts. Even if I regarded the "cultic" commandments as being "optional suggestions" instead of commands, I would still seek to keep them as best as I may for the sake of being more like Yeshua HaMashiach ben Elohim in every single way.
I am hopeful that there at least we can find some common ground, even if we come at that goal from different directions.
What I have endeavored from the first is to get you to stop seeking to pass judgment on me. You can't quite seem to grasp that concept.
You seem to be missing something here as evidenced by your quote of Rom. 14:5. Rom. 14 is dealing with the issue of adiaphora, that is, things indifferent in themselves. He uses the examples of food -- one who eats all things vs. one who eats only vegetables. Whether one eats all things or not is a matter of pure indifference spiritually speaking. God neither commends nor condemns so neither should we. "I know and am convinced by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself; but to him who considers anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean" (Rom. 14:14).
Now, your error is that you wish to justify your messianic practices based on the direction by Paul regarding things indifferent. But how can conformity, messianically speaking, to the law of God as you read it be a matter of indifference? Either God has told us to observe all these old covenant holy days in perpetuity, or He has not. If He has not then your entire argument falls to pieces.
If God has commanded seventh day sabbath worship in perpetuity as you theorize, then it cannot be a matter of indifference. There can only be one correct answer, spiritually speaking. It would be like saying that murder is not OK for me, but it is OK for you. Silly, isn't it?
So you are left with the fact that you either need to condemn "gentile" practices that the church has adopted for 2000 years, while it has ignored all these rediscovered "messianic" practices, or you must admit that your "messianic" practices do not have theweigh of "thus saith the Lord" and are purely human traditions.
(Again, I don't condemn human traditions as social customs. My family still observes the traditional Italian "Christmas Eve" dinner as a social custom. Since we don't celebrate Christmas it's of no religious significance to us. It's when folks attach precise religious significance that I draw the line. If you want to dress up like a Jew, listen to Jewish music, and eat Jewish food, celebrate holy days like the apostate rabbis do, that's your business. But don't tell the rest of us that God is more pleased with your "ancient" worship patterns than the worship of us stupid gentiles.)
I don't see how you came to those conclusions from a "careful study of Scripture."
So then the only conclusion for you is that you must condemn my approach to God as unholy. I am not keeping Jesus commandments, and therefore I do not love Him. Running to Romans 14 and declaring "I'm OK you're OK" won't get you out of that theological bind.
Obviously, I'm telling people, according to your theory, not to keep certain of the commandments in violation of Matt. 5. I'm tell them that the kind of food they eat is not part of the new covenant. I'm telling them whether they are circumcised in the flesh, whether Jew or greek, is not part of the new covenant. I'm telling them that observing annual holy days is not part of the new covenant. All these things passed away when the old covenant passed away in the 1st century AD. And I tell them that foilks who do these things as a matter of religious practice are self-deceived. How can that be a matter of indifference from your perspective?