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Now consider the plight of a new Gentile Christian coming from a pagan background. He has to give up all idolatry, which most likely loses him his guild status, his family, and may mark him as an enemy of the Empire when he refuses to call Caesar Lord....It's frankly hard to be a Jewish proselyte, and there are darn few who can turn their lives on their heads overnight, but until they do, keeping not only the written Torah but the traditions of one of the major Jewish sects

So after two thousand year now what? Gentiles still find it difficult to be "Jewish proselytes"? Are you going to go on record as saying all Christians need to become Jewish proselytes or else they are not as "spiritual"? That is what you and a few others are implying. You're making the claim that most Christians find it too difficult to follow this path but you, and a few others, are making this "sacrifice".

Honestly, don't you see just a tad bit of problem with this attitude? Gentiles have been grafted in with the Jews. Shouldn't everyone follow the same code?

But in fairness to you, what's equally astonishing is other Christians saying, "Well, if that's Buggman's thing of "sacrificing" to God then more power to him. I "sacrifice" in other ways." There remains no more sacrifice. The sacrifice has been paid.

I'll publicly go on record and say there isn't anything that I sacrifice to God. If I fast tomorrow I'm really not giving up anything that God hasn't first given to me.

BTW-Please note in regards to your comment on western and biblical cultures that it is my position all Christians belong and derive their identity and protection from the group, just as you claim was the biblical culture. There is no different between Jews and Gentiles. The Gentiles have been grafted into the Jewish believers who trust God through faith. By taking the position that some can be Messianic Jews and other Gentiles, you are taking the western path of rugged individualism.

So after two thousand year now what? Gentiles still find it difficult to be "Jewish proselytes"?

lol Harley, Gentiles and Jews both still find it difficult to be Christian "proselytes." Almost no significant change in a person's behavior or lifestyle happens overnight, except on some very rare occasions where the Holy Spirit decides to do it "the easy way"--just read about the struggles of those who are trying to leave a homosexual lifestyle to walk with the Lord. All of us spend the rest of our lives "tweaking" our behavior to more closely conform to God's standard in Scripture.

You're making the claim that most Christians find it too difficult to follow this path but you, and a few others, are making this "sacrifice".

Oh, please. Your argument by outrage is wearing just a bit thin, and your accusations of attitude are mere projection. I've said no such thing--I've said that there was a reason why the Apostles didn't demand that new proselytes walk perfectly in the Torah as a prerequsite to inclusion in the community. They didn't even demand that they conform to what a modern Gentile church regards as the norm for Christian behavior. All they did was require them to separate from the worship of pagan gods and believe in Yeshua. Obviously, that was a baseline, not an end.

Imagine if a Wiccan became a Christian in your congregation. The first and prerequisite condition would naturally be that she put away all of her paganism and occultic practices. Would you also require that she memorize and be able to perfectly spout Calvinist theology before you let her in to teach her? I doubt it. I imagine that you'd set a minimum bar and then give her room and time to study the Bible both with you and on her own, gently correcting her errors as she learns, and trusting the Lord to finish what He's started.

Conversely, do you regard the hours you've spent studying Calvinist theology to be some horrible burden, some amazing sacrifice that ordinary mortals can't pull off? What about the growth in your Christian walk that you've made by purposefully changing behaviors because of various things you've found in Scripture in your studies? Or do you regard the gain, the growing walk with the Lord, to be far an away better than the sacrifice of time, leisure, and whatever sins you've given up?

Same here.

Shouldn't everyone follow the same code?

I certainly think so; tell me, which code did the Apostles follow? Which code did the Jerusalem Church follow? Which code did Yeshua follow?

Go thou and do likewise.

There remains no more sacrifice. The sacrifice has been paid.

Funny, Sha'ul didn't seem to think so, at least not in the sense that we are using the term in this discussion (Phil. 4:18). Who are you to contradict him again? Or are you simply committing a form of the logical fallacy of ambiguity?

By taking the position that some can be Messianic Jews and other Gentiles, you are taking the western path of rugged individualism.

No more so than God saying that some Israelites could be priests and others not, or than the Apostles strictly adhering to Torah themselves while giving the Gentile believers more leeway.

As usual, you are trying to have it both ways: On the one hand, if I say that everyone should be Torah-observant, you get to accuse me of legalism and Judaizing. On the other hand, if I allow for grace and honest disagreement, you accuse me of having some kind of double-standard. You're failing on a very simple point: I've shown that the Scriptures themselves establish different standards for different people under different circumstances. You have made much sound and fury, but you have not yet even addressed, let alone countered, my Scriptural examples. Moreover, I've shown that there were very good reasons for the Apostles not to dump all the Torah at once on new Gentile converts, but also that they kept a rigid standard of Torah-observance themselves. Therefore, my position is 100% consistant with theirs.

My position has been consistant all along: Every command of Scripture should be kept to the best of our physical ability, and I utterly reject the "what's in it for me?" system of ethics. However, I do not expect someone to be able to keep or even know all of the commands they are to keep immediately on conversion, and I don't hold honest disagreement on this subject against my brothers and sisters in the Messiah. Instead, I continually enjoin my brethren to go back to the Book, read it for themselves, and apply what they read and understand to be God's commands to their lives without trying to find loopholes as to why they shouldn't have to, and I trust the Spirit, who writes the Torah in our hearts (Jer. 31:33) and moves us to obey God's commands (Ezk. 36:27) to grow them as God wills, not as I will.