[roamer_1]

To be fair to Roamer, each item listed is supported with citation of a Biblical passage. Those are the quotes I am concerned with. But it was sloppy of me to say it the way I did. Sorry about that.

np. but perhaps you might peruse those links and judge for yourself whether the passage indicated actually supports the 'saying' derived from it. No doubt many will be just fine, but others will make you go, "HUH?"

Anyway, your pint about who is named in the contract is well taken. Moses’ contract names Israel after the flesh.

Right... all twelve tribes... 10 of which are dispersed among us.

I have a new and better contract, secured by the blood of Jesus in the New Covenant.

Right... which ratifies within itself the Mosaic covenant, and every other covenant there before.

So Roamer, if you want me to break that contract and go back to the one Paul said I was dead to, you need to do better than just tell me to go read it.

No, I don't... All I can do is tell you - If you don't do anything about it, that's your business.

I have read it. It doesn’t work anymore. There is no severability clause. If I go under that law, I’m obligated to the whole thing, top to bottom, even the impossible parts, like offering sacrifices at the temple. Why do you suppose God shut down the temple, knowing it would make Torah observance per Moses impossible?

Why then have the Jews been able to keep Torah for the last two thousand years? And it is simply specious to claim that you or I have to keep the portions of Torah that are meant for priests, or government... According to what you seem to be saying, YOU as that shopkeeper MUST stone that murderer, regardless of any other thing, because the Torah demands it - That would also mean that YOU must provide his trial too... It is simply absurd, and no right reading of Torah would demand such. But, knock yourself out...

Because He had established a new contract, with better terms. So if you want me back under that old contract, the burden is on you to show me what obligations you think I should be under. If you’re not willing to put your cards all on the table and tell me what you think Torah is, then what am I to make of that?

I have already told you - ALL of Torah is Torah. Whatever of it is yours to do, that DO.

[Springfield Reformer]

SR:Anyway, your pint about who is named in the contract is well taken. Moses’ contract names Israel after the flesh.
RM: Right... all twelve tribes... 10 of which are dispersed among us.

Hmmm... hint of British Israelism maybe? WWCOG being channeled here? And as theories go, is about as speculative as it gets. No grounds for obligation visible there.

SR:I have a new and better contract, secured by the blood of Jesus in the New Covenant.
RM:Right... which ratifies within itself the Mosaic covenant, and every other covenant there before. 

No, that's not a ratification. Principle of mutual exclusion. You can't have a new contract that is fundamentally replacing the old and recapitulating the old at the same time, especially when we know from Jesus Himself the two are NOT compatible. In contract law, to bring all the terms of a previous agreement forward you would need an incorporation clause. Matthew 5:17 is a sunset clause issued during the last days of the Old Covenant, so its not even part of the New Covenant per se. Furthermore, even if one granted the premise of continuity past the terminus of the sunset clause (which makes no sense), the applicable parties under the full rigor of Moses are still just God and national Israel, those named in the Old Covenant contract, and only for as long as the individual provisions in question remain unfulfilled. That's not the contract Christians are under.

(Sidebar here: This is why it is critical to define Torah to painful detail. Prophecy is not legal code. Unfulfilled prophecy has no bearing on whether the legal provisions foreshadowing Christ were fulfilled.  Everything we are debating about was fulfilled in Christ. To prove that wrong, you would have to define Torah more exactly than you have so far.)

SR: So Roamer, if you want me to break that contract and go back to the one Paul said I was dead to, you need to do better than just tell me to go read it.
RM: No, I don't... All I can do is tell you - If you don't do anything about it, that's your business.

Yes you do. Paul and much in the New Covent specification says we are free of the Old Covenant to the extent it foreshadowed Christ. If you want to convince me, you need to tell me what this "easy" Torah is because I don't see it. I see a law which, while itself good and reflective of the goodness of the divine nature, puts me in the position of death and eternal doom. The New Covenant undoes that, because as I identify with Christ in His death, I die to the law. The law no longer condemns me. It can't. I'm dead to it, and alive to God.  

Why then have the Jews been able to keep Torah for the last two thousand years?

But they haven't.  God took away the sacrifice and now no one can keep Torah under Moses. No one gave the rabbis permission to just say, "oh well, let's just be nice now instead of sacrifice." That's a unilateral man-generated modification to the law of the contract. It voids the contract. Furthermore, the Jewish religion still rejects God's Messiah. Is that compatible with Torah observance?  They have retained a form of godliness, but have forsaken the power of God. I respect Jewish people as individuals, as I would any other people.  But I do not see them keeping Torah properly. Not at all.

And it is simply specious to claim that you or I have to keep the portions of Torah that are meant for priests, or government... According to what you seem to be saying, YOU as that shopkeeper MUST stone that murderer, regardless of any other thing, because the Torah demands it - That would also mean that YOU must provide his trial too... It is simply absurd, and no right reading of Torah would demand such. But, knock yourself out...

No, there are principles of statutory interpretation involved here that are as ancient as law itself. I have heard repeatedly from the HR community that the explicit statements of the law are immutable. That's false. The law of the sacrifice is explicitly stated, is it not? Yet it is not only mutable, it can be cast aside as nothing when the inconvenience of a missing temple is encountered.

In addition, as a matter of statutory interpretation, if you have a complete, interdependent system, with no specific provision for severing parts of the law out of "inconvenience," then that entire statutory construct must stand or fall as a whole. There is a rational reason for this. You cannot impose rules for individuals that cannot be supported by the full infrastructure. And you cannot expect ordinary people to try and sort through the wreckage of a terminated theocracy and figure out which parts and pieces might be ongoing personal obligations and which can be set aside. You think it's easy, but if you would consider the true magnitude of the task you are really imposing I do not think you would find it so easy. This is why I am fairly begging you to define Torah in practical, spelled out terms. It's only easy when it's vague. Like the first draft specifications for that new application. "App will do bla bla bla." But once you start into really trying to nail it all down, interfacing legacy data, complete use case coverage, meeting all requirements PERFECTLY, that it begins to look a bit harder than at first.

I have already told you - ALL of Torah is Torah. Whatever of it is yours to do, that DO.

Except for the parts that you say don't apply. I am sorry, but that appears to me to be nothing but a useless tautology.   Have you ever had a client who says, "just make it work!" And you say, "what do you want it to so, specifically?" And they say, "Whatever you can make it do, then make it do that." Utterly unusable. You know I'm right. That's the nightmare client, and we've both had him (or her), I'm sure. The project bogs down again and again because you can never get the client to commit to a specific and detailed reality. Those are the projects that are guaranteed to fail.  Guaranteed. Walking in, you know you'll get paid and fail anyway. I don't take on those projects, and I studiously avoid those clients when I can.

But here the stakes are eversomuch higher. We are talking about eternal consequences. Eternity in Hell at worst, or perhaps "merely" failure to please God as a believer. Based on a specification that amounts to saying, "Whatever, just do Torah, whatever that is."

Well no.  If that's the pitch, I'm sticking with the New Contract, which really is new because it's different from the Old Contract. We die to the law when we become believers in Christ, because we follow Him in death, and in resurrection, and so pass out from under the law:

Rom 7:4-6  Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.  (5)  For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.  (6)  But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.

This is Torah for the New Covenant believer, to have faith in Christ, and be renewed by the Spirit, being filled with His love and all manner of spiritual fruit, which the Old Covenant had no power to do:

Heb 8:7  For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second.

New wine and old wine skins do not mix. But you are in effect teaching the old wine skins are incorporated into the new wine skin, in direct contradiction to the explcit teaching of Christ.  The New Covenant Torah is the royal law of love. We are done with the training wheels. How odd it would be to see an adult riding around with training wheels, proclaiming to everyone he met that we should all go back to using training wheels. But for everything there is a time and season, and there comes a time to internalize your sense of balance and set those training wheels aside.

This is possible and does NOT offend God, because God can change His own law. For example, according to Jesus, divorce was alien to Torah before Moses, but was permitted under Moses because of the hardness of human hearts:

Mat 19:7-8  They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?  (8)  He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.

God can change His own law respecting worship:

1Ch 28:11-20  Then David gave to Solomon his son the pattern of the porch, and of the houses thereof, and of the treasuries thereof, and of the upper chambers thereof, and of the inner parlours thereof, and of the place of the mercy seat,  (12)  And the pattern of all that he had by the spirit, of the courts of the house of the LORD, and of all the chambers round about, of the treasuries of the house of God, and of the treasuries of the dedicated things:  (13)  Also for the courses of the priests and the Levites, and for all the work of the service of the house of the LORD, and for all the vessels of service in the house of the LORD.  (14)  He gave of gold by weight for things of gold, for all instruments of all manner of service; silver also for all instruments of silver by weight, for all instruments of every kind of service:  (15)  Even the weight for the candlesticks of gold, and for their lamps of gold, by weight for every candlestick, and for the lamps thereof: and for the candlesticks of silver by weight, both for the candlestick, and also for the lamps thereof, according to the use of every candlestick.  (16)  And by weight he gave gold for the tables of shewbread, for every table; and likewise silver for the tables of silver:  (17)  Also pure gold for the fleshhooks, and the bowls, and the cups: and for the golden basons he gave gold by weight for every bason; and likewise silver by weight for every bason of silver:  (18)  And for the altar of incense refined gold by weight; and gold for the pattern of the chariot of the cherubims, that spread out their wings, and covered the ark of the covenant of the LORD.  (19)  All this, said David, the LORD made me understand in writing by his hand upon me, even all the works of this pattern.  (20)  And David said to Solomon his son, Be strong and of good courage, and do it: fear not, nor be dismayed: for the LORD God, even my God, will be with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee, until thou hast finished all the work for the service of the house of the LORD.

The pattern of the new temple service was given to David directly from the Lord, to be built by Solomon, but it abrogates the pattern of the wilderness tabernacle, which was also Torah, given explicitly and in great detail. Set aside just like that. Because the Lawgiver declared it so, due to a change in circumstances.

In the New Covenant we learn that the two greatest commandments are to love God with everything we've got and love our neighbor as we love ourselves, that the law in fact is fulfilled in these two commandments. This love we also learn is made possible, not by the dead letter of the Mosaic law, but by the spirit of Christ living within us, which life of the Spirit is only possible precisely because we have died to the law in Christ and been raised in newness of life, with the great principles of the law written on our heart, just as Jeremiah prophesied. To go back under that lesser law from which Jesus has set us free is open defiance of the New Covenant Torah. It is disobedience to Christ, who has fulfilled the law on our behalf, and satisfied the all the terms of the sunset clause, allowing us to live in the light of the New Covenant:

Luk 24:44-49  And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.  (45)  Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures,  (46)  And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day:  (47)  And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.  (48)  And ye are witnesses of these things.  (49)  And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.

Peace,

SR