Teaching Team

Sin and Torah

At First Fruits of Zion, we desire to see the whole body of Messiah understand their faith within the context of the Land, the People and the Scriptures of Israel. Our entire ministry is dedicated to "proclaiming the Torah, and its way of life, fully centered on Messiah, to today's people of God." We produce teachings, seminars, books, publications, and Bible study programs advocating Jewish and Gentile observance of the Sabbath, the festivals, and the dietary laws. We have just finished the reprinting of my book Restoration: Returning the Torah of God to the Disciples of Jesus, a book completely dedicated to that message.

However, we concede that Gentile believers are not obligated to circumcision, Sabbath, and dietary laws in the same way that Jewish believers are. What does that mean? Is FFOZ teaching that the Sabbaths and dietary laws are not for Gentiles? Not at all. The word "obligate" means "to bind legally or morally."(1) I offer the definition here because some of our Gentile readers might misunderstand the meaning and assume that those aspects of Torah do not apply to them. The Torah's holy days and the diet are relevant for all of God's people, but they are not mandated for all of God's people.

The apostles confirmed second Temple-era Judaism's belief that God-fearing Gentiles are not legally liable or morally bound(2) to those distinctively Jewish aspects of Torah. But if that's the case, how does a Gentile know what sin is? After all, sin means "missing the mark." The Torah is the expression of God's righteousness. The word Torah comes from the Hebrew word yarah which means "to take aim," or to "shoot for the target." The Torah is the target. Falling short of the Torah's expression of righteousness is sin.

Sin is Transgression of Torah
The Torah defines sin as the act of doing "any of the LORD's commandments about things not to be done" (Leviticus 4:2). Whether one breaks a commandment intentionally or inadvertently, transgression of the command is still reckoned as sin.

Sin is defined by unintentional transgression of the Torah's Commandments: But if you sin unintentionally, and do not observe all these commandments that the LORD has spoken to Moses, all that the LORD has commanded you by Moses, from the day that the LORD gave commandment, and onward throughout your generations. (Numbers 15:22-23)

If one person sins unintentionally, he shall offer a female goat a year old for a sin offering. (Numbers 15:27)

Sin is defined by intentional transgression of the Torah's Commandments: But the person who does anything with a high hand, whether he is native or a sojourner, reviles the LORD, and that person shall be cut off from among his people. Because he has despised the word of the LORD and has broken his commandment, that person shall be utterly cut off; his iniquity shall be on him. (Numbers 15:30-31)

The apostle John echoes the same definition of sin when he says, "Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness" (1 John 3:4, NASB).

An Urgently Needed Message
Today's morally relative world needs to hear this message more than ever. Today's church has lost sight of clear definitions of sin. Many churches today are unable to call wrong "wrong" or right "right" because the cultural norms on which wrong and right once rested have shifted. Who is to say that one's sexual preference is wrong or right? Who is to say what is permitted and what is forbidden?

A Messianic Jewish missionary to a third-world African country once told me, "Africa doesn't need the Gospel message, Africa needs the Torah." I asked her to explain what she meant by that. She replied, "Most of the country I serve in is already Christian. People believe the Gospel, but they have no solid sense of right or wrong. They have no idea that it is wrong to cheat or steal or to abuse others. They have no idea that deceit is sinful."

You don't need to go to Africa to find moral confusion like that. Christianity in the west also needs the Torah. We have lost sight of what sin means. Today each man defines sin for himself: "In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:25). In the Bible, sin is explicitly defined as breaking God's commandments. Whether we break the law inadvertently or intentionally, breaking God's Torah is always a sin.

Different Laws for Different People
But if breaking the Torah is the definition of sin, why did the apostles allow the Gentile believers to remain exempt from laws like circumcision? Different laws apply to different people.

Just for a moment, set aside the conversion-to-Judaism-factor and consider only the literal, physical removal of a person's foreskin. Suppose a Jewish person refuses to circumcise his eight-day-old son. Except in the case of a medical problem which would endanger the baby, the Bible teaches that his refusal to observe the commandment is a sin. As an Israelite, he is obligated to the commandment of circumcision. The same, however, is not true for a Gentile believer. The apostles make it abundantly clear that Gentiles are not required to undergo literal, physical circumcision. For that matter, neither are Jewish women. So already, we see that one of the Torah's laws applies to different people differently:

Uncircumcised Gentile believer: Not Sin.
Uncircumcised Jewish man: Sin.
Uncircumcised Jewish woman: Not sin.

The Torah itself often differentiates. It provides laws for distinct groupings of people such as men, women, widows, and children. It makes distinctions between laws for various offices such as king, priest, high priest, judge, and Levite. Further distinctions in law apply to unmarried women living in their father's household, betrothed women, the brother-in-law of a childless widow, people under a vow, and Nazarites. The Torah's laws distinguish between young and old. We are to rise in the presence of the gray headed (but the gray headed are not to rise in the presence of the young). The Levite below a certain age is not required to work in the Temple, the Levite above a certain age is required, and the Levite over fifty is retired. Many more examples could be cited. The same holds true for Jews and Gentiles. Certain commandments, such as circumcision, apply specifically to the Jewish people.

This is not a question of a unique calling for Jews within the body of Messiah in contrast to Gentiles. In terms of calling unto salvation and the kingdom of heaven, there is no difference in Messiah. "He made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith" (Acts 15:9). "There is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all" (Colossians 3:11). God's calling upon all men is a call to salvation in Messiah, it is not something that determines unique functions for various groups within the body of Messiah. But there is a difference between the call to salvation and the legal obligation of individuals.

For example, the Jewish people have a unique legal liability to those commandments which are designated as signs of the covenant between God and the Israelites: circumcision and the Sabbath. This does not mean that Gentiles should not be circumcised. (In fact, it seems reasonable that they would want to be circumcised and to circumcise their children as part of their identification with the adoptive family of Israel.) It certainly does not mean that Gentiles should not keep the Sabbath. (It seems completely natural that the Gentile believer would keep the Sabbath. The Sabbath is God's holy day and the only biblical day of worship.) But it does mean that the Gentile believers are not legally liable for those things.

Why is there no list?
Aside from circumcision, though, the apostles provide no list of commandments from which Gentile believers are exempt. Perhaps Paul comes close to doing so in Colossians 2:16 where he lists the Sabbath, the festivals, the new moons, and the dietary laws as matters for which the Gentile believers of Colossae should not be judged. He only says that Gentile believers are not to be judged regarding those matters--a statement he could not have made regarding Jewish believers. Nevertheless, the passage cannot be considered a final, authoritative statement for Gentile observance since that was not Paul's intention in the context. There is no specific, complete list of exemptions for Gentiles. Why would the apostles have failed to create a comprehensive list of exemptions?

By the same token, we might ask, "Why did the apostles fail to give us step-by-step instructions for baptism?" Based upon the apostolic "argument from silence," Christianity justifies all manner of baptismal interpretation and procedure. (They never said it isn't supposed to be done a certain way.) Isn't it odd that the apostles never mentioned the procedure for something so central to apostolic practice?

Actually, it's not unusual at all. Baptism was a common institution in second Temple Judaism. Immersion in a mikvah was just a normal part of Jewish life. The apostles did not need to describe it in any detail because it was a natural, assumed part of their culture. Today, long removed from that culture, Christianity suffers a great deal of confusion over what baptism is and how it is to be done. That confusion, however, can be dispelled by studying the rites and institutions of ritual purity and immersion in second Temple Judaism.

The same principle applies to the question of Gentile obligation. In the apostolic era, Gentiles were already a common part of the synagogue world. Every synagogue seems to have had a substantial presence of God-fearing Gentiles. The Jewish community already had expectations in place regarding the God-fearing Gentile. The differences in legal obligations were naturally assumed because of the broader practices of the Jewish community. It never occurred to the apostles to document those differences because they were, at the time, self-evident.

The Four Essentials
But in Acts 15, the apostles did prescribe a list of four essential matters for Gentile believers. Many scholars see these four essentials as an early form of the Noachide laws. For example, in the book of Jubilees (a first or second century BCE retelling of the Torah) Noah offers a similar list of prohibitions for Gentiles including prohibitions on sexual immorality, the meat of un-slaughtered animals, blood and bloodshed.(3) In the days of Noah, the Gentile world was judged and punished with a flood for practicing those things. The apostles may have had some type of similar Noachide minimum-standard in mind. The fact that God held the Gentile world accountable for those matters makes those commandments a natural starting point for Gentile believers.(4)

Some scholars point to Leviticus 17-18 as the background for Acts 15's four essentials.(5) In Leviticus 17-18, the LORD describes the sins for which he is about to drive out the Canaanite Gentiles. He warns the Israelites not to walk in the ways of the Gentile nations, and then he enumerates a list of commandments which he declares binding upon "any one of the house of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn among them" (Leviticus 17:10). The commandments in Leviticus 17-18 include prohibitions on idolatry, blood, unslaughtered meat, and a sexual immorality including various types of fornication, incest, homosexuality, bestiality, and relations during menstruation. God punished even the Gentile Canaanites for practicing these things. The fact that God held Gentiles accountable for those matters makes those commandments a natural starting point for Gentile believers.

At a minimum, the apostles taught that violation of the four essentials was sin for Gentile believers. But the four essentials are not the full extent of a non-Jewish believer's obligation to Torah.

There is a List!
Beyond the four essentials, our Bibles contain extensive instruction for Gentile believers. Those instructions can be found in the epistles. With the exception of the epistle of James and the epistle to the Hebrews, the rest of the epistles in our Bible (including the book of Revelation) were all addressed to mixed communities of Gentile and Jewish believers, and in many cases, exclusively to Gentile believers. The primary thrust of those epistles is to emphasize the Torah's ethical standards, reinforcing them as standards of behavior, and calling Gentile believers to live consistently with those high standards.

For example, immediately after concluding his argument against Gentile conversion to Judaism and its resulting full obligation to Torah, Paul launches into a list of commandments that he considers to be obvious in their application to Gentile believers. He summarizes them all under the heading, "For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself'" (Galatians 5:14). He follows that statement with a list of fifteen specific prohibitions which he calls deeds of the flesh, followed by a list of nine virtues which he calls "fruit of the Spirit."

Paul's epistles are a rich source of Torah instruction for Gentiles. God commissioned Paul as the apostle to the Gentiles. He continually offers Torah to Gentile believers, differentiating between sin and righteousness, and frequently pointing back to Torah as the basis of the distinction. Even when he does not explicitly quote the Torah, he stands upon the foundation of Torah law as he rebukes sin and points toward godliness. For example, without quoting Torah, Paul assumes the Torah's definitions of sexual morality, as in Romans 1:27's condemnation of homosexuality and 1 Corinthians 5:1's condemnation of relations with one's step-mother.

In some passages, Paul provides extensive lists of prohibitions and positive commandments which echo the Torah. For example, consider Ephesians 4:16-6:10, where Paul presents a long list of standards of conduct with numerous allusions to the commandments of the Torah including specific prohibitions and positive commandments. It even contains a direct quotation of Exodus 20:12's instruction to honor one's parents. All of the epistles are filled with comparable passages of instructions in godly living, the purpose of which is to define sin, inspire repentance, and point the Gentiles towards holiness and righteousness as found in God's Torah. As he does, he points them toward the Torah and the further testimony of scripture. He tells Timothy that all scripture is "profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness ... for every good work" (1 Timothy 3:16-17).

The epistles of Peter contain similar lists of instructions for godly living, as do, in their own unique way, the epistles of John. In 1 Peter 1:16, the apostle quotes Leviticus 19:2's, "You shall be holy, for I am holy." In 1 John 5:3, the apostle John summarizes Deuteronomy 6:4ff's admonition to love God by keeping his commandments. Even the Revelation contains Torah instruction and commandments for the believers in the seven churches. Conspicuously absent from all such apostolic lists, however, are those commandments that late second Temple Judaism considered as distinctive marks of Jewish identity: circumcision, Sabbaths, festivals, and the Levitical dietary standards. One might claim that this is simply an argument from silence, but if so, the apostles made a very loud silence. The complete absence of instructions to Gentiles about the rudiments of Sabbaths, festivals, and dietary laws is a glaring omission which can best be explained by its obvious implication: the apostles did not regard those matters as legally obligatory upon the Gentiles.

This is not suggesting that the New Testament has replaced the Old Testament, nor is it akin to dispensationalist thought which divides the relevance of the scripture across different eras of salvation history. Instead, the apostles who wrote the New Testament were following the distinctions between Jewish and Gentile obligation that they found implicit in the Torah itself. They were not supplanting the Torah or overturning its laws, they were confirming what they found in the Torah for Gentiles and transmitting those commandments to the Gentile believers.

They taught the Gentile believers the laws of Torah that applied directly to Gentiles as a fulfillment of Yeshua's great commission. In Matthew 28, Yeshua sent his disciples to the Gentiles. He told them to teach the Gentiles to observe everything that he had commanded them. One of the things he had commanded his disciples to do is to keep the whole Torah, even the least of the commandments. When he said that though, Yeshua did not mean that all distinction between gender, role, age, and nation should be eliminated. He did not mean that the disciples should teach women that they must be circumcised; nor did he mean that the disciples should teach men to go through purification after childbirth. He did not mean that the apostles should teach Gentiles to keep the laws assigned to the high priest. Even in the great commission, the Bible assumes a distinction in application of the commandments. The apostles understood that, and they based their decisions for Gentiles upon that Torah-distinction. The Torah's standards of godly living presented in the epistles are the fulfillment of the great commission.

Are You Saying It's Not a Sin to Eat Pork?
Since releasing our paper, "One Law and the Messianic Gentile" in Messiah Journal 101, we received several concerned inquiries about dietary laws and Sabbath observance. In fact, a sizable majority of people writing to us in defense of a "One Law" perspective seemed to be primarily concerned about people who eat pork and worship on Sunday. They felt that we were, in essence, endorsing people to sin by encouraging them to eat unclean meats and neglect the Sabbath.

We were saddened to realize how many Messianic Gentiles had come to use Saturday worship and Levitical dietary laws as the measuring stick of righteousness. It seems, in much of the Messianic Jewish movement today, honoring Sabbath as the day of worship and keeping the prohibition on pork and shell fish are the truly weighty matters of the Torah.

It is not as if we at First Fruits of Zion neglect these matters. We advocate their observance for all believers. But we are surprised at how particulars like unclean meats, tzitzit, and Saturday worship, all things which the apostles never explicitly enjoined upon the Gentiles, have become the focus of faith and practice for Messianic Gentiles. It seems that today's Messianic movement could benefit from an apostolic reprioritization. We should all feel reluctant to judge others about matters of Torah:

Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. (Romans 2:1)

You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. (Romans 2:23)

For the record, we at First Fruits of Zion advocate a Sabbatarian lifestyle and Levitical diet for Gentile believers. Our reputation for scrupulous observance in these matters is well known and attested in the Messianic movement. Our policy is to live by high personal standards without condemnation, and we believe the apostles did the same. The God-fearing Gentiles in the days of the apostles would certainly, by-and-large, have been both Sabbath observant and kosher-keeping as they emulated their teachers. (Paul could hardly have rebuked Peter for not eating with the Gentiles in Antioch if they had been serving up ham.) But when it comes to defining sin, we acknowledge that the Apostles distinguished between Jewish and Gentile legal obligation to God's commandments.

Summary
What is sin? Sin is transgression of God's commandments. But God's commandments apply to different people in different ways. The Jerusalem council provided four essential minimums for Gentiles. Those four essentials may have been derived from the laws given to Noah and the laws found in Leviticus 17-18. The apostles went on to teach the Gentiles further obligation to Torah, as evidenced in the codes of conduct found in the epistles. Violation of those codes of conduct is sin because those codes are predicated upon the commandments of Torah, not just apostolic whim. However, according to our best understanding of the Bible, the apostles did not bind the Gentile believers to circumcision, the Sabbaths, the calendar, or Levitical dietary standards.

Despite the fact that Gentile believers are not bound to those particular aspects of Torah in the same way that Jewish believers are, we will all do well to practice them and incorporate them into our homes and assemblies. A Gentile believer who neglects to do so is not sinning, but he is erecting a barrier between himself and his adopted family, the people Israel. The Gentile who ignores the Sabbath day rejects the gift of God's Sabbath menuchah and turns his back on the opportunity to experience the Sabbath's holiness, blessing and peace. The Gentile who indulges in unclean meats eats of that which God has called abominable for food. These things cannot be accounted to the Gentile believer as sins, but they are departures from the greater people of Israel and the focus of biblical living.

This represents our best effort to take the Bible literally and understand how the apostles interpreted the Torah for their generation. I sympathize with those of you who believe that we are wrong about these matters. I shared your convictions, and even authored some of them, myself. We at FFOZ make no claim to possessing absolute truth. Study the matter out for yourself and come to your own conclusions.

A Final Word from Boaz:
The scriptures present a consistent pattern of Israel providing Torah as light to the nations. We encourage believing Gentiles to embrace the Torah and their place within Israel as fellow-heirs, one new man, grafted in to the commonwealth of Israel. I believe that bringing the Torah back to Christianity is the most critical mission to be fulfilled within the body of Messiah today.

The apostle James says, "Wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace" (James 3:17-18). At First Fruits of Zion, we are not about condemning others, judging others, or looking down on others. This is especially true regarding commandments that are not explicitly incumbent upon Gentile believers. Instead, our ministry is dedicated to lifting up the Torah as God's perfect revelation. We believe in sowing the message in peace and making peace as we take the Torah to the nations, and we pray for a harvest of righteousness lived out by God's people.

I hope to see many Gentile believers touched for the message of God's Torah in the coming months and years. Please pray for us in this mission as we also pray for you.

References
1. Merriam-Webster
2. See Boaz Michael's blog "Moral vs. Ceremonial."
3. Jubilees 6-7.
4. The Noah passages might also explain why the apostles did not press the Levitical dietary code upon the Gentile believers. To do so would have been to contradict the Torah's explicit statement in Genesis 9:3.
4. For example, Richard Bauckham, James: Wisdom of James, Disciple of Jesus the Sage (London/New York: Routledge, 2006), 148-149; Markus Bockmuehl, Jewish Law in Gentile Churches: Halakhah and the Beginning of Christian Public Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2000), 165; Jacob Jervell, Luke and the People of God: A New Look at Luke-Acts (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1972), 144, 190; Oskar Skarsaune "The History of Jewish Believers in the Early Centuries--Perspectives and Framework," Jewish Believers in Jesus ([eds. Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik] Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2007), 766. / In the Shadow of the Temple: Jewish Influences on Early Christianity (Downers Grove, IN: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 170.

Links to Related Blog Articles:
Reasoning Together
One Simple Verse: Galatians 5:3
Moral vs. Ceremonial
The Unbearable Yoke
Q&A: Divine Invitation
The Tipping Point
Acts 15 Re-Examined
The Lone Voice of FFOZ
One Law in Context Part One
One Law in Context Part Two

About the Author: D. Thomas Lancaster is Director of Education at First Fruits of Zion, and regular contributor to Messiah Journal. He is the author of the Torah Club programs, and the books Grafted In, Restoration and King of the Jews