Is the modern Christian view correct ?

Their can be no doubt that Yeshua and Paul hated legalism. My question for tonight will be. Is our view of Legalism correct ?

If it is. Why is it so confusing and contradictory ?

Example: When a believer is first saved we tell them to "Read their Bible and Obey God" but the moment they start obeying the commandments someone says "I think that is being too legalistic" or "Be careful not to become legalistic".

After much prayer and study I have been consistently reassured by Adonai Elohim (My Lord God) that the only time it becomes confusing is when we try to explain away the commandments of the Old Testament with the New. Instead of looking at the Tanakh (Old Testament) through the eyes of the new, we need to become like the Apostles and look at the New Testament through the eyes of the Tanakh. Actually the Apostles did not have the New Testament for Doctrine and instead relied upon what they knew of the Tanakh and remembered from Yeshua’s teachings. The New Testament did not even become "scripture" until after the Gentiles took control of the Messianic movement. Trying to use the New Testament to explain away the commandments is a direct contradiction to Yeshua’s teaching. It does not work and creates confusion in our spirit and mind. The two are harmonious works by the same being. If we are willing to realize that and believe all scripture above the doctrines we have been taught all of our lives. We will have an understanding of what is expected of us and be more pleasing to Adonai.

There are two Biblical ways of defining Legalism. Possibly three.

First is: Legalism is trying to earn salvation or favor from God apart from trust, faith and a desire to please Adonai founded in Love. The Bible says that is impossible. Salvation has always come by Faith meaning trust in God which then resulted in obedience to His commands. Paul devoted many of his teachings to refute those who taught obedience to the Law not based on love and trust in Adonai. One problem we run into is one of cultural differences: to the ancient Hebrew Faith and works are inseperable.

"6 And without trusting, it is impossible to be well pleasing to God, because whoever approaches him must trust that he does exist and that he becomes a Rewarder to those who seek him out.

7 By trusting, Noach,(Noah) after receiving divine warning about things as yet unseen, was filled with holy fear and built an ark to save his household. Through this trusting, he put the world under condemnation and received the righteousness that comes from trusting.

The 11^th Chapter of Hebrews says that these Old Testament Patriarchs were all saved by faith. But by a faith that led to obedience. Faith without obedience is no faith at all James says it is useless in James 2:17 Listen you always hear me talk about cultural differences and how they have changed our Christian beliefs. Faith is one of the greatest examples of this. To us faith is either trusting or believing. To the ancient Hebrew faith was trusting and acting upon that trust, to them it was impossible to believe in something and it not affect the way you live your life. Theology to us is what we believe. Theology to the ancient Hebrew was how he lived.

So the first Biblical definition of Legalism is trying to earn salvation or favor from God. Which was never possible without faith.

Vs. 6 above makes it plain that when taken in context, Adonai will not reward those who do not obey out of faith. Obedience without faith is not obedience and is useless. Likewise, faith without obedience is not faith and is also useless. Either without the other is useless.

It was not the faith that saved Abraham but rather by obedience to Adonai that results from faith..

Consider William Barclay on the subject of the Christian faith. "This Christian hope is such that it dictates all a man’s conduct. He lives in it and he dies in it; and it is the possession of it which makes him act as he does."

I can see people getting worried already saying, "What about Grace?" Well to the Ancient Hebrews like Yeshua (Jesus), James, Peter and all the Apostles they already knew about God’s grace.

What about Mercy? Psalms 103:17-18 says

"But the mercy of ADONAI on those who fear him

‘This people honors me with their lips

(Yeshua was quoting Isaiah 29:13)

8 Having cancelled the commandment ofGod you are teaching the tradition of men’ 9 And he was saying to them, ‘You are just rejecting the commandment of God, so that you could establish your tradition.’ "

13 so you make void the Word of God by your tradition which you had passed on: and you are doing many things such as these."

The author of the Jewish New Testament Commentary David Stern is a brilliant Theologian and I highly recommend purchasing both his "Complete Jewish Bible" and his "New Testament commentary".

In the aspect of placing our own traditions above the word of ADONAI we are worse than the Pharisees we obey our doctrines above the word of Adonai every day. Many times with no Basis from the Scripture, at least the Pharisees tried to base their traditions from the Scriptures.

We say brother we would never make our traditions more important than God’s word. We are Full Gospel believers. I say we do it every day. Listen to these examples.

Example: We will break the Sabbath and then condemn someone for listening to rock and roll music. By the way I firmly believe that everything we listen to and watch effects our spiritual condition, but we must be careful not to call something sin that God does not call sin. Listening to any Secular music is a poor decision wether it is rock, rap or country they are all the same. But, we are commanded by God to honor the Sabbath not to abstain from worldly music. Which one do we obey, God’s law or ours? By the way the Sabbath is Friday night to Saturday night. While I am on the topic of the Sabbath we want people to go to church three times a week, Wednesday and twice on Sunday, but we refuse to honor ADONAI by going to Church when he says so, on the Sabbath. But then again we might be going to a Jewish Synagogue if we really wanted to obey ADONAI’s word, after all Yeshua did. Once again mankind nullifies ADONAI’s commandments by his traditions.

Another example: We eat pork, crawfish, and other things God said not to and then condemn some one for smoking. Of course everyone today knows that smoking is one of the worst decisions people can make. They teach us that from Kindergarten on these days. So stupid choice? Yes. Sin? Doubtful.

What about this: The Christian church celebrates Easter, Christmas and Halloween all of which are Pagan Holidays in honor of another god. The moment someone says they shouldn’t they say you are being to legalistic. The Christian church does not celebrate Passover or the feast of unleavened bread or for that matter any of the feasts or festivals ordained by God himself. If we would be honest we don’t even know when or how to celebrate them. If somone started celebrating the Biblical Holidays and neglected the traditional Holidays. The Church would have a lot of un-Christlike things to say about them. When in fact Yeshua never celebrated Christmas or Easter. He would have just as much criticism for someone lying to their kids about a certain non-existent jolly elf. Even Paul said Liars will not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. But, Yeshua did celebrate Passover. He also honored the Sabbath and kept the food laws. So next time you say "What would Jesus do?" consider this teaching. If someone calls you Legalistic be happy these same people would call Yeshua Legalistic also.

All of these Biblical commandments we ignore and have replaced with our own "thou shalt nots". I am not saying that any of these commands we ignore are Salvational in nature. But regardless, they are in the Bible and our commands are not. I am also not saying they are not salvational in nature either, that is not my decision but Adonai’s. Consider these scriptures.

AND

We have become so like the Pharisees who had a zeal for God but thought their understanding of the Law was more important than what the scriptures actually said. I would say that at least the Pharisees Legalism was based somewhat on the scriptures. Ours on the other hand seems to be based more on Gnosticism and Neoplatonism. Not surprising since Gnosticism was one of the biggest threats to early Christianity. And the early church father St. Augustine was heavily influenced by Neoplatonism and even admitted it. What these two Pagan systems have in common is the belief that physical pleasure is evil. Judaism on the other hand teaches that pleasure as long as it is not sinful is a gift from God. I will get more into this on my study of " The doctrines of man." What makes this so relevant to us is all the great reformers were very dedicated to the teachings of St. Augustine.

I want to clarify that I don’t disagree with any of the doctrines I mentioned above, on music, drinking and smoking for example. Just that the modern church puts more emphasis on these issues than on the word of God. To the point where we will condemn someone for following God’s commandment to not eat pork, even worse then someone who has sex outside of marriage. We say about the first they are being legalistic and about the second God will forgive them.

What about the scriptures where Paul condemns the law? Consider what David Stern says here.

The phrase our Bibles have translated as "The Law" meaning the Torah or the Old Testament. The Jews used in 4 different ways. Or shall we say to describe 4 different sets of commandments and teachings.

Here they are in order of importance.

(1) The Ten Commandments.

(2) The first Five books of the Bible: What we call The Pentateuch, this is the true meaning for Torah.

(3) If they use the Phrase "the Law and Prophets" they meant basically what we call the Old Testament

(4) The Oral and Scribal law. This is what Yeshua sometimes seemed to get upset with the scribes and Pharisees over, Giving our own laws precedence over God’s commands. Which if we do this we are in effect saying we are smarter and better than God.

Do you think Jesus was talking about the Law of the Old Testament here ? Absolutely not The Scribes were those who wrote the Mishnah and Talmud more on that in a minute. I want to use scripture to prove my point . Notice Jesus said, "you load down men with burdens hard to bear". He never said God loaded men down with burdens hard to bear but the teachers did.

What was the Pharisees hypocrisy ? Teaching the commandments of man and elevating them to a status above the commandments of God. Jesus never condemned the commandments of God. Only those who perverted them.

Example

"nothing in Jewish law says that Gentiles themselves are common or unclean, many of their products and practices were regarded as conveying ritual impurity or were for other reasons forbidden to Jews. At one point the Mishna says, straightforwardly,

As we saw above they didn’t mind bribing and lying which are Biblically forbidden but they refused to break their own made up laws. By not going into the presence of Gentiles. Is any of this starting to make sense yet/ Do you see any parrallels with the modern church?

What was the Oral and Scribal law ? At the time Of the Messiah the Oral and Scribal Law was passed on by Priests, Scribes, and Pharisees orally. Ironically it was called "the traditions of the elders." It consisted of Thousands of rules and laws made up by the Scribes to explain the law. They believed that The Torah (Old Testament) was eternal and God’s final law on everything. Therefore they reasoned that if it is not in the law explicitly it must be in the law implicitly. In other words within the Torah was commandments to empower you to deal with every situation in life. The Scribes also decided they should be the ones to figure them all out and teach the people. ( There is an important life lesson here stand on the word of God, and DO NOT add anything to it. Neither should you take anything away from it.)

Around the Third Century the Jews decided to write a summary of all these Laws down. That was called the Mishnah it equals a book of almost 800 pages when wrote in English. Later the Jews decided to write Commentaries on the Mishnah, which became the Talmuds. The Jerusalem Talmud is twelve printed volumes long and the Babylonian Talmud is sixty printed volumes long. To the Jews of Yahshua’s day the Oral version of these laws were put on the same level of importance as the written word of God. As seen above sometimes these traditions were even more important then the Word of God. Before you condemn them remember the modern Christian Church has done the same thing but in so doing the Chrstian Church has gone a step further and added Pagan Holidays and Greek Philosophy to ADONAI’s Word.

What did these volumes consist of ? For the sake of time I will give you only one example, The Sabbath. Realize that they did this with nearly every command in the Scriptures.

The Sabbath which is Friday at Sunset till Saturday at sunset. By the way I am preparing a study on the traditions of man which have infiltrated the church and then I will explain how the Sabbath was supposedly changed from Saturday to Sunday in honor of the sun god that Constantine worshiped.

The Jews of that day said work must be defined since we are not supposed to work on the Sabbath.. The principal of Honoring the Sabbath, keeping it Holy and doing no work in it is not sufficient. To them it was all about How much weight can I carry on the Sabbath? Certain groups even questioned whether it was lawful to pick your baby up on the Sabbath. How far can I walk on the Sabbath? Writing and studying were limited. They took a great principle, which brethren is still in effect today and made it into hundreds if not thousands of rules. This is "The Law" the Messiah and Paul condemned not the Tanakh (Old Testament) itself.

So how do we Honor the Sabbath? With original intent? If we choose to obey the commandments of God over the traditions of man. Honestly I do not really know, because shame on the modern church they never taught me. Although I want to take a little break here and say that there is debate about wether the Gentiles would have had to obey the Sabbath, please see my two studies Gentiles and the Law and The Noahide Laws.  We should also consider that Gentiles probably would not have been allowed to teach in the early Church. But here are a few ideas about obeying the Sabbath based on the scriptures.

(1) We keep it Holy, which means we separate it from other days of the week, we make it special or different.

(2) We do as little work as possible to honor God’s day of rest. What if your employer says you have to work? Go work! You would be worse than an unbeliever if you did not provide for your family. But pray about a career change to see if that is God’s will for your life. Do not shop or sale or otherwise do business on the Sabbath if possible.

(3) We spend the day focusing on God’s word with our family. It is to become a day to bind the family together with God. This would solve a lot of today’s problems with divorce and bad children.

(4) We give our bodies much needed relaxation and de-stressing. How many injuries and heart attacks could be avoided if we honored the Sabbath.

(5) You do not start a fire on the Sabbath. I do not know why but ADONAI says not to so but he does.

Today, as in the first church, some of the Messianic congregations like to come together on Saturday night after Sundown to study and pray together. They feel during the Sabbath they should be focusing on God with the family then they should come together as a congregation to share what they learned that day.

"(JNTC) A Saturday night meeting would fit more naturally with Jewish Shabbat observance, wherein the restful spirit of Shabbat is often preserved into Saturday evening, after the official end of Shabbat itself, which occurs after sunset when it gets dark enough to see three stars. It would be natural for Jewish believers who had rested on Shabbat with the rest of the Jewish community to assemble afterwards to celebrate their common faith in Yeshua the Messiah. The Gentile believers who came along later would join in the already established practice, especially since many of them would have been "God-fearers" (10:2) already accustomed to following the lead of the Jews in whose company they had chosen to place themselves.

A Sunday night meeting would imply a break of one full day of work between the Jewish Shabbat and the gathering at which Sha’ul spoke. The Jewish believers, as explained, would have been accustomed to prolonging Shabbat, so that they would probably not have minded Sha’ul’s talking till midnight. A Saturday night meeting would continue the God-oriented spirit of Shabbat, rather than require the believers to shift their concern from workaday matters, as would be the case on Sunday night."

Interesting to note one great Jewish Rabbi was apostisized for breaking the Sabbath.

This means they could not get Paul for breaking the Law so ‘Paul obeyed Torah’

The Scribes had turned these four principles into hundreds of laws. This is the kind of Law Jesus and Paul condemned. How could the Word become flesh destroy the commands which were the written embodiment of himself. Especially when he himself said it was impossible for these commands to be destroyed. And specifically that he did not come to do it?

So we see that these aspects of the Law were already foretold that they would come to an end. We also see, below, that the condition of the heart is as important as being circumcised. While we are on the topic of circumcision I doubt if anyone in modern times will deb ate that being circumcised is more healthy then not being circumcised. 

Jer 9:26 I will punish Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon, and Moab. I will punish all who shave the hair on their foreheads or live in the desert. Even though these nations are circumcised, all Israel has uncircumcised hearts."

3) There is a third form of Legalism possibly mentioned in the Bible. Select a verse take it out of context, give it the authority of God and then ignore scriptures that tell you that you are wrong for what you are doing.

(JNTC) Legalism is the exact opposite of trust. Galations 3:11 assumes this, but v. 12 proves it. The proof is that legalism uses a wrong hermeneutic. That is, instead of "letting the Torah" as a whole "speak for itself" (2:19) and thus guide behavior, legalism selects one verse, takes it out of context, and elevates it above the rest of the Torah, so that it replaces the Torah as the ultimate authority, it becomes "a canon within the canon." The verse is indeed part of the Torah and therefore has God’s authority behind it, but only provided that it is understood along with and in relation to the rest of the Torah. By being removed from the modifying effects of the rest of the Torah, it becomes the basis for a heresy, the heresy called legalism. (The heresies based on Scripture verses taken out of context are beyond number, and the misery they cause is beyond measure.)

Workers of lawlessness = you who work without the Law

And again

(CJB) Matthew 5:16-20

16 In the same way, let your light shine before people, so that they may see the good things you do and praise your Father in heaven.

Remember

Lastly let us consider the possibility that I am wrong on how I have interpreted Legalism and the modern Christian view is right. By trying to obey the commandment’s of Adonai, including the food laws and the Holidays, have I lost anything? No. I have simply had a better life and tried to be pleasing to YHWH, my Adonai Elohim.

Now let us suppose the opposite is true, that I am right, and obviously, I believe that is what the scripture teaches or I wouldn’t be teaching it. What does the modern Church have to lose? I will let each one of you answer that for yourselves.

I am just barely starting to understand the Word of YHWH and I have many things to learn. I desire for more believers to want to learn and study being willing to forget man’s traditions and focus on YHWH’s word. I don’t yet understand how to celebrate the Biblical holidays but I can’t compromise with the world and celebrate theirs. I can’t celebrate holidays that are derived from Constantine’s desire to unite the Roman Empire by combining Paganism and Christianity. The Great Reformation began to come out of that religion but stopped short because of Anti-semitism. Let us now complete the Reformation as YHWH intended it.

I am willing to admit that I am wrong if you can prove it to me without saying "but I think". It is not about us or what we think it is about what Father YHWH, our ADONAI ELOHIM and what he thinks. I truly want to do what is right in His eyes not what man thinks.

So to answer the question at the beginning. No the modern Christian view is not correct. Real Legalism as taught by Messiah Yeshua is putting our own man made rules and traditions above the written word of ADONAI.