The old covenant ended at the cross, where the new covenant began through the blood of Jesus. “This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.” Luke 22:20. The new covenant was made with the descendants of Jacob. But later, into THAT covenant, we who have turned from paganism also became included. This is the covenant mentioned in Jeremiah 31:31-33.
God's character traits are eternal, so any instructions that God has ever given for how to know Him by being in His likeness by through embodying His character traits are eternally and cumulatively valid regardless of which covenant someone is under. For example, God's righteousness is eternal (Psalms 119:142), therefore all of God's righteous laws are also eternal (Psalms 119:160). It was in accordance with God's righteousness to be a doer of charity before He made any covenants with man, so that is an eternally valid way to know God regardless of which covenant someone is under. Sin was in the world before the law was given (Romans 5:13), so there were no actions that became righteous or unrighteous when the law was given, but rather it revealed what has always been and will always be the way to do that. The New Covenant is made with the same God with the same eternal character traits and therefore the same eternal and cumulatively valid instructions for how to embody His character traits (Jeremiah 31:33, Ezekiel 36:26-27).
In Matthew 4:15-23, Jesus began his ministry with the Gospel message to repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand, which was a light to the Gentiles, and the Torah was how his audience knew what sin is (Romans 3:20), so repenting from our disobedience to it is a central part of the Gospel of the Kingdom/Grace. Jesus also set a sinless example for us to follow of how to walk in obedience to the Torah and we are told to follow his example (1 Peter 2:21-22) and that those who are in Christ are obligated to walk in the same way that he walked (1 John 2:6). So Jesus seen this ministry teaching his followers to obey the Torah by word and by example, and in Matthew 28:16-20, he commissioned his disciples to teach to the nations everything that he taught them, so did not intended for what he spent his ministry teaching to be nullified with is death. In Titus 2:14, Jesus gave himself to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people of his own possession who are zealous for doing good works, so the way to believe in the Gospel that Jesus spent his ministry teaching and in what he accomplished through the cross us by repenting and becoming zealous for doing good works in obedience to the Torah (Acts 21:20). The reason why Jesus established the New Covenant was not to nullify anything that he spent his ministry teaching, in order to nullify what he accomplished through the cross, or so that we could continue to have the same lawlessness that caused the New Covenant to be needed in the first place, but rather the New Covenant still involves following the Torah (Jeremiah 31:33, Ezekiel 36:26-27).
In Galatian 3:16-19, there is a principle that new covenants do not nullify the promises of covenants that have already been ratified, so all of God's covenants and eternally and cumulatively valid. One thing can only make another thing obsolete to the extent that it has cumulative functionality, so a computer makes a typewriter obsolete but does not make a plow obsolete, which mens that if the New Covenant were something different that was not cumulative with the Mosaic Covenant, then it could not make it obsolete. So the New Covenant still involves following the Torah (Hebrews 8:10) plus it is cumulatively based on better promises and has a superior mediator (Hebrews 8:6). The fault that God found with he Mosaic Covenant was not with the Torah but with the people for not continuing in their covenant, so the solution to the problem was not to do away with the Torah but to do away with what was hindering us from obeying it. This is why the New Covenant involves God sending His Son to free us from sin so that we might be free to meet the righteous requirement of the Torah (Romans 8:3-4) and God putting the Torah in our minds, writing it on our hearts, taking away our hearts of stone, giving us hearts of flesh, and sending His Spirit to lead us in obedience to the Torah (Jeremiah 31:33, Ezekiel 36:26-27).
In Deuteronomy 30, it forms the basis for the New Covenant by prophesying about a time when the Israelites would return from exile, God would circumcise their hearts, and they would return to obedience to the Torah, which is what the context of Jeremiah 31:33 and Ezekiel 36:26-27 is in regard to.
If God saved the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt in order to put them under bondage to the Torah, then it would be for bondage that God sets us free, however, Galatians 5:1 says that it is for freedom that God sets us free. In Psalms 119:142, the Torah is truth, and in John 8:31-36, it is the transgression of the Torah that puts us into bondage while the truth sets us free. Moreover, the Torah came through the line of the free woman, so that should impact how to correctly understand Galatians 4:21-31.
In Acts 15:6-7, Peter argued that Gentiles had heard and believed the Gospel message, which calls for our obedience to the Torah (Matthew 4:15-23). so he was agreeing with the Pharisees from long the believers in Acts 15:5. Likewise, in Acts 15:8-9, Peter argued that Gentiles had received the Spirit and had their hearts cleanse, so he was again affirming that Gentiles should obey the Torah (Ezekiel 36:26-27). It is contradictory to treat Acts 15:19-21 as containing an exhaustive list for mature believers in order to limit which laws Gentiles should follow while also treating it as being an non-exhaustive list by taking the position that there are obviously other laws that Gentiles should follow. It was not given as an exhaustive list for mature believers but as a list intended to avoid making things too difficult for new believers, which they excused with the expectation that Gentiles would continue to learn about how to obey Moses by hearing him taught every Sabbath in the synagogues.
In Ephesians 2:11-22, Gentiles were at one time separated from Christ, alienated from Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, and without hope and God in this world, all of which is in accordance with Gentiles at one time not being doers of the Torah, but through faith in Christ all of that is no longer true in that Gentiles are no longer strangers or aliens but are fellow citizens of Israel along with the saints in the household of God, all of which is in accordance with Gentiles becoming doers of the Torah.
In Psalms 40:8, it again supports obedience to the Torah.
In James 2:1-11, we we break any law and become a lawbreaker, then we need to repent and to return to obedience, which is what James was encouraging them to do.
"To fulfill the law" means "to cause God's will (as made known in the law) to be obeyed as it should be" (NAS Greek Lexicon: pleroo), so Jesus fulfilled the Torah by teaching us how to correctly obey it.
In Galatians 3:10, Paul said that cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything in the Book of the Law, so we should continue to do everything in the Book of the Law.
In John 7:19, the fact that the people that Jesus was speaking to did not keep the Torah does not mean that no one has been able to keep it, but rather there are many people who did keep it such as with those in Joshua 22:1-3 or Luke 1:5-6.
God wanted His children to repent and to return to obedience to the Torah all throughout the Bible and even Jesus began his ministry with that Gospel message, so it would be absurd to interpret Galatians 5:4 as Paul warning against obeying God and saying that we will be cut off from Christ if we repent and believe the Gospel of Christ. In Psalms 119:29-30, he wanted to put false ways far from him, for God to be gracious to him by teaching him to obey the Torah, and he chose the way of faith by setting it before him, so this has always been the one and only way of salvation by grace through faith, this is what it means to be under grace, and it would again be absurd to interpret this as him wanting God to be gracious to him by teaching him how to fall from grace, so you are not correctly identifying what Paul was speaking against in this passage.
In Romans 10:5-8, Paul referred to Deuteronomy 30 as the word of faith that we proclaim in regard to proclaiming that the Torah is not too difficult for us to keep and that obedience to it brings life and a blessing while disobedience brings death and a curse, so choose life!
Everything in the Torah is either in regard to how to love God or how to love our neighbor, which is why Jesus said in Matthew 22:36-40 that those are the greatest two commandments and that all of the other commandments hang on them, so the position that we should obey the greater two commandments is also the position that we should obey the rest of the Torah and love is not doing something that is not in accordance with the Torah.
You are blatantly using Isaiah 1:14 out of context. Do you also think that Isaiah 1:15 means that we shouldn't pray?
In Romans 7:21-8:7, Paul delighted in obeying the Torah and served it with his mind in contrast with the law of sin, which was working within his members to cause him not to do the good tha the wanted to do, which was waging war against the law of his mind, which he served with his flesh, which held him captive, and which the law of the Spirit has free us from. Moreover, Paul contrasted those who walk in the Spirit with those who have minds set on the flesh who are enemies of God who refuse to submit to the Torah. In Galatians 5:16-23, Paul contrasted the desires of the flesh with the desires of the Spirit and everything that he listed as works of the flesh that are against the Spirit are also against the Torah while all of the fruits of the Spirit are in accordance with it. The desires of the flesh causing us not to do the good that we want to do is how Paul described his struggle with the law of sin, which the Law of the Spirit has freed us from, so that is the law that we are not under when we are led by the Spirit. The Torah was given by God and the Spirit is God, so it would be contradictory to interpret Galatians 5:18 as saying that we are not led by God when we are led by God. We need to die to the law of sin in order to be free to obey the Torah, not the other way around.
Christ lived in obedience to the Torah, so that is also the way that we live when he is living in us (Galatians 2:19-20). Grace and truth came through Jesus began he seent his ministry teaching us to obey the Torah by word and by example. In Matthew 11:28-30, Jesus was inviting people to come to him for rest and to learn from him, not inviting people to come to him for rest instead of learning from his example. Moreover, by Jesus saying that we would find rest for our souls, he was referencing Jeremiah 6:16-19, where the Torah is described as the good way where we will find rest for our souls, but they did not want to walk in it. In Hebrews 3:18-19, they did not enter into God's rest because of their disobedience/unbelief, and in Ezekiel 20:13, the greatly profaned God's Sabbaths, so you should not think that you can have the same disobedience to the Torah that prevented the Israelites from entering into God's rest and that it will go differently for you. In Hebrews 4:9-11, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, we should rest from our work as God rested from his, and we should be careful to enter into that rest so that no one might fall away by the same sort of disobedience, so we should continue to keep the Sabbath holy.
In Romans 14:1, the topic of the chapter is in regard to how to handle disputable matters of opinion in which God has given no command, not in regard to whether followers of God should follow God, so nothing in the chapter should be interpreted as speaking against following God. Paul did not mention the Sabbath anywhere in Romans 14 precisely because it had nothing to do with the topic tha the wars discussing.
www.christianpost.com
