A lot of people have asked me and have probably wondered what is going on with my new myspace name “Living the Torah”. I hope this essay (and the ones following) will put any worries or rumors to rest.
The past year and a half I have discovered something that is ancient and something that has been lost that I didn’t realize was lost. What I discovered is something that I’ve been searching for ever since I became a believer and began studying the Scriptures. What I’ve discovered is the roots to my Faith. Before I describe exactly what that is, I want to give a brief summery of my journey to my discovery.
From the earliest of memories, Church has always has been a part of my life. However, from my early years to my teenage years, I was never really into Church. I thought of it as a time to wear nice clothes and play with my friends that I didn’t get to see during the week. From my point of view, the Bible was a book that had many interesting stories about Adam and Eve, Jesus, and other men. Outside the times that it was occasionally read to me before bed and trying to memorize a few verses at Sunday school to earn a few tickets to buy candy with, it was hardly ever thought about. Then one day, towards the end of my senior year of high school, I had a desire to learn about the Scriptures and my Faith. I didn’t know exactly where to start, so I figured the ‘New Testament’ was a good place to begin. I opened up to Matthew and started reading one Saturday morning. I also started to ask lots of questions about my faith and other religions with anyone that I thought might have the answers. Asking questions and entering into dialogue with others became one of the primary ways that I learned about my faith. I believed and still believe that one should not believe something unless one has a reason for it and is able to defend it. During those early times I had always wondered what it would have been like to live in the 1st century and to worship how they worshiped and to know what they knew. I always felt a disconnect between how I did “Church” and how the believers in the 1st century did “Church”.
After I graduated high school, I naturally went to college where my questions and dialogues only increased. There I was more exposed to other worldviews and my searching continued. While there, I went to various Christian campus groups, but nothing was really satisfying. I eventually met the “Campus Preacher” that was different than all the rest. He seemed to have the same appetite for searching for Truth as I did and so we quickly became friends. At that time I thought one of the major goals of the believer’s life was to get people “saved” for the kingdom. We preached on campus together for the next year or so.
We eventually left preaching after discovering the “Home Church Movement”. For those of you that may not know what home church is, it is a movement today that seeks to emulate how the 1st century believers met and worshiped. The movement emphasizes living a community life, meeting in homes, open participatory meetings (everyone shares), and being Christ centered. This of course was very attractive to me and I was very excited to be a part of it. Even with these important principles, however, my particular sect of “home church” had major downfalls. Its number one downfall was that it was very anti-religious and anti-Law. With their heavy emphasis in knowing, experiencing, and expressing Christ, they tended to shun almost anything that resembled “institutional” religion which included leadership (pastors, elders, etc), the study of Scriptures, and living out God’s Commandments. It was taught that one should not attempt to do God’s commandments (for that was going back to the “old” man, back to bondage) but to passively allow Christ to live His life in you. As a result, teaching of the Scriptures in the meetings was virtually non existent and its replacement was everyone sharing their subjective experience of Christ. Without a firm foundation and passion of the Word and righteous living, the home church lost its connection with the Head and eventually dissolved.
Following my three year experience with the home church, I was left in spiritual limbo as to how to pursue the Lord. I was left with a bad taste for “institutional” Church. I couldn’t get over all the good things that I learned from my home church experience (community life, experiencing Christ, etc.), but I knew something was missing and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. For the next three years I seemed to be in exile from God. I began to pursue a career, but that eventually fell through (to put it nicely). As I began to recover from that fall, I once again picked up the Scriptures as I first did and hoped God had a plan of how He wanted me to pursue Him.
In January 2006, the Lord presented me with a great gift, my wife Leilani. The circumstances of how I had met her seemed to have happened by accident (which is another story at a later time). Meeting her was the first step in discovering the roots to my faith. When we met, I was very much intrigued when she told me that she visited a Messianic Synagogue. This was something I had never heard of before and couldn’t possibly have imagined believers wanting to be associated with Jewish traditions and teachings, other than maybe wanting to celebrate Passover. When Leilani took me to her Messianic Synagogue, I was surprised in their expression of worship. They would have set prayers that they would pray together as a congregation (Hebrew and English). Also, in the middle of the liturgy, they would take a huge scroll of God’s Law (the Torah), out of what they called an arch, and process it throughout the congregation. This was fascinating to me but also confusing. Didn’t they know that we are in the New Convent, the age of “Grace”, and that we are no longer “under the Law” (Rom 6:15; Gal 4:4-5)? I quickly began to pursue the truth of this matter. Fortunately, I was able to dialogue with Leilani’s friends who were able to provide answers to my questions. As I fellowshipped with them and listened to their answers, I slowly began to see the light.
I wasn’t as easily persuaded of Messianic Judaism as I have been with other things in the past. I went back to all the books and tapes from the home church to go over the teachings regarding God’s Law and 1st century style of worship. I also pursued the best teachers and apologists that I could think of in mainstream Christianity, such as John Piper, James White, and John Macarthur, just to name a few. Unfortunately, they fell short to the answers that I was given. I realized that I and many believers today have, from church history, inherited this fundamental presupposition – being part of the New Covenant and under “Grace” somehow disregards or abolishes God’s commandments implying that our Lord came to do away with Judaism, start a new religion, and to establish a new way to be “saved”. I am quite convinced that if one would question these assumptions in the pursuit of the truth, one will find no support in history or in the Scriptures themselves. Christianity is merely a continuation of Judaism, not a replacement of it.
So what are the roots of my faith? It is simply this, to study and observe the instructions of righteous living (Torah) that God gave to His people through Moses which the Prophets, Gospels, and Apostolic Scriptures were founded upon. Rather than trying to passively allow Christ life to live through us, it is by the Torah that we are truly able to practically express and conform to the image of our Messiah both individually and corporately.
Just so there are not any misunderstandings or misconceptions, I do not believe in works based righteousness. Our justification before God is solely based on the Sacrifice of our Messiah that can only be obtained through Faith alone. He is the Eternal One that the Father sent into the world to be a ransom for many. The Torah is the instructions on how His redeemed people ought to walk in this world.
In the writings that follow, I hope to demonstrate this truth using both History and the Scriptures. The following list should give somewhat of an idea of my upcoming essays:
- Modern Christianity’s journey away from Torah
- What is so new about the New Covenant?
- What is so old about the Old Covenant?
- Judaism, discovering the life behind the Scriptures
- Is the Torah for Jews only or for the Gentiles too?
- Moral Law only or all the Law, which commandments should believers keep?
- Did not come to abolish but fulfill - Matthew 5:17-20
- Sermon on the Mount, a new Standard?
- What does it mean to be “Under the Law” and to be “Free in Christ”?
- Common Objections for keeping Torah – The Jerusalem Counsel Acts 15
- Common Objections for keeping Torah – Galatians 3
- Common Objections for keeping Torah – Divided wall in Eph 2:14-18
- Common Objections for keeping Torah – Col 2:16-23
- Did Jesus break the Sabbath?
- The Truth about Romans 14
- Responding to John MacArthur on believers keeping the Sabbath.
- Did God change His mind about Food? Heart vs. Stomach Mark 7:19
- Did God change His mind about Food? Peter’s vision Acts 10-11
- What about all the “strange” commandments?
- Is the Law for unbelievers only? 1 Timothy 1:8-11
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