How Well do you Keep the Law?
If you are Jewish, and you are not
keeping the Law, then there is trouble to be had...
How well do you keep
the Law?
by. Dr. C. Matthew McMahon
The Torah explicitly states God’s mind
to his chosen people. It explains what is required of His people before
Him in life and deed. It explains the manner by which the Hebrews were
to approach God. It shows people how to keep the Law. The mark of
God’s people is their conformity to His Law as God requires.
We may ask, "What does God require
of us in the Torah?" In the Torah, there are hundreds of Laws, or
statutes which God has revealed to us so that we may show ourselves to
be his people. There are civil laws which help us to deal with society.
There are ceremonial laws which help us with the sacrificial system, and
atonement of sin, and there are moral laws, the Ten Commandments, which
help us to live righteously before God. Yet, with so many laws, the
question arises, "How well do you keep the Law?", and "Is
what you keep in the Law enough to merit eternal life before God?"
Someone may say, "there is simply too much to keep the whole law
perfectly. God just requires us to do our best."
We ask, "What does God require of us
in order to gain eternal life according to His Torah?" Leviticus
19:2 says, "Be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy." What
does this mean? God is perfectly holy. He has no unrighteousness in him.
The Hebrew word "unrighteousness" is "ehvel" which
means "unrighteousness, violent deeds of injustice, injustice of
speech or injustice generally." It can be actions or speech, or
even thoughts. Anything which is unrighteous is not holy. One drop of
unrighteousness in something which is holy would forever stain it. For
instance, if God were to sin (which He cannot do) He would cease to be
holy. Holiness is moral perfection. It is being perfect as God is
perfect. It is being completely righteous. If we sin once, then we could
never regain the status of being perfect again. Once you drop and
shatter a vase on the floor it can never be made perfect again, no
matter how much glue you use. So God requires that we be perfectly holy.
The word "holy" (qodesh) means "separateness."
We are to be utterly separate from the fallen world, and separated unto
God. We are required by God, as stated in His Torah, to be holy as God
is holy.
Who could ever claim to be as holy as
God? The prophet Isaiah recorded that God is "Holy, Holy, Holy is
the LORD of Hosts." (Isaiah 6:3) The repetition in this verse is a
literary use of exclamation. When a word or phrase appears in order more
than once, there is an attention drawn to it. God is never said to be
love, love, love, or mercy, mercy, mercy. He is said to be "holy,
holy, holy!" What then does that say to us? If God requires we be
so holy, how is this possible? It is only possible through keeping the
Law perfectly.
God gave us His Law so that we would
exemplify holiness of life. The Torah, in its moral commands guides us
down the path of righteousness and holiness. All we have to do is never
sin, and keep the Law perfectly at every point without fault and we will
merit a true holiness before God. This is a great problem! How can
anyone keep the whole law? How can anyone keep the moral law of
God—the Ten Commandments—perfectly? If we have coveted our
neighbor’s possessions then we have broken the whole Law. If you
stumble at one point of the Law, you have transgressed the entire Torah.
Remember, God requires us to be perfectly holy as He is. From the time
of your birth until the time of your death, God requires you to be
morally holy. Without holiness no one will see the Lord.
But you say, "That is impossible.
Since the transgression of Adam in the garden, we are all fallen and
sinful beings. We are not perfect. That was the reason God gave us the
Torah in the first place!" God did give us the Torah as a guide to
be more holy since we are fallen people. But God still requires perfect
holiness. That is why he also gave the sacrificial system. When we
transgress the Law we are to offer a blood sacrifice for our sins.
Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. The
sacrifice was a visual object lesson. God’s wrath was either poured
out on us or on the sacrifice. Our sins will never be forgiven unless
the shedding of blood takes place. But you may ask, "How can we do
this? The temple in Jerusalem is not currently ours. Others have made it
into a Muslim temple." That does not matter. God never tells us in
the Hebrew Scriptures that the sacrificial system has ceased. There may
be Rabbis today which say different because the temple is owned by
others, but God does not say that. Just because Muslims have the temple
does not mean that the Day of
Atonement (Yom Kippur) takes on new meaning. Again, without the shedding of the blood of the lamb, and without the
transference of the sins of the people to the goat, the sins of the
people are not forgiven. What a dilemma is this! People are sinful and
cannot keep the law. A single lust in the heart or a single evil thought
against our neighbor breaks the whole Law. And there is no temple
to sacrifice in! What will a Jew do?
So what can be done? How well do you keep
the law? If someone were to ask you if you were perfectly holy as God is
holy what would you say? If you were honest, you would say you break the
law constantly. Being a child of Adam inherently makes you sinful and
causes you to break the Law constantly. You have never kept the Law. To
keep the Law is to keep the whole law for all of your life perfectly. If
you have not done this then you have never kept the Law. You are not
holy. You are certainly not holy as God is holy. You have not had a
blood sacrifice to take away your sin. And if God requires us to be
perfectly holy to merit eternal life as his chosen people, and we are
not perfectly holy, then we cannot enter heaven with God. We will be
doomed to hell. The Torah says in Deuteronomy 6:5, "And thou shalt
love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all
thy soul, and with all thy might." We do not do this because
we sin. This is the sum or the Law—to love God in this way. If we do
not, then God says in Deuteronomy 6:15, "Then beware lest thou
forget the LORD, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from
the house of . Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God, and serve him...For the
LORD thy God is a jealous God among you) lest the anger of the LORD
thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of
the earth." God says that those who are imperfect will be
"destroyed." Are you perfect, or imperfect?
This is a horrible dilemma to be in. We
are all unholy as children of Adam. We do not keep the Law as we should.
The Torah shows us the mind of God, but we sin nonetheless. We have no
blood sacrifice in the temple, and have not had one for hundreds of
years, and God has never told us we could cease sacrificing animals for
our sins. What do we do?
There was a congregation of Jewish men
and women in the city of Galatia about 2000 years ago. They had the same
problem we do today—they were not holy, and they were trying to keep
the law as best they could to become holy. The problem was they were
sinners trying to keep the law to merit eternal life. But being a child
of Adam they had already broken it! They received a letter from a man
named Paul. He was a disciple and apostle of Jesus Christ who cared for
fellow countrymen very much. He showed them how they could be in a right
relationship with God through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ. He
wrote to them, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live;
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the
flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave
himself for me." Christ had died as a sacrifice for His chosen
people. His blood sacrifice on the cross as the Lamb has done away with
the sin of his people. Through Christ, you can be freed from the of sin.
Christ takes away your sin, and gives you His perfect holiness. He lived
a perfect life without sin. Then He gave up his life to free His people
from the Law. The Law only shows us our sin. It continually stirs up our
fleshly lusts all the more. It shows us how to sin by revealing our sin
to us. We would not have known what lusting or coveting was if the law
did not show us. When it shows us these things it conjures up our
wickedness to do them. The Law is a terrible schoolmaster with no mercy.
We are not to reside forever under the terrible Schoolmaster.
God makes use of the Law to kill but not
to make alive. He makes use of the Law to strike dead all a man’s
hopes of happiness by the deeds of it; but it is the Gospel He uses to
quicken and comfort us. It is by the Spirit of God applying the work of
Christ to our souls that gives us life. The Law never empowered us for
service—it just showed us our wickedness. It never gives us the
strength to perform what it requires of us because we are fallen and
wicked. We cannot merit eternal life
by keeping the Law and doing its works. Now, it is only by faith in Jesus
Christ which we can gain eternal life.
Galatians 3:13 states, "Christ hath
redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it
is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:"
Since we cannot fulfill the law for ourselves because we are wicked,
Jesus Christ has done it for us. He is the end of the Law. He can
deliver you from your inability to keep the Law. You cannot keep the Law
perfectly, but He has. You cannot merit eternal life on your own—Jesus
can do it for you. He is the one who is able to do it because he is the
incarnate Son of God who came to redeem his people. He is the Suffering
Servant of Isaiah 53 who suffers and dies as the only needed blood
sacrifice required by God for sin. Isaiah 53:5, "But he was wounded
for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the
chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are
healed." Through His death He saves. And God was so pleased with
this that He raised Him from the dead. Psalm 16:10 says, "thou wilt
not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to
see corruption." God would not let His servant suffer corruption so
He raised Him up from the dead.
You can be delivered from your sin, and
be a child of Jesus Christ. Galatians 3:29 states, "And if ye be
Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the
promise." The promise of eternal life with God is held before you
in the Son of God. He has redemption to give all who call upon Him by
faith. Habakkuk 2:4 says, " but the just shall live by his
faith." Isaiah 65:6 states, " Seek ye the LORD while he may be
found, call ye upon him while he is near." You must call to him and
believe on Christ’s death by faith. You must plead with God to give
you repentance unto life, and he will transform you into a new creation
in Christ Jesus. You cannot get to heaven by keeping the Law because you
are unable to keep it all, 1 John 3:4 says "Whosoever committeth
sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the
law." And James 2:10 states, "For whosoever shall keep the
whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all." If
you attempt to keep the Law and fail, if you stumble at one point, you
will spend eternity under the wrath of God for being disobedient to His
Law. It is only through the redemption of Christ which shall free you
from sin, deliver you from the curse of the Law and cause you to be holy
before God through His imputed righteousness. Jesus takes your sin upon
Himself and crucifies it to the cursed tree. He gives you His
righteousness so that you may be perfectly holy in God’s eyes.
With all of this in mind—ask yourself
again—How well do I keep the Law? |
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