04 | The Christ: Torah Fulfilled
So far in our study, we have come to see that from the very beginning God’s plan for his creation has been that it would be run by obedient humans who would rule over the creation on his behalf. And even though human beings rebelled against God and began to ruin his good world, God initiated a plan to rescue and restore his blessing to all of his creation through the family of a man named Abraham.
However, as we saw in our last study, the story of Abraham’s family does not go smoothly. It is a pretty dysfunctional family that experiences some pretty dark moments. Even though they end up multiplying and filling the land, they did not stay in the land that God had given to Abraham. Instead, they ended up living as exiles in the land of Egypt. They spent four-hundred years as slaves in a foreign land and more than likely began to only have faded memories of their God, Yahweh, who had established a covenant with their ancestors many years before.
God’s plan seemed to be advancing forward with the family of Abraham, but that family did not stay where they were supposed to stay and did not understand their special relationship with God as well as they should. And so, in order to rescue and restore his blessing to the rest of his creation, God had to rescue and reestablish his relationship with the family of Abraham.
In this study, we will once again see God taking the initiative as he sets apart a man who would serve as the savior, mediator, teacher and leader of God’s people stuck in Egypt.
Many of us fail to realize that if we are going to truly understand the story of the Christ then we need to make sure we have a clear understanding concerning the story of God’s covenant with Israel. If we are going to gain a better understanding of the man named Jesus then we need a better understanding of the man named Moses. These two are intimately connected.
In the Book of Exodus, Moses is the first human figure that we encounter after the oppression of God’s people heats up in Egypt. God uniquely protects him, sets him apart and commissions him to go save his people from the evil empire of Egypt. And although there is some fear and hesitation on Moses’ part, God still uses him to save his people from the Egyptians and to lead them on a journey back towards the land that he had promised to Abraham.
So through Moses, God saves the family of Abraham who we can also refer to now as the nation of Israel.
Quick history of how Abraham’s family became knowns as the nation of Israel: Abraham’s grandson Jacob had an encounter with God where God blessed him and changed his name to Israel. From there that became the name of the nation that was born from his lineage. So that is where the name Israel and Israelites come from.
Anyway, God saves the Israelites from their former life in Egypt, but they remain unsure about what exactly they have been saved for. They are a nation without a homeland wandering through the wilderness without a good idea of what their God plans to do with them and what he might want from them. The Israelites needs to be reminded of their special relationship with the God of Creation and their special role in his plan to rescue his creation. And so, shortly after their exodus from Egypt and shortly into their journey to the land that God had promised to give them, God renews his covenant with them:
Israel came into the wilderness and encamped at Mount Sinai while Moses went up the mountain. The Lord called to Moses out of the mountain and said, “Thus you shall say to the people of Israel: ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you out and to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’” (Exodus 19).
God had rescued the Israelites from Egypt, and now he wants to reestablish his relationship with them by inviting them into a covenant that builds on his covenant with Abraham. God asks the Israelites to obey his instructions, and if they do, then he will bless them and they will become a community of people who represent him to the rest of the world. God will use them to restore his blessing to the rest of creation. This is what is meant by the key phrases that we just read — key phrases describing what Israel was intended to be — phrases like treasured possession, a holy nation and a kingdom of priests. This is why God delivered his people out of Egypt, and this is the purpose for which they had been saved for.
God’s plan is to have a people for himself and to give his people wisdom for how to live as a community that shows the rest of the world what he is like.
And so to explain what we mean by this and why it’s important for us today, we are going to look at the story of Moses and how that story helps us understand the story of Jesus and how all of this ought to shape our story as Christians today.
The Story of Moses
Moses gets more airtime than any other human figure that we have encountered in the Bible so far. There is so much that we could look at and learn from what God did through him. But for our purposes in this particular study, we have no choice but to fast-forward through some very significant events in his life so that we can get to the one particular section of his story that takes place at Mount Sinai.
In commenting on the large chunks of his life that we simply cannot cover in this study, it will be enough for us to simply point out that God called and commissioned Moses to be his special servant whom he would use to accomplish what he wanted to do with his people. God wants the family of Abraham — the Israelites — to become his own special people and a kingdom of priests who live in a relationship of trusting obedience towards him.
At Mount Sinai, God is going to give the Israelites specific instructions and guidelines for how to live as a community that shows the rest of the world what the God of Israel is like. And God appoints Moses as his special servant who will serve as their mediator and their leader who will teach the Israelites all of the instructions that God will give on how to live as a community that represents him.
Moses was a new kind of servant in the biblical story. He held authority as a prophet, priest and ruler over God’s people who spoke directly with God in an unprecedented way (Numbers 12:6-9). Moses’ relationship with God was so intimate that to rebel against him was to reject the authority of Yahweh himself.
So God invites the Israelites into a covenant, and it is Moses who teaches them all the instructions and terms of this covenant. The terms of this covenant begin in Exodus 20 with what is commonly known as the Ten Commandments, but then it continues with roughly 600 more instructions being added to those first ten commands as we read throughout the rest of the Torah.
Now, before we go any further, we need to make sure we understand this word Torah and its significance in the biblical story.
What is the Torah and why is it important?
The word Torah is a Hebrew word that is most often translated in our English Bibles as the word Law. It means the instruction or teaching by definition, but it is also used to refer to the story of God and the Israelites as told in the first five books of the Bible (Genesis-Deuteronomy).
It is easy to understand why the word Torah is often translated as the word Law because it is within the Torah that we learn about the terms of God’s covenant with the Israelites which includes the list of over 600 laws that Moses teaches them. However, it would help us to understand that the Torah is primarily telling a story; it is not just giving us rules and laws.
Why is that helpful?
Because misunderstanding the purpose of the Torah can lead us into misconceptions about how we should read the Torah and what we should do with all the laws that are found in it. We need to understand that the laws that are given by God and taught by Moses to the Israelites were given in the context of a particular period in the overall biblical story.
What do we mean by that?
It is important to realize that these laws were not given to all of humanity or to all the nations on earth. They were given to the ancient Israelites at Mount Sinai in the context of the covenant that God was making with them specifically. God’s plan with the Israelites was to give them specific guidelines for how to live as a community that would show the rest of the world what he is like.
Some of the laws described customs that would have set the Israelites apart from the surrounding nations and other laws described the kind of moral character that would show the rest of the world what Yahweh was like. This was the way that the Israelites were to fulfill their role as a special community and a kingdom of priests who represent God to the rest of the world. Moses describes this perfectly in Deuteronomy 4, where he tells the Israelites:
“See, I have taught you laws and rules, as Yahweh my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land that you are entering into. Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of all the other nations, who, when they hear all these laws, will say, 'Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people’“ (Deuteronomy 4:5-6).
So, the Torah tells the story of God’s initial actions with the ancient Israelites, and it contains the list of laws that were intended to give them wisdom that would set them apart from all the other nations on earth. However, as we read through the Torah, we begin to see an unfortunate pattern of disobedience among God’s people that leads us to doubt whether or not they are going to be able to pull it off and actually be a holy nation and a kingdom of priests.
This pattern continues until we get to the end of the Torah where Moses predicts that the Israelites will not fulfill their role as a kingdom of priests because they have proven that their hearts are just as stubborn as all the other nations on earth (Deuteronomy 28-29). Moses declares that the only way any community of people will ever be able to truly live in a relationship of trusting obedience towards God is if God does something to totally transform the human heart. But then he goes on to express his hope that one day God will in fact do just that when he says:
“And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you, and you return to the Lord your God and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you… And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live” (Deuteronomy 30:1-6).
By the end of his life, Moses had learned a lesson that all of God’s people were intended to learn. He had come to realize that humanity needed more than just new laws; they were going to need God to do something that could give them brand new hearts. The Torah comes to an end, and we are left wondering and waiting to see what God is going to do next. The story of Moses’ life ends with his death in the wilderness, and the story of the Torah closes with these prophetic words:
“And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, none like him for all the signs and the wonders that the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, and for all the mighty power and all the great deeds of terror that Moses did in the sight of all Israel” (Deuteronomy 34:10–12).
These words are clearly pointing forward with hope and anticipation that God will one day send a new prophet like Moses to come and rescue his people once again.
As the rest of the Old Testament story unfolds, Moses’ prophetic prediction proves to be accurate, and the story of the ancient Israelites ends up repeating the tragic story of humanity that was told in Genesis 1-11. The Israelites break their partnership with the God of Creation and are driven out of the promised land to live as exiles in Babylon.
They failed to be the community and kingdom of priests who represent God to the rest of the world. They end up stuck under the oppressive rule of evil empires and desperately needing a new leader like Moses. They need a new savior, mediator, teacher and leader who can do something to transform the human heart and who can help them to live as a community that truly fulfills the Torah.
And so how does all this help us understand the story of Jesus?
The Story of Jesus
In the midst of Israel’s exile, some of their prophets talked about a future time (aka. The Day of the Lord) when God would send a new savior to the people of Israel who would lead his people in a new kind of exodus (Isaiah 43:1-21). And it was through this new savior and leader that God was going to transform the human heart by removing their stubbornness and by putting his own Spirit inside of them (Ezekiel 36:26-27).
Jeremiah talks about this future work of God as a new covenant when he writes:
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt — my covenant that they broke. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 31:31-34).
Jeremiah is saying that one day God is going to do something that will all of a sudden make obedience to him more natural for his people. Obedience to God will no longer feel like a burden or something that we have to do, but rather it will become something that we want to do. God is going to somehow renovate the human heart and renew the human mind.
How is he going to do that?
The very next line in Jeremiah 31 tells us:
“For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:34).
God plans to transform the hearts of his people through an amazing act of forgiveness.
If you have ever experienced forgiveness from someone that you have hurt or wronged in a major way then you understand the powerful way that forgiveness can change a relationship and radically transform your heart towards that person who has suffered and yet completely forgiven you. The prophets were declaring that God was going to transform the hearts of his people through an amazing act of forgiveness, and he would empower them to fulfill the Torah.
The Torah and the Prophets together tell us a story that is full of hope but one that is also left open-ended and unfulfilled.
However, when we get to the New Testament, we are introduced to a man named Jesus who is described as the Lamb of God who has come to take away the sins of the world. He is also described as the savior and leader of a new kind of exodus, and he is the one who clearly sees himself as the ultimate mediator between God and his people.
The New Testament introduces Jesus as the prophet who is greater than Moses. He is the one who has come to transform the hearts of God’s people and to help them live as a new community that truly fulfills the Torah (John 1:17).
This is why we have said previously that if we are going to truly understand the story of who Jesus is and what it means for him to be the Christ then we need a better understanding of Moses and God’s covenant with the ancient Israelites at Mount Sinai. The New Testament authors clearly saw this connection and highlighted it over and over again in their writings.
Matthew records a story that we know as the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus went up on the mountain to teach his followers specific instructions and guidelines for how to live as a community that shows the rest of the world what God is like. This is a very intentional moment that is meant to connect this teaching of Jesus with the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai. Jesus is clearly portrayed as a new Moses, and it is within this scene on the mountain that Jesus says:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Torah or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17).
What does Jesus mean when he says that he has come to fulfill the Torah and the Prophets?
When Jesus says that he has come to fulfill the Torah and the Prophets, he is saying that he has come to pick up the story of God’s plan that the Torah and the Prophets left unfulfilled, and that he is now going to take that story forward through something new that he is doing. The focus will now be on him and his teaching instead of ancient Israel and their Torah. That does not mean that God’s people can now ignore or set aside the Torah, but it does mean that they must now find wisdom by viewing all of the Torah’s commands through the lens of what Jesus teaches.
This is at the heart of what is happening in another story that the New Testament writers talk about known as the Transfiguration. In that story, Jesus goes up the mountain, and his face begins to radiate (see also Exodus 34:29-35) as he meets with Moses and the prophet Elijah (two human figures representing the Law and Prophets). While they are on the mountain, the presence of God descends upon the mountain just like the scene at Mount Sinai, and the voice of God speaks from the cloud that has surrounded the mountain and God declares:
“This is my beloved Son, listen to him” (Matthew 17:5).
Just like the scene at Mount Sinai, as soon as the disciples witnessed all this and heard the voice of God, they fell on their faces and were terrified (Matthew 17:1-6). The New Testament clearly portrays Jesus as a better Moses and the mediator of a better covenant. He is the beloved Son of God, and now God’s people must listen to him above all else. This is also what the author of Hebrews points out when he writes:
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our ancestors by his prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir and ruler over all things…
Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, but Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son (Hebrews 1:1-2, 3:5-6).
This is why Jesus spoke and taught with an unprecedented authority that astonished many and angered others. All the other prophets and teachers in Israel’s history spoke under the authority of the Torah saying, “Thus says the Lord”, but Jesus spoke as if he owned the place and had authority over the Torah saying, “Truly, I say to you.”
A great example of his authority is demonstrated when one day he was asked by a scholar about the commands in the Torah, and which one was the greatest of all of them. Jesus said:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And on these two commandments depend all the Torah and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:34-40).
This is what Jesus was revealing in his Sermon on the Mount when he taught his people that they are to treat others like they want to be treated (Matthew 7:12). This is what Paul was getting at later in his letter to the Romans where he declared that the Torah bears witness to this new way of righteousness revealed in Jesus the Christ (Romans 3:21) and that a passionate love for God and a selfless love for others fulfills the commands of the Torah (Romans 13:8-10).
God’s plan is to have a people for himself and to give his people wisdom for how to live as a community that shows the rest of the world what he is like. Jesus came to fulfill that plan by transforming the hearts of God’s people so that they could truly fulfill the Torah by loving God and loving others. As monumental as his life was in human history, the Old Testament Moses had only foreshadowed what the New Testament Jesus actually fulfilled.
Through the life and work of Jesus the Christ, God now removes our stubborn hearts and gives his people a new heart by putting his own Spirit inside of us. We have been invited into a new covenant that builds on God’s covenants with Abraham and ancient Israel. God now commands Christians to listen to his Beloved Son, and that if we do then he will bless us and we will become the community of people that shows the rest of the world what God is like.
This is what Paul is talking about when he writes that God wants to “purify a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14), and what Peter is implying when he writes that the Christian community is a chosen race, a people for God’s own possession, a holy nation and a royal-priesthood that is called to proclaim the excellency of God (1 Peter 2:9).
And so, if this is a significant aspect of what it means to be a Christian, then let’s look at what it looks like for Christians to live as a community that fulfills the Torah today?
Our Story as Christians
One of the biggest questions that Christians have been confronted with since the beginning of the Jesus movement is, “How are we supposed to view the Torah today and what is our responsibility to all the laws in the Torah?” We cannot hit on everything that the New Testament authors had to say about this big question, but we can offer some insight to help you get you started.
First, we as Christians need to possess the same attitude towards the Old Testament that Jesus and his first followers had. Jesus said that he did not come to set aside or to replace the Torah but rather to fulfill it. He constantly taught from the Torah, and his followers did the same. Any brand of Christian teaching that attempts to undermine the authority of the Old Testament is a brand of teaching that Jesus and his first followers would have rebuked.
Does that mean that we are supposed to obey all the rules and laws in the Torah today?
The laws of Moses given in the Torah were given to ancient Israel in the context of the covenant that God was making with them at Mt. Sinai. Jesus has fulfilled that covenant with the new covenant. This means that we are no longer bound by the rules and laws of God’s covenant with ancient Israel. However, we are still called to uphold their importance in the overall plan of God, and we are commanded to learn from them, gain wisdom from them and to teach them to others (Matthew 5:19). To sum it up, Christians need to honor, study and teach the Torah like Christ.
Next, because we are to honor, study and teach the Torah like Christ, we as Christians must also learn how to find wisdom in the Torah by filtering the laws of Moses through the teaching of Jesus.
What do we mean by that?
It means that we have to learn how to read a command from the Torah and then discern if it should still be obeyed at face value or if there is a principal underneath the command that should still be obeyed or if the command seems to be a custom specific to ancient Israel’s covenant with God that we can learn from but that we don’t need to put into practice today.
Here is a couple examples: The commands to have no other gods and to not steal should clearly still be obeyed at face value because they provide us with practical ways that we can make sure that we are fulfilling Jesus’ command to love God and to love others. However, the command to not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain is not as clear for us today.
While it does seem cruel to muzzle an ox that is working for you so it cannot eat any of the grain that falls, many of us do not own an ox or a field. This is a particular command where we can still find a principal underneath the command that we should still obey today. This is exactly what Paul does when he uses this command about muzzling an ox in two of his letters to point out that Christians should not withhold financial support from those who have worked hard to help them grow in their faithfulness to Jesus (1 Corinthians 9:9, 1 Timothy 5:18). And so, Christians should still obey the principal that this Old Testament command about muzzling an ox teaches us.
To sum it up, as those who have now entered into a new covenant with God and who have been commanded to listen to his Son, we must learn how to filter the laws of Moses through the teaching of Jesus in order to discover the wisdom contained in these commands.
We as Christians should live as a community of love that shows the rest of the world our love for God and his love for the world. For God so loved the world that he did not give up on humanity but gave himself up for humanity so that we could be forgiven of our sin and once again enjoy fellowship with him. This is the God that we represent. We must be God’s people who fully love him by living in a relationship of trusting obedience towards him, and we must fully love others by selflessly serving everyone (even our enemies) and considering their lives as more important than our own.
And so, as Christians, we must have the same attitude towards the Old Testament that Jesus had. We must learn how to filter the laws of Moses through the teaching of Jesus so that we can discover the wisdom they offer. And we must be what God intends for his people to be and live as a community of love that shows the rest of the world what God is truly like.
Jesus, the Christ, is the promised Savior, Teacher, Mediator and King. He is the prophet greater than Moses who has come to fulfill the Torah and to transform our hearts by putting the Holy Spirit inside of us. And so, we as Christians today are now God’s royal-priesthood who are called to represent him to the rest of the world and to help extend his blessing to all nations by embodying and teaching the wisdom and love of God revealed in all of his commands.
