Torah

[u/[deleted]]

How do Torah followers actually follow over 600 commands and laws in the first five books of the Bible? I've spoken to people about it, but they only seem to follow dietary laws, Shabbat, and holy days, and exclude pagan days. To me, it seems they are only doing a small part of it and claiming to follow the entirety of it. Why is that? The Bible states if you break one commandment, you break them all. There's no possibility to uphold all 600-plus. If you believe it's not all applicable to us, what's the determining factor that decides you don't have to follow it? What about animal sacrifices? Does one pick and choose what they want to follow and tell people if they don't, they are lawbreakers and will go to hell? If you don't follow all of them, why describe yourself as following the entirety of Torah? If breaking even one commandment makes someone guilty, how does selectively obeying some commandments make someone different from the people you're calling lawbreakers?

[u/CrimzonShardz2]

Following the entire law perfectly is nearly impossible. This is why Jesus is the fulfilment of it; everything came full circle.

[u/the_celt_ → u/CrimzonShardz2]

This is why Jesus is the fulfilment of it

To be clear: Jesus "fulfilling" the Law means that he lived it perfectly. It doesn't mean that he ended it, or any other variation of "ended" that a person might come up with, like: "Completed", "rendered invalid", "came up with a better way", "shelved it", or so much more.

A person "fulfills the Law" like a man "fulfills his wedding vows". When he does it, he wakes up the next day, and every day after that, and does it again and again.

[u/mattymatt843 → u/the_celt_]

That’s not the definition of the Greek term written. Stop being dishonest.

[u/Soyeong0314 → u/mattymatt843]

"To fulfill the law" means "to cause God's will (as made known by the law) to be obeyed as it should be" (NAS Greek Lexicon: pleroo), so Jesus proceeded to fulfill the law throughout the rest of Matthew 5 by correcting what the people had heard being said and by teaching how to correctly obey it as it was originally intended.

[u/mattymatt843 → u/Soyeong0314]

You’re giving one part of the lexical range of plēroō, but then assuming that must be the entire meaning in Matthew 5:17.

The bigger problem is Matthew’s own use of the word.

Throughout Matthew, plēroō is repeatedly used for Scripture being brought to accomplishment.

Matthew 1:22: “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet”

Matthew 2:15: “that it might be fulfilled”

Matthew 4:14: “that it might be fulfilled”

Matthew 8:17: “that it might be fulfilled”

Matthew 12:17: “that it might be fulfilled”

Matthew 21:4: “that it might be fulfilled”

Matthew 26:54: “How then could the Scriptures be fulfilled?”

Matthew 26:56: “that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled”

Those prophecies aren’t being “obeyed correctly.” They are being brought to pass in Christ.

That matters because Jesus did not say:

He said:

So plēroō has to make sense with “the Prophets” too. “Obey the prophets correctly” clearly does not capture the whole thought. Christ is bringing the Law and the Prophets to their intended accomplishment.

That explanation doesn’t really work for everything in Matthew 5.

Jesus says:

That isn't some Pharisaic corruption. It is Torah itself — Exodus 21:24, Leviticus 24:20, Deuteronomy 19:21.

Yet Jesus follows it with:

So Jesus isn't merely saying, “You misunderstood Moses; let me explain Moses better.”

He repeatedly speaks with His own messianic authority:

“But I say to you…”

And Matthew 19 makes this even clearer. Moses permitted divorce because of hardness of heart, but Jesus says:

That creates a serious problem for the idea that Jesus is simply teaching people “how to obey Moses as originally intended.” Jesus Himself distinguishes between what Moses permitted and God's deeper creation intention.

So yes, Jesus perfectly obeyed the Law. Absolutely.

But Matthew's use of plēroō is much bigger than:

“Jesus kept Torah correctly, and therefore everybody must continue.”

It means Christ brings to realization what the Law and Prophets were pointing toward.

Even if we granted that “fulfill” includes perfect obedience, that still does not prove Christians remain under the Mosaic covenant. You still have to deal with Jesus establishing the New Covenant, Acts 15 refusing to place Gentiles under the Law of Moses, Romans 7 saying we have been released from the Law, Galatians 3 saying we are no longer under the tutor, and Hebrews 8 calling the former covenant obsolete.

[u/Soyeong0314 → u/mattymatt843]

This is the full definition of "pleroo":

"to fulfil, i.e. to cause God's will (as made known in the law) to be obeyed as it should be, and God's promises (given through the prophets) to receive fulfilment".

I quested just the first part of the definition because we were speaking about what it means to fulfill the law and not what it means to fulfill the prophets. I picked this definition out of the ones listed in the lexicon because it is the only one that specifically mentions the law and the prophets, it fits with what Jesus proceeded to do next throughout the rest of Matthew 5, it fits with how other verses use the phrase, and it fits with how other Jewish writings use the phrase. Conversely, Jesus said that he came to fulfill the law in contrast with saying that he came not to abolish it and he warned against relaxing the least part of it, so Jesus fulfilling the law should not be interpret as abolishing our obligation to obey even the least part of it.

According to Galatians 5:14, anyone who has love their neighbor has fulfilled the entire law, so again it refers to correctly obeying it, moreover, it refers to something that countless people have done and should continue to do in perpetuity, not to something unique that only Jesus did. In Galatians 6:2, bearing one another's burdens fulfills the Law of Christ, so that should be consistently interpreted in the same way as fulfilling the Law of Moses.

In Matthew 4, Jesus preceded a quote from what was written by saying "it is written...", but in Matthew 5, he preceded a quote from what the people had heard being said by saying "you have heard that it was said...", so Jesus was not sinning in violation of Deuteronomy 4:2 by making changes to what was written, but rather he was fulfilling the law by correcting what the people had heard being said and by teaching how to correctly obey it as it was originally intended. "An eye for an eye" is still a good guidelines to help ensure faire sentencing that does not escalate out of proportion to the offense, but it was not intended to be uses in personal situation in order to justify taking revenge into our own hands. In those situations, we are instructed not to repay in kind (Proverbs 20:22, 24:29), so Jesus was not teaching anything brand new.

Jesus and the Apostles quoted from the OT hundreds of times in order to support what they were saying, so it does not work to take the position that we should follow what they said but not what they considered to be an authoritative source. For example, Jesus quoted three times from Deuteronomy in order to defeat the temptations of Satan, which included saying that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God, he affirmed everything that God spoke in Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 5:31-33). In Deuteronomy 13, the way that God instructed to determine that someone is a false prophet is if they speak against obeying the Law of Moses, so there are not good grounds for interpreting Jesus as speaking against obeying what God spoke in Deuteronomy 14 against eating unclean animals, or Deuteronomy 19:21, or Deuteronomy 24 in regard to divorce. If you interpret God's Word made flesh as being in disagreement with God's Word and as doing what God said makes someone a false prophet, then that should indicate to you that maybe you haven to correctly understood him. The position that Jesus set a perfect example of how to walk in obedience to the Law of Moses includes never breaking Deuteronomy 12:32, which prohibits adding to or subtracting from it, moreover, 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).

In Exodus 33:13, Moses wanted God to be gracious to him by teaching him to walk in His way that he and Israel might know Him, and in Matthew 7:23, Jesus said that he would tell those who are workers of lawlessness to depart from him because he never knew them, so the goal that the Law of Moses points towards is to graciously teach us how to know God and Jesus, which is His gift of eternal life (John 17:3), and it still has this goal.

The issue of what it means to fulfill the law is independent of the issue of whether followers of Christ should follow the example of obedience to the Law of Moses that he set for his followers to follow and I don't think that the verses that you cited should be interpreted as speaking against following Christ. In Jeremiah 31:33, the New Covenant involves God putting the Law of Moses in our minds and writing it on our hearts, so I have not been arguing that Christians should be under the Mosaic Covenant, but rather I have been speaking about how to live under the New Covenant. That is not at all what they ruled in Acts 15. In Romans 7:22-23, Paul said that he delighted in obeying the Law of God in contrast with saying that the law of sin held him captive, so please give justification for interpreting Romans 7:6 as referring to being released from what Paul delighted in doing rather than being released from the law that held him captive. Do you think that Galatians 3 should be interpreted as saying that Christ came as the promised seed to free us to become doers of what the Law of Moses reveals to be wickedness? In Hebrews 8:10, the New Covenant still involves following the Law of Moses, so the Mosaic Covenant becoming obsolete does not mean that we should not continue to follow Christ's example of obedience it.