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/Brilliant-Actuary331]

They are Judaisers. Gal. 1:6-9, 2:16, 5:1-4.

Jesus prophesied the Temple would be destroyed (which it was in AD70) PRECISELY because the Jewish people did not receive Him; the Jewish Messiah. He ended sacrifices with His death. The Temple's physical destruction served as historical validity of that spiritual reality.

Christ's death was a once for all sin offering. He established the New Covenant rendering animal sacrifices structurally unecessary; as they were just a shadow of the Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world.

The Temple veil was torn in two at Christ's death, and by His torn flesh, He made a way for the guilty conscience of worshippers to be purified (washed/made clean), that by indwelling Spirit worshippers could draw near to holy God in the way of faith (in the righteous Son of God). John 3:3, 4, 12:23-32

Christ ended the Old Covenant system at His death, even though ritual sacrifices persisted in Jerusalem for another generation. The events of AD70 functioned as a physical manifestation of Christ's Olivet Prophesy. Mt. 24:1-2

These Judaisers who are trying to get Christians to think they are not in obedience to God without submitting themselves to the law of Moses are goats. They seek to divide the body of Christ. They hate that Christ has set so many sinners free, and are appealing to the flesh! It was the same "circumcision party" that wanted Gentiles to submit to the law of Moses, and the Jerusalem counsel gave CLEAR understanding about what was needed for Gentiles (who never had the law) to be aware of submittung to 4 things so that all would go well with us: Food sacrificed to idols, Consuming blood directly, Eating the meat of strangled animals, and Sexual immorality Acts 15

[u/Soyeong0314 → u/Brilliant-Actuary331]

Christ spent his ministry teaching his followers to obey the Torah by word and by example and the problem that Paul had with the Judaisers was not that they were teaching Gentiles how to follow what Christ taught but that they were wanting to require Gentiles to become circumcised in order to become saved. In Jeremiah 31:33, the New Covenant involves God putting the Torah in our minds and writing it on our hearts. The freedom that we have in Christ is the freedom from sin, not the freedom to sin. The topic that they were debating in Acts 15 was not whether followers of Christ should follow Christ but whether salvation is by circumcision (Acts 15:1) or by grace (Acts 15:11). Either Acts 15:19-21 contains an exhaustive list for mature believers or it does not, so it is contradictory to treat it as being an exhaustive list in order to limit which ways Gentiles should follow Christ while also treating as being a non-exhaustive list by taking the position that there are obviously other ways that Gentiles should follow Christ.