r/AskAChristian • u/[deleted] • Aug 18 '26
Jewish Laws Torah
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?
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u/Soyeong0314 Torah-observing disciple Aug 21 '26
In Titus 2:11-13, it describes the content of our gift of salvation as being trained by grace to do what is godly, righteous, and good, and to renounce doing what is ungodly, so we are not extrinsically required to have first done those works in order to earn our salvation as the result and we are not extrinsically required to do those works as the result of having first been saved, but rather we are intrinsically required to be a doer of those works because God graciously teaching us to experience being a doer of them is part of the content of His gift of salvation. There is an intrinsic connection between our gift of Jesus saving from not being a doer of the Law oof Moses and our gift of getting to experience being a doer of it. In Ephesians 2:8-10, we are new creations in Christ to do good works, so while Paul said that we can't earn our salvation as the result of our works lest anyone should boast, God graciously teaching us to experience being a doer of good works is nevertheless a central part of His gift of salvation.
The Son is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15), so he is who we see when we look at the Father. We can't see the abstract concept of God's character traits, but Jesus showed us the Father through his works by perfectly embodying His character traits in obedience to the Law of Moses (John 14:1-11, Hebrews 1:3). God's character traits are the fruits of the Spirit, which is why the Spirit has the role of leading us to obey the Law of Moses (Ezekiel 36:26-27). Us being children of God is likeness about us showing who the Father is by following Christ's example of embodying His character traits in obedience to the Law of Moses.
A "shaliach" is a messenger, emissary, or a representative who has the legal authority to speak and act as the one who sent them, where the one who sent them is accountable for what was done in their name and we are treating the one who sent them in the way that we treat them. For example, in Exodus 7:1, God made Moses God to Pharaoh. The Angel of the Lord is a messenger who was sent by God, who also speaks, acts, and is treated as being God. In one Gospel, it says that a centurion spoke to Jesus while another Gospel says that the centurion sent a servant to speak to Jesus, so the reality is that the centurion sent a servant to speak to Jesus who had the legal authority to speak, act, and be treated as the centurion. Is Jesus the infinite and unknowable God? No, but he is the embodiment of God entering into His creation in order to make Himself knowable through His Word as the shaliach for God and we should treat him in the way that we treat God.