What is the Biblical Use of Torah in the Believer’s Life?
The remnant uses Torah to better SHEMA — to hear and to do — the commands of God. God’s primary command is that we BELIEVE the truth about Jesus (1 John 3:23)- God’s Son whose Righteousness and perfect sacrifice as Lamb of God, INVITES US through the vail, to direct relationship (John 17) in the Holy of Holies. As both High Priest and sacrificial Lamb, Jesus is ALL IN ALL. The centerpiece of all time and creation in whom the Father is “fully pleased!”
Letter to the Hebrews 9:12 “He entered the holy of holies once for all, not by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood, having obtained eternal redemption.”
Luke 9:35 A voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen (I delight, I fully and wholeheartedly approve, I am well-pleased); SHEMA him!”
To listen to God in the Hebrew understanding it to ACTIVELY listen with the intent to spring into obedient action. With out the “works” of faith, you cannot have said that you actually heard God in the first place.
If you are not DOING according to God’s Word, you have not truly heard it. “Hearing” is not merely mental data collection, it is a response of your entire being. Real hearing is SHEMA — to directly link your doing to spoken truth as one and the same thing — as inseparable.
And as responding in faith to the Son’s invitation to come into the forever Family of God, we then are filled with the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:19–21) and re-transmitters of Divine Love (John 15:12 ), such that we “love our neighbor” with God’s love — this divine love is ONLY THING THAT OBEYS TORAH. Self-effort and religiosity falls ridiculously and hopelessly SHORT of loving our neighbor with God’s kind of love.
ONLY THE SON living in and through you — the very ONE who fulled all God’s commands — can actually LOVE as God loves. The Gospel is the invitation to let this love be IN you and THROUGH you, NOT love as a virtuous conecpt, but love as the Real Person of the Incarnated Christ/Messiah (Jesus/Yeshua of Nazareth) thereby living out the CORE command in God’s Torah on which everything else depends! By which you will be JUDGED.
Torah is correctly understood as a MEANS of right living to please God FOR OUR OWN BENEFIT of living in Blessing. It is never a means of self-righteousness.
I am saying that it is not that GOD NEEDS YOU to obey him. No, Jesus already FULLY obeyed Him. God never made the mistake of expecting your full obedience. Instead God give you his commands for YOUR benefit. You need to obey Torah for you, not for God. ALL ALL ALL of God’s seeking for a true believer and true obeyer of Torah WAS AND IS fulfilled in the life and sacrifice of Jesus of Nazareth.
Torah is purely for YOUR benefit, not to imagining you are giving God anything by your obedience. You have nothing to bless God with; instead it is God’s own Good Nature and undeserved love that proactiely seeks to bless you. Torah — instructions for blessing and not self-cursing — are a key expression of that.
You full devotion was already commanded from you, and already broken by you. You’ve already hopelessly failed, IN THE EXACT PLACE that Jesus fully succeeded. (Deuteronomy 6:4–7, Luke 10:27, Matthew 22:36–40, Mark 12:28–31) Father God loves you by giving you instructions so as to not curse yourself and shipwreck your own life.
The perverters and legalists try to use Jesus to better understand Torah, when only the opposite is true. The right use of Torah is to obey and appreciate all that Jesus IS and all that Jesus DID, both for you and as you.
Torah, rightly understand will ALWAYS point fo more of the majesty, richness, and perfection of Jesus our only Messiah, King, Lord, and true spiritual Husband. Any other possible “use” of Torah is misuse, is abuse.
