Messianics identity is still up for discussion, and we enjoy a friendly openness (usually) on the details. Our full identity in Messiah is yet to be discovered. So in Part One I make the above statement and then consider briefly some of the pesky questions. But Part Two will show what really counts about who we are . . . those who glimpse the full meaning of Shabbat---resting fully in the sufficient love of the Father.

    The Genesis account has brought God’s people into Egypt, for their preservation during famine, and now the rest of the Jewish Bible tells of their coming out of slavery in Egypt and into the Land promised to Abraham. The people setting out on this odyssey now have the Torah, the physical, written statement of what God expects from his people, and from the human race. In our study here, the question is, What does Torah teach us about the full meaning of the Sabbath, keeping the fourth commandment, living in a state of spiritual rest? The heart of what God is telling the human race is: Do not trust yourselves,but trust Me. That is why Messianics can make the Sabbath, fully understood as resting in Him, the centerpiece of their faith and witness, because spiritual rest is holiness itself.

    “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength” (Isaiah 30:15). I hear this admonition in my heart when I am thinking of Torah as “the whole instruction of God.” Or I hear Yeshua: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (John 6:29). And the written Torah tells us, “The righteous shall live by his faith” (Habakkuk 2:4, Hebrews 10:38, 11:6). We have a clear main idea of what Torah is saying, and spiritual rest is at the heart of it.

    Of course, there are many complexities about who said what in what way, and what to do . . . looking at the Torah, the Pentateuch, the Jewish Bible (Tanakh), the covenants of Abraham, Moses, and David, the Levitical priesthood and its temple service, the oral law (Talmud), the halacha of Rabbinical Judaism, and the New Testament—even Church doctrine. If by these sources we must determine exactly how to please God, we have quite a mess—even while ignoring all the other religions. But we are listening to a Person, not a set of policy directives, and He cares for us and wants us to love and trust Him.

    When we ask what God requires of our hearts, the whole answer will include understanding the moral and religious requirements of the Decalogue, but also how God responds to our failure to truly keep these. So we need to understand the Law, but also the doctrinal and pastoral topic of “Law and Grace.” We need to understand atonement, well known in Christianity but not well understood. To those living within the veil of religious pride and self-effort it is a vapor. This is true of the lost, primarily, but also of sidetracked believers, walking in the flesh. Walking in the Spirit means knowing that our favor with God is unmerited; we are “at one” with Him because of what He has done for us.

    In this study of spiritual rest, we need especially to understand the “schoolmaster” doctrine of Paul, to see how the Law prepares our hearts to receive grace. It first shows our guilt, to lead us to the cross for salvation, and it continues to show our weakness, by setting the standard, illustrating our false steps in scripture, and applying these humbling truths to our hearts. We learn to value ourselves less and the Lord more.

Consider what the Schoolmaster has been showing us in the narratives of Genesis. Eve and Adam made a choice that turned the human will against God’s will, and they became guilty; they covered themselves with an earthly provision but still hid from God, then made excuses and passed the blame. Cain brought that earthly strength to God and got no reward, so he killed Abel for showing what God really required. Lamech boasted in his bitter alliance with Cain and his special kind of strength, but he and all his kind perished in the flood.

    Noah came out of the water by grace, but his son Ham pointed the finger of accusation and consigned himself to the unhappy role of standing in God’s way; his offspring Nimrod then tried to raise up the Name of Humanity in alienation from God, but God stopped that effort and proceeded to raise up his special people who would not live by pride.

 
   Abraham received the call of God and began the history of His people, but before Isaac, son of Promise, was given, Abraham slipped into reliance on natural strength, creating troublesome Ishmael. He then performed his great act of faith, which was to surrender all his earthly hope and expect a resurrection—getting back his son. Isaac and Rebecca had twins who struggled in the womb, and the call of God went to Jacob, who became Israel because he persevered in his struggles. Yet naturally strong Esau came alongside to tempt him and reappears in rank with the Ishmaelim to oppose God’s people—to this day.

    If we tease out of these facts the things that humans did and what God has done, we see humans always on the wrong side,  except when they just receive God’s gift, and we see God working a plan from the beginning, having fully taken into account all the foibles of humankind. These are the two sides of spiritual rest, seeing our impotence and discovering God’s sufficiency.
(Chap. 8 , pp. 105-107,  location  1673-1710)         
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    Some who believe in grace want to say that the Law is altogether removed from our lives, as we walk in the Spirit. It is not a schoolmaster for us. They cite Galatians 5:18, “But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law,” and Colossians 2:14, “Having canceled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” On this basis, they think discipleship has nothing to do with the Law. The blood of Messiah cleansed us once for all when we repented, they say, and the Law is satisfied, so we need not measure ourselves by it or aspire to live by it. This is known as antinomianism, using a word Luther coined to identify would-be followers who were turning his doctrine of grace into an anti-law teaching.
Both Luther and Calvin taught a three-fold function of the Law. The first two are the civil or political, and the pedagogical: the Law orders and restrains a sinful world, and it shows us our sin, to lead us to repentance and salvation. The pedagogical function is the Schoolmaster we have been looking at, but only as directed toward sinners who still need to repent. If the Schoolmaster continues to teach us now that we are saints, this is the third function of the Law: the didactic. It instructs believers as they live and seek holiness.

 
  Antinomianism deletes the didactic operation of the Law. It sets aside not just the ceremonial aspects of Jewish practice, but the moral law itself, as a guide to the conduct and spiritual growth of believers. So it cancels all I said above about the Law as Schoolmaster.

    There is good reason to be cautious about this third role of the Law. Those of us who think the Law continues to tutor believers could be slipping into legalism: I am saved by grace but then must grow by following the Law. Luther’s wording is a little heavy: the third purpose of the Law is that "after they are regenerate ... they might ... have a fixed rule according to which they are to regulate and direct their whole life." (See https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Law_and_Gospel, quoting the Formula of Concord.) Calvin’s third function is “to guide the regenerate into the good works that God has planned for them.” Without faulting Protestant doctrine, I see the temptation toward a born-again legalism. We could try to grow in the same way that sinners try to justify themselves, instead of resting humbly in our full salvation.

    Yet just here appears the counterfeit of grace teaching, in antinomian thought. Spying legalism in the distance, the anti-Law teachers want nothing to do with the Law. But their protective stance against legalism is something else in disguise: it is the pursuit of autonomy. When all is said and done, the secular person, the religious person, and both legalistic and antinomian Christians are setting themselves up in a position from which they can still run their own lives.   

 
   This requires some explanation. First, notice that both legalism and lawlessness are works of the flesh, partners in crime, not opposites. They are not extremes on a scale where we seek the middle. Lawlessness or antinomian thought is legalistic, because it is one more way to justify yourself by something you have done in your own power. This particular legalistic move is to form a unique belief, a variation on a well-known point and a subtle perversion of it, then take pride in being among those who believe it most correctly or thoroughly. It is one kind of “faith-legalism,” and it is  gnosticism, salvation through knowledge. It is also elitism, in which approval comes from the special group you see yourself in.

    Legalism itself is another kind of lawlessness. It ignores the teachings of Torah about faith and rest. It reduces Torah to a shabby likeness of itself and employs selected rules for self-justification, meanwhile allowing the religious person do as he or she pleases, within certain constraints, those keep-able rules that were made up. If your particular group requires that you moan and groan and feel miserable about your lack of progress, then you can do that and you will be okay. After that, you can do what you want. Or you may be required to live a decent life and be nice. Once that is arranged, do as you please.

    Both legalists and anti-law people have attained what they sought: self-assurance that they have done what is required of them. Unsaved religious people and the secular seek the same assurance; to the extent they can find it, they are then free to pursue their own desires. Everyone here is a long way from delighting in His Law.

    Antinomian thinking is dangerous to Messianics. Without a robust view of the Law guiding us to holiness, without confession, believers will be sluggish and complacent. The comfortable autonomy that legalists and antinomians achieve with their religious maneuvers is basically complacency. The result is carnal Christians now and, in coming generations, nominal “Christians” in name only—a special danger to Jews.

    The more far-reaching risk comes when teachers of grace slide into antinomian views, which discredits their teaching. Peter in his second letter identifies the enemy’s tactic: licentious teaching and practice are created in the Church (or in its fringes), “that the way of truth may be reviled” (2 Peter 2:2). Those living in a dull legalism are warned of this error and pull back from the idea of grace, fearing they might take it too far. Legalism is the larger problem in believers, but antinomianism throws up a shield that sustains it.

Believers need to know that we are not under the Law, that we are never condemned by it. There is no guilt, and the Spirit does not challenge us to try harder. The debt against us, the guilt of our sins, has been nailed to the cross and is no more. This is a hundred percent truth and does not need to be cautiously moderated. But the anti-law position is a counterfeit, and it besmirches the real truth, which we all need for holiness and revival. Our undue caution about grace is a victory for the enemy.

    The complete dismissal of the Law could be just a misunderstanding, a failure to distinguish being under the Law (no more) from having the Law written in the heart (forever). It may be difficult to see how people who are fully accepted can be corrected. And some may be rejecting only the well known Jewish laws like dietary restrictions. But I see more than misunderstanding here. It is a spiritual battle over how believers think about law and grace. If we can get this right, we will have power, but clear thinking about law and grace has been elusive.

    We need that refined synthesis of law and grace in which holiness is always before us, and we are always fully accepted. The gospel tells of a sufficient holiness that has arrived: the finished work of Christ. But we do not get that “arrived” feeling—the awful fruit of elitism. Instead, we are led rejoicing into a fervent, loving search for better knowledge of the Law and of Him who lives the Law—even as we rest. We expect nothing from ourselves, but we let the Spirit lead us into better knowledge and fulfillment of Torah. If this does not happen, a wrong turn has been made.  
(Chap. 11, pp. 172-176, location 2792 - 2850 )        Top of excerpts          Return to Quick Look
                

. . . there is no better ending than the two paragraphs in chapter 12 that show exactly what we have come from and where we have arrived, and then exactly how we are to respond. The first of these I will break into two, the before and the after:


These are the before and after of salvation, the whole learning curve that Torah sets before us. We once faced an unapproachable holiness, but we have now come to a heavenly celebration of the sprinkled blood, which justifies us and makes us perfect before God. Hebrews is ending with good news, the total success of God’s plan to redeem us, but also the sobering reminder: if we are not going to fall away, then we are going to bear the abuse He endured.
(Chap. 12, pp. 191-2, location 3105-3126)            Top of excerpts