And that New Covenant includes Torah written on our hearts and minds.
Where did Jesus say that?
Where does he say "believe in God, follow me, receive eternal life and go on keeping all the Torah"?
Yeshua was dealing with the Jews. He did not have to repeat every commandment in order for it to be validated.
If keeping ALL the Torah, and food laws, was a command from God, that his gentile followers would be expected to keep, Jesus would have said so.
"Fulfill" does not mean "abolish".
I never said it did.
The law has been fulfilled in and by Christ. The laws about sacrifices, and shedding blood to receive forgiveness of sin, have been completed, fulfilled, in him. Jesus came to live - i.e was tabernacled - among us, he was without sin, he shared a final Passover meal with his disciples and gave them a new Passover, he died to make atonement for us, was raised again and, at Pentecost, his Spirit was poured out on the disciples. He has fulfilled many of the feasts, as well as laws about forgiveness. He summed up the 10 commandments in the words, "love the Lord your God and love your neighbour as yourself" and gave us a new commandment, to love as he loved us.
Nowhere does he say, or the NT teach, "believe this, but go away and make sure you only wear clothes made from one fabric, (i.e no cotton/wool/polyester mixes), and refrain from pork and prawns."
The context of needing to keep the whole law is justification. If one was to reject justification by faith, then he was obligated to keep the whole law because that would be the means of his justification. If he broke one commandment, he would no longer be justified.
Jesus saves - not Jesus + keeping the law.
If we could be justified by anything apart from Jesus, he would not have needed to die.
The "early church" consisted of all Jews. They did not need to teach about not eating unclean meat.
The early church quickly accepted Gentiles, see Acts 10. Paul founded churches in other countries.
Even Jesus preached to, and accepted, Gentiles - the woman at the well, the Roman centurion with the sick servant, the Syro-Phonecian woman, for example. He commended the latter two for their great faith; nowhere did he say "now sit down while I teach you the Jewish law and what God really wants from you".
And don't give me the ridiculous argument that Peter was ignorant of his new found freedom to eat unclean.
We are not told whether Peter, or any of the others, continued to refrain from unclean meat.
It is in Mark 7 that we find the comment "In saying this he declared all foods to be clean". Peter was the main source behind Mark's Gospel; I doubt that sentence would have been written without his knowledge and approval. Peter was also the one who received the vision about not calling certain things unclean.
But at the end of the day, discussion about the disciples' diet is only supposition; we don't know.
And no, Paul did not change his thinking on meats sacrificed to idols.
He was one of those present at the council of Jerusalem and took their letter - telling Gentiles to abstain from food offered to idols - to the churches. Later he told the Corinthian church that an idol means nothing, that God created all things; but that some people didn't know that and believed that if they ate food offered to an idol, it would contaminate them, 1 Corinthians 8:8, because their conscience was weak. He then said that the Kingdom of God is not about eating and drinking.
So he had been someone who believed that eating food offered to idols was wrong - as a Pharisee he would not have condoned that - but later taught a Gentile church that idols were nothing and they could eat food offered to them if their conscience allowed them to.
Sounds like a change to me.
And even here he says nothing about unclean food, or gives the Corinthians a list of such foods.
So what you are saying is that "Jesus" gave us every commandment we are to keep as believers? Where did he say to not have sex with animals? Where did he give a command against homosexuality?
He taught that marriage, between man and woman, was given by God. He taught us to love as he loves and to treat others as we wish to be treated. Having sex with animals was not a question that people were asking, nor even an issue.
I'm saying that if keeping the JEWISH law, the one that he fulfilled, was essential for GENTILES, and was God's will and plan for us; he would have said so. Neither he nor the church taught "come to Jesus to be saved - then go away, read the law given to the Israelites and make sure you keep that".
They all apply to us except stoning.
Nope.
Stoning for not keeping the Sabbath was God's command to the Israelites, and one which they kept. If you say we have to keep the law, that means ALL of it.
Not trimming your beard, standing up in the presence of elders was also the law; I hope you keep those? The law also said they had to sacrifice animals for sin. Even the Jews don't keep that law now, and they don't go to the temple to celebrate their feasts, offer their tithe, or whatever, because they have no temple. If even they don't keep the law as given to Moses, why do we need to?
What happens to a Christian that commits adultery, but does not repent? Will they die? Will they live, but be judged? Will they live and not be judged? Whatever applies to breaking any law also applies to breaking the dietary laws.
You haven't yet provided a verse where Jesus teaches the dietary laws have to be obeyed - or a verse where he says anything about them at all.
I said nothing about people losing their salvation or their eternal life, so don't imply that I am making this a salvation issue.
I didn't say that you were.
I was pointing out that this is not about salvation. Someone can be a Christian, be saved, born again, filled with the Spirit and serve God all their lives - and eating ham, pork or prawns won't change or affect that. If they were disobeying God by eating their ham sandwiches, they would be continually living in sin and their relationship with God would be permanently affected. If this was the case, then eventually the Spirit would convict them of this sin so that they could be forgiven.
Nor did I ever say we are to live by the Old Covenant. You seem to love to twist my words and paint me in a bad light.
I'm not twisting your words. You have said that all the Torah applies to us. You are saying that we need to keep it and the dietary laws.
How could we do this and NOT live by the Old Covenant? These things all belong to the Old Covenant; the law given to Moses at Sinai, for the Israelites who had been rescued from Egypt.
Maybe you could explain how someone can keep all of the Jewish Torah and yet not be under that covenant.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
Says the man who accused me of distorting your words
for my own ends.
I have repeatedly said we are under the New Covenant where TORAH is written on our hearts and minds (Jeremiah 31:33).
God said that he would put his word and his law into our hearts, not the Torah with all its complicated hygiene rules.
Jesus is the Word of God, John 1:1-3 - the eternal word, though it seems that you don't accept that. Jesus is also the truth and the fulfilment of the Jewish law. We can have Jesus - God's word and fulfilment of the Jewish law - in our hearts.
This is a NEW Covenant - as the book of Hebrews says, where there is a new covenant, the old one is no longer needed or in force.
To be continued.