Soyeong
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- Mar 10, 2015
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Christ our God also went to the Temple with sacrifices, followed kashrut, abstained from wearing mixed fabrics. In fact He kept Torah perfectly.
Following Christ does not mean pretending to be a Jew when one isn't. Pretending is not only offensive to the Jewish people, but it is offensive to Christ, Himself a Jew. As a Gentile I have no intention on pretending to be something I'm not.
-CryptoLutheran
While it is good to correctly understand whom the Law was given to, it is not good to focus on that so much that you lose sight of whom it was given by. The Bible often uses the same terms to describe the character of God as it does to describe the character of God's Law, which is because it is God's instructions for how to express His character traits, such as with it being holy, righteous, and good (Romans 7:12). God's ways are His character traits and there are many verses that describe the Mosaic Law as being instructions for how to walk in God's ways, such as Deuteronomy 10:12-13, Isaiah 2:2-3, Joshua 22:5, Psalms 103:7, and many others, so the Law was not given as instructions for how to live as a Jew, but as instructions to God's followers to teach us about who He is and how to express His character traits.
The theme has always been to the Jew first and then to the Gentile, so Jews were given the Law in order to be equipped to be a light and a blessing to the nations through teaching them to repent from their sins and how to walk in God's ways (Isaiah 2:2-3, Matthew 5:13-16). In Deuteronomy 4:5-8, the intended reaction of the nations seeing Israel's obedience to the Mosaic Law was to marvel at how great and wise God is, so again our obedience to the Law is about acting as a light to the nations through testifying about who God is, which means that the Law has always been intended to be use as a tool to evangelize the nations. There is not much sense in a Gentile wanting to enter into a relationship with the God of Israel while wanting nothing to do with following the instructions that He gave to teach us about who He is.
Christ is the exact imprint of God's nature, so he express the divine character traits/fruits of the Spirit through His actions and that that looked like was complete obedience to the Mosaic Law, so that is what it will look like when we are in Christ and meeting our obligation to walk in the same way he walked (1 John 2:6). Following Christ is not just for Jews, but for Gentiles too, and we are told to follow his example (1 Peter 2:21-22), so following Christ is not about pretending to be a Jew. The way to follow Christ is not through refusing to follow the Law that he followed and spent his ministry teaching his followers how to obey by word and by example.
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