How do you know they were to be a "copy" of a rabbi? Your references below are not congruent with your claim.
I know because I've researched what it meant to be a disciple in the 1st century, and 1 Corinthians 11:1 could easily be translated as saying that we should become a copy of him for he is a copy of Christ. You'll have to explain what you mean by my references below not being congruent with my claim.
No my friend Torah was given to reveal to Israel what sin was. Since Christians are not under Torah sin is not keeping Jesus commandments. You know because I repeatedly quote it. This is how we KNOW we belong to the truth........believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 24 The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. 1Jn3:19-24
God's righteousness is eternal, so the way to do what is unrighteous or sinful is likewise eternal. Jesus was not in disagreement with the Father about what commands we should obey, but rather he said that his teaching was not his own but that of the Father (John 7:16), so his commands were the same as the Mosaic Law. Likewise, if you believe that Jesus was sinless, that he practiced what he preached, and that he preached what he practiced, then you should believe that he taught obedience to the Mosaic Law by word, and that even if he had said nothing that he would have still taught obedience to it by example. In 1 John 2:3-6, it associates saying that we ought to obey his commands with saying that we ought to walk in the same way that he walked, so again, his commands are the same as the Mosaic Law that he walked out. Jesus summarized the Law and the Prophets as being instructions for how to love God and how to love your neighbor (Matthew 22:36-40), so if you fully understand what his command to love means for us to do, then you will live in obedience to the Mosaic Law.
Christian's disobedience to God is when we fail to believe in Jesus and or failure to love others as he loves us.
In Romans 10:5-10, it quotes Deuteronomy 30:11-14 in regard to what it means to submit to Jesus as Lord, and you can't believe that he is Lord while refusing to submit to him as Lord, so a failure to practice obedience to the Torah by faith is a failure to believe in Jesus. Jesus showed his love for us through his obedience to the Torah, so not live in obedience to the Torah by faith is likewise a failure to love others as he loved us.
Torah was (past tense) for Israel only.
The Torah is the way (Deuteronomy 8:6, Jeremiah 6:16-19, Psalms 119:1), the truth (Psalms 119:142), and the life (Proverbs 3:18, Matthew 19:17), Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6), the Torah is God's Word, and Jesus is God's Word made flesh, so Jesus is the living embodiment of the Torah, it is impossible to follow Jesus without following the Torah, and to do away with the Torah is to do away with Jesus. However, God's Word is eternal so it can not come to an end.
Hold on there partner I wrote "He never once told Gentiles to live like He lived." Yes, I am a follower that knows Torah ended at Calvary where the new covenant was given birth and ratified with Jesus own blood.
Messiah's goal in making disciples was to make imitations of himself and when he told his disciples to make their own disciples, he was telling them to make more imitations of him. We are to be like Christ, to reflect Christ to the world, and to teach the world to follow Christ. When he was inviting people to be his followers he was inviting them to live as he lived and someone can not be his follower while refusing to follow his example.
The Law teaches us how to live according to God's holiness, righteousness, and goodness, so if the Law ended at Calvary, then so did God's eternal holiness, righteousness, and goodness. While I completly agree that we are under a New Covenant and not the Mosaic Covenant, we are still under the same God, whose character is eternal, so the way to act according to His character is likewise eternal. God has always been righteous, so there has always existed an unchanging way to act according to His righteousness, which is not dependent on any particular covenant, though it was revealed through God's covenants.
Did I write that the Torah was nailed to the Cross? I thought I wrote that it ended when the new one began. That is how covenants work. Name one instance where they overlap.
Normally that is the verse that people use to say that it ended at Calvary, so my mistake. According to Galatians 3:17, the later covenants do not set aside the previous covenants established by God, but rather they incorporate them. There is a difference between a set of instructions for how to act according to God's holiness, righteousness, and goodness, and a covenant agreement to abide by those instructions. Anyone who wants to find out how to act according to God's character can do so by reading the Mosaic Law regardless of what covenant, if any, they are under, but as part of the New Covenant, we are told to do what God has revealed to be holy, righteous, and good (1 Peter 1:13-16, 1 John 3:10, Ephesians 2:10).
Tell all that to Paul who said the law ended with Jesus Gal 3:19 and
24 Wherefore the law was (past tense) our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. 25 But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.
Having no more need for a tutor is not at all the same thing as having no more need to live according to what the tutor taught you. When a student moves on to 2nd grade, their new teacher doesn't tell them to forget everything they previously were taught, but rather they incorporate and build upon what they previously were taught. Likewise, someone can't move on to algebra by forgetting everything they learned about addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and if they did forget, then they would need to go back for a remedial education. Now that Christ has come, we have a better teacher of how to obey the Torah, we have a better example to follow, and we have the Spirit to guide us in obedience to it (Ezekiel 36:26-27).
The difference is the old one was a covenant of laws and the new is a covenant of grace
There are 613 commands in the OT while there are 1,050 commands in the NT, so it is correct that the Old Covenant was a covenant of laws, but it is incorrect to imply there the New Covenant is not one of laws, just as it is incorrect to imply that God did not show His grace to people under the Old Covenant.
But the covenant was not a grace filled covenant it was an if you obey my laws I will...
It is completely false to think of God grace as being opposed to God's Law, as though a house divided against itself could stand. According to Psalms 119:29, David asked God to be gracious to him by teaching him His Law, According to Romans 1:5, we have received grace to bring about the obedience that faith requires. According to John 1:16-17, grace was added upon grace, so the grace of Christ was added to the grace of the Law. According to Ephesians 2:8-10, we have been saved by grace through faith, not by doing good works, but for the purpose of doing good works. According to Titus 2:11-14, our salvation involves being trained by grace to do what is Lawful and to renounce doing what is Lawless. According to Jude 1:4, ungodly people pervert God's grace as a licence for Lawlessness. According to Strong's, "grace" as defined as "the divine influence upon the heart, and its reflection in the life" and when God's will is reflected in our lives, it takes the form of obedience to His commands. According to the blessing before the Shema, "With an abundant love have you loved us, God. For the sake of our ancestors whom You taught the laws for living, may You also be gracious to us and teach us, too" so Jews have anciently understood God as being gracious to them by teaching them His Law. So it is by grace that God teaches how to rightly live and through faith that we are to trust God to guide us in how to rightly live.
Instructed Israel by giving them a bunch of thou shalt nots. There wasn't much grace shown by God or the Israelites in the Old Testament.
About half the commands are negative thou shalt nots while the other half are positive mitzvots, but negative commands can also be taken as commanding the opposite, such the command not to steal can also be taken as the command to be generous. However, even if it was just a bunch of thou shalt nots, it would be an example of God grace through faith in Him to guide in how to avoid doing what is ungodly and sinful (Titus 2:11-14).
Actually the covenant was not about grace it was about law. Did God show grace? Yes He did and many times but to try to tell us the covenant was a covenant of grace is not true. As far as love is concerned the 10 great commands didn't include loving the neighbor. It was stuck back in the book of the law. It was law until Jesus gave us a new love law, one that tells us to love others as He loves us. That is heavy my friend. That is BIG law. Jesus laid down His life for us think about it, we are to love others like He loves us.
Jesus summarized the Law and the Prophets as being God's instructions for how to love him and how to love our neighbor, so all the 613 commands of the OT and 1,050 commands of the NT can be put into those two categories. Jesus said that all of the other commands hang on the greatest two, so they are all examples or the explanation for how to correctly obey the greatest two commands (Matthew 22:36-40). According to Galatians 5:14, loving your neighbor fulfills the entire Law, which is true because that is what the entire Law is essentially about how to do.
According to Deuteronomy 4:2, it is a sin to add or subtract from what God had commanded them, and Jesus was born under the Law, so if he had added a new law, then he would have sinned and could not be our Savior. However, there is nothing new with the command to love our neighbor because that can be found in Leviticus 19:17. What is new is not the command, but the quality of the example by which we are to obey the command, and this is reflected by that fact that the Greek word used in John 13:34 refers to newness with respect to quality rather than newness with respect to time.
We do not have any evidence that Paul was fully Torah observant. He said:
1 Corinthians 9:22
To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.
The fact that Paul sought to disprove false rumors that he was teaching Jews against obeying the Torah and that he continued to live in obedience to the Torah is evidence that he was fully Torah observant, but that even in his day people were misunderstanding him as teaching against the Torah. In 2 Peter 3:15-17, it says that Paul is difficult to understand, but those who are ignorant and unstable twist his teachings to their own destruction and fall into the error of Lawlessness, so any interpretation of Paul teaching against the Law is wrong. Even in 1 Corinthians 9:21 Paul said in a parallel statement that he was not free from the Torah, but under the Law of Christ, so they are the same thing. In the surrounding verses, Paul was not saying that he was a great deceiver, teaching different things to different people, and lying about what he was teaching to other people and he was not saying that he was willing to become a murderer in order to reach murderers, and adulterer in order to reach adulterers, etc. Sinning to reach sinners would have completely undermined his message, but rather he was speaking about giving up his rights to meet people where they were at in order to win them for Christ.
He never asked or suggested that Gentiles become observant to Torah.
If Paul had wanted to communicate that Gentiles should be Torah observant, he could have simply said that Gentiles should not do what God has revealed to be sin (Romans 6:15), or he could say that we should not present ourselves as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, but as slaves of righteousness (Romans 6:16-19), or he could say that we should be imitator of him as he is an imitator of Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1), or he could say that all OT Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17), or he could say that we have been made new creations in Christ for the purpose of doing good works (Ephesians 2:10), or that Christ gave himself to redeem us from Lawlessness and to purify for himself a people who are zealous for doing good works (Titus 2:14, Acts 21:20).
Is that what you meant to write? It appears that you do not take Paul seriously. I think you are tellin me Paul's writings could be wrong. The ambassador for Jesus is wrong? How could you?
When we follow his writings we are following God. Why do you belittle Paul?
You misunderstand me. I take Paul seriously, I have great respect for him, and consider him to be an Apostle of God, but I do not consider him to have more authority than God. So for example, when God said not to eat certain things and you think that Paul said that we are free to eat those things, then there is a conflict between the two and following Paul would not be following God, so you need to decide who has the greater authority and who you should follow. It is your interpretation of Paul speaking against obeying the Torah where you should therefore consider him to be a false prophet who was not speaking for God. I think Paul was fully Torah observant and taught others to obey it, so it is not my interpretation that puts him in conflict with God. In Acts 17:11, the Bereans were praised because they diligently tested everything that Paul said against OT Scripture to see if what he said was true, so if Paul had tried to tell them something like that the Torah had ended, then they would have tested what he said against OT Scripture and rightfully rejected it. We should let no man keep us from obeying God.
He not only said it he meant it.
I believe it is true and that he meant it, but if he spoke against obeying God's Torah, then he was not God's Apostle and we are instructed by Scripture to recognize him as a false prophet instead.
How do you know he didn't seek to start a new religion? I do follow a different religion than Jesus did and I am so thankful that Jesus gave us a new covenant with different laws than the ones He followed as a Jew.
New Covenant, same God, same laws. The Bible is a continuous whole that reveals God's plan of redemption, it is not God saying and now for something completely different and doing away with 80% of His revealed plan. What of saying that we need to follow Christ's example, to walk in the same way that he walk, and to imitate him implies that we need to disregard his example and do something completely different? David loved God's Law and delighted in obeying it it, as did Paul (Romans 7:22), and Jesus gave himself to redeem you from Torah-lessness, so you should instead be thankful that you get the delight and privilege of living in obedience to the Torah by grace through faith.
Notice that fact was not revealed to Israel until Isaiah mentioned it. Being a light to the World didn't mean that they were to teach the World Torah. Torah was especially designed for Israel only.
In Deuteronomy 4:5-8, they were to be a light to the nations, but even they didn't have that role until Isaiah mentioned it, they still had that role from that point onward. I don't see any reason to think that being a light to the nations did involve teaching them to follow God's commands other than your instance that the Torah was only meant for Israel, but that is exactly the assertion that I am seeking to challenge by pointing out that they were meant to be a light to the nations.
There are many instances in the Bible where it talks about following the Torah as followings God's ways, and not one instance where it talks about it as following Israel's ways, so it is particular to God, not to Israel. In Isaiah 2:2-3, it speaks about the Torah going out from Zion and teaching Gentiles to follow God's ways, so I am not seeing any wiggle room whatsoever to think that does not involve teaching them to follow the Torah.
Absolutely untrue. we have been over the grafting thing a dozen times. Israel was no example worthy to be grafted into.
It is beyond me how you can deny the straightforward reading of those verses. In Romans 9:6-8, it refers to Israel as the children of God, so if you don't consider Israel to be worthy to be grafted into, then you don't consider it to be worthy to be a child of God. It says that not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, but those who are have faith in the promise are counted as offspring. In Ephesians 2:19, Gentiles were once alienated from Israel, but now are fellow citizens. In 1 Peter 2:9-10, Gentiles are now part of God's chosen people, and Israel is God's chosen people. If that's not what these verses say, then what do you think they say?
