The Gift of Salvation from a Torah Observant Perspective

Understanding how salvation works can be very confusing, especially within the Hebrew community, where believers in the Messiah still feel called to be obedient to Scripture's instructions. How does salvation as a free gift of the Messiah fit with the belief that we should still keep Biblical law? Do we believe that you have to do certain things in order to be righteous or saved?

Imagine being gifted with a high-end camera and all the accessories, but not knowing how to use it. DSLR cameras are more complex than point-and-shoot cameras and it's easy to see that their image quality is superior. But if you don't know how to use this camera, you'll be left feeling frustrated.

Unless you refuse to accept this gift, that camera is yours, whether or not you learn how to use it. Good camera equipment is expensive, and it holds its value well. You could keep that camera in a closet and not think about it for years, and it would still belong to you. If you came into a hard time or decided you wanted to use it, it would be there and waiting.

Whether or not you choose to use the camera, it is still yours.

If you learn to use that camera, you would benefit from that. You would be able to capture memories throughout your life, taking pictures of your family as it grows and special moments you experience. It could be a creative outlet for you. You could develop it into a business, and make a living shooting family and wedding photos professionally, giving your clients the gift of lovely pictures. Those pictures in turn could help people see their own beauty and grow in confidence. Those photographs you take could provide comfort and healing to a family grieving from losing a loved one. 

A lot of good can come from this camera! But only if you learn how to use it.

If you just accept the gift and keep it in the box, you'll still have its value at the end of your life. But you will miss out on the joys and benefits it can offer you throughout your life.

I believe salvation works in much the same way. If you ask YHWH for forgiveness, then I believe he is gracious enough to extend that to us, regardless of if we do everything he commands or have perfect theology or whatever else.

"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of YHWH is everlasting life in the Messiah Yahusha our master." -Romans 6:23

"For by grace you have been saved through faith. This is not your doing; it is the gift of YHWH, not a result of works that one may boast." -Ephesians 2:8-9

I don't think you have to keep the seventh day Sabbath, or eat Biblically clean, or celebrate the set apart times in order to have salvation, but I do believe that doing these things would benefit you! The Bible's instructions aren't just meaningless hoops to jump through to try and win some extra brownie points. If you honor your parents, then you will have a better relationship with them. If you don't commit adultery, there is peace and trust in your family and home. If you set apart the Sabbath day, then you benefit from physical rest and a mental-reset each week.

When the Bible gives us instructions, they are not a threat. Our salvation is from the Messiah's work, and not from my ability to perfectly follow the word. The commandments are not, "Do this or else." YHWH gives us instructions as an opportunity for direction and blessings in our lives. The commandments are, "Do this and be blessed."

Related posts:
Biblical Law: Have To or Get To?
King David's Final Advice
Traffic and Laws: The Benefits of Scripture's Instructions

Biblical Law and the Woman Caught in Adultery

Many of us have been told that when the Messiah let the woman who was caught in adultery go free, instead of being stoned to death, he changed Biblical law. Is that what happened?

This story comes to us from John 8. You're probably familiar with it. Jewish leaders brought a woman who had been caught in adultery before the Messiah. They said that in the Torah, Moses commanded that adulterers be stoned. What did Yahusha say about this?

They were looking for a way to trap him theologically. They wanted him to disagree with Moses. Keep in mind that they were not coming to him for advice or because it was required of them. They were experts in Biblical law and they had the authority to carry it out. This was either a trap or a test. He could have dazzled them with his wisdom, as he had before. But what did he do? He stooped down, and used his finger to write in the dirt like he didn't hear them. (John 8:6)

The Bible doesn't say exactly how long the Messiah wrote in the dirt, or what words he put down. Did he write out the passage they were referring to? Did he reference another part of Scripture? Did he write their names or sins? Did he write Psalms of repentance or about the hope of forgiveness through him? Did he write the truth about this situation?

They kept questioning him, and eventually he stood up and said one of his more famous phrases. "He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." (John 8:7)

He stooped back down and went back to his writing. One by one the accusers and crowd went away, from oldest to youngest. After that he spoke to the accused woman. She told him that no one had condemned her. "Neither do I," he said to her. "Go and sin no more." (John 8:11)

Does this prove that the Messiah is altering Biblical law?

Deuteronomy 22:22 does say that adultery is a sin punishable by death:

"When a man is found lying with a woman married to a husband, then both of them shall die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman. Thus you shall purge the evil from Israel."

Biblical law says she deserves death. But not so fast. It also says here that both the man and the woman involved are to be put to death. Where is the man? If the religious leaders were so concerned with rightly dealing with sin, why didn't they bring him to the Messiah? There is no way for the woman to be "caught in" adultery, but not the man. It's not like they didn't know who he was. This seems to imply that something fishy is going on...did they lure her into a trap? Did someone come to them and accuse her falsely? Had she committed adultery with one of the accusing religious leaders and now they were hoping to do away with her while avoiding their own punishment?

Biblical law also says that someone can't be put to death on the testimony of only one witness. It would require two or three. While this passage of Scripture makes it sound like a fairly sizable group was present (she was brought by both scribes and Pharisees, both plural), it would seem extremely suspicious if everyone in this group was a firsthand witness to this sin. This indicates that many people present were accusing her on hearsay alone, which would be wrong and unfair. Since Scripture doesn't tell us that she was caught by at least two or three witnesses, we can't be 100% sure that there were enough witnesses to justify stoning. That means we can't be certain that the Bible truly calls for her to be stoned here.

Deuteronomy 17:7 says that the witnesses who caught her would be required to throw the first stones at her. I believe this was intentional by YHWH to prevent deaths unfairly...if you were going to accuse someone of a weighty sin, then you had to be ready to have their blood on your hands. This means it would be a sin to throw the first stones at someone caught in adultery, if you were not one of at least two witnesses to this sin. Scripture does not definitively say that the witnesses were present in John 8. If they weren't, it would have been wrong to stone her.

The man was not present, and it's not clear if there were first-hand witnesses present. This would make it against Biblical law to stone her, even if she truly had been caught in adultery. Would it be just to put someone to death on hearsay when the other alleged perpetrator of the crime is not even charged? It would not be, according to the laws given in the Torah.

Yahusha followed Biblical law by not stoning her. As a result it was a beautiful foreshadow of his taking the punishment that we all deserve for our sins. His death doesn't mean that adultery or breaking other Biblical commandments is now okay, but it means that forgiveness and redemption are possible when we repent of our mistakes.

"Go and sin no more," doesn't mean what she did was permissible. The Messiah calling it sin tells us it was definitely sin. By telling her not to sin, he was telling her not to break Biblical law. Even as this woman receives mercy and redemption, the Savior calls her to uphold the commandments of Scripture.

Related posts:
Commandments or Traditions - Understanding the New Testament
Stoning in the Bible
How the Bible Defines Sin

Stoning in the Bible

If God is so loving and kind then why did people get stoned?

I hear this question a lot when I talk about my faith with others. I'll share about Sabbath keeping or the Biblical holidays, and then people will ask if I'm for stoning people. If we honor the instructions given in the Old Testament then doesn't that mean we would have to go around stoning people?

Stoning comes up in both the Old and New Testaments, and was a prescribed punishment for the following sins:

Idolatry (Deuteronomy 12:2-5)
Practicing necromancy and other occult practices (Leviticus 20:27)
Murder (Leviticus 24:17)
Saying evil against the name of YHWH (Leviticus 24:16)
Approaching Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:12-13)
Certain sexual sins (Deuteronomy 22:21)

(Other sins were punishable by death, but of a different means. In this post we are just going to look at stoning.)

In order for someone to be stoned for one of these sins there first needed to be a trial, and at least two witnesses needed to testify against the accused. Interestingly, those who witnessed against someone were required to be the first to throw stones (Deuteronomy 17:7).

Did you know that very few people were actually stoned in Scripture? The mainstream viewpoint nowadays tends to be that the God of the Old Testament was so cruel or demanding that people got stoned for any little thing, but that is seriously not the case. We see very few people get stoned in the Bible.

People stoned in Scripture:

-Stephen (Acts 7:58)
-Paul (Acts 14:19 - though he didn't die)
-Naboth (1 Kings 21:13)
-Adoniram - The man King Rehoboam put in charge of forced labor (1 Kings 12:18)
-Zechariah the priest for prophesying against those breaking the commandments (2 Chronicles 24:21)
-Achan - The man who took things from Jericho (Joshua 7
-Shelomith's son - A man who blasphemed the name of YHWH - (Leviticus 24:10-16)
-The man who picked up sticks on the Sabbath (Numbers 15:32-36)

Stephen, Paul, Zechariah, and Naboth, and Adoniram were all wrongfully stoned. They had not committed the sins that lead to death by stoning, and they certainly weren't given fair trials. Stephen and Paul were stoned for sharing the Gospel; in Stephen's case he was likely stoned for using and speaking highly of the name YHWH - which of course is the opposite of speaking evil against the name of YHWH, a valid reason for stoning. The people were angry when Zechariah asked them why they weren't obeying Scripture's instructions, and they stoned him. Naboth was stoned by two of the Kingdom of Israel's most evil leaders - Ahab and Jezebel - for not selling his family inheritance to them. Adoniram was stoned as part of the Israelite revolt against forced labor under Solomon's son King Rehoboam. The stoning of these men were not ordained by YHWH.

But what about the others? We are left with only three people:

1. Shelomith's son was stoned for blaspheming and cursing the name of YHWH.

2. Achan was stoned for taking gold and silver from Jericho that was to be set apart for YHWH.

3. The man who gathered wood on the Sabbath day was stoned for not guarding the Sabbath.

What do these men have in common? They all intentionally despised the word of YHWH! It's crucial to understand they did these things on purpose. They were not in ignorance of the commands they violated. They didn't misunderstand or didn't hear an instruction. They willingly chose to be disobedient.

Let's take a look at what happened to each.

1. Shelomith, an Israelite woman, had a son with an Egyptian and this son blasphemed and cursed the name of YHWH. The Israelites put him under guard, and waited to hear directly from YHWH what was to be done with him (Leviticus 24:12). Please note that they were waiting to hear from YHWH because of the graveness of this offense. Blaspheming and cursing the name is something that Scripture warns against repeatedly, and it's even included in the ten commandments. The rest of the people took these commandments very seriously and knew that something needed to be done because of this. 

2. Achan was stoned for taking gold, silver, and garments from Jericho after the walls of Jericho came down. He took these things knowingly and intentionally, after repeated warnings such as,

"The city shall be put under the ban, and all that is in it belongs to YHWH...and by all means guard yourselves from that which is under the ban, lest you come under the ban when you take of that which is banned from you, and make the camp of Israel a curse and shall trouble it. The silver, gold, bronze, and iron are to be set apart to YHWH, and go into the treasury of YHWH." -Joshua 6:17-19

Did you catch the last part? Achan wasn't just taking things he was told not to, he was taking thing that he knew belonged to YHWH. No one else in Israel did this. The only things that came out of Jericho were Rahab and her family, and the silver, gold, bronze, and iron which were to go the treasury of YHWH. Everything else was burned (Joshua 6:24).

3. Lastly we have the Sabbath breaker, the man who was stoned for gathering wood on the Sabbath day. The people who found him were so dismayed to see him doing this on the Sabbath day that they brought him to Moses and Aaron, and then they waited to hear what YHWH wanted done to this man. YHWH told them to stone him to death (Numbers 15:35).

I think a lot of us read about the man who was stoned for picking up sticks on the Sabbath and kind of feel like we are treading on eggshells...if we do any little thing the slightest bit wrong then we are done for. 

Most people today genuinely don't know about the Sabbath. Maybe they've heard of it, but if they have chances are they don't know that it's the seventh day of the week or what it looks like to honor it. However in Biblical times absolutely everyone knew and was familiar with it. No businesses were open, no one was doing work, there was a culture of preparing extra food the day before to avoid having to gather food on the Sabbath. In this man's time, manna was provided for the Israelites six days a week. It was not provided on the Sabbath and there was no doubt whatsoever what day it was when he made the choice to gather firewood. Not resting on the Sabbath was simply not done. 

All of the people who were rightfully stoned in Scripture knew that what they were doing was wrong and chose to do it anyway, expressly going against the word of YHWH.

Just before this in Numbers 15 Scripture makes a distinction between sinning by mistake, and sinning defiantly. If someone sins on accident, whether through ignorance, or misunderstanding, the punishment for that is not stoning. Rather Numbers 15:25 says we are forgiven for sins we committed by mistake when we repent and bring an offering. We have all sinned by mistake...maybe we didn't realize what the instructions YHWH has for us were, maybe we had been taught poorly, or maybe we were confused. YHWH understands this and offers us mercy and forgiveness.

However when we sin defiantly that is a different story. This makes sense doesn't it? When a student, coworker, child, spouse, or friend does something we don't appreciate accidentally it is much different than if they do something intentionally to spite us. Numbers 15:31, "Because he has despised the word of YHWH and broken his command, he shall certainly be cut off, and his crookedness upon him."

We can't emphasize this enough. YHWH does not punish people for accidental slip ups the same as he does for those who defiantly go against him and despise his word! This sentiment is echoed in the New Testament, by the Messiah himself, "The servant who knew his master's desire, and did not prepare, nor did according to his desire, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he who did not know, yet did what deserved flogging, shall be beaten with few." (Luke 12:48)

This examination of Scripture shows that the Living God was not about stoning people for any little thing they did wrong or accidental sin. His law called only for those who intentionally despised his commands to be put to death.

 More posts to help better understand Biblical law:

The Three Types of Law in Scripture
Why We No Longer Sacrifice Animals and How That's Permissible in Biblical Law
Biblical Instructions: Have to or Get To
Understanding Acts 15