Two of the traditional Christian tenets are that when one professes faith in Yeshua (Jesus) as the son of God, they become an adopted child of Abraham, and the other is that as Gentiles, they are not required to obey the Torah, which is only for Jews.
But if they are now adopted children of Abraham, and the “blood” children of Abraham have to obey the Torah, doesn’t that beg the question: “Do the adopted children get to have different rules in the same household?”
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In his letter to the Galatians, Shaul (Paul) said that when someone belongs to Messiah they are children of Abraham. The direct descendants of Abraham, who are Jews, are required to obey the Torah, so shouldn’t those adopted into our father’s family also have to obey the same rules we do?
Let’s take a hypothetical example: say you are a parent of three children, born to you and your spouse. You raise them to be God-fearing and self-sufficient, as any good parent should. You have rules on how they should treat people, rules for living as a family, and rules for worshiping as a family; these children represent the Jews who first came to accept Yeshua as the Messiah.
Next, you can’t have any more children but because you love kids, you adopt three more kids, all around the same age as your own. Do they get to live a different lifestyle? Do they get to worship differently from the rest of the family? Do they get to refuse the food served at dinnertime to eat what they want to eat? When the family enjoys a day of rest, do they get to change that to a different day? These adopted children would be the Gentiles that came to faith in Messiah sometime around the middle to the end of the First Century, after the main population of Jews who would accept Yeshua began to taper off, and the movement began to mutate to a new religion.
My answer to how these adopted children should be treated would be the same as what happened to these neophyte believing Gentiles making this paradigm shift from paganism to Judaism, which is what they were doing- at least, initially.
The way these newly adopted children should be treated within the family is to be given some leeway, as they were not raised the same way the natural children were. They need an opportunity to learn the rules, slowly, at a pace they can handle, and not be forced to do everything the natural born children have been doing because that would result in one day waking up, and finding the adopted children have run away.
So, you start them off with basic rules they can handle, such as make their bed each morning, help set the table, take out the garbage, and go to worship as a family. As they gain experience in the family, they will learn from watching their siblings all the other rules.
Does this sound like something from the Bible? Well, it is- you can find it in Acts Chapter 15, verses 19-23, when Ya’akov (James) suggested just giving the new Gentile believers a few rules to start with, so as not to place any obstacles in their way. He also says they will eventually learn the entire Torah because it is read at every Shabbat service, demonstrating that the Elders expected these Gentiles to be attending Shabbat worship services with their (now) adopted family, the Jews.
So, what do we have? This hypothetical is really more of an analogy to represent the truth of being an adopted child of Abraham- you are NOT free from the rules of the natural born children, but you are allowed to assimilate into the family at a pace you can handle.
The problem those early believing Gentiles had, which Shaul ran into throughout his ministry, was the legalistic pressure to be completely assimilated immediately into Judaism. His answer was the same that Ya’akov and the Elders agreed with, which is what we did with our hypothetical family- teach them slowly, step-by-step, so they can assimilate easily, and not be scared off.
Here’s what I mean by being scared off: you go to a Pagan worshipper, and explain how they can have eternal joy and blessings on earth by faithfully accepting that there is only one God, and Yeshua is the Messiah and his son.
“OK, that sounds good. What else do I have to do?”
“You must confess your sins and ask forgiveness through Yeshua’s sacrifice, then live a righteous life, giving up the hedonism that you have been doing.”
“Well, I guess for eternal joy I can do that. Anything else?”
“Uh, there is one other, little thing you have to do right away.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“You have to let us cut off the top of your penis.”
(total silence)
“That’s it! So, whaddaya say?”
“Um, right, well… Oh gee! Look at the sundial- I didn’t realize it was this late, and I have an important appointment to go to. How about I get back to you later?”
You can see that an all-at-once conversion from paganism to Torah obedience would not work in many cases with the men, while it would probably be easier for the women to accept.
Here’s the point of today’s message: if you are adopted into a family, you are expected to follow the rules of that family; maybe not all at once, but eventually. However, what Christianity has done was to reject the father who adopted them and create a new family on their own. They ran away from the loving parents who adopted them (that would be God and Yeshua), and taught their new family to reject all that their adopted parents had been trying to teach them.
If you ask me, that’s no way to thank someone who accepted you into their family.
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That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!
