Rabbi Yeshua’s Relationship to the Torah
Introduction
The Jewish identity of Yeshua (Jesus), the Messiah, is not just a historical fact; it is foundational to understanding His teachings and mission. As the Torah-observant rabbi, Yeshua never sought to abolish or replace the Torah but to affirm and fulfill its purpose. Yet, for nearly two millennia, much of the Church has misunderstood this, teaching that Yeshua’s death and resurrection canceled the Torah and established a new law. This lesson explores the enduring validity of the Torah and dispels the misconception that Yeshua came to abolish it. Understanding Yeshua's Jewish identity and His relationship to the Torah is essential for grasping the full scope of His teachings and the Bible’s message.
Before diving into Yeshua’s relationship with the Torah, it’s important to have a solid foundation in understanding what the Torah is. In Module 4: The Covenantal Category of Redemptive History, we introduced the Torah and its significance. The first lesson, The Torah: The Law of Moses, lays the groundwork by showing that the Torah is more than just a set of rules—it’s an expression of the covenant between God and Israel. You can access that lesson by clicking here.
We also covered several other key topics related to the Torah, which are often discussed in this context:
The Torah: A Guide to Messiah and God’s Redemptive Plan — Click here
Did Jesus Cancel or Abolish the Torah? — Click here
Did Paul Teach Against the Law? — Click here
Do Gentile Followers of Jesus Need to Follow the Torah? — Click here
Does Following the Torah Imply Legalism? — Click here
Is the Law Impossible to Keep? — Click here
Rabbi Yeshua and Torah Observance
Yeshua is a Jew, the Jewish Messiah, and a rabbi teaching Torah. A Torah observant Yeshua is a foundation to our faith. So how did later generations lose sight of His Jewish identity? It all comes from one huge misunderstanding: the idea that Yeshua’s death and resurrection canceled the Torah.
Believe it or not, for almost two thousand years, most of the church has been teaching that Yeshua came to cancel the Torah and replace it with a new law. We have already introduced you to this idea in Module Four, immediately after we introduced the Torah and how it points to the Messiah. To review that lesson, click here. This idea is called “replacement theology.” Replacement theology has serious implication and is seen as replacing the Torah, its institutions, and the Jewish people.
The Torah is the foundation upon which the rest of the Bible stands. All the biblical writers assume that the Torah is God’s true and unchanging revelation. God does not change, and His word never changes:
“For I the LORD do not change; (Malachi 3:6, ESV Bible)
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. (Isaiah 40:8, ESV Bible)
If Yeshua abolishes the Torah, the foundation of the Bible collapses, and along with it, so does the integrity of the rest of the Bible. Without a foundation, the whole structure is destabilized. Abolishing the Torah abolishes the Scriptures of Israel.
The Torah contains the laws and instructions that define Jewish identity and nationhood, and it contains the covenants that God made with the Jewish people. If the Torah is abolished, so is Jewish identity. If the covenants are abolished, then Israel is no longer the people of God. Abolishing the Torah abolishes the people of Israel.
The Torah is the reason the promised land is called the promised land. It’s promises connect the land of Israel to the people of Israel as a Jewish inheritance. That connection is the whole basis for the New Testament hope in the future geopolitical Messianic Kingdom with Messiah ruling on David’s throne in Jerusalem. Abolishing the Torah abolishes the Land of Israel. It becomes just another strip of land without a thread of relevance. Abolishing the Torah means abolishing the Land, the People, and the Scriptures of Israel.
We have previously discussed how the Torah is a guide to Messiah. To review, click here. Christ representing the end of the law for righteousness does not mean that the Torah or the law of Moses is canceled. This idea of "canceling" is a common misinterpretation. In the Greek language of Romans 10:4, the word telos is better understood to mean that the Messiah is the goal of the Torah. In other words, Messiah is the destination at which the journey of the Torah arrives. Once again, Paul alludes to this idea in Galatians 3:24:
So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. (Galatians 3:24-26, ESV Bible)
During the first century, wealthy families may designate a household servant as their children's custodians, similar to a modern-day nanny. This servant was called a pedagogue. The pedagogue did not teach the child but ensured the child got to school for the instruction. All things in the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings point to Messiah. Jesus himself made this comment:
Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” (Luke 24:44-45, ESV Bible)
Traditional church beliefs have thought that the Torah and the Mosaic Law only remained in effect until the coming of Messiah and his subsequent death on the cross. But is that the case? Much of Christianity anticipates the apocalypse and the second coming of the Messiah, preceded by the coming of the antichrist, also known as the “son of lawlessness” (aka Torahlessness). In 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12, we read:
Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming. The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (2 Thessalonians 2:1-12, ESV Bible)
We see here that the man of lawlessness will appear and say he is God. He will do all the works which the true Messiah has done. In short, he will look like Jesus. But 2 Thessalonians 2 is not the first time Israel and the children of God are warned about a false prophet. Moses warns Israel not to heed a prophet or miracle worker who entices them away from the Torah’s commandments in Deuteronomy 13:1-6:
“If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the LORD your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him. But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has taught rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of slavery, to make you leave the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.” (Deuteronomy 13:1-6, ESV Bible)
When Christians present Yeshua as cancelling the Torah, we present him as a false prophet. Deuteronomy 13 warns against false prophets who will turn the Jewish people away from the Torah. Moses says anyone who “makes you leave how the LORD your God commanded you to walk” is deemed a false prophet. What is how God commanded them to walk? Their command to walk is the Torah, and the commandments stated, “You shall walk after the LORD your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him.” Moses tells the Jewish people that if anyone claims to speak on God’s behalf and declares the Torah has been canceled or that the Jews no longer need to observe the Torah, this person will be seen as a false prophet. Even if they come doing signs and wonders.
And here is where much of Christianity finds itself today. Jesus has often been taught as the Jesus who canceled the law, who abolished the Torah, who discarded the Sabbath, who did away with the distinction between Jew and Gentile, whose death replaced the Levitical priesthood and the Levitical services, who declared all food clean, who canceled Judaism and started Christianity. Do you see the problem with this teaching? This Jesus described here is the same false prophet mentioned in Deuteronomy 13.
And when this false prophet Jesus is taught, it is no wonder why many Jews cannot accept the claims of Christianity. They cannot accept a Messiah that turns them away from the commandments of God. And this is precisely what Moses is describing in Deuteronomy 13. He is explaining a commandment of God. In other words, in the context of Deuteronomy 13, the rejection of a Jesus who cancels the law, is a commandment they must follow.
And the context of Deuteronomy 13 does not stop there. If Jesus did cancel the law, then not only is he a false prophet, but the disciples, Paul, and anyone preaching his message is also a false prophet or teacher. The only problem with this line of thinking is the words of Jesus seem to suggest something completely different. What does Yeshua say about the Torah?
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” (Matthew 5:17, ESV Bible)
Keep in mind that when Yeshua said, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Torah,” He was not referring to His incarnation or arrival from heaven. The expression “I came to,” functions idiomatically in Hebrew to express purpose or intention. He was not speaking about coming as the Messiah; He was speaking about the purpose of His teaching. He was not speaking about fulfilling Messianic prophecies; instead He said, “Do not think that my teaching is intended to in any way diminish the Torah. My intention is not to abolish the Torah of Moses, but to establish it.” In these words, He declared that He was teaching halachah, that is to say, He was explaining how to live out the Torah.
Yeshua says he did not come to abolish but to fulfill the Torah. Often this is interpreted as “Yeshua didn’t come to abolish the Torah but to fulfill, and by fulfilling it, He has brought it to an end.” That is not what he meant. This interpretation is irrational and self-contradicting.
The meaning of the word “abolish” is obvious. To abolish is to destroy, discard, or overturn something. To abolish the Torah means to nullify the Law.
The meaning of “fulfill” is a little more ambiguous. How do you fulfill the Torah? In this context, “fulfill” does not mean to add to the Torah, replace the old Torah with a new higher law, replace the Torah with a new law of love, or even to fulfill the prophetic content of the Torah. Instead , fulfill must be understood as the opposite of abolish. The Greek word for “fulfill” is pleroo, and regarding its use here, it means “to carry into effect, bring to realization, realize universally and absolutely, to fulfill, to cause God’s will (as made known in the law) to be obeyed as it should be. Matthew’s use of pleroo argues that Yeshua is both obeying Torah as it should be and through His teaching causing God’s Torah to be obeyed as it should be.
Further, Yeshua did not teach in Greek but rather in Hebrew and Aramaic. What Semitic word might lie behind the Greek pleroo? A brief study of rabbinic literature reveals hundreds of parallels in which the term “fulfill the Torah” (kiyyem et haTorah) refers expressly to “obeying the Torah” or demonstrating how the Torah is to be properly obeyed. Look at this saying from the Mishnah in Pirkei Avot:
Whoever fulfills the Torah in poverty, will fulfill it later on in wealth; and whoever abolishes the Torah in wealth, will abolish it later in poverty. (Pirkei Avot)
The sages often argued about how to properly interpret the commandments. For example, the Mishnah says, “If, however [the rabbis] ruled that a part [of a commandment] was to be annulled and part fulfilled [kiyyem], they are liable [for misinterpretation]. A rabbi who misinterpreted the Torah was said to be abolishing it. A rabbi who properly interpreted the Torah was said to be fulfilling it. By using the terms “abolish” and “fulfill,” Yeshua told His disciples that He interprets and obeys the Torah correctly.
The second-century Rabbi Gamliel ben Shim’on (who was no friend to the Jewish believers) nevertheless understood Yeshua’s words and intention to mean that one must neither add to the Torah nor subtract from it. He quotes the Master saying, “I did not come to destroy the Torah of Moses nor to add to the Torah of Moses.” The seventeen-century orthodox rabbi Jacob Emden says, “It is therefore exceedingly clear that the Nazarene never dreamed of destroying the Torah.
In Matthew 5:17, Yeshua endorsed the ongoing, unchanging authority and validity of the Torah of Moses in the strongest possible language. He endorsed the whole Torah, not just the Ten Commandments. The rest of the Gospels and Epistles should be interpreted in light of His emphatic statement, and the remainder of the Sermon on the Mount should be understood as His interpretation of the unchanging and enduring Torah.
They are many passages in rabbinic literature that use the terms “abolish” and “fulfill” regarding the Torah. Often this refers to correctly interpreting and applying the Torah. The one who “fulfills” it upholds it, heeds its words, and carries them out. One who mishandles the Torah, misinterprets it, or fails to perform a commandment can be said to be annulling the Torah:
Armies came against Levi ben Sisi’s town. He took a Torah scroll and climbed onto the roof. He said: “Master of the worlds. If I annulled one word of this Torah scroll, they may come; if not, they shall leave. Immediately they were looked for but not found.” (Jerusalem Talmud)
Fulfill the Torah means to correctly interpret and observe the Law.
Yeshua goes on to teach that not even the smallest Hebrew letter or even a tiny part of a Hebrew letter can be removed from the Torah:
“For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:18-20, ESV Bible)
This is probably as strong a statement about the enduring and unending authority of the Torah as any rabbi has ever made at any time. We should not even think that He came to abolish the law. Has heaven and earth passed away? Of course not! Does this not imply that the Torah or the law of Moses is still valid? Messiah is the goal of the Torah but not the end or termination of the Torah. And should we ever doubt or wonder if He represents the termination of the Torah, we reflect on Matthew 5:17-18.
In addition, Jesus goes on to encourage his disciples to keep even the least of the commandments of the Torah:
Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:19-20, ESV Bible)
As Matthew chapter 5 continues, He begins to “fulfill” (correctly interpret and observe the Law) the Torah by revealing its inner meanings.
Yeshua is not overturning the laws of the Torah; He is strengthening them. Rather than replacing the commandments, He is writing the commandments on the hearts of His disciples. This kind of teaching continues through the whole of the Sermon on the Mount and all Yeshua’s teachings.
The Torah is unalterable and remains in force until the end of time. Not the smallest letter will pass from the Torah. The smallest Hebrew letter, the letter yod is only the size of an apostrophe. The “tittle” probably refers to the small strokes of a single letter, which distinguish similar looking letters from one another. Yeshua’s words allude to the careful scribal tradition of Judaism. The scribal tradition considers a Torah scroll with a single defective letter invalid.
Yeshua’s words also seem to echo a rabbinic story about King Solomon. According to the story, King Solomon tries to justify his penchant for multiplying wives by editing the text of Deuteronomy. He erases a single letter of the Torah in order to change the commandment forbidding him to multiply wives:
When the Holy One, blessed be He, gave the Torah to Israel, He placed in it positive and negative commands and gave some commandments for a king, as it says [in Deuteronomy 17:16-17]: “He shall not multiply horses for himself…He shall not multiply wives for himself, or else his heart will turn astray.” But Solomon arose and studied the reason for the prohibition, saying: “Why did the Holy One, blessed be He, command, “He shall not multiply wives for himself?” Is it not simply so that his heart turn not astray? Well, I will multiply wives and keep my heart from turning astray.”
At that time, the little yod (‘) from the word yarbeh ascended on high and prostrated itself before the Holy One, blessed be He, and said: “Master of the Universe! Did you not say that no letter shall ever be abolished from the Torah? Behold, now Solomon has arisen and abolished me. Who knows? Today he has abolished one letter, tomorrow he will abolish another until the whole Torah will be abolished!” The Holy One, blessed be He, replied, “Solomon and a thousand like him will pass away, but the smallest tittle will not be erased from you.” (Exodus Rabbah 6:1)
In the story, the king is supposed to be making a copy of the Torah himself, per the instruction in Deuteronomy 17:18. While transcribing the words, “He shall not multiply wives for himself, or else his heart will turn away” (Deuteronomy 17:17), he erases the little letter yod(‘) from the word yarbeh (“multiply”) and replaces it with an aleph. The yod is only a small jot of ink, but by replacing that letter, Solomon changed the whole meaning of the sentence. His new version said, “I will multiply for himself wives and his heart will not turn away.” By changing that single jot, Solomon canceled the prohibition on multiplying wives. This story explains the words of Yeshua. The Torah is in no way to be regarded as something to be tampered with or even done away with.
In Matthew 5:17-19, Yeshua responded to critics attempting to discredit Him:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:17-19, ESV Bible)
Yeshua had healed the sick on the Sabbath. Some among the Pharisees believed that He was not keeping the Torah properly. Any prophet or would be Messiah who broke the Torah and taught others to do so as well disqualified himself as Messiah and as a prophet. This again goes back to Deuteronomy 13. If Yeshua’s opponents could prove Him to be a Torah breaker, they could discredit His ministry and His claims. If they could prove that He intended to abolish or annul the Torah, they could dismiss Him as a heretic. To answer their charges, Yeshua declared the validity of the Torah and the Prophets.
Yeshua said that not even the smallest jot or tittle will “pass from the Law until all is accomplished” (Matthew 5:18). At what point does that happen? When will it be accomplished? Some people will say that the words “until all is accomplished” indicate a coming end to the Torah. They teach that the Torah endured “until Yeshua accomplished all things by His death on the cross. Other people explain it to refer to the Torah’s ongoing validity “until” Yeshua accomplished all things by His perfect obedience to it. Still other people suggest the Torah remained “until” the destruction of the Temple.
The phrase “until all is accomplished” stands parallel to the phrase “until heaven and earth pass away.” In other words, the validity, authority, and unchanging revelation of the Torah will continue until this present world is subsumed into the World to Come.
The Torah is God’s unchanging revelation and standard of law until the end of time—until heaven and earth pass away:
But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the Law to become void. (Luke 16:17, ESV Bible)
Did Jesus Only Mean the Ten Commandments?
Many Christians have also argued that the Torah is not canceled, meaning the moral components of the Law still stand. They place emphasis on the Ten Commandments, distinguishing them from the rest of the Torah. This is considered an error in interpretation within Judaism and was apparently prevalent among Christians in ancient times as witnessed in b.Berachot 12a, which says that [the Jewish people] used to recite the Ten Commandments every day in the Temple, and even tried to do so in the entire region. They stopped doing this on account of the sectarians, who imagined that even the Jews, in doing so, were confessing that the Ten Commandments were more important than the rest of the Torah. According to the Torah, it is all the word of HaShem, and one should in no way divide them up. It appears that some Christians believed that Yeshua and his disciples accepted the Ten Commandments and cast aside the rest of the commandments in the Torah. Keeping the Sabbath, which is one of the Ten Commandments, created difficulty; they took care of this at Rome by reinterpreting it as the first day of the week—the day of Messiah’s resurrection—making it the Sabbath day.
Another time in the Gospels, Yeshua is asked, “Teacher, what is the most important commandment in the Torah?” In this example, we see Yeshua instructing a young man to follow the commandments of Moses to inherit eternal life:
And behold, a man came up to him, saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The young man said to him, “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. (Matthew 19:16-22, ESV Bible)
Not once does Jesus say, “believe in me and you will go to heaven.” What we see is Jesus directing the young man to keep the commandments, and then to sell his possessions. This is a very performance, works based response.
He replies by quoting Deuteronomy 6:4-5, the first two verses of a recitation called the Shema:
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5, ESV Bible)
The passage in Deuteronomy continues to speak about internalizing the commandments of God:
And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. (Deuteronomy 6:6, ESV Bible)
Jewish people refer to these words from Deuteronomy as the Shema, a name derived from the first Hebrew words of the passage, “Shema Yisra’el”; that is, “Hear, O Israel!”
It doesn’t get more Jewish than the Shema, and according to Yeshua, the Shema is the most important commandment in the Torah. He says that the second most important commandment is like it because it shares the common words, “You shall love.” This time He quotes another verse from the Torah, Leviticus 19:18. When they are put next to each other, it is easy to see the parallel:
You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. (Deuteronomy 6:5, ESV Bible)
You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD. (Leviticus 19:18, ESV Bible)
Yeshua says of these commandments:
The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:31, ESV Bible)
He does not say that these are the only two commandments that matter or the only ones still valid. Instead, He says:
On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:40, ESV Bible)
According to Rabbi Yeshua, the whole Torah hangs on love. He doesn’t say that love replaces the Law. Instead, the Law hangs on love: love for God and love for your fellow human being.
Earlier we could see where Jesus goes on to encourage his disciples to keep even the least of the commandments of the Torah:
Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:19-20, ESV Bible)
Not only did Jesus say they should do the commandments, He says their righteousness should exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees! Not only do the commandments better than the Pharisees but also listen to the teachers of the law, the Pharisees and Sadducees:
Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice.” (Matthew 23:1-3, ESV Bible)
Although Jesus often rebuked these leaders of the Jews as failing to live up to the same standards to which they held everyone else, he still commands his followers to obey the rulings of the Sanhedrin because they sit in the “seat of Moses.”
Conclusion
So we see, again and again, ample evidence that Jesus respected, followed, and encouraged obedience to God’s commandments found in the Torah. In rediscovering Yeshua’s true relationship with the Torah, we see a Messiah who upheld and fulfilled the law, rather than abolishing it. His teachings in the Gospels repeatedly affirm the ongoing relevance of God’s commandments, calling His followers to deeper righteousness and greater commitment to God’s Word. Far from creating a new religion, Yeshua remained deeply rooted in Judaism, teaching His disciples to live in accordance with the Torah. Understanding this truth not only enriches our understanding of the Bible but also bridges the gap between the Messiah and His Jewish heritage, bringing us closer to the heart of God’s plan for Israel and the world.
But what about the passages where Yeshua appears to break the Torah or clash with religious leaders? In a future lesson, we will delve deeper into this misconception, exploring whether Yeshua truly violated the Torah or rejected Judaism. We'll examine these moments in context, revealing that rather than breaking the Torah, Yeshua was often restoring its true meaning and challenging misinterpretations by the religious authorities of His time. Stay tuned as we uncover the heart of His teachings and their alignment with the Torah.