Commandments, Pride and Fear

All Eternal Fruitfulness of The Torah Is Based on Grace

Neither pride nor fear of condemnation can produce repentance. Yet the commandments of G-d are given only to produce repentance in Adam.

Preparing for Messianic Torah Dialogues

In consideration of relationships between Jews and non-Jews pride and fear of condemnation both often arise and contaminate the air.

To clear the air of these elements of pride and fear we may begin with some clarifications about what is required for a standing of righteousness before G-d.

Israel did not choose Mashiach but Mashiach chose Israel. When this is clearly understood it is also understood that first G-d chose Israel, only then did Israel chose G-d. If it is said that G-d chose Israel because Israel chose to accept the Torah, this is true only in that sense that G-d attributes merit to those whom He justifies by His grace.

There Is Only One Nation Justified By G-d's Grace

Although, in the end, G-d justifies many non-Jews as well as Jews by His grace and attributes to them the merit of the works that their soul produces as it is restored through His redemptive Spirit, Israel is the only nation that G-d ever justifies corporately as a nation.

G-d began this justification of Israel when He called Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to Himself, promising this justification to Abraham and to his seed, and then when He redeemed Israel out of Egypt and claimed her as His own and gave to Israel His Torah because He had claimed her as His own. And He completed and sealed the justification of Israel for all eternity in the death and resurrection of the Messiah of Israel.

Correcting The Natural Mind's Ideas About Salvation

At the same time, the idea of a salvation that salvation is only from the legal consequences of sin is a meaningless idea of salvation. The idea that the judgement of G-d consists only in a legal justification, as if all that was important and necessary were a court decision where wrong is made right, without any regard for the damages done to the soul and to the world and the need for the healing and rectification of those damages is an idea that could appeal only to to the natural mind's desire to get away with its crimes without having to face the real consequences of the actions for which it is responsible.

There Is a Need For Repairing and Rebuilding The Broken Soul

Again, the limited concept of a salvation of the soul that does not consist in the restoration of the soul and of the world and of all relationships of the soul to a condition of perfect health and righteousness, is a meaningless concept. The need for the healing and rectification of the damaged soul applies both to the soul of the individual and to the soul of Israel, which is the soul of Adam.

Therefore G-d first imputes righteousness to the soul. Even though it is contaminated and corrupted, He declares it righteous and innocent, as when He first conceived and created it. For only as having such value is it worthy of being restored. In doing this, He judges the will and work to attain righteousness, which He cultivates within the soul by His Holy Spirit, as being responsible for this righteousness, which He imputes to the soul by uniting it with Mashiach. This is His act as Creator and Father, the Redeemer. For He calls that which is not as though it were and so it is.

Reframing Judaism and Christianity In Complimentary Opposition

Judaism has emphasized the restoration of the soul. Christianity, because it has been molded by the desperate situation of gentiles, has emphasized justification. If these aspects of salvation are kept apart they should each generate animosity toward the position of the other. Only if they are kept together do they and should they compliment one another. And so we see that this is acted out in history. We must bring these together. We must clear the air, for the sake of the repentance of all Adam.

First Christianity must be reframed right from its point of conception. Then, when it no longer speaks against the salvation of the corporate soul, it can begin to learn from the emphasis of Judaism upon the restoration of the soul. And in the course of learning this lesson it can then show the necessity of its own emphasis upon the justification of the soul as the completion of the foundation of salvation for Israel and for the world.

What Is The True Nature of Obedience?

We read in this way in Davarim (Deuteronomy) 28:1,2:

1. And it shall come to pass if hearing you hear by the voice of the Hashem your God for {receiving the ability of} guarding {the word given to you} for {the purpose of} doing the very thing, his commandments, which I have commanded you {as the light of} the day, then I will give you, Hashem your God, {as a c}over upon all nations of the earth.

2. And will come over you all the blessings, these {which shall be expressed} and {they will pursue and} overtake you because you heard the voice of Hashem your God. {Because you heard the ruach HaMashiach.}

-- The voice of Hashem your God -- this is the ruach HaMashiach.

We Must Be Careful About How We Use Our Intelligence

Our intelligence was given to us in order to assist us in listening to G-d. We use it in this world instead of listening to G-d.

We understand that the calling of Adam was in the beginning to hear the commandment given in the Garden of Eden, not through their own voice of thier own understanding but through the voice of the spirit of Mashiach. What is this spirit? It is the true spirit of the Oral Torah. What is this saying?

It is saying that from the very beginning, when G-d first gave a commandment to Adam, He gave with it a principle of interpretation and that this principle came as a spirit to enlighten the intelligence, to overcome the evil inclination and to give victory over temptation.

When this is understood it can also be understood that the day of death for disobedient Adam was a day of grace in which Adam was called by that same spirit of Mashiach to repentance, even though they were already in their graves in the sight of G-d, their Creator, Blessed be He.

Here we are at the source of all understanding of the The Great Commission.

For we are charged not with a new message, but with the message that was from the foundation of the world, to hear the Torah of the God of Israel through the spirit of Mashiach.

Is this another Oral Torah than that received through the Pharisees and the rabbis of Israel? May Israel's G-d forbid the thought! Rather, it is the eternal light of this tradition. For all the Oral Torah of Israel shall be made to shine with this light, the light of the voice of Mashiach, and shall radiate through this light forever.

Now how will this great unification take place between the spirit of Mashiach and the full body of the Oral Torah, which has had to speak to the most imperfect conditions of this world and has therefore not ever reached the level of perfection which Adam lost, the level where once the the commandment might have been received perfectly in the spirit of Mashiach? The answer to this is that which is to be given in the revelation of the mystery of G-d, which revelation is spoken of in Revelation chapter 10. For more on this see Hearing Seven Thunders.

How We Can Obey The God of Israel - Part Two

See part one of this posting here:

How We Can Obey The God of Israel - (part one)

Any and all Christian theology that has understood Paul to be teaching that the death and resurrection of Israel's Messiah resulted in an end having come to the Torah as God's instructions for the life and conduct of Israel have misread him. The grace of God is not an instruction for Israel on how to live life corporately, communally or personally, as is the Torah. The only fundamental question Paul discusses is the question about how we can obey God. Secondarily, he discusses a question about how gentiles can obey God in distinction from how Israel and Jews can obey God. Once this is clear, a great deal of confused Christian theology is put into perspective.

The death and resurrection of Israel's Messiah of his nation reveals once and for all that it is not possible for Israel to obey the Torah as it was commanded to, as a nation, perfectly and completely, without doing so with God's Spirit. Did Israel then, from the time of Moses not possess God's Spirit? She did, though not in the measure at all times that she needed to be truly obedient, which one must be in order to actually fulfill the commandments.

It is possible to do many things that God commands without doing so as an act of obedience to God. It is possible to do so as an obedience to one's own will, as an act only of one's own deliberation and decision and not as an act of obedience to the commandment as given by God. For example, one could obstain from murder simply because one chose to and then not obstain from murder if one chose to commit murder. Not committing murder because of following one's own decision is a different thing from not committing murder because of obeying the commandment of God not to commit murder.

It is not vain or useless to do those things that are also commanded in the Torah to Israel because one choses and answers only to one's own self. The problem with this is that if one does this, eventually they will begin to fail and will slowly become more and more corrupt. Not only this, the attitude itself is always a violation of the relationship with one's Creator. It is essentially an attitude of idolatry, of sin.

Israel was not only given the Torah. With the Torah Israel was given the promise of God to bring about the blessing of life. In this promise of God Israel was given God's Spirit. To say that the Spirit of God was given to Israel through the form of a promise is to say that the Spirit of God was not yet given to Israel in full measure. It was because of this that the Torah, as Paul put it, was weak through the flesh, through human nature, and was not able yet to provide the power to Israel to enable Israel to coporately perfectly and completely obey God in every commandment, (rather than leaning to her own undertanding in some ways).

This then is the Good News, that the blessing of God for Avraham and his offspring, Israel, is now being given in full measure and no longer just by promise.

The World At The Edge of Time

Here we are in this sharpened steel scissor toothed world of predatory wealth, and right now everyone is scurrying like prey, worried and protecting houses built on moral sand, scrambling to care for soulless chariots which burn oils of long dead remains from before the Great Flood. We are not altogether obsessed with wealth though, despite its haughty seductive dress. We all know somewhere within that magnificent wealth is a predator and in some part of us we want some true taste of messianic world justice, at least some taste.

Yet the experts tell us that each real change takes a century and we should be patient like the generations that have died before us. One day the centuries all have to jam up together, both for good and evil, and all their changes have to fall out at once, as if from a great crash of time, like a giant wave crashing on the shore. For God is long suffering, not willing that the world should be ruled by the mind of sin forever, but instead that the whole globe should come to a day and true moment of repentance as one.

The witness of Israel has been conveyed to me by the Spirit of Israel's Messiah, the witness that a day of judgment has been appointed for the Earth and will not be delayed. Yet my own actions say that I don't quite believe this yet with my whole heart. I live too much of my life as though I doubted it just a little. Or I might say that my little doubts have the power to run a disproportionate portion of my life. It is time I took a further step away from these doubts, indeed, a decisive step to walk away from them.

I look at our tough and angry world, the world I was born and raised in, the world that is ruled by death but still, like a defiant child, never stops fighting back in order to build its dreams, even though its dreams are always crushed in the end, over and over again, one era and one civilization after another. I know there is a temptation to excitement in the fear of death, and there is temptation to vain pride in fighting against the inevitable, the temptation to the pleasure of self-consolation which leads eventually to any and every moral license. But I have heard the Torah tongue of the Spirit of the Messianic Redeemer of Israel saying, "Today I have put before you life and death. Choose life!" A simple choice, but it seems as hard as moving the mountain of the world off of one's own grave.

I see the beauty of this world that entices to self-consolation. But what beauty is like the beauty of life? What pleasure is like the pleasure of holiness? What success is like the success of obeying with perfect obedience a single commandment of God? I know the attractiveness of the salvation that would offer escape from the consequences of sin, but what salvation is like the salvation of repentance? I know the passion of temptation to find belonging with brothers and sisters in a fraternity of denial that there is a day of justice and judgment coming against all the world. But oh that the God of Israel might give me a way of repentance that I might turn my back on all these temptations once and for all and walk unwavering toward Him, to find my need for belonging met through belonging to Him and to His people forever.

ROSH CHODESH SHEVAT

On Sunday January 25, 2009, 12:35, Max Kirk wrote on the Azamra website:

"The numerical value of “prophecy” (נְבוּאָה ) is also equal to the value of the three holy Names that refer to the essence of the Almighty:
,י-הוה, א-היה, א-הוה whose numerical values are: 26, 21, 17, respectively. These three Names are composed solely of the Hebrew vowel letters, אהוי , and correspond, respectively to the three sefirot: wisdom (chochmah), understanding (binah), and knowledge (da’at). Altogether, these three holy Names have 12 letters, alluding again to the prophecy of Moshe. Also, each of these holy Names' letters can be permuted in exactly 12 different ways (though each has four letters, the letter hei repeats twice in each, producing a total of 4!/2 unique permutations). Thus, one should meditate on how a permutation of each of these three holy Names enlightens each of the 12 months of the year, in context with the special sense and tribal qualities that correspond to each month.

In the coming year, we should seek to fasten our consciousness on prophecy as it is revealed at its highest level and specifically with the unique hue of prophecy that will shine in each particular month."
--> http://www.inner.org/newyearblessing/5768_blessing.php

As the twelve months form a circle - and we know that every circle orbits itself - and understand from this the mystery of pi and of the dimensions of Solomon's brass sea of Israel's purification - so also from this we may contemplate the glory and joy of the unity of the twelve tribes of Israel, through which is revealed the unity of the name of the Blessed Holy One.

Perfect Torah Righteousness Is Only The Starting Place

Luke 17

5  And the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith.
6  And the Master said, If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you might say unto this sycamore tree, Be plucked up by the root, and be planted in the sea; and it would obey you.
7  But think!  Which of you, if you had a slave plowing or feeding cattle, would say unto him after this work, when he had come in from the field, Go and sit down to eat?
8  And would not rather say unto him, Prepare now my meal that I may dine.  Dress yourself and serve me, till I have eaten and my thirst is satisfied; afterward you shall eat and drink?
9  Does the master thank that slave because he did the things that were commanded him? I think not.
10 So likewise you, when you shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.

What is that which the students of the Master Yehoshua were commanded to do?  The commandments they received were the 613 commandments of the Torah.  What did the Master teach them about this that would increase their faith, as they asked of him?  That if they were to attain the perfect righteousness of Torah observance they would only be living as Adam and cHavah were living on the day they were created - the righteousness in which they would have continued, had they not fallen from the grace of the Torah which was written in their members.  For what purpose, then, was the perfectly Torah righteous Adam created, the man and the woman?  For what purpose were they created with their every limb perfect in the righteousness of the 613 commandments?  They were created to till the soil of the Garden of Eden with their Torah perfect limbs and thereby to prepare a banquet wherein they might serve their Creator.  And until they had done so, although they were Torah perfect they were unprofitable servants.

From this we learn that anyone who has need of their faith being increased should not think that they will be rewarded for a desire of only obeying the commandments of the Torah.  Rather, they should look for the reward of a faith that can command the trees of the Garden of God with a word only when their heart is set on correcting the unprofitability of Adam, not only the unprofitability of Adam as an unrighteous sinner but also the unprofitability of Adam as a tzaddik and tzaddikah who never completed in their righteousness their service to their Creator.

God Will Create A New Thing: A Woman Will Surround A Man

This prophecy from Jeremiah seems at first both intriguing and strange. It is presented in a way that makes it sound like a key to prophetic understanding, and indeed it is like a key in a box, a box which itself is locked and must be opened for the key to be made accessible. Once this key is in one's hand it can be used to open the mystery for which it was designed. This mystery is the mystery of Israel's conversion from disobedience to the final mature service of God for which the nation was chosen.

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