Loving Yeshua for Jews 101 – Yochanan 14

As we seek to build a mature Messianic Judaism for the future I would like to offer a brief look at how our Torah observance relates to our righteous Messiah, Yeshua, the one who lived a life of complete obedience to Torah and is our example.

The Torah is the way of life of the Jewish people and is the guiding document of what it means to live out the covenant between God and Israel. In our observance of Shavuot, the traditional time of the giving of Torah on Mt. Sinai; one of the most important parts of the story of the redemption of the Jewish people from Egypt was the purpose of freedom. When God sent Moses to speak to Pharaoh, we read:

Go in to Pharaoh and say to him, “This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says, ‘Let my people go so that they may give me worship.’

Exodus 9:1 BBE

The worship of God embodied in Torah observance was the reason for being freed from Egypt and our way to participate daily in and celebrate God’s great act of redeeming Israel from Egyptian bondage.

In Yochanan 14, we see some insights about the important issue of Torah observance for Messianic Jews from the teaching of Messiah Yeshua.

If you love me, you will keep my commands; and I will ask the Father,and he will give you another comforting Counselor like me,the Spirit of Truth, to be with you forever.Yochanan 14:15-16, JNT

In verse 15, Yeshua gives us another level of what Torah observance means beyond being the obligation of Jewish people to order their lives according to Torah and a participation in the freedom from slavery in Egypt.  For the Jewish followers of Yeshua it also is a way of showing love for our Messiah by observing his commands, Yeshua being the physical manifestation of the God of Israel, the giver of Torah.

This ties in well with the words of the Ve’ahavta section of the Shema wherein as we “accept the yoke of Heaven”, embodied in observing Torah, we recite, “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:5). Each day as we recite the Shema, we affirm the connection between living a life of Torah observance and whole hearted love for God.

In verse 16, Yeshua promised that by obeying Torah we would be given the Spirit of God to be our Comforter and helper to live Torah. So in obeying Torah we are granted the Spirit of God so that we can more earnestly live within a Torah life. Let us seek to live lives of Torah faithfulness and in so doing we will be obeying God, celebrating freedom from slavery, showing love to Yeshua, our righteous Messiah and also opening ourselves to receiving the power of God’s Spirit to live more fully the Torah.