The Messiah and the Torah
This essay is adapted from the third message in The Meaning of Messiah, a series exploring Jesus through the eyes of the Hebrew Scriptures.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Torah or the Prophets.”
Jesus faced many mockers and critics in his day. Many of his opponents claimed this rabbi from Nazareth was teaching God’s people to abandon his Torah, but he was quick to correct this misinformation.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Torah 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 Torah 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).
Right in the middle of the most famous sermon the world has even known, Jesus affirms the ongoing authority of the Torah in God’s redemptive plan.
He does not speak like someone embarrassed by Torah or treat it as irrelevant to his mission. He insists upon its ongoing authority and warns that whoever relaxes even its least commandments will be called least in the kingdom.
Our Master believed that the kingdom of God was within reach in his generation, which he why he preached a message of repentance: “Repent, for the kingdom is at hand!” If God’s kingdom was arriving, then Jesus believed God’s standards mattered. As Messiah and King, Jesus understood that when the kingdom comes, the king comes. And our task today is to understand how he intends to rule.
Israel’s kings were never free to invent their own moral order. The king was to know God’s instruction, study it, live beneath it, and uphold it. If Jesus is the Messiah, and the Messiah is a king, then we must ask what kind of government rests upon his shoulders? What relationship does his kingship have with God’s Torah? And why does any of that still matter for us today?
A King Formed by Torah
For many Christians, the Torah is often viewed as the part of the Bible Jesus came to free us from. But Jesus does not say that in Matthew 5. To understand what kind of Messiah he believed himself to be, we need to ask what kind of king the Scriptures presented him with.
The Torah answers that question long before Israel ever places a king upon a throne.
In Deuteronomy 17, as Israel prepares to enter the land, God gives his people a blueprint for their future king. He must be chosen by God and come from among his brothers. Unlike the kings of the surrounding nations, he must not build his security through military power, political alliances, personal excess, or accumulated wealth. Everything about his reign must remain beneath the authority of God.
The king’s security, power, and reputation must come through covenant faithfulness to Yahweh—not through the ways of the nations.
Then God gives such a remarkable requirement:
“And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this Torah, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left” (Deuteronomy 17:18–20).
The king must write his own personal copy of the Torah!
He cannot let the priests summarize it for him, keep a pretty ceremonial copy on a shelf, or memorize a few of his favorite passages. He must write it by his own hand, submit his manuscript to the priests for scrutiny, and then read it every single day for the rest of his life.
Torah is not merely a set of rules the king enforces upon everyone else. Torah is the wisdom that forms the king himself. It shapes his mind, his heart, his loyalties, his humility, and his obedience. If Jesus believed he was the Messiah, then he did not merely need David’s royal blood or Abraham’s Jewish blood. He needed to become this kind of king: a Deuteronomy 17 king who knows God’s instruction, lives it, and can teach it because he has spent his life mastering it.
The Messiah is a Jewish king. And a Jewish king must be a Torah scholar.
What Does the Messiah Do With Torah?
Torah can refer broadly to the first five books of Scripture, sometimes called the Pentateuch. But the word Torah means instruction or teaching. It reveals God’s wisdom for human life and flourishing in God’s good world, so it makes sense that the Messiah does not spend his life studying that wisdom for his own sake. The prophets give him a two-part mission:
He must teach God’s Torah to the nations.
He must renew Israel so that God’s covenant people can finally uphold it.
Isaiah 2 describes the first part of this mission. In the last days, the mountain of Yahweh’s house will be established, and the nations will stream to Jerusalem. They will say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem” (Isaiah 2:3).
This is not just a slow trickle; this is a steady stream of people from the nations coming to Jerusalem to learn the ways of Israel’s God. They make a long journey, learn this wisdom, but they don’t remain there. Returning back home, they bring the good news of the Torah back to their regions—the Torah going forth from Zion—and teaching the world how to live beneath God’s rule. The result is righteous judgment between nations: settled disputes, economic harmony, ecological stewardship and abundance, and eventually the end of war.
This is the world beneath the wise government of God’s king. The kingdom is centered in Israel, but its blessing reaches the entire world. Torah was entrusted to Israel so that Israel might model for humanity the wisdom and ways of its Creator.
But Isaiah’s vision is only half the story. Before Torah can go forth from Zion to the nations, Israel herself must be renewed to walk in God’s ways and fulfill her calling.
The New Covenant Is Not Torah’s Funeral
When many Christians hear the phrase new covenant, it is easy to almost automatically assume a dichotomy: the old covenant was bad; the new covenant is good. The old was law; the new is grace. The old must disappear so the new can take its place.
This rhetoric is so deeply embedded within parts of Christianity that it’s hard to even recognize it. But we must understand that this reasoning is not consistent with how the prophets or apostles describe the new covenant.
The new covenant is not God scrapping Torah. It is God renewing his people—the Jewish people—so that they can live faithfully within his instruction.
The Torah is good; the human heart is what’s stubborn. So God does not promise, “I‘ll get rid of my Torah.” Of course he cannot get rid of the Torah! It’s his wisdom, his standard. It’s upon the wisdom of Torah he founded the world. So God says “I’ll send my Messiah to transform the hearts of my people.”
Hebrews 8 quotes Jeremiah’s new-covenant promise at length:
““For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. For he finds fault with them when he says,
Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah…. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people”
In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.” (Hebrews 8:8, 10; quoting Jeremiah 31:31–33).
That final line is an easy to trip over, because at first glance, it makes it sound as though God is done with the Torah; that the Torah is the thing that’s obsolete and passing away. But a slow, careful reading provides a different meaning, one consistent with what Jesus himself taught.
Whom does God find fault with in the first covenant? Verse 8 says he finds fault “with them”—the people, not the Torah, not even the covenant. The people are the faulty party.
With whom does he make the new covenant? The house of Israel and the house of Judah. The new covenant is not with me personally, nor Christians or the church. I am grateful that I am invited to particate in the blessings of that covenant through faith in it’s mediator, but the new covenant is not first or primarily with me.
What does God promise to place within the house of Israel and Judah? His Torah.
And what is becoming obsolete? The first covenant.
This is important. The first covenant is not the Torah. The first covenant is Israel’s agreement to keep the Torah.
The problem was not that God’s Torah was defective or impossible to attain, but that his people did not keep their end of the deal. They did not continue in the covenant.
So the new covenant does not abolish God’s Torah. It recreates God’s people: new hearts, with Torah written within, and the Spirit empowering covenant faithfulness from the inside out.
The new covenant is not Torah’s end, but Israel’s renewed capacity for faithfulness to God.
For the Sake of His Name
By this point, we may be thinking to ourselves, “Ok, that’s all great but why does any of this matter?”
Why must Israel walk faithfully in Torah?
Why must the nations learn it?
Why must the Messiah teach it?
Jesus has already died, risen, and defeated death in his own body. He’s done it! So why does biblical faith still require any of this?
There is one very big reason: if Israel does not walk faithfully in Torah, God cannot dwell in her midst as he promised. If God is not dwelling in Israel, his name is profaned among the nations.
In the world today, this is a present reality. God is not dwelling in his temple in Jerusalem. Israel is not hosting his presence on the land as the prophets envision. And the nations look at Israel and reason: There is no God in Israel. The promises he made to this people are imagined, they’re stories, legands. There is no Messiah. The God of Israel will not do what he said—or he at least meant something different by them. There is no Yahweh God.
This is what today’s world has concluded about the God we worship. The Torah is God’s wisdom for humanity, but ultimately it’s about something greater: God’s reputation. His name.
Through Ezekiel, God tells Israel:
“It is not for your sake that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name…. And the nations will know that I am the LORD … when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes” (Ezekiel 36:22–23).
Here’s how God is going to vindicate himself:
“My dwelling place shall be with them…. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary is in their midst forevermore” (Ezekiel 37:27–28).
God has attached his name to this people and land, and his reputation to their restoration. Israel’s renewed ability to walk in the fullness and wisdom of God’s Torah demonstrates to the world that the God of Israel keeps his word—and that he is the Most High God.
Jesus taught his disciples to pray for precisely this:
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:9–10).
Jesus knew the writings of Ezekiel. He knew God’s name can only be hallowed among the nations when he restores Israel to covenant faithfulness, dwells among his people, and brings the earth beneath his righteous standards.
So let’s follow the logic:
If Israel is not renewed, God cannot dwell among his people as he promised.
If God does not dwell among them, Israel cannot fulfill her calling as a light to the nations.
If Israel cannot be a light to the nations, the nations will never learn the wisdom and ways of Israel’s God.
And if the nations never learn God’s ways, evil just keeps going.
The world cannot heal itself. But Yahweh does not fail. He has not forgotten his people or abandoned his Torah.
God has installed his Messiah to bring Israel and the nations into alignment with God’s wisdom.
The cross and resurrection are not alternatives to that mission. They are the decisive victory guaranteeing that the Messiah will complete it.
This is why Torah still matters. That is why the Messiah being a Torah scholar still matters. He has not yet completed all that the Torah and the Prophets teach. Jesus did not come to throw out Moses and replace Torah with grace, but to be the king who brings Israel and the world into alignment with the wisdom of God.
The Messiah Steps Into His Role
When Jesus ascends the mountain in Matthew 5, gathers the Jewish people and begins to teach Torah, he is not offering spiritual tips or making the Torah a matter of the heart.
He is beginning the work the Scriptures assigned to Israel’s Messiah.
He speaks with the authority of a king, teaching God’s people how to walk in God’s ways. He exposes shallow and selective obedience and presses the wisdom of Torah to it’s farthest extent.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not murder,’” Jesus tells the crowd. Then he calls out the anger and contempt from which murder begins.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’” Then he expands beyond outward restraint and exposes what faithfulness and holiness means in some of the most important relationships we can have in this life.
He speaks about oaths, retaliation, and love of enemies, pushing the Torah’s wisdom to is limits: integrity, mercy, and true righteousness.
Jesus does not waive Torah. He intensifies it, clarifies it, and administers it as the king who understands its goal.
Then, at the end of Matthew, Jesus stands on another mountain. Having received all authority in heaven and upon earth, he sends his disciples to the nations:
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations … teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19–20).
The king of Israel, enthroned over heaven and earth, sends his disciples to instruct the nations in the ways of God. Doesn’t that sound like Isaiah 2?
The Messiah has not yet finished this work. The vision of the Torah and the Prophets is much larger than anything we have yet seen. The nations have not streamed to Zion. War has not ceased. Israel and Judah have not been fully renewed. God’s dwelling has not been restored in Jerusalem, and the earth has not come beneath the Messiah’s wise instruction.
Our king has begun the work, and he will finish it when he reigns in fullness.
You Have Heard It Said
In our day, we, too, have heard it said…
that he Torah does not matter anymore,
that God is finished with all that Old Testament stuff,
that Jesus abolished the law,
that Hebrews says it is all obsolete anyway.
But Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Torah or the Prophets.” Our question is not, What do I believe about Torah? but whether I have submitted myself to learning its wisdom? Have I allowed the Scriptures that formed Jesus to teach me who he is, how he intends to govern the world, and how he intends to reign over my life now?
Psalm 1 describes the righteous man this way:
“His delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night” (Psalm 1:2).
Those words are portrait of Israel’s Messiah. If we love Jesus, then we need to love the things he loves. And Jesus loves God’s Torah. He meditates upon it. He lives it. He teaches it. And the government we hope will one day rest on his capable shoulders and heal the world is grounded in the wisdom revealed there.
Open the Scriptures that formed your king. Read them slowly—day by day, year by year. You have heard it said that Torah is over, but Jesus says otherwise. Are willing to sit at the feet of our King and learn?
“Teach me, O LORD, the way of your statutes;
and I will keep it to the end” (Psalm 119:33).