"The church" keeps insisting that the word "fulfilled" somehow meant "abolished". Well, it didn't! While your job as parent teaching your kids how to be safe, and to, for instance, NOT cross the road without first looking both ways to make sure it was safe to cross, ended when those kids grew up, did that mean they could now start crossing the road WITHOUT looking both ways first?
Well, it's the same with God's Divine Instructions! Jesus didn't bring anything new when he came to do everything His Father commanded; he simply went on to explain and even demonstrate the need for Torah! His death didn't relieve anyone from OBEDIENCE to the Divine Instructions. It simply alleviated the need for us to NOT have to kill an innocent animal to atone for our sins.
Let's examine this a little further:
Matthew 5: 17 Don’t think that I have come to abolish the Torah or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to complete. 18 Yes indeed! I tell you that until heaven and earth pass away, not so much as a yud or a stroke will pass from the Torah – not until everything that must happen has happened.
19 So whoever disobeys the least of these mitzvot and teaches others to do so will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But whoever obeys them and so teaches will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness is far greater than that of the Torah-teachers and P'rushim, you will certainly not enter the Kingdom of Heaven! (CJB)
Has everything that "must happen" happened yet? Have "heaven and earth passed away? If not, then it seems believers are supposed to BE Torah observant today!
The verse in Matthew 5:17-20 that says: "So whoever disobeys the least of these mitzvot and teaches others to do so will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven" is a major key, because it is talking about YHWH's commands!
What commands are they? TORAH commands - which still stand today ... and WE are obligated, as believers, to keep those that we can! We need to pay special attention to those that have the word "forever" or "throughout your generations" attached to them.
Why? Because "forever" hasn't ended yet! Not to mention, "fulfill" never meant "to put an end to." It means, Yeshua came to do His Father's will and to fulfill "the next thing on the agenda".....
"Fulfill", among other things, means to have proper understanding of a scriptural passage, such as recognizing a precise fulfillment of prophecy. Therefore, for instance, when Yeshua says, "This word is fulfilled in your hearing," he means that he is the goal or object of that prophecy and has now arrived on the scene to do his mission as specified according to prophecy.
Now, if the "fulfillment" has not happened yet, as is the case when Yeshua says, "All that is written in the Torah and Prophets must be fulfilled," then it means, quite obviously "kept", "vouchsafed" or "adhered to" – the exact opposite of passing away!
That is also why he says, "He who keeps (fulfills) my words shall not taste death!"
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