How did you become a Christian?
The Biblical answer is your faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of the Son of God makes you a Christian. You believe He atoned for your sins with His Blood on the cross, He was buried and rose again after three days in the grave.
How did He atone for your sins? Is there a deeper Biblical meaning behind His death explaining important Biblical truths for your faith?
Lev 17:11 says Blood is given to us as atonement for our sins, and John 1:29 says Jesus is the lamb of God who atones for the sins of the world. Jesus atoned by being God’s sacrificial lamb in every way, fulfilling the requirements for a sin offering in the Torah (the written law of Moses.)
Because His death fulfilled every commandment for a sin sacrifice in the Torah, you and I can now be reconciled to Yehovah (God) by faith in His death, burial, and resurrection. This is what makes you a Christian, your faith in the atoning death, burial, and resurrection of the lamb of God.
So by faith, you have been obedient to the sacrificial laws in the Old Testament by offering up the death of the Son of God as a sacrifice for your sins. Your obedience to the sacrificial laws in the Old Testament found in the Torah (the written law of Moses), by faith, is what makes you a Christian.
James 2:10 says, if you obey all commandments in the Torah except for 1, you are guilty of breaking the entire Torah. This works both ways as well; if you follow one commandment of 613 commandments, your obedience does not matter. You are still seen as if you have broken them all.
When Christians obey the Torah’s commandments about atonement, by believing in the death burial and resurrection of Yeshua, but reject the others, their faith in Yeshua can not save them. (James 2:10-26.) This is why we see Christians who confess Jesus as Lord and even have ministries, being turned away by Yeshua when He tells them, “Depart from Me for I never knew you, you who are without Torah, Matt 7:21-23.”
When Christians believe in Yeshua’s death, burial, and resurrection but reject the Torah (the written law of Moses), they are rejecting the very foundation for their faith. If you believe the Torah does not apply to you, you believe the sacrificial laws which Yeshua fulfilled for you do not apply to you.
“Are you saying we can earn our salvation by obeying Moses??”
The Torah, the written law of Moses, tells us how to atone for our sins by sacrificing animals in the temple. The temple is gone; the Romans destroyed it, so now we cant go there and atone. Yehovah did not have to come up with a solution, but because He loves us, He foresaw what would happen to the temple. So He gave us His Son Yeshua to make atonement possible, even after the temple was gone. And at the same time, He made it possible for us to have our intentional sins atoned for. This was not possible under the sacrificial system before we could only atone for unintentional sins, but now we could atone for both and have atonement without accessing the temple.
We did nothing to deserve this, so the cross and what Yeshua did for us, is a gift. But what we do with the gift is our responsibility.
The Bible says if you want salvation, you have to use Yehovahs gift following the sacrificial laws given in His Torah. The only way to open the gift of salvation is to believe Yeshua’s Blood meets every requirement for atoning sacrifice laid out in the sacrificial laws in the Torah. There is no other way for us to be saved/atone for our sins. We have to believe Yeshua is the sacrificial lamb and believe His Blood atoned for our sins, according to the laws for atonement given to us in the Torah. We did nothing to deserve the gift given to us in Yeshua, but to use God’s gift the way He intended it, we have to go by the laws of Moses.
So the only way to be saved is to obey the sacrificial laws in the Torah (the written law of Moses.) But the Bible also says should you choose to reject the rest of the law, your faith in the cross can not save you. (James 2:10-21, Matt 7:21-23.)
So what happens after you have made atonement for your sins by faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Yeshua?
Paul the Apostle says in Rom 6:11, we are to count ourselves as dead to sin but alive to Christ.
How do we count ourselves dead to sin but alive to Christ?
In Rom 6:8, Paul says our faith in the cross, burial, and resurrection of Yeshua joins us with Him on a spiritual level. So even though Yeshua died on the cross 2000 years ago, your faith in His atoning death for your sins right now will make your spirit one with His Spirit. Your faith will join your Spirit with His in His death, burial and resurrection. You died with Him, you were buried with Him, and raised with Him to a new life. If you believe this, Paul says you have to act on what you believe and from now on live out the new life in obedience to righteousness. If you do this, you are dead to sin but alive to Christ.
Do you see how Paul, in Rom 6:8-11, says we have to do something? Paul is placing the responsibility on us, and he says, if we believe, we are responsible for living out our faith and act on what we believe in. Paul never supported the idea of passive faith.
So what Paul is trying to tell us is this, to have salvation, we have to obey God’s rules on how to be saved. Yehovah (God) has already said in the Torah (the written law of Moses) we need to atone for our sins with a Blood sacrifice in the temple. The Romans destroyed the temple, but Yehovah has given us His sacrificial lamb in His own Son Yeshua. Everyone who believes Yeshua is their sacrificial lamb and believes His Blood atoned for their sins, will be reconciled to Yehovah according to the law of Moses.
Paul goes on to say if we believe He is our sacrifice for our sins, we will join with Yeshua by faith. We will become one spirit with His Spirit, and we are to see ourselves as dead with Christ, buried with Christ, and risen with Christ to a new life. Now that we have been given a new life in Christ, Paul and John say we have to live for Him as slaves to the law of Moses (to righteousness.)
So what the Bible says is this, we can only be saved by obeying the law of Moses. We can only go on living as a Christian if we continue to follow the law of Moses. Obedience to the Mosaic law saves us, obedience to the Mosaic law keeps us saved. Should we, on the other hand, choose to reject the rest of the Torah, and only obey the laws for atonement, the Bible says our faith in the cross can not save us.
Living in obedience to the Mosaic law is not only what saves us and keeps us saved, but it is also what guarantees our needs to be met in this life.
In Matt 6:25-34, Yeshua says we are to seek first to be obedient to the Torah (the written law of Moses), and if we do, we are promised that Yehovah will meet all our needs and we will have no reason to worry about anything. What Yeshua is saying here is the same thing as Yehovah says in Deut 28:1-14, if we obey the Torah, He guarantees He will heal us, provide for us, deliver us, protect us, and everyone will know He is our God.
What Yeshua and Yehovah are talking about here is not a carefree life without any problems. It more resembles what happened to Moses and the Israelites, our forefathers, when they stood at the shores of the Red Sea. It resembles more what Yehovah says in Psalm 91 and Psalm 23. We will still hear and see bad things happening in this world, and sometimes, it will seem as if we will be the victim of them. But if we keep walking out our Christian lives, in obedience to the Torah, Yehovah promises to show up in our lives and show off, so everyone will know He is our God. Sometimes it will seem as if the Egyptian army is about to overrun us. Still, if we keep being obedient, Yehovah will suddenly make a move on our behalf and remove every obstacle and every hindrance that is in our way.
So remember this as we start the new week, what made you a Christian is what keeps you a Christian and what blesses you as a Christian: the Torah (the written law of Moses) and your obedience to it.
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