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Sweet The Sound
by Boaz Michael
What happened to Amazing Grace?
When you first hear about our Messiah Centered—Torah
based approach to faith and community expression
the word—legalism
may spring to mind. In fact, it may appear that grace
has been diminished in favor of this clarion call to
righteous living and God’s Torah. But such a
reading would be a misperception. B’nei Avraham
in fact is very grace-based. We believe anything added
to grace or subtracted from grace is something other
than grace. Why then the perception of legalism?
Each member of the community of B’nei Avraham
firmly believe in the finished, atoning work of Jesus
Christ.1 Christ alone is the way
to receive the free gift of God’s righteousness
and to be fully acquitted of sins. It’s true
that many people have perceived the Torah as a set
of rules to be followed in order to gain salvation.
But that is a sad misperception of Torah. No one can
earn, merit or keep eternal salvation through following
the Torah or any other set of rules. To attempt to
do so would be legalism indeed. To teach the need to
do so would be selling grace short. Instead, the community
of B’nei Avraham fervently stands
on and believes that people can be saved only by the
unmerited grace of God—through personal faith
in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
To be saved is to be a new person. Before a person
is born again he/she is in rebellion against God
and His Torah (Romans 8:7). But, when a person becomes
a believer in Jesus, God makes that person a new
creation. Romans 6:1-6 says that the old human being
actually dies on the cross with Jesus and the believer
is made a brand new person by virtue of Messiah’s
life planted within. Romans 5:19 states that Messiah’s
life in us changes our inner constitutions. The believer’s
identity has been changed from sinner to saint. They
have become living versions of Christ. Their deepest
and most basic identity was changed the moment that
they were born again and granted new life from God
above.
A sinner is someone defined by and enslaved by sin.
Sin is Torahlessness (1 John 3:4). Every violation
of Scripture is sin. This applies not only to the biggies,
like murder and stealing, it applies to every jot and
tittle, just like Jesus said in Matthew 5:17. Sin means “missing
the mark.” Torah is the mark for which we are
to aim. Jesus never missed the mark. He was a human
being, made like us in every way, yet He was without
sin. Now that we are His, we are to walk in the same
way that He did (Hebrews 4:15; 1 John 2:6; 1 John 3:5).
Sin is not normal for us anymore! We used to be aiming
at something else (sin, whether we knew it or not),
now we aim for Torah (righteousness). We used to be
sinners; now we are saints.
Please don’t misunderstand. We’re not saying
believers never sin. Sin happens. No one is perfect
yet. But the believer’s relationship to sin has
entirely changed. If sin means missing the mark, one
might say that the sinner doesn’t even know how
to string the bow. Jesus transforms sinners (mark-missers)
into master archers. Even a master archer will miss
the bull’s-eye sometimes, and a saint will sometimes
sin. But he is no longer a slave to sin and sin no
longer constitutes his identity. Instead, righteousness
is now the true expression of his character. Christians
have been given power over sin through Jesus’ life
in them. Sin is no longer our way of life. To choose
sin is to behave like someone that we no longer are!
Because we are no longer sinners we are no longer slaves
to sin. Therefore, it is our responsibility to yield
our bodies to Messiah, not to sin. How is this done?
The standard has been set for us by the Torah, and
the example has been given in the crucified, buried,
and risen Savior, Jesus Christ. He walked in perfect
obedience to His Father’s Torah and now lives
in us to give us the power to do the same. A Torah-based
lifestyle is a life of obedience to the Word. For believers
in Jesus, Torah living is the fullest expression of
our biblical faith. We have been freed from sin in
order to pattern our lives after our new creation self.
It is sometimes taught that no one can keep Torah because
it is too difficult. The Bible says otherwise (Deuteronomy
30:11–14). To say that we cannot keep Torah
diminishes both the truth and the potential of the
new life planted within us. Christians have been
given a job to do! Christians are to display His
majesty, holiness, righteousness, mercy, and goodness.
We are commanded to be holy, to be set apart for
God. This means being faithful to His instructions
on how to be holy. We can do it through faith in
His Son, our Savior, and the life that He now lives
in us.
The community endeavors to model a high standard
of holiness. That standard is Torah, both the Written
and the Living Torah. Jesus is the Living Torah living
within us. His life lived through us is our fullest
potential in the Kingdom of God! If we truly appreciate
the full extent of God’s grace to us, we will
be passionate about our relationship with Him and
His Son. We will desire to live our lives to the
fullest by being the best person we can be in God.
Being a believer requires more than just a mental
assent to Jesus, it requires a deliberate effort
to ascend in relationship with Him. The community
of B’nei Avraham is dedicated to that purpose,
encouraging all believers everywhere to live out
the grace that has been so freely bestowed upon us
by rising to a new level of holy and godly living
as defined by the Scriptures. That’s what amazing
grace does. It leads us to obedience. How sweet the
sound! For the grace of God has appeared, bringing
salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness
and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously
and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed
hope and the appearing of the glory of our great
God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself for
us to redeem us from every lawless deed 2,
and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession,
zealous for good deeds 3. Titus
2:11-14
- The vast majority
of the people in the community of B'nei Avraham use
the Hebrew rendition of the name of the Messiah—Yeshua.
This places the Messiah back into His cultural context.
This is an important interpretive principle when
one begins to rediscover the roots of the faith.
- anomia {an-om-ee’-ah}
Meaning: 1) the condition of without law 1a) because
ignorant of it 1b) because of violating it 2) contempt
and violation of law, iniquity, wickedness.
- “Good
deeds” in
the Hebrew mind is inseparably connected to the Hebrew
word Mitzvah. A mitzvah is a commandment
of Torah. (Luke 24:27; Titus 2:14; 1 Jn 5:3)
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