Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Birthed By Truth. (Jas. 1:18)



By his* will he gave birth to us through the message of truth, so that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures. (Ja s. 1:18)

The typical believer says amen!  But what exactly is the message of Truth?  Yeshua the Messiah tells us that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life (Jn. 14:6).  Okay, but is there more?  How is this understood from a biblical worldview?  A good hermeneutical principle is that. Scripture always interprets scripture.

In Ps. 119, the longest  chapter in the Bible, which is in praise of the Torah (law) of Elohim, we are told this:  "Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and your law is truth" (142).  So here we are told Yhwh's Torah is truth.  This is perhaps one of the most neglected verses of scripture by the entire Christian Church, and it separates those who belong to Messiah, and those who have a spirit of religion.

Further down, in Ps. 119:151, we read: "You are near, O Yahweh, and all your commands are truth."  In fact, reading sections Tsade and Qoph, verses 137-152, you see the themes of 'righteousness,' 'the word,' 'belief,' and 'obedience' to Yhwh's righteous commands.

So for the Jews living during the days of Yeshua's first advent, they would have understood the term "word of Elohim" as the Tanak, or more specifically, the Torah, which we see throughout the Psalms, and the entirety of the Tanakh (Old Testament).  So when the apostle John writes "The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us" (Jn. 1:14), he was communicating that the Torah became flesh!"

We know Yeshua lived a sinless life by keeping God's Law (Torah) perfectly.  That is how He was able to fulfill Passover as the lamb of Elohim.  John further instructs believers in one of his lesser known books, that "anyone who claims to live in him must walk as that one walked" (1 Jn. 2:6).  That is to say, believers must walk in righteousness, that is, in Torah, not to be saved, but because they are saved, in obedient love.  Yeshua taught, "The one who loves me will keep my commands."  Amen!

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