Now that we have taken a fresh approach to reading the letters Shaul wrote to the congregations he had created, we need to remember that the New Covenant was formulated from many letters and gospels, as well as Codex’s and other materials, by a group of Gentiles who had already been worshiping as far from how Yeshua worshipped as one can get.

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According to Wikipedia, the new Covenant was compiled by approximately 40 different people, sometime around 90-95 AD; other historical documents I have seen state that by that time, even the celebration of the Shabbat was changed from the 7th day of the week (the way Yeshua celebrated it) to the first day of the week (Sunday).

The Epistles have been so misused and misunderstood by men who were not Jewish and already had an agenda to separate the believers of Yeshua from the Jewish roots of the movement that I am not at all surprised that nearly every Christian denomination bases almost everything it does on these letters, almost totally ignoring the Torah.

And remember that these are letters were NOT received in a divine vision and were NOT dictated by God but written by a man to counteract the damaging influences from both without and within those congregations; congregations of Gentile believers who were failing to maintain their faith.

Shaul received his vision from Yeshua on the road to Damascus, sometime around 36 CE, and almost every Bible you read will say this is when he converted to Christianity. The truth is he never converted to anything: what happened was not a conversion, as evidenced by the fact that Shaul continued to worship as a Jew, continued to enter and preach in the synagogue everywhere he went, and even took vows in accordance with the Torah (1 Corinthians 11:1).

A more accurate statement of the event is not that it was a conversion to a different religion, but a revelation of the truth of his existing religion, that truth being Yeshua is the Messiah mentioned throughout the Tanakh to be sent by God.

The first letter we have from Shaul is to the Thessalonians, which was written about 12 years after Shaul’s revelation of Yeshua. The rest of the letters included in the New Covenant range from 50 CE through 66 CE.

In all of these letters we see the same challenges to these neophyte Gentile believers: believing Jews forcing them to get circumcised in order to be saved (legalism), outside influences weakening their faith (arguments about genealogies and Gnosticism), false teachings from outside and even inside the believing community (2 Timothy 2:16), and misplaced loyalties and the formation of cliques within the congregation that was tearing it apart (1 Corinthians 3).

Although it wasn’t mentioned specifically, I think we can also assume there were challenges forced on these believers by non-believing friends, family, and neighbors who were persecuting them for their change in lifestyle, which smelled like death to those non-believers (2 Corinthians 2:15).

I once read a book that identified a conundrum in marriages that were having relationship problems: the conundrum was that if one member of the couple tried to improve the relationship, the other member went out of their way to reestablish the previous, hurtful relationship. Why? Because it had become comfortable.

Now, here we have a Gentile believer in Yeshua who is being told to give up all the hedonistic, drunken, and sexually perverse things he (or she) does in order to live a righteous life with the promise of resurrection. That’s a pretty hard sell, and hard for a person to do, even with support from families and friends, so imagine how much harder it must have been for the Gentiles who chose to live that way back then! It’s no wonder Shaul had to keep on top of them to maintain their faith.

Shaul spent those first 12 years after his revelation of Yeshua traveling all over Asia and the Middle East. Shaul’s missionary work was very successful, but something happened after the Jewish leaders of this new sect within Judaism had all died: the message in Shaul’s letters became polluted by many of the Gentile believers who were now leading this movement, leading it further and further away from what Shaul told them, from what Yeshua taught, and from how God said we all should live.

They did what Shaul had constantly warned against- they listened to the false teachings.

Besides that, there was the political issue of the Romans persecuting the Jews (who were rebelling against Roman rule), so as these people- who had been protected while worshipping the Roman religion- became more “Jewish” in their lifestyle and worship, they became afraid of being associated with the Jews and falling under Roman persecution.

Of course, that backfired on them: after the Romans put the Jewish rebellion down for good in the 2nd Century, they turned their attention to the (now called) Christians because the one thing Rome hated as much as rebellion was creating a religion other than the official Roman one.

This is a little off topic, but I think it is important to note. Shaul never stopped preaching Yeshua is the Messiah to Jews. Some say he stopped talking to Jews when he said, in Acts 13:44, that he would now go only to the Gentiles, but that is wrong. He was in Antioch when he said this, and he said it to the Jews there who were ridiculing him and Barnabus. What he meant was that he would now go to the Gentiles there in Antioch. He never meant that he would only talk to Gentiles from then on. He always went to the synagogues first, in every town he traveled to; this is confirmed no less than 9 times throughout the Book of Acts.

The letters Shaul wrote were not intended to change the way these believing Gentiles worshipped and lived because they had already accepted God as the only God and Yeshua as his Messiah. Rather, they were written to keep the people on track learning how they should live in accordance with the Torah. Not legalistically, as the believing Jews were telling them they had to, but the way Shaul wanted them to do it- slowly, motivated by faithful belief and not legalistic observance. Shaul didn’t require the Gentile believers to convert completely to a Torah observant lifestyle overnight, but rather to learn as they could, sort of taking it one-step-at-a-time.

The letters Shaul wrote did not give new commandments from God or change how God said people should live and worship. No. They were written in order to offset the detrimental influences that were turning these new believers from faithfully following the way Shaul told them to live and worship.

Shaul did a wonderful work for God, bringing salvation through Messiah Yeshua to both Jews and Gentiles. What happened, as we can see from these letters, is that the people who were walking the path to salvation through faithful obedience to God’s word got detoured away from proper worship by human intervention.

Shaul did what he could, from a distance, to combat this redirection of worship. However, looking at the Christian world, with all the different denominations, the many ways the Torah is ignored, and the replacement of God’s Holy Days with so many man-made celebrations and ceremonies, well… I am sorry to say that Shaul’s best attempts failed to overcome human intervention which led to a complete reversal of what his letters were designed to do.

Shaul could see that the congregations he created were being choked by the weeds growing all around them, just as the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13) warned against.

This concludes my teaching series on the Pauline Epistles, and I pray that I have succeeded in showing you that these letters are not really God-breathed scripture, but simply managerial directives.

I hope that you feel edified and maybe now can see these letters from a different viewpoint. I welcome, as always, any comments you may want to make.

I will be going back to my usual teachings in my next posting, so until then, l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

So here it is, maybe a year or so later, and Shaul is writing to the congregation in Corinth, again. He starts off as he does with all his letters, giving thanks and praise to God, and talking about how wonderful it is to be saved by the Messiah’s sacrifice.

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By the end of the first chapter, Shaul is telling them that he wanted to visit but changed his mind. He states why in a very round-about way, and when you take away the flourishes and buttering-up, the main reason he didn’t visit was because he was disappointed in them and they haven’t come up to meet his requirements of them, so he decided not to go there in order to save himself from more anguish (which he says is because he loves them so much), or to cause them anguish (probably from his having to chew them out).

You will note, when reading his letters, that he is so very Jewish (being Jewish, myself, I can get away saying this) in that he constantly lays a guilt trip on people.

He explains how he has been undergoing many trials, but that through the Messiah he has been renewed. He is clearly trying to show the Corinthians that the problems they are having can be overcome as long as they maintain their faith and proper obedience to God.

It isn’t until he is nearly half-way through this letter that he begins to talk directly to the Corinthians, having spent the full first half of the letter talking about himself.

And when he does talk about them, he starts right in with reminding them not to yoke themselves with unbelievers. This was because they were doing things that were not part of a godly lifestyle and working those sinful activities into their tenets and ceremonies.

(What is sad about this warning from Shaul is that Christianity ended up doing just that- incorporating non-biblical ceremonies and holidays into what is supposed to be a God-worshiping religion.)

Now Shaul changes course and he congratulates the congregation for (apparently) having been so hurt by his first letter that they got their heads back on straight, and from Titus Shaul hears good reports about that congregation having repented.

The remaining chapters are pretty much Shaul defending himself, stating he is bolder when away then in person, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a true apostle. He warns them about false apostles, implying that since he doesn’t ask for money, anyone preaching the Gospel and requiring payment is a false apostle, and since Satan masquerades as an angel of light, the ones who work for him also masquerade as servants of righteousness.

(Could it be that Shaul had a vision of the modern televangelist?)

As he continues to talk about the difficulties he has had, which is his way of justifying that they listen to him, he talks about the thorn in his side that God has placed there to keep him humble. One of the best-known verses from his letters is found here, in 2nd Corinthians 12:9, when Shaul is talking about how he pleaded with God three times to remove the “thorn in my side” (no one knows what that was, exactly, and scholars have thought it anything from emotional issues to physical ailments or handicaps), and God answers him by saying:

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

In other words, God can show best his power when he works through someone who is weak. For instance, if I was to fight a professional MMA title holder, it is almost a foregone conclusion that I will get my tuchas in a sling within 1 minute. But, if I conquer the professional, then there has to be some power greater than both of us to make that happen.

After his diatribe about his sufferings and his justification that he is a legitimate messenger of the Messiah, he finishes with a stern warning, saying he is concerned that when he visit, he will find some have still not repented, still indulging in “quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, factions, slander, gossip, arrogance, and disorder.” (2 Corinthians 12:20)

He tells them, in no uncertain way, that he will deal very harshly with that if he finds it when he comes. He says he is being harsh now so that he won’t have to be that way when he arrives.

This letter ends, as all do, with greetings and a prayer for the people there.

As I have been saying, this letter is clearly not anything like the writings of the Prophets or containing any God-dictated commandments on how to worship, as we see in the Torah. No, these are just Shaul’s managerial directives for how the congregation he is writing to should get back on track.

These two letters to the Corinthians, as with all of Shaul’s letters, will reference scripture but they are not scripture. When we read this as if we haven’t already been told what it is supposed to mean, we can see that it is nothing more than a letter written by a man to a congregation of people who are not doing as they should. Truthfully? It’s more like an employee evaluation than God-breathed divine instruction.

The next letter is to the Galatians, and if you think he was being rough on the Corinthians, wait until you hear what he calls the Galatians!

So, nu? I hope I will see you then; in the meantime, l’hitraot and Baruch Hashem!

As the title indicates, this was written to the Gentile (and some Jewish) believers in Messiah Yeshua (Jesus) who lived in Rome. It was written by Shaul (Paul) in 57 CE and meant to be a letter of introduction for him before he arrived there. This letter is one of the longest and most confusing of all the other letters he wrote, so I will break this down into two parts.

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In this letter Shaul talks about the Torah, and over time this letter has been used as a polemic against following the laws in the Torah, while the truth is that it is actually an apologetic to explain that even after accepting Yeshua as the Messiah, it is still important to follow the Torah, but that faith is the over-riding necessity for salvation.

Christianity has, over the centuries, misused this letter to justify ignoring the Torah, but Shaul wrote it to identify the difference between obeying the Torah in order to earn salvation (in other words, just to be “correct’) and obeying the Torah as the result of faithful obedience to God’s instructions, which tell us how he wants us to worship him and how he wants us to treat each other.

I put emphasis on the word “he”, meaning (of course) God, because religion tells us how the religion wants us to worship and treat each other, which (more often than not) is not what God has said.

The beginning of this letter has Shaul explaining that he is not ashamed of the gospel (which is translated as “truth”, i.e., truth of God’s salvation) and desires to preach it to both Greeks and non-Greeks (different races of Gentiles, as well as Jews), the wise (believers in God) and the foolish (in those days, a “fool” was one who refused to believe in or accept God). He states that he does this because the gospel is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes; this truth is to be brought to the Jew first, then to the Gentile (Romans 1:16).

This is not only the order in which he will present the Good News, but a confirmation of what Yeshua said in the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 15:24), when he told the woman from Shomron that he came only for the lost sheep of Israel. We read about the first time the salvation of God was made available to the Gentiles, coming from the Jews (through Kefa, also called Peter) to the Gentiles in Acts 10.

As we go deeper into this letter, Shaul relates how God’s punishment against the sinful is not only justified, but a righteous judgment. He states that God is evidenced throughout the world, and those who refuse to accept his existence and his laws are deserving of the punishment they will receive.

Near the end of Chapter Two, he begins to talk about when Jews who brag about following the law break it, they actually blaspheme God’s name among the Gentiles. What he means is this: when those who profess to worship God do not obey him, they are setting a bad example to non-believers, and essentially making it harder, if not impossible, for them to want to accept God and his Messiah. This theme of hypocrisy will be evident in many of the letters he writes with regard to the interpersonal relationship issues within the leadership of various congregations throughout Asia.

One thing that is misunderstood is Romans 2:28-29, which many people have been taught means circumcision is wrong for Gentiles. What Shaul says is that being physically circumcised doesn’t make one a Jew, but when our heart is circumcised by the Spirit (in Hebrew, Ruach haKodesh– Holy Spirit) then we are a Jew, inwardly. He is not saying circumcision is wrong (as we will also see in Galatians), but that physical circumcision is not enough- we must also be circumcised by the Spirit in our hearts to be a “total” Jew.

What he is saying, if you ask me, if that when we are circumcised in both the flesh and the heart, that is when we can say we are a total Jew.

The issue of circumcision to be accepted as a member of the family of God is a constant problem which he runs into throughout the congregations where Jews are together with believing Gentiles.

This passage also has been misinterpreted to indicate no one accepting Yeshua has to do any of that “Jewish” stuff; but Shaul denies that, saying being a Jew is very important because they have been entrusted with the very words of God (that would be the Torah- there is no other place, anywhere in the entire Bible, where God, himself, tells us what to do). He then starts his Jewish logic argument about how people may say if we are unrighteous, and God’s judgment on us is righteous, then doesn’t our unrighteousness bring out more of God’s righteousness, implying it is good to sin.

His reply is, of course, it is never good to sin. He reminds us (quoting from the Psalms) that no one is ever going to be righteous by trying to obey the Torah perfectly: it is only through faith in Yeshua being the Messiah God sent that will we be able to overcome our sinfulness.

Understand this: no one can overcome their sinfulness because no one, as we are told throughout the Bible, is able to live a sinless life. The way we overcome sinfulness through Yeshua is that his death as a universal sacrifice for sin, replacing the need to bring an animal to the temple in Jerusalem, makes it possible for us to be forgiven of our sins. Especially since the temple was destroyed and that left no place to bring a sacrifice. Our sins can be forgiven through Yeshua, but not automatically, and not without repentance, and not without asking for it.

Shaul makes the argument that because Abraham was not circumcised when he was credited as righteous by his faith, then faith comes before obedience to the law. But he also points out that does not mean the law is done away with.

Later on, after going through a somewhat confusing diatribe about grace, faith, and the law, in Romans 6:15, having told us that grace can always be greater than sin, he asks if we can then go ahead and continue to sin because we are not under the law but under Grace? His answer?

By no means!

He explains that we were slaves to sin, but with Messiah we are slaves to righteousness, and that a slave must obey his master (remember how Yeshua said no one can serve two masters? Matthew 6:24). So, now that we are slaves to righteousness, and sons of God, he says we must be obedient to what is righteous.

His point is that as believers in Messiah, even though we are sons of God through faith more than circumcision, as slaves to righteousness we must do that which is righteous.

(So, nu? Let me ask you: where you find the things to do that are righteous?
You got it- in the Torah!)

In Chapter 10, Shaul begins to make an argument for legalism verse faith. My way of stating the difference between legalistic obedience and faithful obedience is that the former is a performance-based salvation, while the latter is a faith-based salvation, but not faith alone- it is faith demonstrated through obedience! (James 2:17)

When discussing Israel’s rejection of Yeshua, he shows that God will not forever abandon his people because of it (Deut. 33:21; Isaiah 65:1-2), and how the prophets have indicated that those who were once not God’s people (i.e., the ones rejecting Yeshua) will be called sons of God. In other words, Shaul is talking about the remnant of Israel (Jews) who have, and in the future will, accept Yeshua.

Next lesson we will start with Chapter 11, which is one of the most ignored chapters, if you ask me, by traditional Christian teachings.

Until then, l’hitraot and Baruch haShem!