General Questions
Explore common questions about beliefs and missions.
In Jewish thought, the claim that Jesus “fulfilled the Law” in the sense of ending, replacing, or nullifying the Torah is a category error. The Torah explicitly teaches that God’s commandments are eternal and not subject to cancellation or revision (e.g., Deuteronomy 13; Deuteronomy 29:28), and it defines as false any figure who leads people away from Torah observance. In first-century Jewish usage, to “fulfil” the Law (lekayem et ha-Torah) meant to properly interpret, rightly expound, and faithfully uphold the Torah in practice—standing in contrast to “abolishing” it through misinterpretation or neglect. This is the precise nuance of Matthew 5:17, where Jesus denies annulling the Torah and instead affirms its continuing authority “until heaven and earth pass away.” The later Christian claim that “fulfilment” renders the Law obsolete is a post-biblical theological innovation and not only foreign to Judaism, but in direct contradiction to the Torah’s own standards for truth, covenant, and Messiahship.
Did Jesus fulfill the Law?
How can you keep the Law without a Temple—where are your sacrifices?
This objection rests on a false premise: that Torah observance and atonement are impossible without a standing Temple. The Hebrew Bible itself explicitly teaches otherwise. While the sacrificial system was central when the Temple stood, it was never the exclusive means of atonement. The Tanakh repeatedly affirms that repentance (teshuvah), prayer, obedience, and ethical transformation bring forgiveness and restore covenantal relationship (e.g., Psalm 51; Hosea 14; Isaiah 1; Ezekiel 18; Daniel 9), many of these texts addressing periods with no functioning Temple at all. Historically, Israel lived this reality twice—after the destruction of the First Temple (586 BCE) and since the destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE)—without prophets or sages declaring the covenant suspended. Only a minority of commandments depend on the Temple; the vast majority of mitzvot (Shabbat, kashrut, sexual ethics, charity, justice, prayer, and the festivals in modified form) remain fully binding everywhere. The Torah itself anticipates exile and provides a covenantal path forward (Deuteronomy 30): atonement through repentance, prayer, and faithful obedience, not through the invention of a replacement covenant or substitute theology.
Jesus is the Law of Moses?
The statement “Jesus is the Law of Moses” is not a biblical claim; it is a modern theological slogan with no basis in the text of the Gospels, the Torah, or Second Temple Judaism. Nowhere do the Gospels state that Jesus is the Law, replaces the Law, or becomes the Law. The Torah consistently defines the Law of Moses as a revealed legal covenant—commandments, statutes, and judgments—given at Sinai (e.g., Deut. 4:5–8). A person is not a legal code.
More importantly, this claim collapses your own Christian paradigm. If Jesus is the Law of Moses, then the Law has not been abolished, fulfilled-away, or rendered obsolete. On the contrary, it would mean the Torah is eternal and embodied—precisely the opposite of mainstream Christian doctrine, which explicitly teaches that the Mosaic Law has been ended or set aside (cf. Romans, Galatians, Hebrews). You cannot coherently argue both that the Law is abolished and that Jesus is the Law. Those positions are mutually exclusive.
Finally, the idea that “Jesus is the Law” appears to originate not from Scripture, but from modern popular media and devotional language (e.g., television dramatizations), not from the biblical text itself. Biblical theology is built on texts, languages, and historical context—not slogans. When Scripture speaks, it speaks clearly: the Law of Moses is Torah, and Torah is commandments—not a person. Any claim to the contrary is a category error and theologically incoherent.
Was Abraham a Jew?
In the Hebrew Bible, Hebrew (ivri) is an ethno-cultural designation applied to Abraham and his descendants (Genesis 14:13), while Jew (Yehudi) is a later tribal–national identifier derived from Judah; these terms are not mutually exclusive but describe different stages of the same covenantal lineage. Judah is Abraham’s great-grandson (Abraham → Isaac → Jacob → Judah), so claiming Abraham “cannot be a Jew” because the name emerged later is anachronistic—by that logic, Israel would be illegitimate because Jacob received the name “Israel” only later. Moreover, Yehudi is a biblical term (e.g., Esther 2:5), and while the English word Judaism is later, the religion itself is explicitly named and defined in Scripture as “the Torah/Law of Moses” (e.g., Joshua 8:31; Deuteronomy 4:44). Scripture consistently identifies Abraham as the covenantal father of Israel and Judah (Genesis 17; Exodus 2:24; Psalm 105:6; Isaiah 41:8). The Jewish claim is not that Abraham was a tribal Judahite, but that he is the foundational patriarch from whom Judah—and thus the Jews—descend.