Chapter 4: God of the Commandments
God’s Commandments and God’s People
Jews, and Christians, would insist that God’s commandments are still viable and important, but which ones. Micah says, “… the Lord requires of you: only do justice, and love goodness, and walk humbly with your God. But how? "Without the ability to address the particular, the general, however lovely, is vague and impractical. A person needs not only to know what to think, but how to live.”
What Are God’s Commandments?” 613 commandments were revealed to Moses. But even those need interpretation. What does it mean to do no work on the Sabbath?
Why Keep Them? "Is the Torah unchanging divine revelation or merely a human attempt to hear and respond to God or the Divine? If the former, it may not be abrogated. If the latter, it may, indeed must, be adjusted as God’s people continue to look for God’s presence and purpose in the present moment.” Jews and Christians have struggles with this issue and both have a variety of responses spanning the conservative to liberal scale. "Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel and the People of God
"For a Jew, knowing the presence of God does not require a “leap of faith” or a “leap of thought” but “a leap of action.”23 It is in obedience that we “walk humbly with our God.”"
Some Christian Reflections
Protestants have underestimated the importance of obedience to God’s commands in the NT and in Pauls writings. "God. Gentiles would not be required to take on the “identity markers” of the Jews, but both Jewish followers of Jesus and gentile followers of Jesus would demonstrate their righteousness by obedience."
Quotes from Phelan, John E.. Separated Siblings: An Evangelical Understanding of Jews and Judaism (p. 88). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.