Questions Jews Ask

Orthodox Question 07: Why Does the New Testament Sometimes Seem to Relax or Redefine Commandments That Traditional Judaism Sees as Binding?

Abstract

This Orthodox Jewish question is understandable and serious. From within traditional Judaism, the mitzvot are not merely moral suggestions or ethnic customs. They are covenant commandments given by HaShem to Israel. Shabbat, kashrut, circumcision, purity, festival life, family law, and the broader halakhic way of life are bound to Jewish obedience, communal continuity, and love for the God of Israel. When the New Testament appears to set aside food distinctions, relativize handwashing traditions, refuse to require circumcision for Gentiles, or say that believers are not "under the law," Orthodox Jews naturally ask whether Christianity is relaxing commandments that Torah treats as binding. If so, why should a Torah-faithful Jew regard Jesus, or Yeshua, as anything other than a teacher whose movement led people away from mitzvot?

A responsible Christian answer must not trivialize the concern. Jesus himself says in Matthew 5:17-20 that he did not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets but to fulfill them, and he warns against relaxing commandments and teaching others to do the same. Therefore, any Christian reading that turns Jesus into an enemy of Torah contradicts Jesus' own stated posture. The New Testament does contain real developments: Jesus claims authority to interpret Torah's deepest intention; Mark 7 challenges purity assumptions around food and the heart; Acts 10-11 shows Peter learning that Gentiles made clean by God must not be excluded; Acts 15 rules that Gentile believers in Israel's Messiah are not required to become Jews through circumcision and full Torah obligation. But these developments are not best understood as contempt for Torah. They are better understood as messianic fulfillment, covenantal differentiation between Jews and Gentiles, and the inclusion of the nations in Israel's God without making the nations into Israel.

For Christians, the warrant for receiving this authority is the resurrection. The apostles did not merely claim that Jesus was a creative rabbi with bold opinions. They proclaimed that the God of Israel raised him from the dead, with eyewitness testimony summarized in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 and preached publicly in Acts 2. If Jesus was not raised, Christians have no right to reorder covenant questions. If he was raised, then the Orthodox Jewish question becomes whether God has authorized the Messiah to bring Torah to its appointed goal and to define how Jews and Gentiles stand together before the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Why the Orthodox Objection Has Weight

For an Orthodox Jew, commandments are not detachable religious preferences. The mitzvot are the shape of covenant fidelity. They form Jewish time through Shabbat and festivals, Jewish bodies through circumcision and family purity, Jewish homes through kashrut and mezuzah, Jewish speech through blessing and prayer, and Jewish communal life through halakhah. To ask whether the New Testament relaxes commandments is therefore not to ask a minor technical question. It is to ask whether Christianity undermines Israel's covenant vocation.

Christians should feel the force of that concern. Jewish memory includes centuries in which Christian institutions pressured Jews who accepted baptism to abandon visible Jewish practice. Jewish believers in Jesus were sometimes expected to stop keeping kosher, stop observing Shabbat, leave Jewish communal patterns, and merge into Gentile Christian culture. Even where such pressure was not violent, it often communicated that Jewish covenant life was spiritually inferior. That history makes the Orthodox question sharper: perhaps the New Testament itself is the source of the problem.

The answer must be careful. Some Christian readings have indeed made the New Testament sound anti-Torah. Some sermons speak as if the Torah were a failed religion of works, as if Judaism were nothing but legalism, or as if Jesus came to free people from Jewishness. Those readings are theologically reckless and historically unfair. Jesus was Jewish. His mother, disciples, and first apostles were Jewish. He taught in synagogues, went up to Jerusalem, quoted Torah, affirmed the Shema, and understood his mission through Israel's Scriptures. A Christianity that treats Jewish obedience with contempt has already drifted from the Jewish Messiah it claims to follow.

At the same time, Christians must not pretend the New Testament says nothing new. It does. Jesus speaks with extraordinary authority. He intensifies some commandments, interprets others around mercy and human wholeness, challenges traditions that he says obscure God's commandment, and identifies himself as the fulfillment of Israel's story. The apostolic mission then brings Gentiles into the worship of Israel's God without requiring them to become Jews. That was not a small adjustment. It required theological judgment about covenant, Messiah, Spirit, and the nations.

The question is whether that judgment abolishes Torah or fulfills Torah's purpose in the Messiah.

Matthew 5:17-20 and the Meaning of Fulfillment

Matthew 5:17-20 is the necessary starting point because Jesus directly addresses the accusation of abolition. He says he has not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfill them. He also says that until all is accomplished, even the smallest part of Torah will not simply disappear. He warns against relaxing commandments and teaching others to do so.

This passage should restrain Christian carelessness. Jesus does not announce that Israel's Scriptures have been discarded. He does not say that the commandments were foolish, temporary mistakes, or merely negative burdens. He places himself inside the story of Torah and the Prophets and says he brings that story to fulfillment. Fulfillment is not contempt. Fulfillment means bringing something to its intended fullness, goal, and meaning.

An Orthodox reader may rightly ask whether "fulfillment" is being used as a polite word for abolition. Christians should acknowledge the danger. If a person says, "I fulfill Shabbat by ignoring it," or "I fulfill kashrut by treating all distinctions as meaningless," the word fulfillment becomes evasive. But in the New Testament, fulfillment is a thicker claim. Jesus is presented as the Davidic Messiah, the representative Israelite, the prophet like Moses, the suffering righteous one, the Son who embodies Israel's calling, and the one through whom blessing comes to the nations. Fulfillment means that Torah's narrative, sacrificial, priestly, ethical, royal, and prophetic lines converge in him.

This creates several kinds of continuity and development. Some commandments are reaffirmed in their moral demand. Jesus does not loosen murder, adultery, truthfulness, or love; in Matthew 5 he presses them more deeply into the heart. Some commandments are interpreted through mercy, restoration, and the purpose of human flourishing. This appears in Sabbath controversies, where Jesus argues that doing good and giving life accord with the Sabbath's purpose. Some commandments connected to purity, sacrifice, temple, and boundary markers are treated as reaching a new stage because the Messiah has come and the nations are being gathered.

The Christian claim is not that Torah was bad and Jesus came to replace it with a better religion. The claim is that Torah was good and prophetic, and Jesus is the one to whom it pointed and in whom its goal is disclosed. Orthodox Judaism does not accept that claim, but Christians should state it accurately. Fulfillment is not a sneer at mitzvot. It is a messianic claim about Torah's telos, its appointed goal.

Mark 7 and the Question of Food and Purity

Mark 7 is one of the passages that most strongly raises the Orthodox concern. Jesus disputes with Pharisees and scribes over handwashing and tradition. He criticizes using human tradition in a way that nullifies God's commandment, and he teaches that defilement proceeds from the heart. Mark's editorial comment is often understood by Christians as declaring all foods clean.

For an Orthodox Jew, this sounds like a direct challenge to kashrut. If Torah distinguishes clean and unclean animals, how can a teacher declare all foods clean? Does that not relax a binding commandment?

Several distinctions matter. First, the immediate dispute in Mark 7 concerns ritual handwashing and the status of eating with hands considered defiled, not a simple abstract lecture on Leviticus 11. Jesus is not casually mocking the Torah. He is arguing about purity, tradition, and the moral source of uncleanness. Second, Jesus does not say evil comes from food; he says evil comes from the human heart: idolatry, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, deceit, envy, pride, and folly. His emphasis is prophetic. Like Israel's prophets, he refuses to let ritual practice substitute for inner covenant faithfulness.

Third, Christian interpretation has often extended Mark 7 beyond its immediate setting because later apostolic events, especially Acts 10-11 and Acts 15, show a larger shift in how purity boundaries operate when Gentiles are included in Messiah. That larger shift is real. The New Testament does not leave Gentile believers under Jewish dietary law as if they had become Sinai-obligated Jews. But this is not the same as saying kashrut was meaningless for Israel or that Jewish believers must despise it.

Here the Jewish-Gentile distinction is crucial. A Gentile Christian eating food that is not kosher is not necessarily violating a commandment given to that Gentile in the same covenantal way it was given to Israel. Torah itself distinguishes Israel from the nations. Israel receives the covenant at Sinai. The nations are accountable to the Creator, and Jewish tradition itself has categories for righteous Gentiles who do not take on the full yoke of the mitzvot. The New Testament's Gentile mission works with a comparable distinction, even though it frames the matter through Messiah, Spirit, and apostolic authority rather than later rabbinic halakhah.

Therefore, Mark 7 should not be used by Christians as a weapon to mock Jewish food practice. Its first target is hypocrisy and misplaced confidence, not Jewish identity. It teaches that true impurity is rooted in the heart and that external practice must serve covenant faithfulness. In the broader New Testament, it also contributes to the conviction that Gentile inclusion in Messiah is not dependent on adopting the full Jewish dietary code. But treating kashrut with contempt is not required by Mark 7 and should be rejected.

Acts 10-11 and Peter's Vision

Acts 10-11 is another central text. Peter sees a vision of animals and is told not to call profane what God has made clean. The meaning becomes clear when Peter is sent to Cornelius, a Gentile God-fearer. Peter enters a Gentile home, proclaims Jesus, and sees the Holy Spirit fall on Gentiles. When criticized by Jewish believers in Jerusalem, Peter recounts the event and concludes that God gave Gentiles the same gift.

This passage is frequently reduced to a statement about food, but Acts itself points to people. The vision prepares Peter to receive Gentiles whom God is cleansing. The issue is not merely menu; it is table fellowship and covenant inclusion. Peter must not treat Gentile believers as untouchable when God has given them the Spirit through Messiah.

For Orthodox Judaism, this remains difficult. Traditional halakhah maintains distinctions that structure Jewish life among the nations. Acts 10-11 appears to shift those boundaries. Christians should not deny that. But they should also be precise: the text does not say Peter has discovered Torah was false. It says God has acted. The Spirit has been given to Gentiles who believe in Jesus. Peter's conclusion is theological before it is sociological: if God gives the same gift, who is Peter to oppose God?

This is a pattern throughout Acts. The apostles are not inventing a relaxed religion because they dislike commandments. They are responding to events they believe God has initiated: the resurrection of Jesus, the outpouring of the Spirit, the conversion of Samaritans, the inclusion of Gentiles, and the signs accompanying the mission. The question is one of divine authorization.

That authorization finally depends on Jesus. Peter does not appeal to an abstract principle that purity no longer matters. He proclaims Jesus' death and resurrection, forgiveness through his name, and God's appointment of him as judge of the living and the dead. Gentile inclusion is anchored in the risen Messiah's authority.

Acts 15 and the Jerusalem Council

Acts 15 is the most important passage for the question of commandments. Some believers from Judea teach that Gentiles must be circumcised according to the custom of Moses to be saved. The apostles and elders gather in Jerusalem to deliberate. Peter, Paul, Barnabas, and James all speak. The council concludes that Gentile believers should not be burdened with full Torah obligation. They are instructed to abstain from idolatry-related pollution, sexual immorality, what has been strangled, and blood.

This decision is sometimes treated as Christianity's official abolition of Torah. That is mistaken. The council is not deciding whether Jewish believers should continue as Jews. It is deciding whether Gentiles must become Jews in order to be included in the people of Messiah. The answer is no. Gentiles are saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus and receive the Spirit without circumcision. Therefore, they should not be compelled to enter Jewish covenant status as a condition of salvation.

This is not Torah contempt. In fact, it assumes the ongoing importance of Moses, since Acts 15 refers to Moses being read in synagogues every Sabbath. The council's ruling is a practical and theological judgment about the nations: Gentiles must turn from idolatry and sexual immorality, honor basic holiness concerns, and enter fellowship without being forced to convert. It protects the truth that Israel's Messiah brings the nations to Israel's God as nations.

The prophets provide a background for this. Israel's Scriptures envision nations streaming to Zion, seeking the God of Jacob, and joining themselves to HaShem. They do not always picture the nations becoming ethnically Jewish. The Abrahamic promise is that through Abraham's seed all families of the earth will be blessed. The New Testament argues that this promise comes to fulfillment in Messiah Jesus: Gentiles become fellow heirs of blessing, not by replacing Israel or erasing Jewish election, but by being grafted into mercy.

This means Christians must distinguish between salvation and covenant vocation. No Jew or Gentile earns salvation by commandments. Forgiveness is God's mercy. But Israel's covenant vocation remains real, and Gentile vocation is not identical to Jewish vocation. Acts 15 refuses to impose Jewish identity on Gentiles. It does not command Jewish followers of Yeshua to abandon Jewish identity.

Paul and the Gentile Mission

Paul's letters are often the center of Jewish concern because Paul speaks sharply against requiring circumcision and Torah observance for Gentiles. In Galatians, he warns Gentile believers that accepting circumcision as a condition of covenant inclusion would distort the gospel. In Romans, he says believers are justified by faith apart from works of the law. In several places, he speaks of not being under the law.

These statements can sound like a rejection of Torah. But Paul's actual argument is more specific. He is the apostle to the Gentiles. His mission is to announce that Gentiles are included in Messiah by faith, receive the Spirit, and become children of Abraham without becoming Jews. Therefore, when some insist that Gentiles must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses to belong fully, Paul resists with everything he has.

This is not because Paul thinks Torah is evil. In Romans, he can call the law holy and the commandment holy, just, and good. His problem is not God's Torah but sin, flesh, boasting, and the misuse of Torah as a boundary that excludes Gentiles from the Messiah's people. Paul sees Messiah as the goal of Torah, not its enemy.

Paul himself remains Jewish. He identifies as an Israelite, from the tribe of Benjamin. He grieves for Israel, honors the covenants and promises, and warns Gentile believers not to boast over Jewish branches. Acts portrays him as willing to accommodate Jewish practice and as taking Jewish concerns seriously, even while refusing to compromise the freedom of Gentiles from required circumcision.

The difference between Timothy and Titus illustrates the point. Paul circumcises Timothy in Acts because Timothy has a Jewish mother and the mission among Jews requires clarity about his identity. Paul refuses to circumcise Titus, a Gentile, because compelling Titus would imply that Gentiles must become Jews to be included in Messiah. The issue is not whether circumcision is disgusting or holy in itself. The issue is what circumcision signifies for whom.

This distinction answers much of the Orthodox objection. The New Testament relaxes commandments for Gentiles only in the sense that it refuses to place Gentiles under Israel's full covenant yoke. It does not thereby declare the yoke evil. It declares that the nations come in through Messiah as Gentiles, cleansed by God, filled with the Spirit, and called to holiness appropriate to their calling.

Jewish and Gentile Covenant Obligations

Traditional Judaism already understands that Jews and Gentiles do not share identical covenant obligations. Jews are bound to the mitzvot given to Israel. Gentiles are accountable to God but not obligated to become Jews. Rabbinic tradition often discusses the nations in relation to Noahide obligations. Christianity does not simply reproduce rabbinic categories, but Acts 15 makes a recognizably similar distinction: the God of Israel welcomes Gentiles without requiring them to become Jews.

This distinction is often lost in Christian history. Many Gentile Christians read every New Testament statement about not being under the law as if it applied in the same way to Jews and Gentiles, then concluded that Jewish believers should stop keeping mitzvot. That is a serious mistake. The New Testament's central battle is not to make Jews less Jewish. It is to make clear that Gentiles do not need to become Jews in order to belong to Israel's Messiah.

For Jewish followers of Yeshua, the matter is more complex. The New Testament does not present Torah observance as a means of earning salvation. It also teaches that Messiah's coming transforms the meaning of sacrifice, temple, priesthood, purity, and covenant membership. But that does not require Jewish believers to treat Shabbat, circumcision, festivals, kashrut, Hebrew prayer, or Jewish family life as shameful. These can be expressions of covenant identity, love for Israel, obedience to God, and witness to the faithfulness of HaShem.

Different Christian traditions answer the practical halakhic question differently. Some hold that Jewish believers in Jesus should continue Jewish practice as part of their calling, while recognizing Jesus as Messiah and not making Torah observance a condition of salvation. Others emphasize the new covenant in a way that sees all believers as free from Mosaic covenant obligation, while still honoring Jewish heritage. A respectful apologetic cannot pretend all Christians agree. But the best Christian answer to Orthodox concern should insist on at least this: no Christian has the right to despise Torah, erase Jewish identity, or command Jews to become culturally Gentile as proof of faith in Jesus.

Torah Fulfillment Rather Than Contempt

The word "fulfillment" must carry real content. Christians believe Jesus fulfills Torah in several interwoven ways.

First, he fulfills Torah by obedience. He lives as the faithful Son, loving the Father, resisting temptation, honoring the Scriptures, and embodying the righteous Israelite vocation. He is not a Gentile outsider critiquing Judaism from ignorance. He is Yeshua of Nazareth, a Jew within Israel's story.

Second, he fulfills Torah by interpretation. In Matthew 5, he reveals the inward depth of commandments. Murder is not only the final violent act; contempt and hatred already violate the heart of the command. Adultery is not only the external deed; lustful possession reveals disordered desire. Truthfulness, mercy, reconciliation, and love are pressed more deeply. This is not relaxation. It is intensification.

Third, he fulfills Torah by sacrifice and priestly mediation. Christians believe his death and resurrection bring to completion what the sacrificial system pointed toward: atonement, cleansing, reconciliation, and access to God. Orthodox Judaism will object that Torah does not teach this in the Christian way, especially after the destruction of the Temple and the development of prayer, repentance, and deeds of mercy in Jewish life. Christians should recognize that disagreement. But Christian theology does not say sacrifices were worthless; it says they were shadows and signs fulfilled in Messiah.

Fourth, he fulfills Torah by gathering the nations. Torah's story begins with creation and the nations, narrows through Abraham and Israel, and looks outward again toward blessing for all families of the earth. The Messiah brings Gentiles into worship of Israel's God. This is why Acts 15 matters. The apostles are not abandoning Torah; they are discerning how Torah's promise to the nations is fulfilled without dissolving Israel.

Fifth, he fulfills Torah by inaugurating the new covenant. Jeremiah 31 speaks of a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, with Torah written on the heart. Christians believe Jesus inaugurates this covenant through his death and resurrection and gives the Spirit. That does not mean commandments become irrelevant. It means obedience is transformed from external boundary alone into Spirit-shaped life. The Orthodox objection is that Christianity has often used this language to evade concrete mitzvot. Christians must answer by saying that Spirit-shaped life never means lawlessness, idolatry, or contempt for Israel.

The Resurrection as the Warrant for Authority

All of this depends on one decisive question: did God raise Jesus from the dead?

Without the resurrection, Christians have no sufficient warrant for saying Jesus may authoritatively interpret Torah in these ways. A dead messianic claimant, however impressive, cannot redefine covenant obligations for Israel and the nations. Paul himself says that if Messiah has not been raised, Christian faith is empty. Therefore, the resurrection is not an apologetic decoration added to a Torah debate. It is the central Christian warrant.

The New Testament presents the resurrection as eyewitness testimony. In 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, Paul summarizes a tradition he received: Messiah died, was buried, was raised, and appeared to Cephas, the Twelve, more than five hundred brothers and sisters, James, all the apostles, and finally Paul. This is striking because it names witnesses and groups. It also includes James, who was not simply predisposed to believe during Jesus' ministry, and Paul, who had opposed the Jesus movement.

Acts 2 presents Peter preaching in Jerusalem to fellow Jews. He argues that Jesus was attested by God, crucified, raised, and exalted, and that this vindicates him as Lord and Messiah. Acts 10 likewise connects Gentile inclusion to the apostolic witness that God raised Jesus and appointed him judge of the living and the dead. The logic is consistent: God has acted publicly in Israel's Messiah; therefore Israel and the nations must respond.

An Orthodox Jew may say that even resurrection claims must be tested by Torah. Christians should agree. Deuteronomy 13 prevents any miracle claim from authorizing idolatry or apostasy. But Christians argue that the resurrection of Jesus does not lead to another god. It leads to the God of Israel, the Father of Jesus, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who has revealed the Son and poured out the Spirit. The resurrection does not cancel the Shema; Christians believe it discloses the identity and saving action of the one God confessed in the Shema.

This remains the central disagreement. Orthodox Judaism does not accept that God has authorized Jesus in this way. Christianity does. But the Christian case should be clear: Jesus' authority over commandments is not grounded in convenience, Gentile preference, or anti-Jewish sentiment. It is grounded in God's vindication of Yeshua by resurrection from the dead.

A Direct Answer to the Question

So why does the New Testament sometimes seem to relax or redefine commandments traditional Judaism sees as binding?

First, because Jesus claims messianic authority to reveal Torah's fullness. He intensifies the moral heart of Torah and challenges traditions or practices that obscure mercy, justice, faithfulness, and inward purity. Christians should not present this as Jesus casually loosening Judaism. It is an authority claim, and Orthodox Jews are right to ask whether that claim is true.

Second, because the New Testament distinguishes Jewish and Gentile covenant obligations. Acts 15 does not say Torah is bad. It says Gentiles who turn to Israel's God through Israel's Messiah need not become Jews through circumcision and full Torah observance. That distinction is essential. Much Christian confusion comes from forgetting that the early apostolic debate was about Gentiles entering the people of Messiah, not about forcing Jews to stop being Jews.

Third, because Christians believe certain Torah institutions are fulfilled in Messiah. Sacrifice, purity, temple, priesthood, and covenant boundary markers are not despised; they are interpreted in light of Jesus' death, resurrection, and the gift of the Spirit. Orthodox Judaism rejects that messianic interpretation, but Christians should at least make clear that their claim is fulfillment, not contempt.

Fourth, because the resurrection changes the authority question. If God raised Yeshua from the dead and gave eyewitness testimony through the apostles, then Christians believe God has authorized him to define how Torah reaches its goal and how the nations are included. If God did not raise him, Christianity's reinterpretation has no foundation.

The Christian answer should therefore be humble and precise. The New Testament does not give Christians permission to despise mitzvot, mock halakhah, or erase Jewish identity. It does teach that salvation is by God's grace in Messiah, not by ethnic status or commandment keeping as a ground of merit. It does teach that Gentiles are included without becoming Jews. It does teach that Jesus fulfills Torah and has authority to interpret it. And it does ground that authority in the resurrection, witnessed by those who claimed to have seen him alive after death.

For Orthodox Jews, this answer will not remove every objection. The differences remain profound: oral Torah, halakhic authority, divine sonship, messiahship, covenant obligation, and the meaning of redemption. But Christians can at least answer the question without caricature. The New Testament's apparent relaxation of commandments is not meant as a rejection of the God of Israel or a dismissal of Torah. It is the outworking of the Christian conviction that Israel's Messiah has come, that he has risen, that the nations are now being gathered, and that Torah's goal is found in him.

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