Keeping Torah

Holiness is not an experience you have; holiness is keeping the law of God.

David Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Its overarching purpose is to affirm and explain the teachings of the Torah.

Robert D. Bergen

The clearest way to put this is to say that Jesus thinks that following him means following the Torah. Those who follow him (and his teaching of the Torah) will be called “great” in the kingdom.

Scot McKnight

He wants to make clear that he is unswerving in his adherence to the Torah. This supplements but does not replace Torah; rather, it is the true explication of Torah, the implications that have not previously been understood.

Grant R. Osborne

49    To be kept holy is better than merely to be kept safe.

Charles Spurgeon

All of Grace (19th century)

Charles Spurgeon

God promises to keep his people, and he will keep his promises.

Charles Spurgeon

Abraham is wrested from the Jews as an exemplar of torah-obedience and made into an exemplar of faith.

Douglas J. Moo

10  Friend, if a man would not keep a sacred vow before Almighty God to his wife—I wouldn’t trust him to keep any promise, any where, any time.

Adrian Rogers

“A Nation in Crisis” sermon (1996)

Adrian Rogers

It is for the Bible to form and reform the church … it is for the church to keep and keep to the Bible.

J. I. Packer

The root meaning of Torah is “instruction.” It has to do with everything God has revealed or says.

James Montgomery Boice

Both Wisdom and Torah are commonly associated with life and light in the Jewish sources; John ties them in with Christ, the Word.

D. A. Carson

The Qumran community and the Pharisees believed that if the Torah were kept more faithfully, God would fulfill his promises.

Thomas Schreiner

Antiochus IV of Syria (175–163 b.c.) launched a program to exterminate Judaism in 167, making such religious observances as circumcision and Sabbath keeping and the possession of a copy of the Law punishable by death.

J. I. Packer; Merrill C. Tenney

God’s circumcising of the hearts of his people so that they love him and keep his Torah from the heart. What is envisaged, in other words, is not so much the question of what happens when this or that individual sins, but the question of what happens when the nation as a whole fails to keep the Torah as a whole.

N. T. Wright

Israel’s ethnic privilege, backed up by possession of Torah, will be of no avail at the final judgment if Israel has not kept Torah. Justification, at the last, will be on the basis of performance, not possession.

N. T. Wright

The basic, unifying principle that held the different expressions of Judaism together was commitment to the one God through the keeping of the Torah, the covenant made with God at Sinai and mediated through Moses.

David Arthur

The psalmist clearly sees such purposeful immersion in the torah as an effective antidote to the inappropriate association with evil described in verse 1. Not only are students of torah occupied, but torah so feeds and shapes the mind and heart of those who give themselves to it that their feet are kept firmly on the path of life.

The “law” in the phrase is the Jewish Torah; and what Paul signifies by the phrase is Torah-faithfulness—and Torah-faithfulness understood as a means of setting Jews off from all other people.

D. A. Carson; Douglas J. Moo

Gerald H. Wilson

The psalm is to be classified as a wisdom psalm, that is, one that teaches ethical and moral conduct in keeping with the Law of God, the Torah.

Robert G. Bratcher; William David Reyburn

Paul in polemical contexts views “works” as the keeping of the commandments of the Torah while James employs “works” to signify acts of mercy and kindness (2:13; the fulfilling of the royal law, 2:8).

Ralph P. Martin

Temple, Land, Torah and racial identity were the key symbols which anchored the first-century Jewish worldview in everyday life.

N. T. Wright

If Israel is chosen to be the people through whom the creator will put the world to rights, what happens when Israel itself needs to be put to rights? The answer given by the Pharisees was reasonably clear: Israel needs to learn how to keep Torah, how to keep it properly this time. If Israel wants the covenant God to be faithful to his promises and bring the restoration they longed for, Israel has to be faithful to this God, to Torah, to the covenant.

N. T. Wright

Keep close to the law if thou wilt keep close to Christ.

John Wesley

Israel will be vindicated, will inherit the age to come—but it will be the Israel that has kept Torah, or that, through penitence and amendment of life (as in Daniel 9, looking back to Deuteronomy 30), has shown the heartfelt desire to follow God’s ways and be loyal to his covenant.

N. T. Wright

Daniel is not going home. He is not a candidate for restoration. He will dwell in the empire, benefit from it, and serve it. But he will keep Torah and thereby keep Torah identity, refusing the “defilement” of the empire.

Walter Brueggemann

What is distinctive in Psalm 119, of course, is the consistency with which Torah is brought to bear on all of the above petitions. As promise, Torah constitutes the ground of hope for God’s deliverance.

Both apocalypses look to the keeping of the covenant, the Torah, as the way forward.

David A. deSilva

Gordon J. Wenham