The Gospel Presented by Paul (Sha’ul) in Acts 13

*http://www.torahclass.com/ used as source Torah Class with Tom Bradford

READ ACTS 13:13-52

13 Having set sail from Paphos, Sha’ul and his companions arrived at Perga in Pamphylia. There Yochanan left them and returned to Yerushalayim, 14 but the others went on from Perga to Pisidian Antioch, and on Shabbat they went into the synagogue and sat down. 15 After the reading from the Torah and from the Prophets, the synagogue leaders sent them a message, “Brothers, if any of you has a word of exhortation for the people, speak!” 16 So Sha’ul stood, motioned with his hand, and said:

“Men of Isra’el and God-fearers, listen! 17 The God of this people Isra’el chose our fathers. He made the people great during the time when they were living as aliens in Egypt and with a stretched-out arm he led them out of that land.[b] 18 For some forty years[c] he took care of them in the desert, 19 and after he had destroyed seven nations[d] in the land of Kena‘an he gave their land to his people as an inheritance. 20 All this took about 450 years. After that, he gave them judges,[e] down to the prophet Sh’mu’el. 21 Then they asked for a king, and God gave them Sha’ul Ben-Kish, a man from the tribe of Binyamin. After forty years, 22 God removed him and raised up David as king for them, making his approval known with these words, ‘I found David Ben-Yishai to be a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want.’[f]

23 “In keeping with his promise, God has brought to Isra’el from this man’s descendants a deliverer, Yeshua. 24 Now before the coming of Yeshua, Yochanan proclaimed to all the people of Isra’el an immersion in connection with turning to God from sin. 25 But as Yochanan was ending his work, he said, ‘Who do you suppose I am? Well — I’m not! But after me is coming someone, the sandals of whose feet I am unworthy to untie.’

26 “Brothers! — sons of Avraham and those among you who are ‘God-fearers’! It is to us that the message of this deliverance has been sent! 27 For the people living in Yerushalayim and their leaders did not recognize who Yeshua was or understand the message of the Prophets read every Shabbat, so they fulfilled that message by condemning him. 28 They could not find any legitimate ground for a death sentence; nevertheless they asked Pilate to have him executed; 29 and when they had carried out all the things written about him, he was taken down from the stake[g] and placed in a tomb.

30 “But God raised him from the dead! 31 He appeared for many days to those who had come up with him from the Galil to Yerushalayim; and they are now his witnesses to the people.

32 “As for us, we are bringing you the Good News that what God promised to the fathers, 33 he has fulfilled for us the children in raising up Yeshua, as indeed it is written in the second Psalm, ‘You are my Son; today I have become your Father.’ 34 And as for his raising him up from the dead, to return to decay no more, he said,‘I will give the holy and trustworthy things of David to you.’
35 This is explained elsewhere: ‘You will not let your Holy One see decay.’
36 For David did indeed serve God’s purposes in his own generation; but after that, he died, was buried with his fathers and did see decay. 37 However, the one God raised up did not see decay.

38 “Therefore, brothers, let it be known to you that through this man is proclaimed forgiveness of sins! 39 That is, God clears everyone who puts his trust in this man, even in regard to all the things concerning which you could not be cleared by the Torah of Moshe.

40 “Watch out, then, so that this word found in the Prophets may not happen to you:

41 ‘You mockers! Look, and marvel, and die! For in your own time, I am doing a work that you simply will not believe, even if someone explains it to you!’ ”
42 As they left, the people invited Sha’ul and Bar-Nabba to tell them more about these matters the following Shabbat. 43 When the synagogue meeting broke up, many of the born Jews and devout proselytes followed Sha’ul and Bar-Nabba, who spoke with them and urged them to keep holding fast to the love and kindness of God.

44 The next Shabbat, nearly the whole city gathered together to hear the message about the Lord; 45 but when the Jews who had not believed saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and spoke up against what Sha’ul was saying and insulted him. 46 However, Sha’ul and Bar-Nabba answered boldly: “It was necessary that God’s word be spoken first to you. But since you are rejecting it and are judging yourselves unworthy of eternal life — why, we’re turning to the Goyim! 47 For that is what Adonai has ordered us to do:

‘I have set you as a light for the Goyim, to be for deliverance to the ends of the earth.’ ”
48 The Gentiles were very happy to hear this. They honored the message about the Lord, and as many as had been appointed to eternal life came to trust. 49 And the message about the Lord was carried throughout the whole region.

50 But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the women ‘God-fearers’ of high social standing and the leading men of the city, and they organized persecution against Sha’ul and Bar-Nabba and expelled them from their district. 51 However, Sha’ul and Bar-Nabba shook off the dust of their feet against them and went on to Iconium; 52 and the talmidim were filled with joy and with the Ruach HaKodesh.

BACKGROUND: At a synagogue in Antioch Paul is given an opportunity to address the congregation (a mixed congregation of Jews and gentiles), and he begins by giving a brief summation of the redemption history of Israel that reminds one of what the martyr Stephen said before the Sanhedrin. Logically he begins with Abraham, the first Hebrew, and in but a few sentences advances quickly from Abraham, to Egypt, the exodus, the conquering of Canaan and the subsequent era of the Judges. Next he jumps to King Saul, the 1st king of Israel, and then quickly to King David.

What is Paul’s point in repeating a history that surely at least the Jews in the crowd already have a working knowledge of? It is this: it is that the Old Testament and the Gospel of Yeshua confirm one another. To pretend (as is regularly done in modern times) that the Gospel doesn’t rest upon the Torah and the Prophets, or to preach that the Gospel stands alone, independent of all that came before it, stands somewhere on a scale between false and foolish. Let’s tuck away into our memory banks just who is speaking and is using Israel’s history, and the purpose of the Torah and the Prophets, to base his argument and justification of Yeshua as the Messiah. It is the same Paul that institutional Christianity has for so many centuries said no longer has a regard for the Torah or the Prophets, believes that the Torah and the Prophets are dead and gone, and proclaims that Yeshua has replaced all that came before Him. The same Paul that Christianity says teaches that the gentile Church has replaced Israel. Thus the conclusion is that all that matters for Christians begins with the Book of Matthew and the teachings of the earliest gentile Church Fathers.

Well, here is what one of those early gentile Church Fathers, John Chrysostom, said on the subject of Paul and his viewpoint about the place of the Torah and the Prophets; a piece that was written around 400 A.D. Taken from his Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles, Chrysostom says this:

“Notice how (Paul) weaves his discourse from things present, and from the prophets. Thus he says, ‘from this man’s seed according to the promise’, and then adduces John again, saying, ‘By condemning, they fulfilled all that was written’. Both the apostles as (the) witnesses of the resurrection, and David (also) bearing witness. For neither do the Old Testament proofs seem so cogent when taken by themselves, nor the later testimonies (the New Testament) apart from the former. Therefore it is through both that he makes his discourse trustworthy”.

I agree on most points with Chrysostom. My disagreement with him is that he makes it sound as though Paul was quoting and comparing Old Testament passages to New Testament passages, and that is not at all what is happening. The proof of this is that the New Testament would not exist until nearly one and one-half centuries following Paul’s death. Rather, everything Paul is teaching to the congregation at Antioch is taken ONLY from the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament. Thus Chrysostom also makes it sound as though the revelation of the Gospel is a recent event, and the Old Testament knows only to anticipate its eventual coming. The reality is that the Gospel is pronounced and developed in the Old Testament; and the New Testament merely identifies who the anointed one is that is both the agent and administrator of the Gospel, and now that the anointed one has come and gone what this means for mankind.

But Chrysostom’s main point is that Paul clearly says that the Old Testament and the New Testament depend on one another, as least as concerns the Gospel message. And that a Bible without the New Testament is only half the story; a Bible without the Old Testament is only half the story. A Bible without the New Testament leaves one still in anticipation of discovering who the Messiah shall be; a condition that Judaism suffers under to this day. A Bible without the Old Testament leaves one without the basis for understanding the Gospel, for what a Messiah is or does, for how it is that we are to live these redeemed lives, and what our faith roots are (they are Hebrew faith roots). This is what mainstream Christianity suffers under to this day. A Bible is not a Bible unless it contains both Testaments and both are given equal weight and relevance.

In verse 23 Paul speaks of the one who will be the agent and administrator of this Gospel in terms of being a result of the “promise”. What promise is he speaking about? The promise given to the Fathers of Israel, the Patriarchs; the promise that was first given to Abraham. This promise was pronounced in Genesis 12:

Genesis 12:1-3 CJB

It is the last few words of that promise that reveals the Gospel message; but it is pretty hazy and contains little substantive information. Thus it is important especially for Believers to understand that the guarantee of the Gospel (whatever it would eventually amount to) was given to, and would happen through, the Hebrews (the first Hebrew being Abraham). And yet, Paul spent a fair amount of time in his historical summary speaking about a different part of the promise made to Abraham, the part about the land. That part was expounded upon by God to Abraham a little later in Genesis in chapter 15.

Genesis 15:18-21 CJB

Thus God defines the specific land that is included in the promise and He does it by defining it according to land currently occupied by 10 named people groups. All together this area of land is called the Land of Canaan. So Paul is demonstrating that the land and the people and the promise and the Gospel (and therefore Yeshua) are all organically and inseparably connected. Remove any one of these elements, and what remains is incomplete. Thus, says Paul in verse 23, in keeping with His promise, God, through David (a descendant of Abraham), has brought forth this deliverer (this anointed one) who is the agent of the promise; and this deliverer’s name is Yeshua.

So after identifying Yeshua as the messiah and as King David’s descendant, Paul then speaks about the role that John the Baptist played by immersing people (Jewish people) as a means of preparing the way for Messiah Yeshua. The important point made in verse 24 is that the immersion, the baptism, was made not in Yeshua’s name but rather as symbolic of the worshipper having made a decision to repent from his sins. In other words, whereas in Messianic Judaism and in Christianity, when we are properly immersed there is no need to be immersed again, here with John the immersion he gave was essentially only a preliminary immersion. So contrasted with today when we are immersed into the name of Yeshua as our Savior, Lord and King, but also as a declaration of us having repented from sin, John’s immersion was ONLY concerning repentance, NOT salvation. Paul said that John the Baptist asked “what do you suppose I am?” And then said that someone would come after him of immeasurably greater worth than he. So what John accomplished was the first step of a two step process. Step one: repent from your sins. Step two: identify with Yeshua as the one who pays the price for your sins and ritually purifies you. Today, because the Christ has appeared and made known who He is and what we must do, it is a one step process. One immersion is sufficient for all of these purposes.

Up to this point, we could probably characterize everything Paul has been telling his audience as history, theory and theology. But now he makes practical application.

To the congregation he essentially says: this applies to you! It is for YOU that Abraham was given the promise. It is for YOU that King David’s line was chosen to bring forth the Messiah. It is for YOU that Yeshua, who came from that line, died on the cross as the fulfillment of the promise God made to Abraham. Even those who constitute his audience are spelled out: 1) sons of Abraham’s family (Hebrews) and 2) God-fearers (gentiles who worship the God of Abraham). All are included. Racial, ethnic and national boundaries have been crossed as concerns the work of the Messiah.

Paul now condemns those who condemned Yeshua. I want to point out that he specifically calls out the Jews of Jerusalem as bearing responsibility; not all Jews in general. Yes, the crucifixion happened in Jerusalem, so obviously it was the Jerusalem Jews who called for it. But we’ve discussed for awhile now that the Jews of Jerusalem were, in general, those who desired to be at the power center of Judaism, which was in Jerusalem. So they paid more attention to political issues and religious matters. They were more concerned about the details. They were more activist. And this is where the greatest concentration of zealots lived and operated. And, of course, Jerusalem is where the Romans had the most problems with the Jewish people; not out in the countryside and certainly not in the Diaspora.

And why did these Jerusalem Jews do this dastardly thing of turning against one of their own; Jesus of Nazareth? Because, says Paul in verse 27, they didn’t recognize who Yeshua was. And why didn’t they recognize who Yeshua was? Because they didn’t understand the Scripture readings taken from the Books of the Prophets that were read every Shabbat in the weekly synagogue service.

Jesus Himself confronted His own followers with this same thing on the road to Emmaus:

Luke 24:13-27

13 That same day, two of them were going toward a village about seven miles from Yerushalayim called Amma’us, 14 and they were talking with each other about all the things that had happened. 15 As they talked and discussed, Yeshua himself came up and walked along with them, 16 but something kept them from recognizing him. 17 He asked them, “What are you talking about with each other as you walk along?” They stopped short, their faces downcast; 18 and one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only person staying in Yerushalayim that doesn’t know the things that have been going on there the last few days?” 19 “What things?” he asked them. They said to him, “The things about Yeshua from Natzeret. He was a prophet and proved it by the things he did and said before God and all the people. 20 Our head cohanim and our leaders handed him over, so that he could be sentenced to death and executed on a stake as a criminal. 21 And we had hoped that he would be the one to liberate Isra’el! Besides all that, today is the third day since these things happened; 22 and this morning, some of the women astounded us. They were at the tomb early 23 and couldn’t find his body, so they came back; but they also reported that they had seen a vision of angels who say he’s alive! 24 Some of our friends went to the tomb and found it exactly as the women had said, but they didn’t see him.”

25 He said to them, “Foolish people! So unwilling to put your trust in everything the prophets spoke! 26 Didn’t the Messiah have to die like this before entering his glory?” 27 Then, starting with Moshe and all the prophets, he explained to them the things that can be found throughout the Tanakh concerning himself.

They too were looking for the wrong thing or spent years hearing the wrong message taught in synagogues rebuked by Jesus Himself. He scolds them for their unbelief. Then in verse 27 He gives them an exposition of what we call Messianic prophecy, prophecies about the first coming of the Messiah. He went through Moses and the prophets showing that the very elements that seem to militate against His Messiahship are actually evidences of His Messiahship. These were the things that were supposed to happen to the Messiah.

Back to Paul, so ironically, by not listening, not paying attention, and thus not understanding, these Jerusalem Jews unwittingly brought about the prophecies concerning Yeshua by their very act of condemning Him. These prophecies that apparently flew right over their heads plainly tell of such things as:

1. Yeshua would be hated by His fellow Jews for no good reason. This was prophesied in Isaiah 49:7.
2. A friend would turn against Him and turn him over for execution. This was prophesied in Psalm 41
3. The price for his friend’s betrayal was 30 pieces of silver. This was prophesied in Zechariah 11:12
4. Yeshua would be executed by means of crucifixion as predicted in Psalm 22:17
5. He would be buried in a rich man’s tomb. This was predicted in Isaiah 53:9.
6. He would arise, alive, from the grave. This was prophesied in Isaiah 53:9 & 10 and in Psalm 2.
7. He would ascend to God and sit at the Father’s right hand in Heaven. This was prophesied in Psalm 16:11, and in Psalm 68.

And there is much, much more. So why didn’t these Jews who regularly went to synagogue week after week, year after year, and heard the Haftarah reading of the Prophets, and heard these prophecies, and had the opportunity to ask questions, and saw Yeshua in person and what was happening before their very eyes, not connect the painfully obvious dots? How did the learned Torah scholars, and the priests, and the teachers, and the synagogue leaders miss it? The event that the entire Torah pointed towards, that the Prophets said they longed to see, happened and most of the Jews of Jerusalem were not only blind to it, they helped bring about the most unsavory parts of the Prophets’ prophecies and were completely unaware of their personal involvement. What did Messiah say as He hung there, in agony, as thousands of the very people He came to save mocked Him?

Luke 23:33-34 CJB

They didn’t understand. Or perhaps, they wouldn’t understand because they didn’t want to understand. Here, then, is my greatest fear for those who sit out there today, and who are reading this online, and for those who sit in pews and comfortable chairs in Churches worldwide; a fear that is spoken by the same one who asked forgiveness for those who were persecuting Him unto death, but ought to have known better.

Matthew 7:21-23 CJB

Those Jews who insisted on Yeshua’s crucifixion were obviously oblivious to the very prophecies they were helping to fulfill, as well as to the prophecies Yeshua came to fulfill. And so many who fill the pews of houses of worship today are in danger of missing out on the prophecies of God, maybe even being the subjects of some of the prophecies in a very unbecoming way, because they don’t pay attention to what is happening right in front of their eyes. Because they don’t seriously study, and so don’t know, God’s Word. Leaders and teachers are much to blame because their flocks aren’t taught God’s Word. Rather manmade traditions and doctrines are taught as holy and true.

The unfortunate truth is that many of us prefer to hear teachings that make us feel better about ourselves, and often we are attracted to houses of worship that tell us what we want to hear. We seek out and accept only the most comfortable doctrines; ones that fit our personal lifestyles, make our lives easier and validate our wants and desires. And then only rarely do we ever compare them to Holy Scripture to see if these doctrines are correct. The Jews of Yeshua’s day got their teaching in synagogues; there, they were taught Halakhah (a fusion of Bible, doctrine and custom). Most Jews considered Bible, doctrine and custom as one in the same and any questioning of the status quo was considered as heresy; just as most Christians in modern times consider Bible, doctrine and custom as one in the same and so few question the status quo. And when the Jerusalem Jews insisted that Yeshua should be executed, it was because they had no interest in knowing the truth; only in practicing their religion. The same ones who filled the synagogues, without fail, every Shabbat, demanded the death of their prophesied Messiah. And when He comes again (and he IS coming), an enormous number of self-proclaimed Believers will find themselves rejected by Messiah because they had no interest in the truth; only in practicing their religion.

I suppose I ought to say I’m sorry for being so blunt and so tough and so judgmental; but time is too short and the consequences too great to beat around the bush. I want us all to develop a healthy fear of God. I want us all to examine ourselves and question why we believe what we believe. I want us all to mature in the Lord and to obey Him even when it means real lifestyle changes. I want us to discover by learning God’s Word where we might be wrong, and if we are, to change our minds. And that is because whether in death or in life our day of reckoning is nearly upon us. We don’t know the day or hour, anymore than did those Jews of Jerusalem who condemned themselves by condemning their own Savior. But by believing the doctrines of men over the Word of God, we put ourselves in the greatest danger.

In verse 32 Paul explains that the very purpose of him and of other disciples of Yeshua who have come to Antioch is to bring this Good News of Yeshua that was promised to the fathers. What fathers is he speaking of? When the Bible speaks of “the fathers”, it is referring to the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So Paul says that the Gospel was first presented to Abraham, then Isaac, then Jacob. Long before Moses. Long before the designated Prophets, God was progressively revealing His plan of salvation, but always through His chosen people the Hebrews. Then, interestingly, Paul points out some verses from a specific Psalm; a Psalm that was very popular in that era. Let’s read this short but powerful Psalm so that we have the entire context.

READ PSALM 2

I realize that you and I have the benefit of hindsight, but how can anyone in Paul’s day read this Psalm and not understand that this cannot be about some human earthly king? Could David or some other king really have thought that every nation in the world would want to come against him, and that to serve the God of Israel is the same as serving this king? And that the statement in this Psalm about those who take refuge in this person will be blessed by God could not possibly be talking about taking refuge under a regular king (unless delusions of grandeur were running rampant in that king’s mind)? Yet, somehow, this striking prophetic Psalm and many other Bible passages like it were misconstrued and glossed over. Likely they were allegorized (as we do too much of today) to make them fit the current doctrine.

Verse 34 (And as for his raising him up from the dead, to return to decay no more, he said,‘I will give the holy and trustworthy things of David to you.’) brings up a point that Paul will use to make a common sense argument. It is that Yeshua arose from the dead and did not suffer from any decay. The gruesome reality is that the reason for embalming is to interrupt the natural decaying process that begins immediately upon death. Jews weren’t embalmed. The lack of decaying in Yeshua’s body is an important piece of evidence for Paul. Further, Paul quotes another messianic passage from Isaiah 55:3 that says that the anointed one will receive things promised to David. So here is more proof that despite the claim in the birkhat ha-minim of the Amidah that David himself will be the messiah, that manmade tradition goes directly against Scripture and this passage in Isaiah is one such example.

So says Paul, David died, was buried and indeed his body decayed (he speaks of it as common knowledge). But the anointed one of God was raised from the dead without suffering decay. Ergo, David cannot possibly be the Messiah.

Torah Could Forgive Sin, But Not All

Paul now draws a fitting conclusion from all the evidence he has presented. He says that it is through Yeshua that one can receive forgiveness of sins. He goes further (and I suspect that what he is about to say may have been the hardest part of his conclusion for the Jews at this synagogue to accept). He says that if anyone puts their trust in Yeshua, then they can be forgiven sins that even the Torah of Moses could not forgive. It is hard to express in words the highest regard that all Jews, no matter their location, had for the Torah and for Moses. So to say that someone or something could do more than the Torah or Moses could do…..well, those were fighting words. So what does Paul mean by this? There are many laws and commandments listed in the Torah (Judaism says there are 613 of them). For each law there is a prescribed remedy should that law be broken. For simple theft, for example, the stolen goods had to be returned along with a 20% penalty. And the thief was required to go to the Temple and offer an animal sacrifice in addition. If the perpetrator had a contrite heart, and did these things, he was forgiven for his sin. It was like that for almost all Torah laws…..but not for every law. For some laws the crime was considered by God as to be so grave that the only remedy was for the perpetrator’s life to be forfeited. That is, no amount of compensation to a victim, and no altar sacrifice for atonement could be performed. Forgiveness was impossible.

Among the sins for which the Law of Moses offered no means of atonement were things such as murder and adultery. The Bible also says that high handed sins cannot be atoned for. That is, these are the worst of the worst sins, and they are those sins that are committed in an intentional, rebellious, heinous, blasphemous way. So a sin that might otherwise have had a means of atonement (such as for manslaughter) might be elevated to murder if it was committed in a high handed way, and thus no means of atonement was available. Paul says that even high handed sins that could not be atoned for in the Torah by an altar sacrifice could be atoned for by trust in Messiah Yeshua.

This passage is more controversial than it might seem. The rather standard mainstream Christian take on this passage is that it means that the Torah of Moses could in no way justify a sinner. That is, these Bible interpreters make justification the point instead of atonement. As usual, this is because these particular interpreters choose to begin with a manmade doctrine, and then work backwards from it to try and validate it. The doctrine in this case is (in a nutshell) that there is no real forgiveness available in the Torah, ever. Forgiveness is only in Jesus Christ. That doctrine is contradictory to the plain teachings of the Torah, so the doctrine’s purpose is to demean the Torah as worthless, faulty from its inception, and now (thankfully) dead and gone. This passage in Acts 13:39, [YLT: and from all things from which ye were not able in the law of Moses to be declared righteous, in this one every one who is believing is declared righteous;] at least to me, is plainly worded. And in investigating the Greek (where the key word is dikaioo), the plain meaning of the word is righteous, not justify. It speaks of Yeshua being able to make righteous a person who committed crimes (broke certain Torah laws) for which there was no remedy in the Torah. It in no way implies that every Torah law broken had no remedy to bring that person back to a righteous condition (by being forgiven). But that is what many interpreters say that this passage means. If that is true then we have a real quandary on our hands because we gets dozens and dozens of statements like this example in the Torah concerning when a person sins (breaks a Torah law) and then performs the prescribed sacrifice of atonement.

Leviticus 4:32-35 CJB

32 “‘If he brings a lamb as his sin offering, he is to bring a female without defect,
33 lay his hand on the head of the sin offering and slaughter it as a sin offering in the place where they slaughter burnt offerings.
34 The cohen is to take some of the blood of the sin offering with his finger and put it on the horns of the altar for burnt offerings. All its remaining blood he is to pour out at the base of the altar.
35 All its fat he is to remove, as the fat of a lamb is removed from the sacrifice for peace offerings; and the cohen is to make it go up in smoke on the altar on top of the offerings for ADONAI made by fire. Thus the cohen will make atonement for him in regard to the sin he committed, and he will be forgiven.

Over and over, more times than I can count, this is the standard formula in the Torah for explaining the procedure for when a person sins. And the result, if performed sincerely and properly, is always forgiveness. So real forgiveness occurred under the Levitical sacrificial system.

Therefore it cannot be that the Law never actually gave forgiveness and restored righteousness. What we see, however, is that in the Law of Moses God grades sins based on their seriousness. The greater the sin, the more costly the sacrifice. From a cheap dove or pigeon for a minor sin, all the way up in steps to the most expensive, a mature adult bull, for a major sin. What this shows us is that despite the standard Christian bumper sticker doctrine that a sin is a sin is a sin; that stealing a candy bar is no worse to God that murdering your neighbor, because both are sins, is simply false on every level. There are less and more serious sins, and they thus require various levels of atonement reflected by the cost of the animal involved as well as lower and greater levels of punishment and other consequences that are required. But, for the worst of the worst sins, blasphemy, adultery and murder, the sin is so serious that no atoning sacrifice can be costly enough so no sacrifice is prescribed. The perpetrator is cut off from God forever, and from his physical life forever (he is executed).

Paul explains that Yeshua can even atone for sins such as these, for which under the Law of Moses forgiveness was not possible. And as much as I personally count on the nearly limitless capacity of messiah to blot out my sins, there is still a limit.

Mark 3:28-29 CJB

28 Yes! I tell you that people will be forgiven all sins and whatever blasphemies they utter;
29 however, someone who blasphemes against the Ruach HaKodesh never has forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin.”

But the other caveat that must be added is this: just as the Torah Law usually required a consequence paid by the perpetrator to the victim for his crime, in addition to the sacrifice paid to God that forgave him NOT for what he did to his earthly victim but rather for the trespass he committed against God, never does the Torah kind of forgiveness or the Yeshua kind of forgiveness negate the earthly consequences of our sins. God may forgive our eternal penalty, but our earthly penalty usually remains. A murderer does not escape execution even as a Believer in Yeshua. But he can escape eternal damnation, on a spiritual level. Trust in Christ is not a universal Get Out of Jail Free card. Our actions still have consequences.

Acts 13:38-39 CJB 38 “Therefore, brothers, let it be known to you that through this man is proclaimed forgiveness of sins!
39 That is, God clears everyone who puts his trust in this man, even in regard to all the things concerning which you could not be cleared by the Torah of Moshe.

It is also crucial to help us understand the historical Paul, and what he means when he speaks about how he views the Law in some of his several letters that form the New Testament Biblical books that we call the Epistles. I’ll do little more than summarize as to the plain meaning of verses 38 and 39. Clearly, no matter which English translation you might choose to read, the crux is that Paul says that there are things in the Torah of Moses for which forgiveness was not possible using the Torah system of atonement. However, trust in “this man” (Yeshua) can clear you of those formerly unforgivable sins. The mainstream Christian thought on this verse is that the Torah didn’t forgive any sins at all; ever. Only Yeshua can do that. That head-scratching conclusion is a good example of a manmade doctrine that has been formed to satisfy a certain agenda, and then regardless of what the Bible might say, the Scripture is contorted or allegorized to uphold the doctrine.

Example: The worst translations then have to be:

New International Version
Through him everyone who believes is set free from every sin, a justification you were not able to obtain under the law of Moses.

New Living Translation
Everyone who believes in him is declared right with God–something the law of Moses could never do

Those verses make it sound as if there never was ‘ANY’ atonment in the law of Moses… NOT TRUE

We looked above at Leviticus 4:32-35 as an example of the Torah claiming that if the sinner had a contrite heart and if he followed the ritual procedures (meaning offering a sacrifice) then that sinner would be forgiven of that sin. Lev. 4:35 states: Thus the cohen will make atonement for him in regard to the sin he committed, and he will be forgiven. This same statement is made numerous times in the Law of Moses, so it cannot have been a translation error nor can it be anything but an established God-pattern. Obviously the Bible tells us that the sacrificial system offered actual forgiveness for sins, so logically it cannot be that Yeshua represents the first time in history that men could achieve forgiveness of sins. Rather, as the self-evident reading of Acts 13:39 states, there were certain sins in the Torah of Moses that could not be forgiven; but Messiah Yeshua can forgive them.

Either forgiveness of sins occurred as a result of an animal sacrifice properly administered through the Levitical priesthood, or it didn’t. If an animal sacrifice didn’t provide forgiveness as promised, then the Torah is simply wrong. So if the sacrificial system failed to atone for sins as the Torah claims, then God created and gave to the Israelites a broken system or He deceived Israel into believing that the animal sacrifices forgave sin, but they didn’t. And since God Himself gave Moses the Torah, then the bottom line is that God must either have made a mistake or He changed His mind. And both of these possibilities are as unthinkable to Christianity as they are to Judaism. Once again: Paul is pointing out that it is only that Yeshua could forgive sins that the Torah sacrificial system was not designed to forgive; sins such as idolatry, adultery, and murder. In fact the Mishnah says that there are 36 sins for which no animal sacrifice can provide forgiveness.

But what we also see in verses 38 and 39 is a fundamental understanding of Paul’s theology. It is that Yeshua’s kind of forgiveness is better and more all encompassing than the kind of forgiveness available in the Torah of Moses.

Let’s look it at this way: there are two sides of the divine ledger of justice that the Torah deals with: on one side is a series of written laws that are to be obeyed. On the other side of the ledger is what to do when one of those laws is disobeyed. The sacrificial system for atonement only dealt with the side of the ledger of what to do when a law is disobeyed. This side of the ledger is also called the curse of the Law because it deals with negative consequences for breaking the Law. Thus it is the same with Yeshua; He only came to deal with the side of the justice ledger that had to do with what happened when a law was disobeyed; the side that deals with the curse of the Law. This is why during His Sermon on the Mount, after addressing a few Torah laws and explaining their deepest meaning and intent, He then paused in Matthew 5:17 – 19 to declare that the side of the justice ledger that established the many laws and commandments that forms the Law of Moses is not what He came to deal with. Or as the passage says, “I did not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets”. Ending or editing the list of divine laws in the ledger was not His purpose. Thus when Paul speaks of The Law and of the forgiveness of Messiah, it is in this context that he means it. It is on the side of the ledger that deals with the consequences of breaking the Law whereby Paul establishes the concept that Yeshua is better than the remedies the Law can provide when it comes to forgiveness. Therefore Yeshua is the answer to the curse of the Law; not to the Law itself.