The Claim
Most churches teach that the Pharisees were the keepers of the Law of Moses. When Yahushua clashed with them, He was clashing with the Law. He let His disciples pick grain on the Sabbath. He healed on the Sabbath when the leaders said He must not. He let His disciples eat with unwashed hands, and He called the religious men of His day hypocrites. Later the apostles warned against yokes, ordinances, and the commandments of men.
Put together, the teaching runs like this. The Torah was a heavy system of rules. Yahushua came to set people free from it. Anyone who keeps the Torah today has gone back to the Pharisees.
The charge is serious, and it is made sincerely. It deserves a straight answer.
The Short Version
- Two kinds of rules were in force in the days of Yahushua. One kind came from Yahuah. The other kind came from men.
- Yahushua never broke the first kind. Scripture says He never sinned, and sin is breaking the law.
- He broke the second kind openly, and often.
- Every fight He had with the religious leaders was over the second kind.
- The modern teaching treats the two as one. Once they are separated, these passages stop being about the Torah.
Two Sources, Not One
Yahuah’s people have always lived with two sets of instructions at the same time. The first set was spoken by Yahuah and written down by Moses. The second set grew up around it, built by men who wanted to protect it, explain it, or improve on it.
The second set always looked religious. It always claimed to serve the first. But it was never the same thing, and Scripture never treats it as the same thing.
Yahuah Fenced His Own Word
Before Israel ever crossed the Jordan, Yahuah put a fence around His commandments. The fence faces both ways.
Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of Yahuah your Elohim which I command you.
— Deuteronomy 4:2
He said it again eight chapters later (Deuteronomy 12:32). Proverbs says it a third time: “Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar” (Proverbs 30:6).
Two Hebrew words carry the rule. Yasaph (H3254) means to add. Gara (H1639) means to take away. Both are forbidden in the same sentence.
This settles more than it first appears to. A rule added to the Torah is not part of the Torah. It does not become part of it by being old, or by being popular, or by being taught by respected men. And a man who refuses an added rule has not broken the Torah. He has kept it, because the Torah told him not to accept additions.
Isaiah Named the Problem Seven Centuries Early
Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men.
— Isaiah 29:13
The precept of men is mitsvat anashim in Hebrew, the commandment of men. Mitsvah (H4687) is the same word Scripture uses for the commandments of Yahuah. Isaiah’s point is sharp. The people had a commandment. It simply was not His.
Yahushua Laid the Charge Against Tradition
When the leaders challenged Yahushua over the tradition of the elders (Matthew 15:2), He answered by quoting Isaiah.
Why do ye also transgress the commandment of Yahuah by your tradition? … Thus have ye made the commandment of Yahuah of none effect by your tradition. … But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
— Matthew 15:3, 6, 9
Notice who is accused of breaking a commandment. Not Yahushua. Them. And notice what did the breaking. Not belief, and not a new covenant. Their tradition.
His example is plain. The Torah commands a man to honor his father and mother (Exodus 20:12). The leaders had a rule that let a man declare his goods a gift set apart, and from then on he owed his aging parents nothing (Matthew 15:5). The rule looked holy. It cancelled a commandment.
Made Void Is a Courtroom Word
“Of none effect” is one Greek word, akuroo (G208). It means to void, to cancel, to strip of legal force. Paul uses the same word for a covenant that no later law can cancel (Galatians 3:17).
So the one time in the gospels that anyone is charged with voiding Yahuah’s commandment, the charge is laid against tradition. It is never laid against Yahushua.
Greek Keeps the Two Kinds of Commandment Apart
In Matthew 15:3, the commandment of Yahuah is entole (G1785), the ordinary word for a commandment. In 15:9, the commandments of men are entalma (G1778). Entalma appears only three times in the apostles’ writings (Matthew 15:9; Mark 7:7; Colossians 2:22). Every time, it describes rules that came from men. It is never once used for a commandment of Yahuah.
The Word Tradition Is Not the Problem. The Source Is.
Tradition is paradosis (G3862), from a verb meaning to hand over. It is simply something handed down. The word appears thirteen times in the apostles’ writings, and most of those uses describe the tradition of the elders or the traditions of men. Paul used it for his own past: “being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers” (Galatians 1:14).
But Paul also used the same word for what the apostles handed down: “hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle” (2 Thessalonians 2:15; see also 1 Corinthians 11:2).
So the test is never the word. The test is the source. What Yahuah handed down through His messengers is to be held. What men handed down and set beside Yahuah’s word as its equal is to be refused. Paul draws that exact line:
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Messiah.
— Colossians 2:8
A study that called every tradition evil would not survive a reader who opens Second Thessalonians. This foundation does not make that claim. It claims only what Yahushua claimed: a tradition that voids a commandment is to be thrown out, and the commandment kept.
He Never Broke a Commandment
Here is the plainest proof in the whole debate.
Yahushua asked His enemies, “Which of you convinceth me of sin?” (John 8:46). No one could. Peter wrote that He “did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth” (1 Peter 2:22). Hebrews says He was tempted in every way “yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). And John defines the word:
Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.
— 1 John 3:4
Put those verses together. If Yahushua had broken one commandment of the Torah, He would have sinned. He did not sin. So He never broke one commandment of the Torah.
That means every time the leaders accused Him of breaking the law, one of two things was true. Either the charge was false, or the law they meant was their own. There is no third choice that leaves Him without sin.
The Heavy Load Was Theirs
The modern teaching calls the Torah a crushing weight. Yahushua put the weight somewhere else.
For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.
— Matthew 23:4
“They bind.” The burdens were tied together by men. John, writing decades later, says the opposite about the commandments of Yahuah:
For this is the love of Yahuah, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.
— 1 John 5:3
Heavy in Matthew and grievous in John are the same Greek word, barus (G926). Yahushua called the leaders’ rules heavy. John said the commandments are not heavy. The weight the church warns about belongs to the men who added it, not to the One who gave the Torah.
The Sabbath Fights Were Over Fences
Six passages in this series are Sabbath disputes between Yahushua and the leaders. They follow the same pattern as the gift rule in Matthew 15. The leaders forbade something the Torah never forbade, and Yahushua refused the added rule while keeping the commandment. Each dispute is answered in its own testimony.
One Question Tests Every Rule
To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.
— Isaiah 8:20
Every rule can be tested with one question: where is it written? The commandments of Yahuah can always answer it. The commandments of men cannot. They point to the elders, the fathers, the custom, or the council. They never point to the text.
The Same Error, Running the Other Way
Deuteronomy 4:2 forbids two things, not one. Adding, and taking away.
The leaders of the first century added. They piled rules on the Sabbath until a healing became a crime.
Much of the modern church takes away. The seventh day is set aside. The table is set aside. The appointed times are set aside. In their place stand days and customs that no verse commands. That is taking away and adding at the same time.
The question “where is it written?” works on both. The Pharisee who forbade healing on the Sabbath could not answer it. The pulpit that calls Sabbath keeping bondage cannot answer it either. The first-day passages are weighed in their own foundation (F-11), and not one of them commands a new day.
Yahushua’s verdict on the first error fits the second just as well: “in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men” (Matthew 15:9).
What Did Change
Saying exactly what Yahushua did keeps anyone from having to overstate the case.
- He set aside rules that men had added. He did it in public, and most often on the Sabbath, because that was where the fences stood thickest.
- He pointed the commandments back to their purpose. He told the leaders they had left “the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith,” and then added, “these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone” (Matthew 23:23). He kept both.
- The commandments themselves did not change. No passage says He cancelled one. The only charge of cancelling in the gospels lands on tradition.
The Verdict
The modern case needs Yahushua to have broken the Torah. Scripture says He never sinned. So the case quietly moves the rules of the elders inside the Torah, and then reads His freedom from their rules as freedom from Yahuah’s.
Give each rule back its source and the passages sort themselves. The commandments of Yahuah stand. The commandments of men fall. Every passage that rests on this foundation is answered one at a time in its own testimony.
Paul asked whether belief makes the law void, and answered his own question:
Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.
— Romans 3:31
Scripture charges one thing with making the commandment void. It is not belief, and it is not the Messiah. It is the tradition of men.