The Claim
Most churches teach that Paul told believers, again and again, to stop letting anyone tell them what to eat or which days to keep. “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days.” Why return to “weak and beggarly elements” and observe “days, and months, and times, and years”? “One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.”
From these passages comes a clear conclusion. Sabbaths, feasts, and food laws are optional at best, and bondage at worst. The person urging a believer to keep them is the very judge Paul warned against. Torah keepers are the modern Judaizers, and Paul’s letters are written to protect believers from them.
The Point in One Sentence
Every “let no man judge you” passage has a judge in the room, and before deciding what Paul forbids, the reader has to find out who is doing the judging and by whose rule.
The Short Version
- Paul’s letters are replies. Each one answers a real dispute with real people in it.
- Paul names his opponents, and he describes what they were pushing.
- The judging Paul forbids is men setting their own rules over others. Scripture never calls obedience to Yahuah’s commandments “judging.”
- The modern teaching assumes the judge is always the Torah keeper. That assumption has to be tested in each passage, not brought to it.
Every Letter Answers Someone
Paul did not write essays into empty air. He wrote to assemblies with problems, and sometimes he says so outright: “Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me” (1 Corinthians 7:1). Reading one of his letters is like hearing one side of a telephone call. The words make sense only when the other party is known.
That is why the same sentence can be read in two opposite directions. “Let no man judge you” protects whoever is being pressured. If the pressure is to abandon Yahuah’s commandments, the verse protects the commandment keeper. If the pressure is to accept a man-made rule, the verse protects the one who refuses it. The verse cannot be read until the pressure is identified.
Three Questions for Every Judging Passage
- Who is doing the judging? An outside faction, a teacher, a brother?
- By what rule are they judging? A commandment of Yahuah, or a rule from men?
- What does Paul call that rule? He is never shy about naming the source.
These questions do not decide any passage in advance. They make sure the reader finds the judge in the text instead of supplying one from outside it.
Paul Names His Opponents
When Paul warns against pressure, he describes the people applying it, and his descriptions rarely fit a faithful Torah keeper.
- In Galatia: “some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel” (Galatians 1:7), and “false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty” (Galatians 2:4).
- In Corinth: “false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Messiah” (2 Corinthians 11:13).
- In Colossae: those who would “spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men” (Colossians 2:8).
And of the Galatian troublers he says something remarkable:
For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh.
— Galatians 6:13
The men pressing circumcision on the Galatians did not keep the law themselves. Whatever they were, they were not faithful Torah keepers. Paul’s quarrel with them was not that they obeyed Yahuah too carefully. It was that they used a ritual to boast in other men’s flesh while ignoring the law they claimed to defend.
There Is One Lawgiver
Scripture draws the line between judging and obeying in a single sentence:
There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who art thou that judgest another?
— James 4:12
The sin of judging is a man taking the Lawgiver’s seat, setting his own rule over another and condemning him by it. Paul asks the same question: “Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth” (Romans 14:4). A man who keeps a commandment Yahuah gave is not sitting in the Lawgiver’s seat. He is obeying the One who sits there.
Paul also tells his readers what kind of matter Romans 14 concerns before he says a word about days or food: “Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations” (Romans 14:1). Disputable opinions. What exactly those opinions were is answered in the testimonies on that chapter.
What This Foundation Does Not Claim
- It does not claim that Torah keepers are never the judges. They can be, and when a Torah keeper condemns a brother over a matter of opinion, Paul’s warnings land on him too.
- It does not decide who the judge is in any particular passage. Each testimony does that from its own text.
- It claims this: the identity of the judge is part of the meaning of the verse. A reading that never asks who the judge is has skipped half the work.
The Verdict
The modern teaching reads every “let no man judge you” as a shield against the Torah. But Paul’s letters were written into real disputes with real opponents, and the opponents he names were men with their own rules, their own philosophy, and in Galatia, men who did not keep the law at all. Find the party in the room first, and the passage tells its own story. The passages that rest here are answered one at a time in their own testimonies.
Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.
— Romans 3:31
Paul never defended a believer against the law of Yahuah. He defended believers against men.