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The Sermon on the Mount Hedges the Torah

July 20, 2026 No Comments

Many issues ail the Charismatic church. Near the top of the list is a lack of appropriate appreciation for the Old Testament. Many Christians have been raised to believe the untruth that the New Testament is the Bible of the church, having moved past the age of the Old Testament. This is ridiculous on many levels, but the most important point is that the Old Testament was the Bible for Jesus and all the Apostles. To move past the Hebrew Bible is to miss out on the wisdom that Jesus and the early believers leaned on.

Some scholars in the 19th and 20th centuries argued that Jesus opposed or superseded the Torah in the Sermon on the Mount. This view shaped the term “antitheses,” still in use in Matthean scholarship. Now, we know Jesus did no such thing, and his sermon was misread. But the idea is still well and alive in many churches. For instance,

Matthew 5:21-22 ESV
[21] “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ [22] But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.

This portion of the Sermon is said to contain “antitheses” – a term that communicated that Jesus’s teaching or stance was somewhat in opposition to the Torah. The Torah says one thing, but Jesus sees fit to update or refine it in his authority. Modern scholarship has since abandoned the antithetical reading. It is not the case that Jesus pits himself against the Torah. In fact, he earlier states this point clearly:

Matthew 5:17 ESV
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

That Matthew clearly states this point before the “antitheses” should be a hermeneutical handle or lens for reading the text. Jesus is not opposed to the Torah in any way. He came to fulfill the hopes held out in the Torah for Israel and humanity at large, as we have shown elsewhere. He could not be opposed to the thing he came to fulfill. Indeed, he further states:

Matthew 5:19 ESV
Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

Whatever else Jesus’s ministry might be about, opposing the Torah is not one of them. What, then, are the antitheses about if Jesus is not opposing the Torah? A few clues point us in the right direction. First, consider this verse:

Matthew 5:43 ESV
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’

The first half, “You shall love your neighbor,” is from the Torah. The second half, “You shall hate your enemy,” does not exist anywhere in the Torah. But the quotation lumps together loving your neighbor and hating your enemy. To insist that Jesus quoted the Torah is to imply that he did not know the Law well. A more plausible alternative is that Jesus was not here directly interacting with the Torah.

Second, Matthew earlier, in the temptation account, shows Jesus using a standard formula when he cites the Torah: “It is written” (4:4, 7, 10). But in 5:43, he says, “You have heard that it was said.” This implies that Jesus is addressing interpretive oral traditions circulating in Second Temple Judaism that the people were likely familiar with. If we assume that Jesus accurately represented the interpretations of his day, that further suggests that the Torah had already been distorted. And there were understandable reasons for such a development. The people were colonized by a brutal state in Rome that did not always allow them to live in accordance with their ancestral ways. It is not difficult to see how some preachers may begin to hate their oppressors. Such distortions misrepresented God, and Jesus sought to restore the way of God consistent with the Torah.

The antithetical hypothesis, however, was correct in recognizing that Jesus goes beyond the text of the Torah. But he remains within its spirit. I think, at minimum, what Jesus does here is not different in kind from what other Rabbis did: hedging the Torah. Jesus is here building a fence around the Torah by helping his audience recognize early when they were in danger of breaking the law. Hence, he formulates other rules that, if observed, would prevent the breaking of the Torah. But, unlike other Rabbis, Jesus’ hedges are not merely preventative fences; they are also kingdom‑forming internalizations of Torah, shaping disciples into the renewed Israel – themes the epistles will later flesh out. For instance,

Matthew 5:27-28 ESV
[27] “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ [28] But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Exodus 20:14 forbids adultery, and Matthew 5:28 hedges the Exodus command. Committing adultery with a woman in one’s heart is not the same thing as physical adultery – if in doubt, know that women who have suffered abuse would be happy if it only happened in the hearts of men. Jesus here teaches an obvious truth: noumenal adultery precedes physical adultery. Hence, if a person catches adultery in their heart before it is full-grown and addresses it, they will not end up breaking the Torah. So, Jesus is calling his disciples to a higher level that protects against breaking the Torah.

Here is another example:

Obviously, anger and murder are different things. But anger typically precedes murder. Again, if someone catches anger rising in them and addresses it, they will not murder. Jesus is not legally equating anger with murder, but he is morally intensifying the command by addressing the root that leads to murder.

Let us take another example:

Matthew 5:38-39 ESV
[38] “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ [39] But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

This rule predates the Torah, as it appears in the Hammurabi Code centuries earlier. It was an improvement for its time because it ensured that the offended party did not exact greater damage in retaliation. If someone accidentally killed a neighbor’s goat, this law ensured that the offended party would not kill a herd. In the Torah, this law – better known as the Lex Talionis – is a judicial principle, not a personal ethic, since it applies to court cases, not interpersonal conflict. However, Jesus extends the application of the law to interpersonal relations, implying that he believed the spirit of the Torah was not merely about damage control but also about loving one’s enemy. Indeed, he soon would explicitly say that in Matthew 5:44-48.

It is worth noting that the Hebrew Bible contains a cluster of themes that lead to Jesus’s teaching on loving an enemy. To begin with, Torah’s “eye for eye” rule is not a command to retaliate. It is a limit on retaliation, a justice – and loving – principle. Besides, the Torah explicitly teaches principles that together amount to loving people who have done wrong. Leviticus 19 contains many laws pointing in this loving direction. For instance, 19:18 says ancient Israelites shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against a neighbor. Indeed, 19:17 forbids hating a brother in one’s heart. Also, Exodus 23:4-5 teaches the Israelites to care for an enemy’s ox and donkey. This ensures that an enemy’s business does not suffer. Hence, no matter how mad one might be against an individual, it was still one’s responsibility to ensure that the enemy’s means of livelihood did not suffer in certain cases.

Furthermore, Proverbs contain explicit turn-the-cheek teachings:

Proverbs 20:22 ESV
Do not say, “I will repay evil”; wait for the Lord, and he will deliver you.

Proverbs 24:29 ESV
Do not say, “I will do to him as he has done to me; I will pay the man back for what he has done.”

Proverbs 25:21 ESV
If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink,

These texts essentially teach not to repay evil with evil and, in certain circumstances, to care for an enemy in need.

Moreover, and most strikingly, Isaiah’s suffering Servant offers his cheeks to those who strike him (Isaiah 50:6). Matthew identifies Jesus as this Servant (Matthew 12:18–21), making ‘turn the other cheek’ a direct extension of the Servant’s ethic. So, Jesus’s teaching to resist escalation and love the enemy is not a new ethic. Jesus massages Torah’s wisdom to the specific context in which he taught while also revealing its fulfilled, kingdom‑shaped form. He is not asking his disciples to do what he has not embodied, as he soon would show what loving one’s enemy ultimately looks like.

The notion that the New Testament superseded the Hebrew Bible is both historically misinformed and spiritually impoverishing. It blinds believers to the very Scriptures Jesus read, prayed, taught, and fulfilled. When we treat the Old Testament as obsolete, we cut ourselves off from the wisdom that shaped the Messiah and the entire apostolic movement. The Hebrew Bible is not a discarded relic; it remains the soil from which the gospel grows. Indeed, we cannot adequately understand the gospel without significantly upping our appreciation of the Hebrew Bible. To ignore it is to rob ourselves of the contexts and covenant story that make Jesus intelligible. Recovering the Old Testament is not optional because, to be provocative, it is the primary Bible. The New Testament is mostly an inspired commentary on the Hebrew Bible, and, on the evidence of a typical Sunday sermon these days, it is quite counterproductive to read a commentary without knowing the primary text well.

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The Contingent Security of Salvation: A Critique of OSAS

July 9, 2026 No Comments

Background

Now and then, a theological issue boils over into a national conversation in Nigeria. One recent such matter concerns the doctrine Nigerians dubbed “Once Saved, Always Saved” (OSAS). The theologically savvy reader might know the matter as the hotly contested issue of the perseverance of the saints. Some years ago, we explored this matter here on the blog, focusing on four various Christian positions on how to read Hebrews 6:4-6. So, this entry may be considered a continuation of that conversation.

What is OSAS?
It is a cute summary of a doctrinal synthesis that posits that once Jesus saves a person, absolutely nothing in the entire cosmos can reverse it. There are various ways a Christian might arrive at this conclusion. For most Western believers, this is just the conclusion of Calvinism. But I suspect there may be other reasons this position is appealing to African believers: our traditional worldview is deterministic. See our treatment of Yoruba cosmology, for example. Besides, OSAS can be quite comforting, as it teaches that the believer does not need to live in fear of what might happen. Her future is already settled in Christ. Christians are merely occupying until Jesus returns; we are in no doubt about our destiny.

The Hidden Premises of OSAS
Like most Christians influenced by the Word of Faith movement, I, too, initially affirmed OSAS. Much later in my journey, however, I learned more about the origin of this idea. In particular, once I learned about the ideas that underpin OSAS, I could not, in good faith, continue to affirm it. The idea that a person is always saved (in and by Jesus) if she was ever once saved is a result of other theological claims within a particular 16th-century European Reformation theology. Some of the hidden claims include the following:

1. God sovereignly chooses who gets saved and who gets eternally damned. And this divine choice has no input whatsoever from the humans affected.

2. That saving grace of God is both irresistible and efficacious. The selected humans cannot reject the grace extended, and the grace is guaranteed to do complete work for and in the recipients.

From these claims (and a few others), the conclusion follows that once a person is selected for salvation, it must be because God sovereignly chose that person. Since God is all-knowing and all-powerful, it is impossible for that person ever to become unsaved.

Furthermore, there is a Word of Faith spin on the same idea above. The apostles of the Word of Faith movement taught that when a believer gets saved, she receives eternal life into her recreated human spirit. Obviously, if it were true that eternal life is woven into one’s constitution at rebirth, then it becomes very difficult to see how one can lose it. Besides, Word of Faith theology holds that if eternal life can be lost, it is not eternal to begin with. To be eternal is to continue without end. Hence, once anyone receives eternal life, it is irreversible.

Both ideas, the Calvinistic and the Word of Faith ones, lead to the same end: a believer cannot forfeit salvation. For reasons to be explored shortly, I reject both ideas in their entirety. I shall argue that the Calvinistic premises and the Word of Faith conception of eternal life are mistaken. A believer, once saved, will always be saved provided she continues to abide in Jesus. If she fails to abide, she may forfeit salvation.

We have explored at length elsewhere reasons to reject the idea that God, by divine fiat, chooses who gets saved and who does not. Furthermore, I do not believe that Jesus’s saving grace is irresistible. In other words, I do not think that humans cannot say no to Jesus’s offer. Interested readers should see our interaction with these ideas in the entries on Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free Will. We shall soon interact with more biblical data in this entry.

Understanding Eternal Life

The Word of Faith conception of eternal life is cute, but it is an imagination foreign to the Bible. Indeed, Jesus gives “eternal life”, but this life is not what some Charismatics have imagined it to be. To begin with, eternal life is not like a substance one receives. This is a deeply Hebraic idea that must be understood on its own terms.

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Death, Sheol, and Resurrection: What Happens When We Die?

April 16, 2026 1 Comment

This piece is adapted from a longer entry investigating Word of Faith theology.

Generations of believers have been taught that they will go to heaven when they die. People, of course, know they will not go to heaven as they are on earth. Everyone knows that the body decays in the grave when someone dies. Hence, one tradition says it is the spirit of the person that goes to heaven. So, life after death is quite spiritual. In this piece, I want to show that this common view is mistaken by exploring biblical data on life after death.

Let us begin with this: Do humans continue to exist when they die—that is, when the spirit separates from the body? This is a remarkably complex question that we cannot do justice to in this short entry. However, we will make a few key points. First, the answer is both Yes and No. When people die, they obviously cease to exist in the way they used to be. Indeed, death seems to be the precise word we use to describe the cessation of the life of a person as we knew it. Properly speaking, a human life is an embodied life. So, once the body ceases to be animated, life as we know it ceases. But it is also true that the ancients in the Bible thought that a dead person continues to exist:

Ecclesiastes 12:7 ESV
and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.

This text, made famous by its frequent use at Services of Songs for the deceased, suggests a reversal of the creation of the human in Genesis: the breath of life returns to God, and the body dissolves into the earth. This may lead one to think the dead continue to exist with God in some spiritual form. But as we shall soon see, this existence consists of almost nothing. Some other texts suggest that the dead go to the realm of the dead, characterized by inactivity:

Ecclesiastes 9:10 ESV
Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

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By God’s Design: Heaven is not the Goal

April 14, 2026 3 Comments

Introduction

For several decades now, Christians worldwide have been taught that the ultimate goal of the faith is heaven. Considering longevity, this idea has essentially achieved a canonical status in believers’ minds. Yet, Christians before the 1900s did not entertain such a thought. One major reason the notion became popular was the publication of the Scofield Bible in 1909, which presented the idea alongside the Bible’s text, not as one among many options, but as the only reading offered. Rapture theology became synonymous with eschatology. Other enabling factors, including the later rise of American fundamentalism and Cold War anxieties, contributed to the popularity of this idea.

I recognize that this can be an emotionally charged and potentially disorienting issue. There are people in their 80s who have believed all their lives that heaven awaits. So, I’m aware of the potential distress that this entry might cause. But I owe it to such persons to rigorously interact with Scripture to extract the truth. In this piece, I shall argue that the earth has always been and will forever be humanity’s destiny. Yes, there is a heaven, but it is not the residential home of humans.

In the Beginning

Let us take it from the beginning. Humans were not the first created beings. The Bible reveals that a host of heavenly beings were created before humans. For reasons best known to God, he made the angels, cherubs, seraphs, and others to reside in heaven. But when God made humans, he first prepared a cultivated portion of the Earth for them to dwell in. He could have made humans join the heavenly beings. Instead, heaven – that is, God – regularly comes to the earth to fellowship with humanity in the special spot he has earmarked for them. It was not long before things went south. The humans became corrupted, and God must act:

Genesis 3:22-24 NRSVUE
[22] Then the LORD God said, “See, the humans have become like one of us, knowing good and evil, and now they might reach out their hands and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever”— [23] therefore the LORD God sent them forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which they were taken. [24] He drove out the humans, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.

I have written elsewhere that knowing good and evil is not, in itself, a sin. In his famous prayer when he became king, Solomon asks:

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Who Incited David in 1 Chronicles 21:1-2 and 2 Samuel 24:1-2: God or Satan?

February 1, 2026 No Comments

This entry is adapted from a longer one here.

Consider the following texts:

2 Samuel 24:1 ESV
Again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go, number Israel and Judah.”

1 Chronicles 21:1 NRSVUE
Satan stood up against Israel and incited David to count the people of Israel.

These texts record the same event. Yet, the first account says it was God who incited David, while the second says it was Satan. Which is it?

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The Gospel without Torah is a Non-archored Half-Truth: An Example from Matthew 12

November 28, 2025 1 Comment

I recently learned that the church did not pay attention to the Gospel of Mark for centuries because it assumed that Mark was merely an abbreviated version of Matthew. This caused my mind to entertain several thoughts. Could it be, for instance, that after over 2000 years, we still may be deficient in our understanding of the faith? Consider the following passage:

Matthew 12:1-8 ESV
[1] At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. [2] But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” [3] He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: [4] how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? [5] Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? [6] I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. [7] And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. [8] For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

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Examining the Foundations of Word of Faith and Hyper-Grace Theologies

November 9, 2025 3 Comments

At my core, and in my deepest hopes, I am a Charismatic Christian. I long to walk alongside fellow followers of Jesus who wholeheartedly celebrate that God is still present and active in our lives today, still healing and saving. My desire is for a faith that touches both my mind and my heart. One of the gifts of the Word of Faith movement is its encouragement to trust God boldly, to believe that God cares about every aspect of our lives—health, relationships, and even our daily needs. I have witnessed genuine joy and a beautiful simplicity of belief in many of these communities, and it would take an unhealthy dosage of skepticism to maintain that none of the claimed results in these circles is genuine. I cannot dismiss the real and meaningful experiences that so many have shared. With care and respect, however, I feel compelled to thoughtfully examine some of the movement’s core theological beliefs, as I believe they deserve a closer examination and an honest conversation.

Let me briefly mention that the theological patterns examined in this piece extend beyond classic Word of Faith teaching and apply equally to modern Hyper‑Grace movements. Indeed, Word of Faith theology is the giant on whose shoulders Hyper-Grace theology stands. In many cases, the latter merely takes the former’s ideas to a logical conclusion. Hence, in examining the Word of Faith movement, we will also be addressing flashpoints in Hyper‑Grace theology.

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God and Hagar: Abraham’s Evil Treatment of Hagar

October 23, 2025 No Comments

Abraham is a significant figure in Judaism, including the form that has evolved into the mutated form we know today as Christianity. The gospel of Jesus was first preached to Abraham as God sovereignly chose to set his redemption plans in motion through Abraham. Generations of Bible readers have also noted the atypical commitment of Abraham to perform what God required of him in the Aqedah story. This story raises many moral questions, as we discussed elsewhere. These points, along with many others, including Abraham’s mention in the “Hall of Faith” chapter of the book of Hebrews, have led many in the church to downplay his not-quite godly episodes. One of such episodes is how he treated Hagar.

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Celebrating Queen Vashti

October 11, 2025 No Comments

Many scholars today believe that the book of Esther was written as a play, not history. There are several reasons why this makes sense, but we will not focus on those here. While the Protestant canon places Esther alongside historical books like Ezra and Nehemiah, the Hebrew Bible Canon places the book alongside Wisdom literature. It is also worth noting that there are several known versions of the Book of Esther, each with notable differences. For instance, preachers have often pointed out that the book of Esther is a book of the Bible that does not mention God at all; God is an invisible hand writing the story. However, in some of the other versions, God is explicitly invoked in the story.

Furthermore, Esther and the Song of Solomon are books that were hotly contested during the process of establishing the Hebrew Bible canon. One apparent reason is that these books are rather sexual, and some of the deciding powers did not think that sex and spirituality walk together. In the case of Esther, there might have been another reason people resisted its canonization: the story is about heroines, not a hero.

That’s right. I think there are two heroines in the book of Esther, though we have often focused on one and maligned the other. The Jewish girl, Esther, certainly deserves the praises that have been accorded her since the book was written. She risked her life by approaching the Persian king unbidded:

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On the Gender of God: Is God Male?

July 22, 2025 1 Comment

I first became aware of this matter in an undergraduate Hebrew Bible Writings class. The ethnically Jewish, non-religious professor made a comment that set off the rabbit hole: “The name ‘Yahweh’ in Hebrew is as grammatically masculine as ‘Richard’ is in America.” I had not listened closely enough to realize that grammatical and biological genders are separate. My mind immediately went down a long rabbit hole. It seemed to me that whatever it meant to say God was masculine could not exactly mean how we ordinarily use the term for humans. The reason seemed simple: God is a spirit. To be a spirit is to be unembodied. I had to admit, on the other hand, that God is consistently called a Father and Jesus was a male human for 33 years. I managed to get out of the hole by pushing the issue aside so I could focus on the lecture. Now is the time to carefully unpack this crucial matter. Is God male? It may be helpful to ask the same question differently: Are men more like God than women are? Obviously, how one answers this question is enormously important. Several downstream ideas in a person’s economy of beliefs rest on the answer.

Language Matters: What Does it Mean to be Male?

Many of us today use the terms “male/man” and “female/woman” synonymously – and this is more or less the practice I’ll uphold in this entry. However, it is beneficial to be aware of and learn from advancements in Psychology and Gender Studies. In the ancient world and many parts of our world today, biology is assumed to determine one’s gender. In the Greco-Roman world, for instance, women were thought to be irrational, unsuitable for ruling, needing male guidance, and emotional. Amy Peeler notes that because women were generally smaller in body, they were also thought to be smaller in mind and spirit (90). In other words, to be female meant manifesting the attributes above. The problem begins when we observe that not all women fit into that box, and some men check some of the boxes. This observation motivated some scholars to separate biology from sociology and sex from gender. Biology determines sex, but social factors determine gender. This move raises an obvious question: what does being male (or female) mean?

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