“I will put My law within them and write it on their heart;
and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” Jeremiah 31:33

Someone recently asked why Gentiles should study Torah if we are not “under the Law”. These are the thoughts that I shared with them.

Imagine being a Gentile teenager that is adopted by a Jewish family. You have your own cultural identity so your adoptive family does not expect you to become a Jew in order to become a member of the family. But they do have ethical and moral standards that you are expected to follow, which are based on their Jewish faith. As long as you live in their house, there are some things you are obligated to do just because it would be disruptive to the family if you didn’t (such as observing Shabbat). Your Jewish siblings are expected to follow the commands of Torah in the literal sense, not just as a moral/ethical/spiritual guide. The more you know about Torah, the better you can understand your new siblings, appreciate where they are coming from, and live in peace and unity with them.

As Gentiles, we have essentially been adopted into a large extended family in which the adopted children now far outnumber the biological children. Even though the Apostles determined that Gentiles entering the New Covenant are not obligated to follow all the terms of the Mosaic Covenant (Acts 15:19-29), Jesus and the Apostles did teach everyone to follow a moral code of conduct that is rooted in Torah. In order for us to obey that code of conduct, it helps tremendously to understand the foundation that it is based on.

Torah reveals God’s standards of right and wrong and tells us what God wants from us. For Jews, that includes specific actions that are part of the covenant God made with the children of Israel at Sinai. For both Jews and Gentiles, it includes the underlying principles of righteousness. In that sense, sin is breaking Torah and repentance is marked by a return to the deeds of righteousness that we understand through Torah.

In addition to all that, here are a few more good reasons to study Torah:

  • God’s nature is imprinted in Torah. The separation of the sacred and the common, His principles of truth and justice, and very concrete examples of His love and mercy are all present there, and studying it helps us to know our Father in a way that you just can’t get from a systematic theology.
  • Torah is integral to the structure of the Bible. The Prophets and the Writings build on it. The Gospels and the Epistles build on all of that. The Torah is full of types and shadows and prophecy that illuminate our understanding of everything that follows it. I don’t think we can separate the study of the commandments from the study of the Torah in general.
  • More specifically, the story of Israel is the backstory of Messiah. (Again, the commandments are intertwined with the history.) We need the full context of Torah to understand the story of Israel, and we need the story of Israel to fully appreciate Israel’s Messiah.
  • The Torah is essential for understanding eschatology. Nearly all of the prophetic motifs have their roots in Torah, including in places that are intertwined with ritual and civil law that many Gentiles skip over. It’s hopeless to try and understand the end times without studying Torah closely.
  • One reason to study the commandments of Torah in particular as a Gentile is to wrestle with the question of whether or how it applies to you. There are some which don’t have an easy answer. Gather a whole pile of questions from the Torah and read through the New Testament looking for answers. It’s challenging, but very rewarding.

And there’s one more reason, which is perhaps the most important. I think this last reason is what Paul was always trying to get at when he discussed Torah. The point of the New Covenant is to have God’s law written on our hearts (Jeremiah 31:31-37). That means our character must be conformed to the character of Yeshua, so that our natural motivation and inclination is to do what is right in God’s eyes. It’s supposed to start coming from the inside instead of being enforced from the outside. Every part of Scripture has value in transforming our minds, but Torah has a unique role. The cognitive dissonance that we must resolve when pressing into the hard or dull or seemingly irrelevant parts of Torah is a great contributor to that character formation.

“Your testimonies I have as a heritage forever, for they are my heart’s joy.” Psalm 119:111

To continue the study of this topic, dive deeper with this article.