Tackling a Tough One (part 2)

Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God,  Hebrew 6:1  ESV

Dead works – Are you ready to move on toward maturity?  If you are, then you will have to come to terms with your “dead works.”  Too often these words are taken as a declaration that “dead works” means the law, and therefore it is no longer in effect.  Because we import a “law vs. grace” mentality, we read “dead works” as if it means “trying to be saved by earning righteousness,” and that is verboten ever since Martin Luther.   But no Jew would have understood these words in that way.  The law doesn’t bring death.  It brings life!  The Torah tells me how I am to live after I have peace with God through His grace.  Every Jew knows that hen (grace) is the basis of our relationship with YHWH.  Torah is simply how we become God’s feet and hands in this world.  Paul argues as much in Romans.  Only those who continued to claim that Gentiles had to become Jews (by certain actions for proselytes) in order to worship YHWH are subject to this criticism.  Paul’s argument in Galatians definitively overturns the claim that we must become Jewish before we can enter into the covenant of God.  But that does not set aside the Torah.  It simply demonstrates that the Torah is not about salvation.  It is about life after grace.

Then what does it mean to say, “not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works”?  Certainly we understand the idea of not going back again and again to the first step of repentance.  While followers need to repent of sins as they align their lives with Yeshua’s call, this is not the same as that first step of repentance, the step that puts us on the road toward conformity with the Son.  John makes this clear in his first letter.  But what is the connection to “dead works”? Ellingworth’s comment is instructive.  “The context requires [themelion  . . . metanoias . . .] to mean ‘a foundation which consists of repentance . . ,’ not, as more commonly, ‘a foundation on which repentance etc. are built.’  The list contains nothing distinctively Christian, and of course nothing exclusively Jewish; such a sharp dichotomy is alien to a Jewish Christian writing mainly to readers in the same tradition.”[1]  The list follows in verse 2 and includes hand washing, laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead and eternal punishment.  Our text should read “not laying again a foundation which consists of repentance . . .”  But repentance from what?

“Dead works” is an expression found only in Hebrews.  Ellingworth notes that the parallel with pistis (faith in the living God) “requires the stronger meaning ‘works which lead to death.’”[2]  The contrast in this verse is not between works (law) and grace but rather between human behaviors that lead to death versus those that lead to life.  Paul makes a point of this in Galatians 5, but the echo goes back to Moses in Deuteronomy 30:19 (“I have set before you today life and death . . . Now choose life”).  And if this is the echo of the author, then he clearly cannot mean the Torah is no longer valid.  Moses’ entire exhortation is built on the premise that Torah is life!  It is important to note that the author of Hebrews never develops this theme.  He simply assumes that the reader will hear the echo of Moses and know what is required. That assumption must guide our reading as well.

If you subscribe to the Christian idea of replacement theology (that God has, in the new dispensation, replaced Israel and the law with the church and the message of grace), then you are likely to read this as an indictment of Torah.  You will think of Torah as “dead works.”  But the perspective of Paul and the author of Hebrews must cause us to reject this false dichotomy.  For every follower of the Way in the first century, Torah is still the living, guiding instruction necessary for fulfilling the purposes of God on earth.  To abandon Torah is to abandon faith in YHWH.  Many significant scholars today are realizing that the prior teaching of the Church regarding replacement theology is mistaken.  And we can confidently assert that no one reading this letter in the first century would have believed that the Church replaced Israel as God’s elect or that grace set aside Torah.

So, we can move on.  What do we leave behind?  A continual recitation of the first step of repentance.  We don’t need to repeat God’s first call, His first prompting, over and over.  We have experienced grace.  Move on.  How do we move on?  By abandoning those actions that lead to death.  We leave behind those behaviors that do not produce life.  We don’t go back to the things that once condemned us.  We choose life!  How do we know what aligns us with life as opposed to death?  Go read Moses!

Topical Index:  dead works, nekra erga, Moses, Deuteronomy 30:19, Hebrews 6:1