God
There is one God, the creator of the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1), who revealed his name to Israel (Exodus 3:15). “Hear, Israel: the LORD is our God. The LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). He does not change (Malachi 3:6; James 1:17), and so his word and his standards do not change either.
He is holy, and calls his people to be holy as he is (Leviticus 19:2; 1 Peter 1:15-16). He is gracious: he loved us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8).
The Scriptures
The Scriptures are the sixty-six books of the Bible, Genesis to Revelation. All of them are God-breathed and profitable “for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Jesus said that man lives by every word that proceeds from God’s mouth (Matthew 4:4), that the Scripture cannot be broken (John 10:35), and that God’s word is truth (John 17:17).
We hold that no part of Scripture has been set aside. “The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God stands forever” (Isaiah 40:8). The later books do not cancel the earlier ones; they assume, quote, and build on them. So we read the whole Bible as one word and let Scripture interpret Scripture.
Jesus the Messiah
Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah promised to Israel, the Son of God, born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:18-25). His Hebrew name is Yeshua, which means “the LORD saves.” He is the Word who was with God in the beginning and became flesh (John 1:1, 14); all the fullness of God dwells in him (Colossians 2:9). He is the prophet like Moses, speaking only what the Father gave him (Deuteronomy 18:18-19; John 12:49-50).
He lived without sin, kept the Torah, and taught others to keep it (Matthew 5:17-19). He was crucified, buried, and raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3-4; Acts 10:39-40), and he is now our high priest, having entered the heavenly Holy Place once for all through his own blood (Hebrews 9:11-12).
Salvation by grace through faith
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), and sin is the breaking of God’s law (1 John 3:4). Its wage is death. No one is justified by the works of the law, and no amount of obedience pays for past disobedience (Galatians 2:16; Romans 3:20).
“for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before that we would walk in them.”
Ephesians 2:8-10
Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 2:2). Whoever confesses him as Lord and believes that God raised him from the dead will be saved (Romans 10:9). Grace does not license sin (Romans 6:1-2); it creates people who walk in the good works God prepared. Faith that produces no obedience is dead (James 2:17-18). Obedience is not the price of salvation. It is the shape of love for the one who saved us (John 14:15; 1 John 5:3).
The Holy Spirit and the new covenant
God promised through Jeremiah a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, unlike the covenant their fathers broke: “I will put my law in their inward parts, and I will write it in their heart” (Jeremiah 31:31-33; Hebrews 8:8-10). Jesus inaugurated that covenant in his blood (Luke 22:20).
What is new is not a different law but a different place for it. The Spirit is the one who does the writing: “I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes. You will keep my ordinances and do them” (Ezekiel 36:27). The Spirit guides believers into all truth (John 16:13), and that truth is the word (John 17:17). The earthly priesthood and its repeated sacrifices have given way to a better mediator and a better sacrifice (Hebrews 8:6; 9:15); the commandments themselves are what the new covenant writes on hearts (Hebrews 10:16).
The Torah still stands
The Torah, God’s instruction given through Moses, is holy, righteous, and good (Romans 7:12), and it has not been abolished. Jesus said that until heaven and earth pass away not one stroke of it would pass, and that whoever does and teaches even its least commandments will be called great in the Kingdom (Matthew 5:17-19). Paul asked whether faith nullifies the law and answered, “May it never be! No, we establish the law” (Romans 3:31). So we keep the seventh-day Sabbath, the LORD’s appointed times, his instructions about clean and unclean food, and the tzitzit he commanded, along with everything else in his law that can be kept today (see what we can follow today). The sacrifices are not abolished, but they are not possible now, and Jesus is our once-for-all atonement (Hebrews 10:10). The full case, including the passages usually raised against it, is in the fifteen questions.
One people: Israel and the nations
God made his covenant with Israel and with everyone who would join them: “One law and one ordinance shall be for you and for the stranger who lives as a foreigner with you” (Numbers 15:16). He has not rejected his people (Romans 11:1-2), and his gifts and calling are irrevocable (Romans 11:28-29). Believers from the nations have not replaced Israel and are not a separate people beside it. They are wild branches grafted into Israel’s olive tree (Romans 11:17-18, 24), once strangers to the covenants and now fellow citizens (Ephesians 2:11-19), Abraham’s offspring by faith (Galatians 3:29).
The new covenant is made with the house of Israel and the house of Judah (Jeremiah 31:31), so to be in it is to be joined to Israel. Jesus spoke of one flock with one shepherd (John 10:16), and the gates of the city to come bear the names of the twelve tribes (Revelation 21:12).
His return and the kingdom
Jesus will return in the same way he left (Acts 1:11). Those who are his will be raised and will reign with him on the earth (Revelation 20:6). In that kingdom the law goes out from Zion and the nations go up to learn his ways (Isaiah 2:2-4); the nations keep the feast of booths (Zechariah 14:16); and “from one Sabbath to another, all flesh will come to worship before me,” says the LORD (Isaiah 66:23). What we keep now, we keep as a rehearsal for that day.
After his reign all will be raised and judged (Revelation 20:11-13), and God will dwell with his people in a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21:1-3). We do not set dates or speculate beyond what is written.
How we treat those who disagree
Most of the body of Messiah does not share these conclusions. We do not think that makes anyone less our brother or sister. Salvation is by grace through faith, not by Sabbath-keeping, and we will not treat a difference over Torah as a difference over the gospel.
We ask one thing of anyone who disagrees, and hold ourselves to it too: test it by the text. “Test all things, and hold firmly that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Examine the Scriptures daily to see whether these things are so (Acts 17:11). Where we are wrong, we want to be corrected, and we intend to correct others only with gentleness (2 Timothy 2:24-25; 1 Peter 3:15), speaking truth in love (Ephesians 4:15).
Everything on these pages is offered to be tested against Scripture, not accepted on our authority. If you find a passage we have misread or left out, please tell us.