Completing the storyline of the Hebrew Torah can leave us with a lot of questions about the purpose of the laws and commandments they were given and whether they apply to us today. When we think of the word Torah it is closely related to the picture of respect we saw earlier when we spoke about God’s holiness being like a King for whom people would bow at his feet. When one respects a teacher as one filled with wisdom they are considered worthy of showing us how to walk. The word Torah is rooted in the idea of shooting or throwing an arrow. It flies in a straight direction and hits the target.

To teach is to “point the way one is to walk in life.” The Torah is the “throwing of a finger in a direction,” showing us how to rightly live. We get the term righteous from this idea. One who walks in a straight line as opposed to a crooked or corrupt path.

Hundreds of years after the Torah was written, Jesus came to Israel teaching “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” The purpose of the Law is to be a tutor that draws people to see their need of a teacher. Until I see what evil looks like, I will have a difficult time believing that I myself am capable of evil. Once again, the problem is always rooted in humans trying to define good and evil by themselves instead of allowing God to “point the way one is to walk in life.” Jesus did not claim to just be a good teacher of the way to walk but He said “I am the way…” Jesus came to represent God well in the Earth, not only by being a teacher who practiced what He preached but also a savior who loved us enough to rescue us. The law is God’s way of showing us our need for Him.