The format of this teaching is worth noting before engaging its content. It consists entirely of questions - four rhetorical questions designed to make Torah observance feel like the only coherent, non-contradictory reading of Scripture, and to make the New Covenant position feel like confusion. No exegesis is offered. No argument is developed. The questions are simply posed and left hanging, with the implication that the Torah-observance position answers them and the opposing view cannot. This article takes each question seriously, answers it directly, and then asks a few questions of its own.

Question One - Does God's Definition of Sin Change?

1 John 3:4 reads: "Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness." The HRM reads this as confirmation that the Mosaic Torah remains the definition of sin - that breaking Leviticus 11's dietary laws or failing to observe the Sabbath constitutes sin for New Covenant believers.

But this reading requires importing "the Mosaic Torah" into a word - nomos, law - that John does not define that way anywhere in his letters. John's use of "commandments" throughout 1 John is consistent and specific: "And this is his commandment: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us" (1 John 3:23). John's commandments are Christ's commandments. His law is the law of love that Christ embodied and commanded. John never once instructs his Gentile readers to keep Sabbath, observe dietary laws, or follow the feast calendar. If the Mosaic Torah were John's definition of the law in 1 John 3:4, you would expect to find it somewhere in his practical instruction. It is entirely absent.

There is also a simpler test. Does anyone sin by eating pork? Is the person who eats shellfish transgressing God's moral standard in the same way as the person who commits adultery, lies, or hates their neighbour? If the answer is no - and the New Testament's entire trajectory says no - then 1 John 3:4 is not about Levitical food categories. Sin is lawlessness - the lawlessness of refusing to love God and neighbour, of walking in darkness rather than light, of rejecting the commandments of Christ. God's definition of sin has not changed. What has changed is the covenant administration through which that standard is expressed - and the law of Christ sets a higher standard than Leviticus, not a lower one.

Question Two - How Can Something That Stands Forever Be Temporary?

Isaiah 48 declares that God's word stands forever. The question posed is: if this is true, how can any part of God's word be temporary or become irrelevant?

The answer is that "standing forever" describes the truth, authority and reliability of God's word - not that every instruction within it applies identically to every person in every era of redemptive history. God's word stood forever when it declared the Mosaic covenant. And God's word stood forever when it declared, through Jeremiah 31, that the Mosaic covenant would give way to a New Covenant that would not be like it. Both declarations are God's eternal word. Both stand forever. The question is which one we are now living under.

"For when the priesthood is changed, the law must be changed also." - Hebrews 7:12

This is not Paul's opinion or a theologian's inference. This is God's own word - spoken through the author of Hebrews, under inspiration - declaring that the law changes when the priesthood changes. The Levitical priesthood has been superseded by Christ's eternal priesthood after the order of Melchizedek. Therefore, by the Scripture's own internal logic, the law has changed. This does not contradict the eternal standing of God's word. It is the fulfilment of what God's word always promised. As our article on the supersession of the Levitical priesthood examines in detail, Hebrews 7:12 is not a peripheral comment. It is a load-bearing declaration about the relationship between the old covenant and the new.

Furthermore, God's word standing forever is entirely compatible with covenant administrations having defined purposes and defined durations. The word God spoke to Noah about the ark stood forever as true - but nobody builds arks today. The word God spoke to Abraham about circumcision stood forever as true within its covenant context - but the New Testament is explicit that physical circumcision is not the mark of covenant membership in Christ. Progressive revelation does not mean God contradicts himself. It means God's plan moves forward according to his own announced intention.

Question Three - Does Paul Contradict Christ?

This is the most rhetorically powerful of the four questions - and the most easily resolved once the key term is examined. The question assumes that Jesus' statement "not even the smallest part of the law will disappear until heaven and earth pass away" means the Mosaic Torah continues unchanged. If that is what Jesus meant, then Paul's statements about dying to the law, not being under the law, and the law being a guardian whose era has ended would indeed be contradictions.

But as we have examined in detail in our article on reading both halves of Matthew 5:18, the verse has two until clauses - not one. "Until heaven and earth pass away" and "until everything is accomplished." The second governs the meaning of the first. "Everything accomplished" is the language Jesus uses from the cross - tetelestai, it is finished. The law and the prophets stood until their purpose was accomplished in Christ. That is not Paul contradicting Jesus. That is Paul explaining what Jesus' own words meant.

More fundamentally: Paul was an apostle of Christ, appointed by Christ on the Damascus road, whose letters Peter describes as Scripture. The suggestion that Paul contradicts Christ assumes that Christ's words in Matthew 5 mean what the HRM says they mean - which is precisely the disputed question. You cannot resolve an interpretive dispute by assuming your interpretation is correct and then accusing the other side of contradiction. That is circular reasoning dressed as a coherence challenge.

Paul and Jesus are not in tension. The Pauline paradox dissolves entirely once fulfill is read correctly - as bringing to its intended completion rather than perpetuating unchanged. Christ announced the fulfilment. Paul explained its implications. They are one coherent witness, not two contradictory voices.

Question Four - The Coherence Challenge Reversed

The teaching closes with a challenge: if God's word is eternal and unchanging, all Scripture must be reconciled without contradiction. The implication is that Torah observance achieves this reconciliation and the New Covenant position cannot.

But consider what a fully coherent reading of all Scripture actually requires. It must account for:

Hebrews 8:13 - "By calling this covenant new, he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and ageing will soon disappear." This is Scripture. It must be reconciled.

Romans 7:4 - "You also died to the law through the body of Christ." This is Scripture. It must be reconciled.

Galatians 3:24-25 - "The law was our guardian until Christ came... now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian." This is Scripture. It must be reconciled.

2 Corinthians 3:7-11 - the old covenant administration, described as "fading away," contrasted with the surpassing glory of the new. This is Scripture. It must be reconciled.

Acts 15:28-29 - the Jerusalem council, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, requiring of Gentile believers not Torah observance but four specific requirements. This is Scripture. It must be reconciled with the claim that all believers are obligated to keep the whole Torah.

What the Questions Are Actually Doing

It is worth naming the rhetorical strategy explicitly, because naming it is part of answering it. Posing questions rather than making arguments creates the impression that your position is obvious and your opponents are confused - without requiring you to do the exegetical work that would expose your position to scrutiny. Each of these four questions is answerable. None of them was answered in the teaching that posed them, because the teaching never engaged the texts that answer them.

This is what our article on the HRM interpretive lens identifies as a consistent pattern - the selection of texts that support Torah observance, the framing of opposing texts as confusing or contradictory, and the implicit claim that only the HRM reading achieves biblical coherence. The claim to coherence is not itself coherence. Coherence is demonstrated by engaging the hard texts honestly - and the hard texts for the Torah-observance position are not Matthew 5 and 1 John 3:4. They are Hebrews 7:12, Hebrews 8:13, Galatians 3:24-25, and Acts 15.

God is not the author of confusion. That is exactly right. The New Covenant is not confusion. It is the resolution - the arrival of the reality that the law's shadows were always pointing toward. Christ is not the problem the law needs to solve. He is the answer to the questions the law raised. And the New Testament, read as a whole and in the light of its own internal logic, is not a collection of contradictions to be managed. It is a coherent and glorious announcement that the destination has arrived.

For when the priesthood is changed, the law must be changed also. - Hebrews 7:12