Among the most respected sections of the Mishnah is "Aboth", "The Fathers". Here we find many wise sayings, even going back to the time of Hillel and Shammai, whose schools of teaching influenced the thinking of Jews even in Jesus’ time. Since the Jewish background to the Christian faith has been neglected for many years, the discovery of Aboth by those of us seeking to re-establish our roots can be like a fresh inspiration. Here we find a stimulus to understanding Rabbinic thought which even sheds light on the Lord’s teaching. In our zeal to learn about our roots, and through studying what for most of us is a new discovery, we might even begin to sympathise with Jewish traditions and teaching because of what we read. Yet, while sympathising in many ways with our Jewish friends and respecting their great zeal for the truth and their great part in preserving and outworking biblical truth, I suggest that we need to be careful. In the very first paragraph of Aboth is a beguiling idea that we must treat with care.

Aboth begins with the familiar words: "Moses received the Law from Sinai and committed it to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the Prophets; and the Prophets committed it to the men of the men of the Great Synagogue. They said three things: Be deliberate in judgement, raise up many disciples, and make a fence around the Law."

A fence around the Law, on the face of it, is a very wise thing to construct. The principle is that, in order not to break the laws given by God, more stringent requirements should be devised than in the laws themselves. If the more stringent requirements are kept (and even if they are only broken in a minor way), then there will be no danger of breaking the actual commandments of God. How sensible! How Holy! Yet surely this is the very route to bondage and self-righteousness.

If we consider Jesus’s challenge to the interpreters of the Torah in His day, we have evidence that the very framework he was challenging related to the fence around the Law. Heavy burdens were put on ordinary people, which took away their freedom and their delight in the Torah of God. Not only that, but Jesus also identified the self-righteousness that resulted from these attempts at piety, as He confronted the religious leaders themselves. Surely, this was also Paul’s chief area of concern regarding works rather than faith. It is easy to deceive ourselves that we have come into the safety zone concerning the observance of Torah by applying strict rules of interpretation. Yet extreme bondage rather than true freedom is the result.

The key to the exercise of true freedom in relation to Torah is faith. It is, dare I say it, not only faith for the forgiveness of sin (which is falling short of the laws of God) through the Blood of Jesus, but also faith that the Holy Spirit will enable us to achieve the standards of holiness required by the law, gradually, as we grow in fellowship with Him. This is a sensitive and balanced freedom that can easily turn into licence, but it is the only meaningful route to a truly Torah observant lifestyle. A fence around the law is a fleshly device that will lead to bondage and deceive us that we are holy when we are only self-righteous. A fence around the law denies the true freedom we have in Jesus and the faith that is the hallmark of our walk (halachah) with the Holy Spirit.