"Not everyone who says to Me, 'Master, Master,' shall enter into the kingdom of the heavens, but he who is doing the desire of My Father in the heavens. Many shall say to Me in that day, 'Master, Master, have we not prophesied in Your Name, and cast out demons in Your Name, and done many mighty works in Your Name?' And then I shall declare to them, 'I never knew you, depart from Me, you who work lawlessness!' For not the hearers of the Torah are righteous in the sight of Elohim, but the doers of the Torah shall be declared right.

You see, then, that a man is declared right by works, and not by faith alone.

"If you are not Torah observant, then you are not saved." I have heard this statement before. I agree with it in principle, but perhaps there is a better way of stating it. You decide:

Salvation is free and without cost. We are saved by grace through faith and the atoning blood of Messiah Yeshua. Period. At the moment of our individual salvation, we ask for it in sincerity and it is granted, without any prior works of Torah on our part. That "is finished." but...

We can throw it away, if we so choose. Once saved, we are expected to "go and sin no more." Scripture says

"The soul that sins, it dies." The author of the book of Ivrim (Hebrews) puts it this way:

"For if we sin purposely after we have received the knowledge of the Truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but some fearsome anticipation of judgment, and a fierce fire which is about to consume the opponents. Anyone who has disregarded the Torah of Moshe dies without compassion on the witness of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think shall he deserve who has trampled the Son of Elohim underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was set apart as common, and insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who has said, 'Vengeance is Mine, I shall repay, says YHWH.' And again, 'YHWH shall judge His people.' It is fearsome to fall into the hands of the living Elohim.

The type of "sin" referred to here is a "pesha," a deliberate and willful violation of those transgressions which carry the death penalty, not a "chattah" which is a sin committed by mistake which does not carry the death penalty.

In other words, if we are not Torah-observant, we can still be saved. However, if we willfully and deliberately continue to sin once we are saved, despising the blood of Yeshua who died for our sins, we will in effect be throwing that salvation away.

So, the statement might be better said as, "If you are saved, you will become Torah-observant. If you don't, and deliberately choose to continue in your sin, thereby mocking the Most-High and His grace upon you, as well as the blood of His own son which was shed for you, you will ultimately not be saved."

Maybe my explanation is splitting hairs, but I thought it worth pointing out for the benefit of those who might

misunderstand, whether innocently or with malice.

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