The argument in Galatians actually begins in 2:15. Everything up to this point is basically historical prologue that illustrates the theological point Paul is going to be making from here on out.
So, why did he make such a big deal about the fact that he got his Gospel and apostolic calling directly from Jesus? And why did he make it a point to emphasize he confronted Peter over the fact that Peter stopped associating with Gentile Christians because they weren’t circumcised? The answer gets to heart of what the Gospel is all about and what it means to be part of the people of God.
All throughout the Old Testament, the focus was on the people of Israel—they were the people of YHWH (the God of Israel) and bound to Him under the Mosaic Covenant from Mount Sinai, when they left Egypt during the Exodus. But the question most people fail to ask about that is, “What exactly was the Mosaic Covenant? What did it do? What was it all about?”
Some people (many Christians, in fact) think that the Mosaic Covenant (i.e. the Torah) was how ancient Israelites “got saved” so they could go to heaven. To the point: That is completely wrong. To understand the purpose of the Mosaic Covenant/Torah, you have to view it against the larger narrative backdrop of the Old Testament. To do that, you have to first look back to YHWH’s covenant with Abraham.
The story of Abraham comes right after Genesis 1-11 that lays out the basic human predicament: human beings are made in God’s image but are also sinful and are subjected to death. By the end of Genesis 11, the basic question is, “How is God going to redeem humanity from sin and death?” The beginning of that answer is found in the covenant with Abraham in Genesis 12-25, when YHWH enters into human history and basically “makes a deal” with Abraham. If Abraham puts his faith in YHWH and enters into covenant with Him, YHWH promises to do three things: (1) make Abram’s name great (it eventually is changed to Abraham), (2) raise up a great nation from the offspring of Abraham (that’s going to be OT Israel), and (3) through that great nation, YHWH will bless all nations and redeem His creation.
With that in mind, the Mosaic Covenant at Sinai is where YHWH “makes a deal” with that great nation He raised up out of the offspring of Abraham. The purpose of the Mosaic Covenant was to clearly identify who that “great nation” through whom YHWH would bless all nations and redeem creation would be. It wasn’t God’s method to “save Israel” so they could “go to heaven.” It was the law code that identified OT Israel as that special people through whom He would work.
To the point, Torah observance didn’t make anyone righteous. And Paul’s point here in Galatians is that Torah observance never was meant to make anyone righteous—only faith in Christ can do that. That being said, it is important to realize that Jews did not believe they had to keep the Torah in order to get saved. They viewed themselves as saved already: YHWH had saved them out of Egypt and called them to be His chosen people. It was after He saved them (from Egypt) that He gave them the Torah. Therefore, Jews saw the Torah as something God’s people did because they were saved, not in order to get saved. Still, they felt that keeping Torah made you a better, more righteous person. (That is the part Paul is going to push back on). From the Jewish perspective, observing Torah is what marked you out as being different from the rest of the sinful world. Sinners didn’t keep Torah; God’s people kept Torah. That’s how you could tell who was and who wasn’t part of God’s people.
That is what Paul thought as he grew up in Judaism, and that is what he thought as a Pharisee. But his experience on the Damascus Road changed everything. Being a Pharisee, Paul was zealous in his observation of the Torah, but when he encountered Christ, he realized that, despite his Torah observance, he, as a persecutor of the Church (the followers of Jesus) had set himself up as God’s enemy. Not only had his Torah observance not made him righteous, but he wasn’t even saved because he had not put his faith in Christ—and it was that faith in Christ that would make him righteous. The heart of what Paul realized was this: If all his Torah observance didn’t make him righteous, if, despite his Torah observance, he found himself a sinner and God’s enemy, if his salvation and righteousness was entirely dependent on God’s mercy and Christ’s faithfulness…then his situation before his encounter with Christ on the Damascus Road was no different than any Gentile sinner.
That didn’t mean Torah observance was necessarily bad. It just meant that when it came to salvation and righteousness, Torah observance was entirely irrelevant—that wasn’t its job. Its job was to mark out who is a Jew, but that meant nothing in terms of righteousness. Since that was the case, Paul’s main argument here in Galatians is that trying to force Gentiles who had been saved through faith in Christ to submit to the Torah completely undermines what the Gospel is all about. To the point, forcing Torah observance on Gentiles was telling them that Torah observance was the key to being made righteous—but it wasn’t. It contributed nothing. In fact, insisting on Torah observance only brought division and conflict. That is what lies at the heart of 2:15-3:20.
In the first part (2:15-21) of this section, Paul begins by contrasting Jews with “Gentile sinners.” It is important to realize that “sinner” here primarily refers to anyone who doesn’t keep the Torah. It isn’t being used in the way we use it today as a catch-all term to describe everyone as “sinners.” In addition to Gentiles, the Pharisees called also many of their fellow Jews “sinners” because they didn’t keep the Torah to the extent the Pharisees did. All Paul is doing here is making the obvious distinction that Jews (at least in theory) strive to keep the Torah and Gentiles don’t, because Gentiles aren’t Jews. Despite that, Paul insists that even though Jews have the Torah and do the works of Torah, doing those works of Torah doesn’t make anyone righteous. That is why he says that he and his fellow Jews who had put their faith in Christ know full well that keeping Torah doesn’t make one righteous. Only the faithfulness of Christ does.
This leads to what Paul says in 2:17: “If in our seeking to be made righteous in Christ, we are found to be sinners too, does this mean Christ is a slave of sin? No way!” Paul is saying that he and his fellow Jewish Christians know full well that righteousness is only found in Christ. They’ve realized they are sinners, just like Gentiles, even if they observe Torah. What that doesn’t mean is that the Gospel of Christ promotes sin. Or to put it another way, not observing Torah doesn’t make you a sinner—you’re a sinner either way, whether you keep Torah or not. The problem, as Paul articulates in 2:18-21, lies in what the Judaizers were trying to do. After all, the work of Christ has shown the Torah to be irrelevant in terms of righteousness, and thus has “torn down” the Torah as a requirement for righteousness. So, when the Judaizers to tried to “build it up” again and force Torah observance on Gentiles, they showed themselves to be the transgressors, because they are going against Christ.
That is why Paul says in 2:19-21 that he “died to the Torah through the Torah.” The Torah effectively condemned him as a sinner and “crucified” him because he couldn’t, in fact, keep it perfectly. It was that death that opened the door to new life found in Christ. Thus, even though he is still living “in the flesh” (meaning the current age in which sin and death reign), he is living by the faithfulness of Christ. If the Torah could have achieved righteousness, the Christ would have died for nothing. What would have been the point? Why bother with faith in Christ if doing the works of Torah could do the trick?
Given that, Paul really lets the Galatian Christians have it in the second part (3:1-5), when he expresses his frustration with them for allowing themselves to be pressured by the Judaizers. Most translations have Paul calling them “foolish,” but the Greek word is where we get the word “moron” from. He then asks a basic question that sets up the second half of the letter: Did they receive the Spirit because they responded to Paul’s message about faith, or did they receive the Spirit because they started doing the works of Torah? Since it is obvious that Torah observance had nothing to do with their receiving of the Spirit, Paul asks them why would it be necessary to start doing the works of Torah when it was obvious that they didn’t work when it came to becoming righteous?
It should be noted that in 3:2-3 Paul seems to be equating the works of Torah with the flesh. When Paul talks about “the flesh,” though, he’s not talking about our literal bodies, but rather about the current “old age” in which sin and death reign. Thus, he is lining up the works of Torah with an “old age” way of doing things: the works of Torah is an “old age thing” that brings death, whereas faith in Christ is a “new messianic age thing” that brings life and righteousness. Therefore, Paul is asking the Galatians, “Now that you’ve been given a taste of the life of the age to come, why would you want to go backwards and embrace something that typifies the death of the old age?”
In the third part (3:6-14), in order to “flesh” this out even more, Paul sets up a contrast between Abraham and the Torah. Paul first points out that it was Abraham’s faith that God counted as righteousness, obviously not his keeping of Torah (because the Torah didn’t even exist yet). Therefore, Paul argues, what is good for Abraham is good for everyone. In this sense, it is those who share the faith of Abraham who are the true sons of Abraham, not ethnic Jews who observe Torah. That was God’s plan all along: Through Abraham all Gentiles would be blessed. The blessing that was to come through Abraham to the Gentiles was by means of faith, not the works of Torah.
If that is the case, though, what about Jews who observe Torah? Shockingly, Paul says that anyone who submits to trying to do the works of Torah is actually under a curse—and he quotes from the Torah to prove it! Deuteronomy 27:26 says that anyone who doesn’t continually do everything in the Torah is under a curse. Paul argues that the curse is being impelled to try to do something that is impossible, namely achieve righteousness through Torah observance. The more one tries, the more one fails, and the further away one gets from true righteousness. It’s like running on a treadmill to try to get to the Grand Canyon—you’ll never get there, and you’ll die on that treadmill.
Christ, though, rescues us from the curse of the Torah by becoming a curse for us. Given the overall context of 2:15-3:20, we need to realize that when Paul says, “Christ rescued us from the curse of the Torah,” that he is specifically referring to Jews like himself who came to faith in Christ, and not Gentiles who were never “under the Torah” to begin with. Paul is saying he was saved by Christ from that curse of feeling he had to keep doing the Torah in order to become righteous, even though he knew full well that it couldn’t.
In addition, when Paul says Christ “became a curse for us,” he is getting that from, of all places, the Torah: Deuteronomy 21:23 says that anyone who is hung on a tree is cursed. So, what Paul is doing is tying Jesus’ crucifixion on a cross of wood to the tree mentioned in Deuteronomy 21:23, hence, suffering the ultimate curse of death. Yet, by raising from the dead by the power of the Spirit, Christ opens the door to being made righteous through faith. Paul’s point is that the blessing of Abraham that was to come to the Gentiles was always going to be through faith.
In the fourth part (3:15-20), Paul wraps up the section of 2:15-3:20 by teasing out his point concerning Abraham and the Torah from 3:6-14 in regard to faith and blessing coming to the Gentiles. To do this, Paul engages in a wordplay in 3:15-16. The Greek word for “covenant,” diatheke, is also the same word for “will,” as in a last will and testament, where a person grants his inheritance to someone. Paul says that when a man’s will (diatheke) is made and ratified, it can’t be changed by anyone. In the same way, when God made his covenant (diatheke) with Abraham, God’s promises in that diatheke were made to Abraham and his offspring. The Greek word for “offspring,” Paul points out, is singular, not plural. So, when it says that through Abraham’s “offspring” all Gentiles would be blessed, Paul says that “offspring” is a reference to Christ, for it is through Christ that blessing comes to the Gentiles.
Then in 3:17-18, Paul mentions the giving of the Torah at Sinai was a good 430 years after God made His diatheke with Abraham. Therefore, the giving of the Torah doesn’t change the promises in the original diatheke God made to Abraham. The promise in the Abrahamic diatheke that God would bless all Gentiles through faith, and that this promise would come through Abraham’s “offspring” was always in effect—the Torah cannot nullify that original diatheke. The inheritance of blessing going out to the Gentiles through Abraham’s offspring by means of faith still stands. The Torah doesn’t negate God’s diatheke with Abraham.
If that is the case, what was the point of Torah in the first place? That is what Paul answers in 3:19. The Torah’s purpose was never to make anyone righteous. Its purpose was to point out sin. Its purpose was, in effect, to point out the problem that the ultimate offspring of Abraham (Christ) was going to remedy through faith.
All that might be a lot to digest. But if you try to understand that Paul is explaining the significance in the Gospel in light of, not just the Torah, but ultimately against the backdrop of YHWH’s covenant with Abraham—if you try to understand the Gospel against the larger narrative backdrop of the entire Old Testament—it will start to make more sense.
In my understanding, “works of the Torah” is a Jewish idiom which refers to the Jewish identity type commandments, such as circumcision, keeping Sabbath, eating kosher, wearing tzitzit, etc. Paul is saying that just because one is Jewish and keeps those Jewish identity commandments does not mean one has a share in the world to come AKA being saved. This is what Yeshua also taught. I am willing to discuss further if you wish.
Yeah, I think that pretty much sums it up. Being Jewish and being part of the Mosaic Covenant doesn’t produce righteousness–faith does.