1516 These two verses are the key to how Shaul regarded the Law of Moses; thus they are the key to the book of Galatians and to the book of Romans. He who seizes their true meaning can help repair the grave damage done to the unity of Jews and Gentiles in the Body of the Messiah by those who have misunderstood Shauls view of Torah.
In these verses Shaul pivots from defending the authority behind his version of the Gospel (which he began in the very first verse of the letter and has made his central topic since 1:10) to explaining why under the New Covenant it is wrong to Judaize Gentile believers. From here to the end of the book of Galatians he will be attacking the Judaizers (see v. 14bN) and defending the true Gospel, according to which Gentiles need not become Jews in order to follow Yeshua the Messiah.
For comparative purposes, here is a literal translation of vv. 1516:
15 We, by nature Jews and not sinners from Gentiles, 16 but knowing that a person is not justified from works of law but through trust of Messiah Yeshua, even we unto Messiah Yeshua trusted, in order that we might be justified from trust of Messiah and not from works of law, because from works of law not will be justified all flesh.
15 Goyishe sinners, literally, sinners from Gentiles. I have added the words, so-called, along with quotation marks, in order to show that Shaul was not employing this demeaning term himself but using the terminology of his opposition, the Circumcision faction (see vv. 1112&NN). According to them Gentiles were by definition sinners, since they did not have the Torah. This equating of Goyim and sinners can be found in the Apocrypha (1 Maccabees 1:34, Tobit 13:6) and in the Gospels themselves (compare Lk 18:3133 with Lk 24:7); while at Mt 9:10, 11:19; Lk 7:34, 37; 15:12 the P<rushim apply the word sinners in a similar way, but to a class of Jews rather than Gentiles. Formerly Kefa himself had held a low view of Gentiles, but his vision in Yafo changed his attitude (Ac 10:111:19). We dont have evidence for how Shaul thought about Gentiles before he came to faith, but it is clear from the whole book of Romans that as a Messianic Jew he went out of his way to emphasize the equality of Jews and Gentiles before God. See also vv. 1718.
16a Declared righteous by God, Greek dikaiooÆ, make righteous, justify. In order for a person to have fellowship with God, he must be righteous; because God is righteous, holy, without sin, and cannot tolerate sin in his presence. Theology distinguishes two kinds of righteousness: (1) behavioral righteousness, actually doing what is right, and (2) forensic righteousness, being regarded as righteous in the senses (a) that God has cleared him of guilt for past sins, and (b) that God has given him a new human nature inclined to obey God rather than rebel against him as before.
Yeshua the Messiah has made forensic righteousness available to everyone by paying on everyones behalf the penalty for sins which Gods justice demands, death (see Ro 5:1221&N). Forensic righteousness is appropriated by an individual for himself the moment he unreservedly puts his trust in God, which at this point in history entails also trusting in Yeshua the Messiah upon learning of him and understanding what he has done (1 Yn 2:23). The task of becoming behaviorally righteous begins with appropriating forensic righteousness by trusting in Yeshua; and it occupies the rest of a believers life, being completed only at his own death, when he goes to be with Yeshua (Pp 1:23).
Libraries of books have been written on the subject of righteousness, both Jewish ethical treatises and volumes of Christian theology, since the question of how righteousness is attained sparked the entire Protestant Reformation. What is important to keep in mind here is the difference between these two kinds of righteousness. Each time the Greek word dikaiooÆ or a cognate is encountered, it must be decided which of these two meanings of the word is meant. In the present verse and the next, all four instances of dikaiooÆ refer to forensic righteousness. But in v. 21, the related word dikaiosuneÆ refers to behavioral righteousness (see note there).
16b Legalistic observance of Torah commands. The Greek word nomos usually means law; it is also the normal New Testament word for Hebrew Torah, which can usually be translated by the phrase, Law of Moses, or simply, Law. Most Christians therefore suppose that erga nomou, literally, works of law, a term which appears three times in v. 16, must mean, actions done in obedience to the Torah. But this is wrong. One of the best-kept secrets about the New Testament is that when Shaul writes nomos he frequently does not mean law but legalism.
So that my defense of this interpretation will not appear to be special pleading, I make my case by quoting from two distinguished Gentile Christian scholars without any Messianic Jewish axe to grind. C. E. B. Cranfield, in his commentary on the book of Romans, writes:
it will be well to bear in mind the fact (which, so far as we know, had not received attention before it was noted in [Cranfields article in] the Scottish Journal of Theology, Volume 17, 1964, p. 55) that the Greek language of Pauls day possessed no word-group corresponding to our legalism, legalist and legalistic. This means that he lacked a convenient terminology for expressing a vital distinction, and so was surely seriously hampered in the work of clarifying the Christian position with regard to the law. In view of this, we should always, we think, be ready to reckon with the possibility that Pauline statements which at first sight seem to disparage the law, were really directed not against the law itself but against that misunderstanding and misuse of it for which we now have a convenient terminology. In this very difficult terrain Paul was pioneering. If we make due allowance for these circumstances, we shall not be so easily baffled or misled by a certain impreciseness of statement which we shall sometimes encounter. (C. E. B. Cranfield, The International Critical Commentary, Romans, 1979, p. 853)
Cranfield is rightexcept for his speculation that he was the first. Forty-three years earlier Ernest De Witt Burton, in his classic commentary on Galatians, also made clear that in the present verse nomos means legalism and not Gods Torah:
Nomou is here evidently used
in its legalistic sense, denoting divine law viewed as a purely legalistic system made up of statutes, on the basis of obedience or disobedience to which men are approved or condemned as a matter of debt without grace. This is divine law as the legalist defined it. In the apostles thought it stands for a reality only in that it constitutes a single element of the divine law detached from all other elements and aspects of divine revelation; by such detachment it misrepresents the will of God and his real attitude towards men. By erga nomou Paul means deeds of obedience to formal statutes done in the legalistic spirit, with the expectation of thereby meriting and securing divine approval and award, such obedience, in other words, as the legalists rendered to the law of the Old Testament as expanded and interpreted by them. Though nomos in this sense had no existence as representing the basis of justification in the divine government, yet erga nomou had a very real existence in the thought and practice of men who conceived of the divine law after this fashion
. The translation of this phrase here and constantly
by the works of the law
is a serious defect of [versions that have it]. (E. Burton, The International Critical Commentary, Galatians, 1921, p. 120)
The phrase, erga nomou, found only in Shauls writings, is used eight times, always in technical discussion of the Torahhere three times; 3:2, 5, 10; and Ro 3:20, 28. Two other uses of erga (works) are closely associated with the word nomos (law)Ro 3:27, 9:32. Even when he uses erga by itself, the implied meaning is frequently legalistic works (5:19; Ro 4:2, 6; 9:11; 11:6; Ep 2:9; 2 Ti 1:9; Ti 3:5), although he uses it 17 times? in a neutral way (Ro 2:6; 13:3, 12; 2C 11:15; Ep 2:10, 5:11; Co 1:21; 1 Ti 2:10; 5:10, 25; 2 Ti 3:17, 4:14; Ti 1:16; 2:7, 14; 3:8, 14).
I submit that in every instance erga nomou means not deeds done in virtue of following the Torah in the way God intended, but deeds done in consequence of perverting the Torah into a set of rules which, it is presumed, can be obeyed mechanically, automatically, legalistically, without having faith, without having trust in God, without having love for God or man, and without being empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Erga nomou, therefore, is a technical term coined by Shaul to meet precisely the need Cranfield has written about; it speaks of legalism, not Law. But because Shauls subject is misunderstanding and perverting Torah into something it was never meant to be, erga nomou are, specifically, in context, works of legalism in relation to the Torah, exactly as Burton explained. Hence my rendering, legalistic observance of Torah commands.
Likewise, the term upo nomon (under law), which appears five times in this letter, never means simply under the Torah, in the sense of subject to its provisions, living within its framework. Rather, with one easily explainable variation, it is Shauls shorthand for living under the oppression caused by being enslaved to the social system or the mindset that results when the Torah is perverted into legalism (but more on upo nomon in 3:23b and 4:45).
Christian scholars have discoursed at length about Shauls supposedly ambivalent view of the Torah. Their burden has been to show that somehow he could abrogate the Torah and still respect it. Non-Messianic Jewish scholars, building on the supposedly reliable conclusion, gratuitously supplied by their Christian colleagues, that Shaul did in fact abrogate the Torah, have made it their burden to show that the logical implication of Shauls abrogating the Torah is that he did not respect it either and thereby removed himself and all future Jewish believers in Yeshua from the camp of Judaism (the so-called parting of the ways). In this fashion liberally oriented non-Messianic Jews in the modern era have been able to have their cake and eat it too, to claim Jesus for themselves as a wonderful Jewish teacher while making Paul the villain of the piece.
But Shaul had no such ambivalence. For him the Torah of Moshe was unequivocally holy and its commands holy, just and good (Ro 7:12). And so were works done in true obedience to the Torah. But in order to be regarded by God as good, works done in obedience to the Torah had to be grounded in trust, never in legalism (see Ro 9:3010:10&NN). If one keeps in mind that Shaul had nothing but bad to say for the sin of perverting the Torah into legalism, and nothing but good to say for the Torah itself, then the supposed contradictions in his view of the Torah vanish. Instead of being the villain who destroyed the backbone of Judaism and led Jews astray, he is the most authentic expositor of Torah that the Jewish people have ever had, apart from the Messiah Yeshua himself.
