14) Galatians 3:11-12
Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” (Galatians 3:11-12, ESV Bible)
The Torah is Not of Faith
When Paul said "the law is not of faith." he seemed to imply that a great chasm lies between those who have faith unto salvation and those who practice the law. Anyone reading the Epistle to the Galatians might conclude that a person who practices the law is not a person of faith. That idea has prevailed for most of the history of church interpretation.
Christian interpreters typically understand this passage to demonstrate the difference between Christianity and Judaism, the difference between a Christian and a Jew, and the difference between faith and works. The Apostle Paul flatly stated, "The Torah is not of faith." He seemed to contrast "those who keep the Torah" against "those who live by faith." A Jewish person, therefore, is not a person of faith if he practices the law, for the law is not of faith. If you want to have faith, the one thing you cannot do is keep the Torah. This is the conventional interpretation of the passage and seemingly the plain meaning.
When Messianic believers tell their friends in the mainstream church that they have decided to begin to keep the Sabbath or to eat a biblically clean diet, their friends often react with alarm and concern. Any perceived observance of the law is cause for alarm because the "Torah is not of faith."
The Christian church has maintained this standard even for Jewish believers in Yeshua. When a Jewish person became a believer, he quickly learned that he must no longer practice Judaism or keep the Torah. Christian confessions often considered renouncing Torah Judaism as a prerequisite to the life of faith for Jewish believers because the "Torah is not of faith." Throughout Christian history, churchmen castigated Jewish Christians who kept the Torah in some fashion (for example, kept the Sabbath on the seventh day or refused to eat unclean meats). Churchmen considered such Jews insincere converts, backsliders, and not of true faith.
The church often made abandonment of Torah the litmus test for Jewish believers, a test by which they had to prove the authenticity of their commitment to Christ and Christianity. As David Stern said in his book Messianic Judaism, "Now that you are a Christian, you are free from the law. Have a ham sandwich!" That litmus test remains the standard for most of Christianity even to this day.
When Paul said that "the Torah is not of faith," historical Christianity understood it to mean that Torah observance and faith are incompatible. That's what it means for much of the body of Messiah to this very day, but that interpretation does not work for Messianic Judaism.
Life and Death
Life and death are a big deal. Those two words cover the whole of human existence. Everything a human is or ever will be can be expressed in two words: life and death. It starts out with you alive, and then you are not. Death comes, most often uninvited, an unwelcome, rude intruder, an antithesis to being. Death is not our friend; death is our enemy the last enemy to be defeated. The prophets tell us that one day death will be defeated. We can be sure of this hope because we have seen it happen in the resurrection of Yeshua of Nazareth. The empty tomb he left behind bears testimony. He is the one who is alive forever more. Death holds no sway over him, for he holds the keys of death and Hades.
Yet these both remain: life and death. The Torah commands us, "Choose life." God says, "I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life" (Deuteronomy 30:19).
Paul did not use the words "life" and "death," "live" and "die" in a strictly literal sense. Instead, he often invested the terms with more meaning. For Paul, "to live" is to attain the resurrection, eternal life, and the world to come. "To die" is to die without hope of the world to come, with only the dread of the final judgment.
To live: What some Christians call "saved," to live means to attain the right to resurrection and eternal life in the kingdom and in the world to come.
To die: What some Christians call "unsaved" or "lost." to die means to face death without hope and with only dread of the final judgment.
Paul used the terms life and death to indicate eternal destinies. He did not create these post-mortem definitions himself. His broader definitions reflect a terminology and method of interpretation which he learned as a Pharisee. The rabbis spoke like this and interpreted the Scriptures in the same manner. They often spoke of life and death not merely as literal life and death but also as eternal destinies.
The Pharisees may have adopted this method of biblical exegesis as part of their ongoing argument with the Sadducees. The Sadducees claimed that the Torah did not teach about an afterlife or resurrection; the Pharisees claimed that it did. It all depended on how you interpreted the words life and death.
Eternal Life
The apostles followed Pharisaic interpretation. Paul was not the only apostle to use the terms life and death this way. All of the apostles used the same terminology, and so did our Master. For example, Yeshua said, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die" (John 11:25-26).
The same specialized use of the terminology is at work in Galatians 3:11-12, where Paul quotes two passages, one from the prophet Habakkuk and one from the Torah:
Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for "The righteous shall live by faith." But the law is not of faith, rather "The one who does them shall live by them." (Galatians 3:11-12)
But the righteous shall live by his faith. (Habakkuk 2:4)
You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them. (Leviticus 18:5)
Both of Paul's proof texts and his interpretation of both of the proof texts are represented in early Jewish teaching.
Leviticus 18:5
In Pharisaic and apostolic interpretation, the words "he shall live by them" in Leviticus 18:5 mean "a man may attain the resurrection from the dead and eternal life if he does them." Rashi explains, "Live by them' refers to life in the world to come, for if you should say that our verse refers to life in this present world, is it not man's destiny to die?" The Aramaic targumim paraphrase the passage as follows:
And you shall keep my statutes and my judgments, which if a man do he shall live by them and have everlasting life. (Leviticus 18:5, Targum Onkelos)
And you shall keep my statutes and the order of my judgments, which if a man do he shall live in them, in the life of eternity, and his position shall be with the just. (Leviti-cus 18:5, Targum Yonatan)
Paul stayed in line with the mainstream of Jewish interpretation by explaining Leviticus 18:5 as saying that if a person keeps the commandments, he will attain eternal life by them. Yeshua himself quoted the same passage to the same effect in Luke 10:28:
And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.” (Luke 10:28, ESV Bible)
Rabbi Meir, who lived about two generations after Paul, also quoted Leviticus 18:5 to prove that a Gentile can attain eternal life:
Rabbi Meir used to say, "How do we know that even a Gentile who studies the Torah is equivalent to the High Priest?" From Leviticus 18:5, where it says, "You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them." Meir says, "It does not say if a priest, a Levite, or an Israelite does them, he shall live by them. It says "if a person" does them. You learn here that even a non-Jew who studies the Torah is equivalent to a High Priest. (b. Sanhedrin 59a)
Meir interpreted this verse to mean that a person can attain life through obedience, whether or not he is Jewish. Both Jew and Gentile can attain life by obedience to God. The immediate relevance to non-Jews is that Leviticus 18 contains prohibitions on sexual immorality and idolatry, for the violation of which God punished the Gentile Canaanites. Therefore, the sages deduced from this passage that Gentiles are required to keep the Torah's prohibitions on idolatry and sexual immorality.
Habbakkuk 2:4
After quoting Leviticus 18:5, which seems to imply that eternal life can be attained by keeping the commandments, Paul brings a seemingly contradictory verse from Habakkuk 2:4, which says that "the righteous shall live by faith." So Paul was saying, "On the one hand, the one who does the commandments will live by them. On the other hand, the righteous will live by faith."
Habakkuk 2:4 receives prominent attention in a famous passage in the Talmud. In that passage, the sages begin by stating that God gave Israel 613 commandments by which they could attain eternal life. If a man does them, he will live by them. But since 613 is far too many commandments and far too difficult (who can remember 613 commandments?), King David simplified it, summarizing the 613 in eleven principles expressed in Psalm 15. Eleven is still a lot. That's still too much. So Isaiah simplified it, summarizing it in six principles in Isaiah 33:13-14. Six is still a lot to remember. So Micah simplified it to three in Micah 6:8, where he says, "He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to 1) do justice, and to 2) love kindness, and to 3) walk humbly with your God?" But even three things are a bit imposing, so Isaiah again simplified it, summarizing the whole Torah in two principles. In Isaiah 56:1, he says, "Keep justice, and do righteousness." That's concise enough, but the Talmud goes on to say, "Then came Habakkuk, and reduced and simplified the whole Torah into one principle, saying, 'The righteous shall live by his faith'" (b.Makkot 24a). By the word "live," the Talmud means "live in the world to come."
The sages and rabbis also used this Habakkuk text as a Messianic passage. The righteous who live by faith are those who have faith in the coming of the Messiah. This is the passage from which Maimonides derived his twelfth article of the Jewish faith: "I believe with a complete faith in the coming of the Messiah, though he may tarry, yet I will await him every day."
For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end- it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay ... the righteous shall live by his faith. (Habakkuk 2:3-4)
Pauline Terminology
The above provides us an overview of how Judaism interpreted the two passages. What did Paul mean by quoting them in Galatians? Was Paul contrasting them against one another to demonstrate that faith and keeping Torah are opposites, since the Torah is not of faith?
According to most interpretations, he set the two passages in antithesis, one against another, pitting faith against Torah as competing paths to eternal life. Is this what Paul meant? When Paul used the phrases "the works of the law," going "under the law," and even just "the law," he ordinarily was not speaking of the Torah in a generalized sense as God's instruction, the commandments, or even the five books of Moses. Instead, he used that terminology in a very narrow sense to refer to being Jewish (and/ or converting to become legally Jewish) and therefore bound to the observance of certain identity markers, i.e., specific commandments that define Jewish identity, such as circumcision.
Previously, we have also learned that the words "justify," "justification," "righteous," and "righteousness" are all different forms of the same word in both Hebrew and Greek. We have been translating them as "exoneration," i.e., a "not-guilty" verdict in the heavenly court before God. To be "justified" is to be declared "not guilty" by the court.
We can take all of this specialized Pauline terminology and apply it to Galatians 3:11-12:
Now it is evident that no one is [exonerated as righteous] before God by [attaining Jewish status through the works of the] Torah, because "The righteous shall live [in the world to come] by faith." And [attaining Jewish status by the works of the] Torah is not of faith; instead, "The one who does [the commandments] shall live [in the world to come] by them." (Galatians 3:11-12)
“And” or “But”
Ordinarily, we understand Paul's two proof texts as set in opposition to one another, as if Paul used one to refute the other. On the one hand, "The righteous will inherit eternal life by faith," but on the other hand, "The one who does the commandments will inherit eternal life." Daniel Lancaster, suggest that Paul did not contrast the two verses. The Greek conjunction de between the two verses need not be translated in the adversative. Lancaster translates it as "and" instead of "but".
"The righteous shall live by faith." But And the law is not of faith, rather "The one who does them shall live by them." (Galatians 3:11-12)
In that case, Paul simply presented two proof texts to prove the same thing. "The righteous will live by faith" is the same as "He who does them will live by them." "He who does them" is the righteous man, living by faith.
The real opposites that Paul contrasted was "living by faith" and "the works of the Torah," that is, "having Jewish status." He called Jewish status "the law" as a shorthand reference for "works of the law," the term he used in the previous verse.
Again, Paul countered the theology of the "influencers" who taught that, once a person becomes Jewish, he need not worry about keeping the commandments except for those works of the law that identify him within the nation and covenant. The influencers taught an approach to faith and practice like the churchgoer who does not worry about living a Christian life after he has been baptized, confirmed, said the sinner's prayer, or whatever religious ritual he felt he needed to do to earn salvation. Paul countered that cheap-grace theology in Galatians 3:10, and he continued to argue against it in Galatians 3:11-12.
Corroborating Evidence
Paul makes a verbal analogy (gezerah shavah) based upon a common term shared by the two passages. The common term is "will live." The first passage says, "The righteous will live by faith." The second passage says, "The one who does them shall live by them." The rabbis quoted verbal analogies between two passages in precisely the same manner, not to contrast them but to link them together or to use one to define the other. According to that type of rabbinic interpretation, the righteous one who lives by faith in Habakkuk 2:4 is the same person as the fellow who does the commandments in Leviticus 18:5. He is not the one who converts to take on Jewish status under the works of the law. Converting to become Jewish is not of faith. Keeping the commandments is of faith.
This interpretation has the advantage of solving the otherwise hopelessly cryptic statement, "The law is not of faith." Paul only means that "converting to become Jewish by the works of the law is not of faith." This is essentially the same point that Rabbi Meir made in the Talmud when he used Leviticus 18:5 to prove that even a Gentile who studies and practices the Torah is equivalent to the high priest in the eyes of God. As demonstrated above, this interpretation also finds corroboration in the early targumim, in the Talmud in Tractate Makkot, and in the interpretations of Rashi. Finally, we can find further corroboration elsewhere in the writings of Paul:
For God shows no partiality. For all who have sinned without the law [Gentiles] will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law [Jews] will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. (Romans 2:11-13)
If I am understanding Paul correctly, what he is saying is the exact opposite of what we usually think he is saying. He is not pitting "faith" against the keeping of the Torah. Instead, he says that the righteous man who lives by faith is the man who does the commandments and lives by them. Faith and faithfulness are two sides of the same coin: faith and obedience.
Paul contrasted the man who lives by faith and shows his faith by his obedience to God's commandments (as they apply to him, whether Jew or Gentile) opposite the man who believes that salvation is achieved simply by being under the Torah, i.e., simply by attaining and maintaining Jewish status through a few works of the law, such as circumcision.
Referneces
This lesson was curated from teachings from First Fruits of Zion “Holy Epistle to the Galatians.”