Paul speaks of righteousness and faith as the foundation of Christianity. Indeed, they are what bind the faithful person to Christ, while righteousness as a spiritual state enables a person...
Paul speaks of righteousness and faith as the foundation of Christianity. Indeed, they are what bind the faithful person to Christ, while righteousness as a spiritual state enables a person to share in the life of the Kingdom. Righteousness is not a consequence of the Torah, not the result of its effect on a person, nor even the result of observing it. Of course, someone who follows the Torah will attain righteousness, but only on one condition: that they follow it in all its fullness and to the very end, becoming a living Torah. Only then will they acquire the quality necessary for righteousness, for the life of the Kingdom.
But the point is that it is impossible for a person to become a living Torah. For fallen humanity, righteousness is not a property or a quality; it is a state in which one can abide. Yet following the Torah does not in itself enable one to attain that state, because attaining righteousness requires observing the Torah in all its fullness; without that fullness, everything is useless. And ‘works of the Torah’—‘works of the law’—in themselves add or take away nothing here. When it comes to righteousness in general and Christian life in particular, it is precisely fullness that matters; nothing else counts. It does not matter how far a person still has to go to reach the goal of becoming a living Torah; all that matters is whether they have become one or not.
Since Abraham's time, the foundation of righteousness has been not the Torah as such—which had not even been revealed in Abraham's day—but a person's faithfulness to God. Faithfulness in the most literal sense: bringing one's will into relation with God's will, entrusting oneself to God. The Torah is only an instrument for reaching that goal. In entrusting themselves to God, people cease to belong to themselves, and righteousness, impossible for them by nature, becomes possible as a state into which God Himself brings them.
If this was already true in Abraham's day, it remains all the more true now that Christ has come. The fullness of righteousness required of a Christian is still the same, and its necessity has become even more evident: without it, one cannot enter the Kingdom. That is why the apostle asks the Christians of Galatia the central question: was it through the Torah and circumcision that you felt God's breath and came to share in the life of the Kingdom? Was it not through the good news of Christ and faithfulness to Him? Why, then, did you leave what opened a new life to you and go looking for something else? What were you lacking?
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2:21 Meantime I do not make void - In seeking to be justified by my own works. The grace of God - The free love of God in Christ Jesus. But they do, who seek justification by the law. For if righteousness is by the law - If men might be justified by their obedience to the law, moral or ceremonial. Then Christ died in vain - Without any necessity for it, since men might have been saved without his death; might by their own obedience have been both discharged from condemnation, and entitled to eternal life.
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3:1 O thoughtless Galatians - He breaks in upon them with a beautiful abruptness. Who hath bewitched you - Thus to contradict both your own reason and experience. Before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been as evidently set forth - By our preaching, as if he had been crucified among you.
3:2 This only would I learn of you - That is, this one argument might convince you. Did ye receive the witness and the fruit of the Spirit by performing the works of the law, or by hearing of and receiving faith?
3:3 Are ye so thoughtless - As not to consider what you have yourselves experienced? Having begun in the Spirit - Having set out under the light and power of the Spirit by faith, do ye now, when ye ought to be more spiritual, and more acquainted with the power of faith, expect to be made perfect by the flesh? Do you think to complete either your justification or sanctification, by giving up that faith, and depending on the law, which is a gross and carnal thing when opposed to the gospel?
3:4 Have ye suffered - Both from the zealous Jews and from the heathens. So many things - For adhering to the gospel. In vain - So as to lose all the blessings which ye might have obtained, by enduring to the end. If it be yet in vain - As if he had said, I hope better things, even that ye will endure to the end.
3:5 And, at the present time, Doth he that ministereth the gift of the Spirit to you, and worketh miracles among you, do it by the works of the law - That is, in confirmation of his preaching justification by works, or of his preaching justification by faith?
3:6 Doubtless in confirmation of that grand doctrine, that we are justified by faith, even as Abraham was. The Apostle, both in this and in the epistle to the Romans, makes great use of the instance of Abraham: the rather, because from Abraham the Jews drew their great argument, as they do this day, both for their own continuance in Judaism, and for denying the gentiles to be the church of God. Gen 15:6
3:7 Know then that they who are partakers of his faith, these, and these only, are the sons of Abraham, and therefore heirs of the promises made to him.