NOTES for Gal 3:7

What is the first thing we remember about Abraham? That he "believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness." "Believed" here means nothing light or simple. Abraham's faith is labor and struggle. He gathered his family and went where God called him. No one could stop him, he listened to no one. He trusted God so much that he was ready to sacrifice his only son. He received God in his home; he was the first to experience communion with the Trinity. And all this happened to him not because he was righteous in himself. On the contrary, he was sinful, and the Bible describes not only his faith but also everything that in no way fits with it. But Abraham's righteousness became not the fulfillment of all ritual prescriptions, but unconditional trust. Paul calls believers sons of Abraham. Not distant descendants, but the next generation. This means that we inherit Abraham's basic traits if we believe. Yes, sin is still strong in us. But faith in God, whom we serve, for whose sake each time we fall we rise again, with whom we continue to live, this faith will become our justification.

Paul speaks of righteousness and faith as what constitutes the foundation of Christianity. Indeed, they are what bind the faithful person to Christ, and righteousness as a spiritual state allows 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, and not even the result of fulfilling it. Of course, a person who follows the Torah will attain righteousness, but only in one case: if he follows it in all its fullness and to the end, becoming a living Torah. Then a person acquires the quality necessary for righteousness, for life in the Kingdom.

But the point is that it is impossible for a person to become a living Torah. Righteousness for fallen humanity is not a property or quality; it is a state in which one can abide. But following the Torah in itself does not allow a person to gain such a state, because to gain righteousness one must keep the Torah precisely in all its fullness, and if there is no fullness, everything is useless. The 'works of the Torah,' or 'works of the law,' add and subtract nothing here in themselves: when the issue is righteousness in general and Christian life in particular, fullness is what matters, and everything else does not count. It does not matter how far a person remains from the goal, from becoming a living Torah; what matters only is whether he has become it or not.

The foundation of righteousness since the time of Abraham is not the Torah itself, which in Abraham's time had not yet even been revealed, but a person's faithfulness to God. Faithfulness in the most literal sense: the alignment of the human will with God's will, the handing over of oneself to God. The Torah is only an instrument for reaching this goal. Entrusting himself to God, a person ceases to belong to himself, and then righteousness, impossible by nature, becomes possible for him as a state into which God Himself brings him.

And if this was true already in Abraham's time, it remains all the more true now that Christ has come: the fullness of righteousness required of a Christian is the same, and its necessity has now become even more evident, since otherwise one cannot enter the Kingdom. That is why the apostle asks the Galatian Christians the main question: did you feel the breath of God and share in the life of the Kingdom through the Torah and circumcision? Was it not through the good news about Christ and through faithfulness to Him? Why then have you left what opened new life to you and gone to look for something else? What did you lack?

Continuing the discussion of faith and "works of Torah," Paul draws attention to the most important difference between them: faith is based on relations between God and the human person, while "works of Torah" remain the fruit of human efforts alone. The apostle does not remind the Galatian Christians by accident that the reality of the breath ("Spirit") of God, the breath of the Kingdom, was opened to them through an act of faith, through the trust in Christ of which they proved capable, and not through any "works of Torah." So why, Paul asks the recipients of his letter rhetorically, do you now rely not on this trust, not on the breath of the Kingdom so well known to you, in a word, not on the spiritual, but on purely human means, which is what any religious activity is in God's eyes (vv. 2-3)? And the One who gave you a share in the reality of the Kingdom, who let you feel His breath ("Spirit"), did He do this by means of "works of Torah," rather than by calling you to faithfulness ("through instruction in faith") (v. 5)?

The apostle once again turns to the image of Abraham: after all, he was certainly faithful to God, and God was with him, but in those days there could be no talk of any "works of Torah," since the Torah itself did not yet exist; it was first revealed to the people much later, through Moses. But then others also can count on receiving what Abraham received if they turn to God and remain faithful to Him, becoming Abraham's spiritual heirs (vv. 6-8). Paul does not deny the path of unfailing adherence to the Torah; he merely points to the obvious fact that the Torah was given not as a means of justification before God, but as a kind of signpost indicating the direction in which one must move, though without faith one cannot arrive there (vv. 9-11). If one walks the path indicated by the Torah to the very end as one should, without violating a single commandment, one can obtain at the end the same life that those who follow Christ obtain (v. 12).

But everything must be fulfilled, fully and to the end, and no human being has the strength to do this. Only one thing remains: to follow Christ, who opened to everyone ready to entrust himself to Him the path of faith walked by Abraham (vv. 13-14). Paul reminds the Galatian Christians of the foundations. He speaks to them not about religion, which in itself brings no one closer to the Kingdom, just as it does not move anyone farther away from it, but about spiritual life in the true sense of the word, where the relations of people with God and with one another turn out to matter most. Relations without which there is no Kingdom.