NOTES for Gal 5:4-5
In Gospel times the Torah, the Law, was viewed in different ways. For most believing Jews the Torah was a kind of moral and legal code that was to be unconditionally accepted and fulfilled. At the same time it was taken for granted that this code was fulfillable. And on the level to which the religious majority limited itself, there really were no insoluble problems with fulfilling the Torah. Of course, this required effort, but sincerely religious people usually do not spare such effort. And having made the effort, having fulfilled the Torah, as it seemed to them, to the end, such people naturally considered themselves righteous.
Indeed, from their own point of view, from the point of view of a religious person, they had nothing for which to reproach themselves. What else could God demand of them? He had set forth His requirements in the Torah, and they had fulfilled it. However, in those days there was also another view of the Torah and of spiritual life. A view that, in essence, already went beyond the framework of traditional Jewish religiosity and beyond the framework of any religiosity in general. In this case the matter concerned the inner Torah. The Torah perceived not as a legal or moral code, but as the revelation of God's will.
God's will in the most literal sense. In the sense of God's intentions directed toward the human person. Intentions that must determine a person's whole spiritual life, and his whole life in general. They must become the spiritual backbone that alone can make a person righteous, if it determines his life entirely. Speaking about the Torah, Paul often contrasts the inner Torah with the outer. And the point is not that he is a principled opponent of all religiosity. He simply knows too well from his own experience that religion has never yet made anyone righteous, nor can it.
A religious person can do much for God. But in spiritual life the main thing is not to do, but to be. What is needed is not a set of good and pious deeds, but a qualitative change of life. And here religion proves powerless: it changes a person from the outside, through the norms and rules it offers. But real changes always happen from within. Here precisely the inner Torah is needed, and this is what fallen man is unable to bring to fullness.
Original sin hinders him. And the apostle understands this perfectly too: he himself tried to live this way and suffered complete failure, which he quite openly described in the Letter to the Romans. What remains is only hope in that breath of God, the breath of the Kingdom, which alone can make a person righteous. Of course, this is an admission of one's own spiritual insolvency. But it is better to acknowledge the obvious and acquire the fullness of the life of the Kingdom than to try to put a good face on a bad game and lose everything.