NOTES for Rom 3:21-31
The Torah, at least the inner Torah, in the apostle's words, only reveals to a person his own sinfulness; by it "sin is known." But where is the way out? What can free a person from sin? Paul answers: righteousness that is greater than the Torah. The Torah and the Prophets bear witness to God's righteousness; in Paul's time this was the name for what we today would call Holy Scripture. Only the manifestation of this divine righteousness ("the righteousness of God") can free a person from the power of sin. Here Paul remains faithful to the rabbinic tradition: the Torah was never an end in itself; it was needed as a means of establishing a person on the path of righteousness.
But into the traditional rabbinic understanding of the problem of Torah and righteousness the apostle introduces a new, messianic interpretation: he speaks of the manifestation of the Messiah's righteousness, the righteousness of Christ, and of faithfulness to Christ ("faith in Jesus Christ") as the only possibility for a person to share in this righteousness. God's righteousness has been revealed to the world by Christ; the blood He shed becomes for those faithful to Him what sacrificial blood was for believing Yahwists of the pre-Christian era.
At that time the blood of a sacrificial animal offered for the sin of a particular person cleansed that person from the consequences of the sin he had committed and opened to him the possibility of sharing in God's righteousness in the relative measure that was open to people before the coming of Christ. Now the Messiah Himself opens to everyone who has entrusted himself to Him the whole fullness of God's righteousness possible for a human being, a fullness made available to the world through His path and His sacrifice.
It is no accident that the apostle speaks of redemption, of ransom: the Savior's death on the cross, the blood He shed, became payment for human sin in the same way that the blood of the animals slaughtered at the altar had previously become payment for human sins. As animals then gave their lives in order to open a path to God for a person, so now the Messiah gives His life in order to open for a person the path into the Kingdom.
But then both purification and sharing in God's righteousness were partial; now they become complete. And this is not because the "works of Torah" can somehow help a person, but because God's righteousness has been revealed to the world by the One who Himself bears it in all its fullness. Yet the Torah is not devalued by this, at least if we are speaking of the inner Torah. Faithfulness to Christ is unthinkable without the path of righteousness and outside it, and therefore it is unthinkable without the inner Torah as that spiritual dynamic without which there is no path of righteousness. That is why the apostle says that everything he has said about salvation through faithfulness to Jesus Christ by no means devalues the Torah, but only establishes it all the more.