NOTES for Gal 5:4-5

In Gospel times people looked at the Torah (the Law) in different ways. For most believing Jews the Torah was a kind of moral and legal code that was to be accepted and fulfilled unconditionally. At the same time it was taken for granted that this code was fulfillable. And at 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 are usually not sparing of such effort. And after making the effort and fulfilling the Torah, as it appeared 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 with which to reproach themselves. What more could God require of them? He had set out His requirements in the Torah, and they had fulfilled it.

Yet in those days there was another view of the Torah and of spiritual life. It was a view that, in essence, already went beyond the framework of traditional Jewish religiosity, and beyond the framework of any religiosity at all. In this case the matter concerned the inner Torah. A 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 addressed to a person. Intentions that must determine the whole spiritual life of a person, and indeed that person's whole life in general. They must become the spiritual core that alone can make a person righteous, if it determines his life completely.

When speaking about the Torah, Paul often contrasts the inner Torah with the outer one. 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, and cannot do so.

A religious person can do many things 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, because it changes a person from the outside, through the norms and rules it offers. Real changes always happen from within. Here what is needed is precisely the inner Torah, but this is exactly what a fallen human being is unable to bring to fullness. Original sin stands in the way.

And the apostle understands this perfectly too: he himself tried to live this way and suffered a complete failure, described quite frankly by him in the Letter to the Romans. All that remains is 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 insufficiency. But it is better to acknowledge the obvious and obtain the fullness of the life of the Kingdom than to try to put a good face on a bad situation and lose everything.