NOTES for Gal 3:6-7
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?