Rebuilding Walls

Returning to the jurisdiction of the Torah means the restoration of the old social barriers between Jews and Gentiles.

The third chapter of Galatians is pivotal to Paul’s argument for the oneness of God’s people. The old social divisions under the Mosaic Legislation are inappropriate in God’s One Covenant Community since the promised “Seed of Abraham” has arrived, namely, Jesus of Nazareth. In Christ’s Assembly, “No longer can there be Jew or Greek!”

The Torah was intended to keep Israel distinct from the surrounding Gentile nations. Whenever the Church adopts the requirements of the Mosaic Law, it rebuilds the “middle wall of partition” between Jewish and Gentile believers, a wall removed by Jesus at great personal cost. Paul presents an alternative to the Law for defining and identifying the people of God - the “faith of Jesus Christ” – (Ephesians 2:11-22, Romans 3:21-24, Galatians 3:15-21).

[Stone Wall - Photo by Daniel Born on Unsplash]

Nor is adopting only certain requirements of the Law an option. The Torah itself insists that if we are under the Law, we are obligated to keep the whole thing, and failure to do so puts us under its “curse”:

• “For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, Cursed is everyone who fails to continue in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them” – (Galatians 3:10, Deuteronomy 27:26).

• “I testify again to every man who receives circumcision, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. You are cut off from Christ, you who would be justified by the law, you are fallen away from grace” – (Galatians 5:3).

Any uncircumcised male under the Law, regardless of his descent from Abraham, was outside the covenant, and therefore, not a “son of God.” He could only become a member of Israel by undergoing circumcision and otherwise adopting a Torah-compliant lifestyle. Yet now, “in Christ Jesus”:

• “You are all sons of God through the faith of Christ Jesus. For you, as many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There cannot be Jew or Greek, there cannot be bond or free, there cannot be male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus: Now, if you are of Christ, by consequence, you are Abraham’s seed, according to promise, heirs” - (Galatians 3:26-29).

The Torah also distinguished between slaves and freemen, and males and females. Because of their periodic uncleanness due to menstruation, women could not participate fully in the worship rites of the Temple. They were restricted to the Court of Women at some distance from the Sanctuary and therefore the presence of Yahweh. Effectively, the women of Israel were second-class citizens.

If the congregations of Galatia placed their members under the Mosaic Legislation by undergoing circumcision and observing the Jewish calendar, they would restore this inequity to their female members, believers for whom Christ died to set them free from “the curse of the law.”

The “all” in verse 25 refers to Gentile and Jewish believers (“all are sons”). The Scriptures declared that everyone was confined under the Law before the “Seed” arrived. Since Christ’s arrival, neither Jew nor Gentile is under that confinement any longer; members of both groups became sons of God “through the faith of Christ Jesus.”

If adoption into the family of Abraham is through the “faith of Jesus,” then logically, we do not qualify as “children of Abraham” through the deeds and rituals required by the Torah. This does not mean ethnicity and gender no longer matter in our daily lives. However, such distinctions have no bearing on our standing before God. Faith and obedience matter, not ethnicity, gender, social, or economic status.

THE CUSTODIAN

The Apostle presents the analogy of the Law as the custodian of a minor child. In Greco-Roman society, a minor did not enjoy full liberty and civil rights until he came of age. Though by right destined to be the master of the household, until the child reached legal age, he was no freer than household slaves.

• “But I say that so long as the heir is a child, he differs nothing from a slave though he is lord of all. He is under custodians and stewards until the day appointed of the father. So we also, when we were children, were held in bondage under the rudiments of the world. But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because you are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So that you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God” - (Galatians 4:1-7).

“Custodians and stewards” performed two different functions. First, they took charge of the heir. Second, they managed his estate. This condition continued until the “time appointed by his father,” and in Paul’s analogy, this corresponds to the “fullness of time” when God sent Jesus to redeem us.

• “But at that time, not knowing God, you were enslaved to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather, to be known by God, why do you seek to return to the weak and beggarly elemental principles to which you desire to be enslaved again? You observe days, and months, and seasons, and years” – (Galatians 4:8-10).

The term “elemental principles” in the preceding passage translates the Greek noun ‘stoicheion’ (Strong’s Concordance, #G4747). It refers to the basic components that comprise a larger whole. The idea is “element, first principle, rudimentary.” From it comes the sense of “elemental principles.”

To adopt circumcision and the observation of the Jewish calendar now that the “Seed of Abraham” has come would mean regression to something rudimentary, even infantile, a return to an earlier and incomplete stage in God’s redemptive plan.

Jesus came to redeem those “under the Law,” so they could receive the adoption as children. This refers, firstly, to Jewish believers. The need to redeem or ransom them implies that being “under the Law” was a form of slavery, or at least, an incomplete stage in God’s redemptive plan. The Torah was incapable of acquitting and justifying anyone before God. Paul’s previous statement in Chapter 3 is conceptually parallel:

• “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree, that upon the Gentiles might come the blessing of Abraham in Christ Jesus; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” - (Galatians 3:13-14).

The result of God’s redemptive act is our “adoption.” We are not God’s “children” through physical birth. All humans are His creatures but not all are His children. The implication is that Jews, likewise, become His sons through grace, faith, and the death of Jesus on the Cross, not physical descent or the deeds, observations, and rituals required by the Torah - (Romans 8:15, 8:23, 9:4, Ephesians 1:5).

Because we are “children,” God sent the “Spirit of his Son into our hearts”. This summarizes the long argument that began at the start of Chapter 3 when Paul reminded the Galatians that they received the Spirit from a hearing of faith, and not from the “deeds of the Law” – (Galatians 3:1-4).

The term “spirit of his Son” refers to the work of the Holy Spirit conforming us to Christ’s image, the same Spirit that prompts us to cry out, “Abba, Father!” What greater proof of the acceptance of Jews and Gentiles into the Covenant Community could there be than the Gift of the Spirit?

• “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are sons of God. For you received not the spirit of slavery again unto fear; but you received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father! The Spirit itself is bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and coheirs with Christ” – (Romans 8:14-17).

In Christ Jesus, Jewish and Gentile believers become “heirs” to the Abrahamic Covenant and its promises. Moreover, through his sacrificial death, Jesus has “dismantled the wall of partition” that previously separated Jews and Gentiles, and “alienated the Gentiles from the commonwealth of Israel, and made them strangers from the covenants of the promise” – (Ephesians 2:11-18).

Adopting the deeds and rites of the Law would mean dividing the Body of Christ along ethnic lines. Since we are all now “sons” and “children of Abraham,” and heirs of the Patriarch and “coheirs with Jesus,” why attempt to seek what the Law could never deliver by subjecting ourselves to the requirements of the Mosaic Legislation? Why rebuild the “wall of partition” between Jews and Gentiles?

Men and women are justified before God from the “faith of Jesus,” and every disciple is a “child of God” and an “heir of Abraham” regardless of his or her biological descent. Why do some today still insist on rebuilding the old walls dismantled by the sacrificial death of Jesus?

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SEE ALSO:

• God's One Household - (The promises, types, and shadows of the Hebrew Bible are fulfilled in the Son of God and Messiah of Israel, Jesus of Nazareth)

• One New Man - (Since his Death and Resurrection, Jesus has been forming one new covenant community - One New Man - based on faith in him – Ephesians 2:11-22)

• The Faith of Jesus - (We are not acquitted before God from the works of the Law but through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ – Romans 3:21-26)

• Construction De Barrières - (Le retour à la juridiction de la Torah signifie la restauration des anciennes barrières sociales entre Juifs et Gentils)