Thanks, Ray! I always enjoy your posts.
I find that Paul’s use of, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited/counted to him as righteousness,” seems to vary slightly in emphasis from Galatians to Romans. While Romans 4 seems to lay more stress on the forensic aspect, to me, Paul seems to have been speaking of the Torah largely as covenantal arrangement in Galatians.
The Law/Torah was what separated Jew from Gentile, and the works of the law, especially the entry point of circumcision, as well as practices such as food laws, Sabbath and holy times, were the visible badges of identification that marked off Jews as the people of God, the distinctive children of the covenant, in this world. This is why, after speaking of Abraham’s faith (lit. he said Amen to God), as being counted to him as righteousness in Galatians 3:6, he says that, all "…those who believe (say Amen to God in Christ, and join up with him), are the __children of Abraham. The Scripture foresaw that God would justify/put right the Gentiles by faith…"_ This seems to speak more to covenantal and family belonging than forensic/legal standing before God. A belonging that had nothing to do with being Jewish by physical descent, or the works of the Law/Torah.
It also speaks to the gospel as primarily God’s promise and act. Just as he did for Abraham, as seen in Genesis 15, God makes extravagant and incredible promises to all people. Abraham said Amen to those promises, “let it be as you said,” and God counted him as his friend, as one who belonged to him and was in a right covenant relationship with him. What adds to this view is God cutting the covenant with Abraham after his response of faith. It speaks to God’s faithfulness, his power, and his continued promise to Abraham of posterity, and land, all signs of Abraham’s belonging, and the new future he now looked forward to. Abraham’s entire life was changed forever, solely by faith in the promise/covenant keeping God. A faith that seemed totally at odds with his present, visible circumstances.
Gentile believers had grasped the ultimate fulfillment of this by responding to God’s invasive action into this world through his Son. Their lives, their futures, and their relationship and belonging to God had been radically altered by joining Jesus and his movement in the world. They were now part of his covenant people, put right with God as his new creation in this present age. To turn to the Law through circumcision and its obligation to keep it in its entirety was to was to go backwards into the old age and all that characterized it, when Christ had already inaugurated the new. It was to exchange the blessing for the curse, freedom for enslavement, the unity and equality of all who believe (regardless of religion, ethnicity, race, gender, and social status) for the dividing walls of human distinctions, and the leading and power of the Spirit for the activity and prompting of the flesh. In short, it was to fall from the grace of God, and to be alienated from Christ himself…to be out of right covenant relationship with God.
I have said this repeatedly, but I wonder how a religious movement that divides itself from the rest of Christianity by visible badges of law (food laws and sabbath holy time) as the remnant people of God, that bases its eschatology and eschatological belonging to God on such as well, and that seems to try to combine faith in Christ with law observance in its own peculiar way, can truly uphold the gospel that Paul preached, and is so radically presented in Galatians. To me, this quarterly, and the mess it often presents, is evidence that it can’t be done convincingly.
Thanks…
Frank