From Jim McGuiggan... A TWO-FACED TORAH (1)

A TWO-FACED TORAH (1)

Romans 3.27 wants to know, “Where then is the boasting?” What brought “boasting” into the discussion at this point? Everyone knew the Gentiles had nothing to boast about for God had passed them by in the matter of election and specific covenant and then there was 1:18-32. But 2:17,23 tells us the Jews were boasting about God (as theirs) and in these areas. The boasting in these texts and in 3:27 is not a general discussion about religious people and how they can be self-righteous. The entire discussion centres on the Jews and their boast in the Torah which tied God to them and excluded the Gentiles.
From their own Torah Paul goes on to convict the Jewish nation of widespread and flagrant sin (3:9-19) and since he had already said enough to shut the mouths of the Gentiles that was all he needed to do to close the mouths of the entire human family.
It’s at that point that he claims that the Torah and the Prophets bore witness to God’s righteousness now set forth in Jesus; a righteousness which was independent of the Torah (3:21-26).  It’s at that point he asks and answers his question about boasting, saying it was shut out (3:27, with a passive aorist in the indicative). He doesn’t say it “is” excluded although that is true; he says it was or had been shut out.
So there is a Torah that had been all along bearing witness to a time when God would publicly demonstrate his righteousness which would show itself in Jesus on behalf of the entire human family (3:21-26, 29-30).
Had Israel rightly understood the Torah it would have made sectarian boasting impossible, it would have led them to Jesus Christ who was God’s righteousness revealed to and for all humans. Jesus is both the terminus of and the goal to which the Torah was leading Israel only Israel didn’t see it (Romans 9:31-32—10:4). In being self-absorbed and seeing the Torah as that which made them an end in themselves they established their own national righteousness and missed God’s eschatological righteousness in the Messiah. He was the “telos” of the Torah—both termination and goal.
Paul wasn’t demeaning the Torah—he was validating it and showing it to be greater than the Jews knew (3:31). Did Jesus end all boasting? He certainly did and he is the essential destruction of boasting but in 3:27 Paul is dealing with boasting as it relates to some “Torah” and he insists that the Jewish Torah as seen from the Jewish angle generated boasting (2:17, 23) but when seen (the same Torah!) from the perspective of faith in Jesus Christ it destroys boasting. It was through the Torah Paul as a Jew died to the Torah and the Torah like a trusted servant took Jews by the hand and led them to the Messiah and so worked itself out of a job (compare Galatians 2:10 and 3:24).
The Torah was at the same time an occasion for sinful boasting (if it was looked at as the religion that excluded all but Israel) and a destroyer of sinful boasting (if it was looked at by faith in Jesus the Messiah who was the goal of the Torah and who apart from the Toah set right with God all who believe in Jesus).
It was also a Torah of sin and death and a Torah of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.

©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.