Torah and distinctives

In this post I attempt to get crystal clear what 'legalism' means, how Paul dealt with 'the law', what this meant for Israel, and what it means for us.

Torah (the law) had a specific function. Israel was signed and sealed by Torah as God's people: set aside for His purposes.

When Paul talks about 'works of the law', he means the acts appointed by Torah. The effect of these acts, lurking in the background of the argument, is that they had marked Israel as being God's people. It was these acts - especially circumcision, Sabbaths, and temple sacrifice - to which Israel was clinging even after Christ's advent, as if merely doing them would ensure her rightness with God.
 
It is this sense of 'legalism' which Paul combatted when he spoke against being justified by the 'works of the law', and against the 'other gospel' to which the Galations were being so quickly seduced - having begun with Christ. 
 
But this is quite different to our own usage of the term, infused with overtones of merit and earned salvation.  So, when we oppose legalism with grace, we mean by that legalism an effort to win God's favour by doing 'moral' things, by being a 'good' person.  This, we rightly say, is doomed to failure; nobody earns God's favour with good works. 
 
However right this is, it wasn't the position Paul was attacking.  His concern was that his fellow Jews were using the works of Torah as a seal and assurance of their rightness with God.  It wasn't so much that they were trying to earn a right standing; rather, they were proclaiming that they already had it, and would keep it.  Had you told a 1st-century Pharisee that salvation is by God's gracious choice, and expected an argument, you would be disappointed.  He'd simply tell you that you were quite correct, and that God had made His choice. Israel.  So, Paul's opponents were no more opposed to grace than we are.  They accepted that Torah was given to them through the graciousness of God.  They knew that Israel had not earned her election.  Their point was that the marks of Torah, given 430 years after the promise, sealed the place they already had. 
 
What they did not accept - what Paul tried to convince them of - was that those outside Torah should also recieve grace, because Torah was not how God would deliver an unfolding salvation to the world. Thus, they needed another seal, and another practice of faith: the one Paul preached.
 
And the gospel of which Paul was not ashamed was that God had enthroned a son of David, Jesus of Nazereth, as king over all creation.  Thus, the news went out that all creation was being welcomed under His rule, by-passing Torah completely. And this was deeply unwelcome to the Jews.  God's salvation coming apart from the law utterly jerked the rug out from under Israel's assurance.  So this is the major issue that occupies so much of the apostolic writings in one way or another. The weaving together of two peoples in Christ, making one new man, is the story of the apostolic church. The announcement, the shocking challenge, that God was doing this in and through Jesus of Nazereth is the story of Jesus' life in the gospels. And this shock is why he was crucified.

It is therefore a mistake to read Paul as an anti-legalist, in our sense of that term.  He wasn't arguing that God's new way of salvation was suddenly by grace and not by law, in our senses of those terms.  You know the drill: in the old testament, people got to God by legalism, by obeying the law: but in the new testament, Jesus died for sins, so now we get to God through grace, by believing in Jesus for the forgiveness of those sins.  Law vs grace; old testament vs new testament.  And today, various Christians are tempted to think that being told to obey the law is legalistic, old testament religion.  Law-keeping is opposed to grace, they think.  And indeed, there is hardly any law - especially a 'church' law - to which an evangelical Christian will feel bound, because he or she thinks that grace has freed us from the law.
 
This confusion has as many wrong heads as Hydra. For a start, we cannot equate the general condition of man, made as God's image (which gives us our 'ethical' boundaries) with the specific task and identity given to Israel under Torah. We cannot lump it all together as undifferentiated 'law'.  The two are different, and Paul's critique of the law applies to the latter. It is not a general rejection of all obligations imposed on an individual or body in the name of a new system called 'grace', but a very specific rejection of Torah, Torah as Israel's seal of rightness and identity as God's people - in the name of faithing Christ, God's new person.

Secondly, in the both the general and specific senses, having law is an act of grace. Law in general restrains us from evil and can constrain us to good; Torah as a specific system was meant to set Israel aside as God's posession: to both her own, and the world's, great benefit. It was a step on the way to God's reconciliation of the creation to Himself. It was never meant to be opposed, in any sense at all, to grace.

Thirdly, along this gracious path of reconciliation many steps were taken. From the first promise of Eve's seed to crush the cause of man's expulsion, to the calling of Abraham, to the giving of the law, to the coming of Israel to the first (proto) promised land, to Israel's return to that land from her exile, to the coming of Christ, his resurrection, his enthronement over all creation, and his final crushing defeat of Jerusalem, with the consequent vindication of his people as co-heirs with him of creation, God's bringing of a new world order can be seen. At each point, salvation was found in being placed and preserved on God's side. Yet there has always been an eye to the next stage, always the possibility of falling away in rebellion or lawlessness (now, in which sense do I mean that?).

This is the unfolding of the biblical drama, in which we are grounded today. It has never been the case that salvation is a timelessly applied matter of getting one's position in a postmortem heaven assured - either by works (however meant) or by grace. So the idea is far too simplistic that, in the old testament, one was 'saved' or could 'get to God' by works, but in the new, the same objective is achieved by grace. While we do look to postmortem life, especially in consequence of Christ's resurrection, this comes as the final act in the unfolding drama, not the immediate objective of every step.

Thus, throughout the vast majority of scripture, 'salvation' is not measured or configured in terms of whether an individual will achieve post-mortem resurrection. In the moment of God's action with a people or person, resurrection to heaven is a matter left very much to the future. What counts is the evidence here and now that the people or persons are placed and preserved as God's people.

So now, hopefully having fewer wrong heads, we come back to Paul's position on Torah. With Jesus vindicated by resurrection as the Christ, Torah no longer functioned as evidence that God's favour rested on the people of that covenant. For, God had made a new covenent in Christ. This was Paul's blinding flash of insight on the Damascus road, having been confronted with the living Christ. Thus, Israel had to repent of her misdeeds (from which Torah was never going to redeem her), and had to exercise faith in Christ. Israel had to adopt Christ's identity as self-sacrificial servant, and had to work for the delivery of God's grace to all the families of earth.

Yet she would not. Instead, she clung to the exclusive assurance she thought could be found in the doing of Torah's works. And on that basis Paul speaks against the works of the law. Torah could not be Israel's assurance of passing through to the next stage of God's restoration. For a start, Israel under Torah stood condemned as law-breakers. As Christ had warned her, she had failed in her misison to be light and salt to the nations, and was due to be thrown out and trampled under foot. Thus, God's new welcome of all earth's families into the dominion of Christ, into His kingdom, could not possibly include Israel insofar as she looked to salvation by the law. And it is a matter of history that the Jews, clinging to Torah, did not achieve this salvation. Looking to establish their own righteousness, they missed that of God's: so they, and all their observances, were destroyed in the rubbish heap Christ made of Jerusalem in AD70.

Of course, Paul would quickly instruct us today that God's salvation comes by grace alone, and not in any sense by our merit. But he would also instruct us that God's grace is neither founded on, nor assured by, any works or marks we might take as particularly distinctive of our place with Him.  And as Reformed people, this is the instruction we particularly need to hear.  It is right there in Paul's original argument.  We not only tend to glory in our own distinctives, but we willfully, deliberately, systematically, exclude others from the signs of grace - primarily, the Lord's Supper - on the basis that they do not have those marks. 
 
This is especially worrying when we discount, ignore, relativise, or otherwise undermine the value God does place on obedience as opposed to sacrifice: real faith as opposed to ritual sign.  Many in our tradition demand that people be made in our image, with our marks of correctness, before we will admit that their persons, cross-shaped though they otherwise be, have any claim on our fellowship.  And to make matters worse, we sneer at, deride or shake our heads in pious sorrow at the 'liberals' (probably the dreaded Arminians) who engage in works of mercy, social justice and various forms of reform or compassion. Yet Paul is quite clear in his letter to the Romans that it is not those who have the law (the Jews) who will be justified, but those who do it (the believing gentiles).  Now, put that in the context in which I am arguing he should be read, and the application to us is a very clear warning: we who have the marks of God's favour (our modern Torah - the marks of a true church?) will play second fiddle to those who actually recieve and do the gospel in practice.

I plead with you, dear and gentle reader, ask whether this is true of you and your tradition. The Lord's visible church - at least those bits of it that we identify as church - is in a very, very sad way. Racked with schism, infighting, factions, jealousy, fear, scandal, parochial pride: the Lord's name is a laughingstock and the object of blasphemy among the nations, and we his people are a pathetic guttering candle. We are irrelevant and unnoticed, useless and used less - and less.
 
What is to be done? Well, we must recant our agendas of self-made distinction and humble ourselves.  We must come to God in earnest, heartfelt prayer.  We must ask Him, and that right fearfully, to breathe us to life in the Spirit, and to vindicate His name among us, for the sake of His glory.  And if we will not be found wanting at the answer to our prayer, we must recapture the heart of the gospel, the drama of it, the great story, the love of God for His creation: and we must do that love.  We must do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.
 
This call, and the old warnings of Paul about where God's favour lies, mean that it is not acceptable for us to lament our inability to do this, or that, good thing in and for the kingdom, while thanking God that at least our theology is correct. Whether it be evangelism, getting alongside adoptive parents fighting the unjust regime of CYFS, helping the poor, lonely and marginalised housed around our church building, or being active in a campaign to restore beauty and rest to the creation: we must do it. And we must because that is what God cares about.  God moves forward to redeem and restore, and takes with Him - that is, He saves - whomever is there with Him as His image, redeeming His creation under His new king.
 
Let that be our distinctive.