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Our Liberty in Messiah...Freedom from the Torah?

by James Pyles

I've been going through a personal study of the book of Galatians using material produced by Tim Hegg for TorahResource.com. His study goes back to 2002 (yes, I'm just now reading it) but I consider Tim's research and scholarship on the matter to be timeless. Perhaps, not as timeless as the Almighty and the saving grace of our Messiah Yeshua, but he certainly has a way of cutting through what for many, is a very confusing letter, and getting down to the core of what Paul was saying.

For most of traditional Christianity, Galatians is the "anti-law" or "anti-Torah" book of the Bible. It is the most often quoted or referenced part of the Apostolic Scriptures that we, in the Messianic community, hear from our traditional Christian brethren. Galatians is commonly used to attempt to convince us that our pursuit of the Torah as a "guide for righteous living" is in error and flies in the face of accepting the grace of Christ. Even many who have long worshiped as Messianic believers, continue to remain a bit "stumped" when reading Galatians. At least in the plain English, it seems to support an anti-law message

While I can't improve on Tim Hegg's research into Paul's epistle, I do want to briefly share a piece of what I've learned in my studies thus far (it's a long work, so I'll not be through with it any time soon). I will be quoting heavily from Tim's "A Study of Galatians" and I think sharing my thoughts will help any one who reads this, understand a bit better how Paul never wrote that the Torah and Yeshua stood in opposition, but rather, were and are in complete harmony.

Galatians 2:4 states

"But it was because of the false brethren secretly brought in, who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty which we have in Messiah Yeshua, in order to bring us into bondage".

The question here is "into bondage" with what? The common conclusion is that the "false brethren" were "Judaisers" who were trying to convince the non-Jewish believers in the churches in Galatia that they must become circumcised (convert to Judaism) and obey the Torah of Moses in order to be considered equal sharers in the covenant blessings of Messiah. Further, the common belief is that Paul was countering this directive by stating faith in the Messiah completely freed the believer from bondage to the Torah and not only did the Gentile believer not have to convert, but in fact, they could disregard Torah obedience altogether as completely inconsistent with Yeshua's message of faith.

Actually, Paul is very clear that the Gentile did not have to convert to Judaism to come to faith in Messiah (a fact that did cause concern with some of the Jewish believers who had difficulty understanding how the uncircumcised could partake of the Jewish faith of "The Way"). Does this mean however, that Paul was advocating throwing out "the baby with the bathwater", so to speak?

Looking at the message another way, what exactly is "...our liberty which we have in Messiah Yeshua"? According to the material I've been reading produced by Hegg, the Greek word translated into English as "liberty" is eleutheria and is found to occur ten times in the Apostolic Scriptures (see below for the specific references^1.). Of these ten occurrences, Paul mentions this word six times and he uses it three times in Galatians. Liberty or freedom then, seems to be an important if not completely central message of Paul's in this letter.

The general meaning of the word group associated with eleutheria refers to freedom in the sense of the opposite of physical slavery. Paul tended to write of slavery metaphorically as the state a non-believer is in when bonded to sin. Liberty then, is being freed from slavery when we come to faith in Messiah Yeshua and his redeeming work in our lives. One common example of this in Paul's writing is Romans 6:17-18

"But thanks be to God that though you were slaves to sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness"

So, once being freed from sin through the atoning death and resurrection of the Messiah, can we then slide back down into sin? Is this what Paul is suggesting? From a standard Christian standpoint, the suggestion would be that attempting to keep "the Law" is in direct contradiction to accepting the grace of Christ. Is "keeping the Law" a means to throw away salvation?

Paul didn't seem to think so. It was his belief that our "old man" (slavery to sin) had been put to death, and having "died" with Messiah, we were raised again with him, as Paul writes in Romans 6:6-9

"We know that our old self was put to death on the execution-stake with him, so that the entire body of our sinful propensities might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For someone who has died has been cleared from sin. Now since we died with the Messiah, we trust that we will also live with him. We know that the Messiah has been raised from the dead, never to die again; death has no authority over him".

Presumably, this also means that death has no authority over us. In other words, once we were "raised" with Messiah, we became that new person and would never revert to our old status as slaves to sin. That being the case, then what could Paul mean when he expressed his concern about believers being brought into bondage?

As I mentioned earlier, the traditional interpretation by the Church is that this bondage or "yoke of slavery" (from Galatians 5:1) is the "yoke of Torah" and that the believer can only achieve "liberty" by abandoning the Torah and accepting Christ's grace, posing a direct opposition between the two. The believer can either be enslaved by the Law or freed by Christ. This can't be Paul's point of view though, because in Romans 7:12, he refers to the Torah as "holy, just, and good". Further, James writes in James 1:25

"But one who looks intently at the perfect Torah, the Torah of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does".

Ok, Paul isn't James, but there's no evidence to suggest that the two would disagree on this point or any other main point of theology regarding the Torah or the Messiah. Since James calls the Law the "Torah of liberty" and Paul refers to the Torah as "holy, just, and good", it doesn't stand to reason that Paul would believe that the Torah was bondage or slavery as opposed to "liberty" in Messiah. On the other hand, how can both the Torah and Messiah be "liberty"?

This has to do with the sequencing of events in the life of the believer. Paul is very clear that freedom from sin can only be acquired through Yeshua as Messiah and Savior, but once that liberty is achieved, what do we do with it? Anything we want? To paraphrase Paul, "Heaven forbid!" Liberty in Messiah isn't a behavioral "free for all" where we are approved to say and do anything we please. That sounds more like our bondage to sin where we served our own selfish natures.

What do you do with your life once you are freed from sin? How do you act? What's your "guidebook to righteousness". I've heard the Bible referred to as "God's love letter to mankind" and as "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth". Yes, both very cute phrases, but both suggesting that the Bible is that guidebook I just mentioned.

Put another way, once we have accepted our liberty, we are not only free from sin, we are free to live out a life of righteousness as outlined in the Torah. While the term "Torah" often refers to the Five Books of Moses, that's not the only definition. Any teaching from God can be thought of as Torah, meaning that we can consider the entire Bible as "Torah". If then, Messiah frees us from sin and frees us to live out Godly lives, the Torah is the blueprint for that life of freedom in holiness. Rather than two concepts in opposition, Messiah and Torah work in unison to give our lives a sense of completion, transitioning us from a lifestyle of slavery to sin to one where we are free to obey the Word of God.

That returns us to our original question. If the Torah isn't bondage, what is? The answer also seems to be in the other ways that "Torah" is defined.

While it was completely unnecessary for a non-Jewish believer to convert to Judaism to enjoy equal status as a son of the covenant, why was it actually "harmful"? Was it because it was a denial of the meaning of Messiah's death? Sure, that's a large part of it, but that doesn't explain the bondage to which Paul refers. What seems to emerge from my study of Hegg's work on Galatians, is that many (and perhaps most) of the Jews in Paul's time, considered Torah to be a much wider body of information than what would have been considered the Bible of their day (The Tanakh or "Old Testament").

Both today and in ancient times, the concept of Halakhah, or a complete way of practicing the Jewish faith in every aspect of life, existed for Jewish people. Halakhah, both in the 1st Century and now, would encompass the collective body of Jewish religious law, including biblical law (the 613 mitzvot) and later talmudic and rabbinic law, as well as customs and traditions. For someone born and raised in an observant Jewish home, halakhah would become deeply ingrained in a person's everyday living. No one source of information encompassed by halakhah would appear to have greater or lesser weight in a person's lived experience.

If the particular Jews who were encouraging the non-Jewish believers to undergo conversion observed halakhah (and this is highly likely), then the expectation of Gentiles who converted would be that they too, observe the same halakhah. Much of this halakhah isn't addressed at all in the written Torah, or any where else in the Biblical record. Yeshua and his disciples themselves, were criticized by other Jews for not observing certain aspects of halakhah, as we see in Mark 7:1-5.

"The P'rushim and some of the Torah teachers who had come from Jerusalem gathered together with Yeshua and saw that some of his disciples ate with ritualistically unclean hands, that is, without doing the n'tilat-yadayim. (For the P'rushim, and indeed, all Judeans, holding fast to the Tradition of the Elders, do not eat unless they have given their hands a ceremonial washing. Also, when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they have rinsed their hands up to the wrist; and they adhere to many other traditions, such as washing cups, pots, and bronze vessels). The P'rushim and the Torah teachers asked him, 'Why don't your disciples live in accordance with the Tradition of the Elders, but instead eat with ritualistically unclean hands?' "

This portion of Mark and the verses that follow, is often cited as a proof text that Yeshua declared all foods "clean". What seems more plain, is that Yeshua and his disciples are being criticized, not for eating "unclean" food, but rather, for not observing the halakhah of ritual hand washing that, while required by tradition, is recorded no where in the Bible. It's interesting to note that this halakhah still exists and can be found in most modern Jewish siddurim (prayer books).

Paul was writing primarily to the non-Jewish believers in the faith communities in Galatia. How they understood the definition of Torah would come from the Jewish believers. For the vast majority of Jews, all of the information sources that together, comprise halakhah, would all be "Torah". Paul, being a "Jew of Jews", would also know this and he likely would have been raised to obey halakhah. He also understood the differences between the Torah as the Word of God and the "Torah" that draws from other sources, including the "Tradition of the Elders". While obedience to the Word of God would be considered a "given" for Paul for all believers, Jewish and Gentile alike, the "...false brethren secretly brought in, who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty..." seemed to have wanted to put the Gentile believer under the impression that they needed to convert to Judaism and come under the bondage of a Halakhah completely unnecessary in the life of a believer. While Paul probably didn't object to Jewish believers continuing their walk with halakhah, he did very much object to the idea that Gentiles should feel subject to it.

It seems clear that if Paul sees anything as in opposition to the liberty in Messiah, it's compelled obedience to traditions and ordinances that Yeshua himself did not expect his disciples to obey. While traditions aren't necessarily bad, they can be a form of "yoke" if they are given equal status to the Word of God and if Gentile believers are made to feel inferior to Jewish believers unless they take all of the contemporary halakhah on board. This is what Paul found in conflict with the grace of Christ...not the liberty of the written Torah...the Word of God.

Going back to the "false brethren", it seems they were sneaking in to see what life was like for believers of The Way, who lived out a lifestyle of Torah obedience, freed from both sin and the Traditions of the Elders through the Savior who died to free us all. We aren't freed from the Torah, rather we are freed to live out the Torah in our lives, just as Messiah Yeshua lived out his life and continues to live forever.

This small article isn't meant to be an exhaustive analysis of the Book of Galatians. As I previously mentioned, Tim Hegg has done a very fine job in his work, "A Study of Galatians" and there is no way I could possibly improve upon it. I only present this bit of my own writing to introduce you to the "radical" idea that neither Paul nor Yeshua had anything against the Torah of God. I also want to suggest that Galatians is not a club to be used to hit on Torah-observant communities but rather, a confirmation of everything God has caused to be written about Himself and about our relationship with Him.

To find the complete "A Study of Galatians" and many other illuminating works by Tim Hegg, go to TorahResource.com.