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One Simple Verse: Galatians 5:3

At First Fruits of Zion we teach that "the commandment is holy and righteous and good" (Romans 7:12) and that all disciples of Yeshua have obligation to the Torah. Even the Gentile disciples of Yeshua will do well to keep the Sabbath, the festivals, and the dietary laws. Our mission is proclaiming the Torah and its way of life, fully centered on Messiah, to today's people of God. We want to see Jewish and Gentile believers everywhere united in the celebration of the Sabbath, the festivals, and the Torah's laws of holiness.

One Simple Verse
So why would we release a 24-page paper in Messiah Journal 101indicating that Gentiles are not obligated to keep certain commandments of the Torah? It's a huge question, and involves lots of different passages of scripture, but for now, let's take a look at just one simple Bible verse. The Bible verse we want to look at is from Paul's letter to the Gentiles in Galatia:

I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. (Galatians 5:3)

The Gentile believers in Galatia were God-fearers. That means they fellowshipped in the Jewish community and were probably already more-or-less Torah observant. According to Paul's teaching, they were sons of Abraham by faith and part of the greater commonwealth of Israel, grafted into the olive tree of Israel, and so forth. But they weren't legally Jewish. Some of them wanted to become legally Jewish. They wanted to undergo ritual circumcision to become legally Jewish. They thought that because they had become believers, they were required to do so.

Not just the men. The women too. As Tim Hegg points out in his paper One Law Movements: A Response to Russ Resnik & Daniel Juster, the word "man" in Galatians 5:3 is a gender neutral term in the Greek. It should be translated as "every person."(1) Did Paul imagine that women wanted to be circumcised too? Of course not. He was speaking of circumcision as the equivalence of a legal conversion to Judaism. So to put it plainly, the verse says, "I testify again to every person who becomes Jewish that he is obligated to keep the whole Torah."

Hegg also rightly points out that Paul was not speaking of simple medical circumcision. Many people groups in the ancient world practiced circumcision. Circumcision was not an exclusively Jewish practice. Paul was not talking about the actual, literal presence or absence of the foreskin, he was talking about legally recognized Jewish status within the Jewish community.

Irrefutably Simple
Galatians 5:3 is irrefutably simple to understand. To our knowledge, no credible scholar within mainstream Christianity, Judaism, Messianic Judaism, or biblical criticism has ever interpreted the verse to support a One Law theology.

Pauline scholar Richard Longnecker says, "Paul here points out that circumcision obligates one to keep all of the prescriptions of the Mosaic law."(2) Jewish Roots scholar Brad Young says, "[Paul] also maintained that if one is circumcised, he is required to keep all the law ... all the commandments of the covenant made at Sinai with children of Israel."(3) Orthodox Jewish New Testament scholar Pinchas Lapide says, "Of course, all of this [exemption from Torah] applies only to Gentile Christians. For Jews and for Jewish proselytes the Mosaic law, as Paul sees it, retains its full and unaltered validity."(4) In their commentary on Galatians Messianic Jewish scholars Le Cornu and Shulam say, "Those seeking circumcision are binding themselves to the observance of [the whole Law]."(5) Jewish New Testament scholar Mark Nanos observes, "Paul's own comment in Galatians 5:3 bears witness to the concern for full Torah observance that obtains for Jewish people and extends to those who complete proselyte conversion."(6) He notes that Gentiles who become proselytes to Judaism and take on halachic (legal) Jewish identity "will then be obliged to observe the whole Law."(7)

We can try creative ways to spin it, but the simple, plain meaning of the text is obvious.
Also obvious is the inverse--that every person who is not Jewish is not obligated to keep the whole Torah. This teaches us three important things:

1. There is a difference between being Jewish and being Gentile

2. Jewish believers are obligated to keep the whole law.

3. Non-Jewish believers are also obligated to keep the law, but they are not liable for the whole law in the same way as circumcised (halachically Jewish) believers.

The Oral Law
Some One Law proponents explain that Galatians 5:3 refers not to the Torah, but to the Oral Law. Is it possible that Paul meant to refer to the Oral Torah instead of the Written Torah? Perhaps he meant, "If you become Jewish, you will be obligated to keep both the Oral Law and the Written Law." Gentiles, on the other hand, were only required to keep the Written Torah.

That explanation does not work. First, Paul did not refer to Jewish tradition as Torah. Neither he nor the apostles refer to the concept of Oral Law. The Oral Law, as a formal body, was not yet compiled or codified. Instead, Paul speaks of the "customs of the fathers," and the "traditions," but he never equates those customs and traditions with the Torah. None of the apostles did. Secondly, this interpretation fails to protect the One Law theology because it purports that Jewish believers do have a different obligation to Torah than Gentile believers: Jewish believers must keep the written and oral Torah, but Gentiles must keep only the written Torah.

Two Different Standards
Would God have two different standards for His people? Yes, and Galatians 5:3 proves it. Think about it for a second. The Torah itself differentiates when it offers laws for distinct groupings of people, such as men, women, widows, children, judges, kings, priests, levites, strangers, natural born and so on. Each group is held to a different standard. For example, it is not a sin for a Levite to attend the funeral of his best friend, but it would be a sin for a priest to do so. Two different standards.

What parts of the Torah did Paul imagine that non-Jews did not have to keep? Did he think that they could commit adultery or charge one another interest on loans? He does not say here. His reason for not enumerating a list of commandments that would suddenly become incumbent upon the proselyte to Judaism is that those things were well understood within the synagogue, Torah culture to which the Gentile believers belonged.(8) One thing not required of Gentiles but certainly a commandment required of Jewish believers and proselytes to Judaism was circumcision itself. (At the very least, every man who accepts circumcision is obligated to be circumcised.)

Holding a rigid One Law stance while at the same time admitting that a Gentile believer can opt out of literal circumcision without incurring guilt is intellectually dishonest. Circumcision is definitely a commandment in the Torah.(9) If Gentile believers are not required to be circumcised, then the idea of "One Law" with identical obligation for both Jewish and Gentile believers is flawed.

Beyond circumcision, Paul could have listed the specific signs given to Israel over and against the allowances granted to all of humanity: in general, the requirement to rest from production and creation on the Sabbath, the requirement to keep the festivals, and the requirement to keep the dietary laws given to Israel.(10) In another passage, Paul singles out those same items as commandments for which Gentiles are not to be judged:

Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. (Colossians 2:16)

That is not to say that Gentiles should not be keeping the dietary laws, the festivals, the new moons, or the Sabbaths. It simply means that no one could judge Gentiles regarding those things because those aspects of Torah were not legally required of the Gentiles.

Beyond those specific Jewish responsibilities, Paul and the apostles believed that the rest of the Torah (with only a few exceptions such as priestly functions or signs given specifically to Israelites) was certainly incumbent upon Gentile believers.(11)

1 Corinthians 7:19
In another passage, though, Paul seems to contradict Galatians 5:3. When writing to the mixed community of Jews and Gentiles in the city of Corinth, he said:

Neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God" (1 Corinthians 7:19)

Doesn't that directly contradict Galatians 5:3? Isn't Paul saying that we are obligated to keep all the commandments whether we are halachically Jewish or not?

Not at all. As Paul says, "keeping the commandments of God" is what counts, not your level of obligation.

In the context of 1 Corinthians 7, Paul is telling Gentiles not to convert to become Jewish--the same message he gave the Galatians. He says, "Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision ... Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called" (1 Corinthians 1:17-20). The uncircumcised Gentile believer should keep the commandments that apply to him; the circumcised Jewish believer should keep the commandments that apply to him:

Paul can only mean that gentiles should obey commandments also, although evidently not the same ones as Jews. He views Gentiles as included in the perspective of the Creator which involves commandments for all ... The saying would then imply that whether or not one is a Jew does not matter before God, but whether one performs the commandments incumbent upon one does.(12)

Moreover, the Greek word translated as "commandments" in 1 Corinthians 7:19 is a word Paul ordinarily uses to refer to the individual commandments "where the individual commandment is distinguished from the whole law." Thus, we can understand it to mean, "Keeping the commandments of God that apply to you is what counts."(13)

Messianic Jewish scholar Mark Kinzer points out that by saying "circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing," Paul simply means that Jewish identity does not elevate the Jew above his Gentile brother in Messiah:

[Paul] does not mean that one's identity, whether Jewish or Gentile, is thus irrelevant to one's relationship with God. If there are different commandments for Jews and Gentiles, different roles and responsibilities assigned by God, then circumcision or uncircumcision make a great difference in one's relationship with God. What Paul means is that circumcision and Jewish identity do not elevate the Jew above the Gentile before God.(14)

Keeping the commandments that the Bible has assigned to you is what counts before God--not your halachic, legal status in the eyes of men.

Keep the Commandments Anyway
At First Fruits of Zion, we encourage all of God's people to join together and bear as much of the LORD's commandments as they are able. The Sabbath, the dietary laws, the festivals, are good, godly, and filled with blessing. Observing them is the natural path of biblical life. We believe that Gentiles will find great blessing keeping even the commandments to which they are not obligated out of a heart of love for God, respect for His holy day, imitation of His holy Son, and identification with his people Israel. But we must admit that when it comes to obligation, Galatians 5:3 makes a definite distinction between Jewish and Gentile believers.

1. Tim Hegg, "One Law Movements: A Response to Russ Resnik & Daniel Juster," (TorahResource: 2005, online at www.torahresource.org).
2. Richard Longnecker, Word Biblical Commentary: Galatians, vol. 41 (Dallas: Word Books, 1990), 226.
3. Brad Young, Paul the Jewish Theologian: A Pharisee among Christians, Jews, and Gentiles (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002), 90.
4. Pinchas Lapide and Peter Stuhlmacher, Paul: Rabbi and Apostle ([trans. Lawrence Denef] Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1984), 42.
5. Hilary Le Cornu and Joseph Shulam, A Commentary on the Jewish Roots of Galatians [Jerusalem, Israel: Akademon, 2005], 327.
6. Mark Nanos, The Irony of Galatians (Minneapolis, MN: fortress Press: 2002),253.
7. Ibid., 142.
8. However, notice that Paul does provide a list of prohibitions and a list of positive commandments just a few verses further into the chapter--Galatians 5:14-23. To Paul, these standards of behavior "are self-evident" (Galatians 5:19).
9. Genesis 17:13-14.
10. For example, compare Genesis 9:3 and Leviticus 11.
11. Most scholars identify Gentile obligation to Torah as only those laws given to Noah, but even rabbinic formulations of the Noahide laws include a broader scope of Torah.
12. Peter Tomson, Paul and Jewish Law (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 271-272, cited in Mark Kinzer, Post-Missionary Messianic Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2005), 74.
13. Gordon D. Lee, The New International Commentary on the New testament: The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), 313 n30.
14. Kinzer, Post-Missionary Messianic Judaism, 74.

A Final Thought: As one of the original proponents of "One Law Theology," I had to wrestle with Galatians 5:3. Here's how I explained it. I said that the Galatian believers were relying on conversion to earn salvation and therefore coming under the Torah's condemnation. Thus to earn salvation they would have to keep the whole Torah perfectly because grace no longer applied to them. It's a nice try, but that's not what Paul was talking about. Imagine Paul saying, "If you become Jewish and keep the whole Torah, then you will earn your salvation." A ridiculous explanation, but while I was trying to hold onto One Law, it was the best I could do to sweep a difficult passage under the carpet. It does not work because that's not what Paul says. Instead, he emphatically states that anyone who becomes Jewish is fully obligated to keep the whole Torah.

Links to Related Blog Articles:
Reasoning Together
Moral vs. Ceremonial
An Unbearable Yoke: Acts 15:10

About the Author: D. Thomas Lancaster is Director of Education at First Fruits of Zion, and regular contributor to Messiah Journal. He is the author of the Torah Club programs, and the books Grafted In, Restoration and King of the Jews