Paul’s Argument in Galatians and Romans Is Salvation-Historical, Not General in Nature

It is a big statement to make, but I believe that the vast majority of Christian interpreters of Paul’s teaching in Galatians and Romans have failed to understand Paul’s argument in the historical context of his day. The major theological issue for the early church (as the calling of the Council of Jerusalem proves) was the Judaizing issue. The issue was basically: Can Gentiles be saved as Gentiles, or do they have to come under the framework of the Mosaic covenant to be justified?

The key to understanding Paul’s argument in Galatians and Romans lies in realizing that his argument is a salvation-historical argument. That is, Paul was attempting to answer the question: How are people saved now that the new covenant in Christ has come? Reflecting the covenantal particularism of the orthodox Judaism of the day, the Christian Judaizers believed that, even though the new covenant had come in Jesus Christ, the new covenant fit neatly into the framework of the Mosaic covenant, leaving the law of Moses fully intact, and thereby restricting faith participation to those who were members of Israel. This is why they put pressure on Gentile Christians to be circumcised (if male) and to follow the law of Moses (Acts 15:1, 5). Paul’s argument is that the new covenant in Christ is actually co-extensive with the still yet earlier Abrahamic covenant, under which a gentilic faith response to God was possible (as proved by the faith of uncircumcised, gentilic Abraham himself).

In Galatians and Romans, Paul was concerned to contrast the requirement of faith under old covenant with the requirement of faith under the new covenant. The term law was Pauline and Jewish code for the Mosaic covenant, and the expression the works of the law was the standard Jewish way of referring to the covenant faithfulness that God required of Israel under the terms of the Mosaic covenant as per Ps 119:30, where the writer speaks of faith in terms of setting his heart on torah. Paul was primarily contrasting the old way of covenant faithfulness under the Mosaic covenant (which was required as the proper response under the old covenant, but had recently been superseded with the coming of Christ) with new (Abrahamic-type) way of covenant faithfulness to Jesus as revealed in the gospel, which Gentiles could participate in.

Paul sought to prove that the new covenant is more Abrahamic in nature than Mosaic. His main proof at this point was the evidence of word association in the Scriptures that linked the new covenant with the Abrahamic covenant. Employing a common rabbinic method of exegesis, Paul noted (as we see in Rom 1:16–17; 4:3, 9, 22; Gal 3:6, 11) that the word והאמן and he believed is used of Abraham in Gen 15:6, and the related word אמונה faith is used of the new covenant in Hab 2:4 (which is part of an eschatological prophecy). That common terminology allows us to link the Abrahamic and new covenants together, the implication being that, if Abraham could believe in God and be justified as a Gentile (i.e., before he was circumcised), then the same thing applies under the new covenant: Gentiles can be justified under the new covenant apart from submission to the law of Moses. Paul also argued that the Sinaitic covenant was just a temporary, intervening covenant (a kind of narrowing down of the Abrahamic covenant for the purpose of regulating the singular nation of Israel until the coming of Christ). Therefore, with the coming of Christ, the old covenant has been subsumed by the new covenant, thus allowing Gentiles to participate in salvation through faith in the Messiah. The new covenant is not just a continuation of the old covenant. The new covenant actually eclipses and supersedes the old, allowing righteousness to be opened up to the nations, in fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham (Gen 12:3).

Paul’s argument in Galatians and Romans is a salvation-historical argument that deals specifically with the major historical issue for the church in his day: the Judaizing problem. It is not a general argument about believing versus doing (as many Christian interpreters have traditionally taken it). We need to read and understand Paul’s argument in the historical context of his day, which also requires that we appreciate the Hebraic background of the key (Greek) terms that Paul employed. A greater sensitivity to the orthodox Hebraic concepts underpining Paul’s terminology, and a greater understanding of how the Mosaic covenant actually functioned, would greatly aid the Christian church in understanding the genius of this great apostle of faith.

Water into Wine: The Significance of the Sign in John 2:1–11

The turning of the water into wine is one of Jesus’ most famous miracles. The narrator of John’s Gospel calls this ἀρχὴν τῶν σημείων the first of the signs that Jesus performed during his public ministry (John 2:11; compare with John 20:30–31; 21:25). If this miracle is a sign, it is appropriate to ask what its significance is.

The detail that Jesus created the wine in six stone jars that were used for Jewish ceremonial washing is important (John 2:6). Each jar could hold about 75–115 liters, which means that together they could have held enough water to fill a Jewish ceremonial immersion pool. It can also be implied from Jesus’ instruction to the servants to fill the jars with water (see John 2:7) that these jars were originally empty or close to such. This is also an important detail.

Jesus filling the jars with water, and subsequently transforming this water into good-quality wine, points to the truth that Jesus is the full-fill-ment of Judaism. The empty state of the jars, and the fact that there were six jars, symbolizes the dryness, barrenness, and incompleteness of the old covenant age. The Old Testament was a time when the work of the Holy Spirit was limited. But Jesus has come to give the Spirit and life and joy in abundance; and as a result, the old covenant age of emptiness and thirst has been replaced by the new covenant age of abundance. This fulfills Yahweh’s promise in Isa 44:3: “I will pour out water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit upon your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.” The time of the new covenant would be a time when the thirsty were invited to come and drink, to “buy wine and milk without money and without price” from the Davidic leader and commander of the peoples (Isa 55:1–4). John’s Gospel presents Jesus of Nazareth as being the fulfillment of this Old Testament hope, and the miracle at Cana points to the fact that Jesus has come to change old covenant curse into new covenant blessing (Ezek 34:26; Zech 8:13; Gal 3:13–14).

In addition, the fact that this miracle involved Jesus making wine signifies that Jesus has come in fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies that describe the new covenant age in terms of an abundance of new wine. For example, in Isa 25:6 it is prophesied: “On this mountain [i.e., Jerusalem] Yahweh of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.” This divine provision of wine occurs as part of an eschatological feast, which is connected with the abolition of sadness and death on a universal scale: “And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord Yahweh will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth” (Isa 25:7–8). The Old Testament often associates divine blessing with an abundance of wine (see Deut 33:28; Jer 31:11–12; Joel 2:19–27; Zech 9:16–17).

On a deeper level, the sign performed by Jesus at Cana stands as a witness to God’s plan for the world. In terms of the bigger picture, world history involves a movement from curse to blessing, from sadness to joy, from death to life, corresponding in large part to the movement from the old covenant to the new, wherein God saves the best till last.

This idea about God saving the best till last is emphasized through the way in which the episode in John 2:1–11 finishes. When the servants took some of the water that had been turned into wine to the master of the banquet, the master of the banquet was amazed, not just at the quality of the wine, but also because of the late timing of its serving:

“When the master of the banquet tasted the water which had become wine and did not know where it was from … [he] called the bridegroom, and said to him, ‘Everyone sets the good wine first; and when they have had too much to drink, the inferior. But you have kept the good wine until now’” (John 2:10).

The master of the banquet was presumably unaware of the deeper significance of his statement, but it captures brilliantly God’s way of working in history, and that is exactly why it is recorded here in John’s Gospel. The statement of the master of the banquet that “you have kept the good wine until now” is statement about God’s way of acting in world history through Jesus. By entering the world in the person of Jesus near the end of world history, God has kept the good wine until the end. God has saved the best till last!

Understanding that God is saving the best till last affords us a profound insight into the purpose of the cosmos. God could have arranged for sin never to have entered our world, but he chose not to structure world history that way. God could have sent Jesus and unleashed the full power of his Spirit shortly after Adam and Eve had sinned, but he chose not to structure world history that way. Rather, God would take his time. This is consistent with the fact that God took six long days to create and order the world before it was “completed” and “very good” (Gen 1:31–2:1). The time frame of creation itself points to the idea that God’s plan for human history would get worked out over time. And as part of this process, God was saving the best till last.

But why would God act in this way? Why take his time? We can frequently become impatient with God and his timetable. At times we are unwilling to accept that suffering continues. We sometimes question God as to why he is not seemingly doing anything. Even Mary wanted Jesus to act before his time had come (John 2:3–4). But God is taking his time, and saving the best till last, because that is the process that is most conducive from God’s perspective for his overarching purpose of self-revelation. History is his story; and like with any story, it takes time to tell it. You cannot appreciate the ending of a story without knowing the preceding narrative. Our experience of the negative helps us to appreciate the positive. That is simply the way that God in his infinite wisdom has chosen to structure things.

God’s saving of the best till last is connected with the revelation of Jesus’ miraculous power and his divine glory (John 2:11). The miracle of turning the water into wine was “the beginning of [Jesus’] signs” because it signifies how the best has come with Jesus. This sign tells us that Jesus has come to complete God’s plan of salvation. Jesus is the one who changes emptiness into fullness, sadness into joy, and death into life. In this way, Jesus is the full-fill-ment of the Old Testament hope of life and salvation. In Jesus, the best has been saved till last, and has “now” been revealed.

An Interpretation of Sin Coming Alive in Romans 7:9

Romans 7 has often been interpreted by Protestants as if it is talking about our inability as Christians to keep God’s law. I have argued elsewhere (see “The Significance of the Law in Romans 7”) that this is a wrong interpretation for three main reasons:

(1) the law that is being talked about in Rom 7 is the law of Moses, not the law of God in general;

(2) in Paul’s thinking, God’s people in the new covenant age are no longer under the law, but have been set free from the law (Rom 7:4, 6; see also 6:14);

(3) Paul’s concern in Rom 7 is to argue that the historical function of the law of Moses was to bring about the death of carnal Israel (Rom 7:14) as a way of compounding the death of humanity in Adam (Rom 7:8-11, 13; 5:20) in a manner consistent with the Old Testament prophets’ view of the primary historical function of the Mosaic covenant in salvation history.

The idea that the law in Rom 7 is specifically the law of Moses is confirmed by a small but intriguing detail in Rom 7:9. This verse is translated in the NIV as follows: “Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.” The ESV has the following: “I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.”

There are a couple of interpretive issues to be resolved in relation to this verse. Firstly, what does it mean that Paul was once alive apart from the law? Secondly, what does Paul mean when he says that the commandment came? And thirdly, what does he mean when he says that sin came alive?

Resolving these interpretive issues centers on our understanding of the small and intriguing detail which is the Greek word ἀνέζησεν. This word is a third person, aorist active indicative form of the verb ἀναζάω. The verb ἀναζάω basically means to return to life or to live again. Used in connection with sin, it implies that sin was once alive and then died, before coming to life again when the commandment came.

Sin was alive, then dead, then alive again. How is this pattern to be explained? The common psychological interpretation of Rom 7 as being Paul struggling with sin as a Christian does not fit neatly with this pattern. Perhaps the best that we can say (following this interpretation) is that Paul was dead in sin as a non-Christian, then liberated from sin at his conversion, but then his struggle with God’s law led to sin coming to life again in the sense that its power to control him reasserted itself. But this explanation is rather strained.

The explanation that makes better sense of ἀνέζησεν understands the sin alive, dead, alive pattern as fitting in with the flow of salvation history as summarized by Paul previously in Rom 5:12–21, especially vv. 12–14. In Rom 5:12–14 Paul speaks about how sin came into the world through the sin of Adam, and how death reigned over humanity from the time of Adam until the time of Moses even though that was a time during which sin was not reckoned. During this period of time, “sin was in the world; but sin was not reckoned, because the law was not present” (Rom 5:13). In other words, the time from Adam’s sin to the giving of the law at Sinai was a time during which sin was effectively dead. Sin was around; but because the law of Moses had not yet been promulgated, there was no explicit legal structure that regulated God’s standards of morality in a formal way.

Paul’s teaching in Rom 5:12–14 helps us understand, therefore, how it is that sin could come alive again for carnal Israel. Sin, which had formally speaking lain dormant from the time of the expulsion of Adam until Israel’s encounter with God at Sinai, came alive with the giving of the law of Moses. The old covenant mediated by Moses set up a legal structure through which the sin of God’s people would result in death in a formal and legally-binding way as a result of covenant rebellion.

We can now explain the three interpretive issues identified above. Paul, as a representative of carnal Israel, was once alive apart from the law in the sense that Israel experienced life prior to the coming of the commandment, which equates to the giving of the law at Sinai. Prior to the giving of the law at Sinai, Israel’s relationship with God was loosely regulated through the Abrahamic covenant and ad-hoc laws. There was no strict promulgation and regulation of covenant stipulations. There was no formally regulated sense of the possibility of the covenant curse of death coming down upon God’s people. But with the giving of the law at Sinai, this changed. A strict accounting of covenant response in relation to covenant law would now begin, and the prospects of success were not great from the beginning (as the incident of the sin of the golden calf serves to highlight). The giving of the law at Sinai opened up the possibility—or the reality in God’s plan in salvation history—of Israel sinning “according to likeness of the trespass of Adam” (as per Rom 5:14), i.e., of Israel rebelling against God’s formally promulgated law in like manner to Adam.

The point of Rom 7:9 is to help Paul’s Jewish opponents and Christian audience understand that the giving of the Mosaic covenant served in God’s purposes in salvation history to intensify the problem of human sin. Far from liberating Israel from sin and death, the law (in God’s plan) actually made things worse! The primary historical function of the Mosaic covenant was to render Israel guilty before God (Rom 3:19), and to bring the curse of covenant death down against the nation (Rom 7:10), in order to intensify the trespass of humanity in Adam, as a backdrop for the salvation of Jew and Gentile through the super-abounding grace of God in the new covenant of Jesus Christ (Rom 5:20).

A Summary of Paul's Understanding of Salvation History

The table below is a summary of the major epochs in salvation history according to the Apostle Paul, and how he characteristically described the key soteriological aspects related to these epochs.

A salvation-historical covenantal approach to Paul suggests that Paul used different terms to describe the word of God, and the required response of covenant faith, in different salvation-historical epochs; but that underlying the differing terminology, salvation has always been through faith, i.e., through the reception of God’s word into the heart thanks to the work of the Holy Spirit.

In effect, Paul has reserved the language of faith solely to the faith of “Gentile” Abraham (on the basis of Gen 15:6) and to faith in the new covenant proclamation of the gospel (on the basis of Isa 28:16 and Hab 2:4). For the faith of godly people under the Mosaic covenant, he uses the term the works of the law instead of faith. He does this, reflecting the predominant way in which faith was denoted in the Pentateuch (i.e., it was spoken of in a holistic way as doing torah), in order to highlight how Mosaic faith was a temporary stage in salvation history, and that salvation in the new covenant age is opened up to the Gentiles, the implication being that it is not right for non-Christian Jews to reject Jesus Christ in the name of faithfulness to Moses, nor for Christian Judaizers to force Christian Gentiles to be circumcised (if male) and to keep the law of Moses, as if only Jews could be saved.

The point of Paul’s argument in Galatians and Romans is that the Mosaic covenant compounds the problem of sin and death in Adam, but the fullness of blessing and life is made available only in the new covenant in Christ. The faith response in the new covenant age mirrors that of Gentile Abraham, meaning that in the new covenant age Gentiles can participate in salvation as part of the people of God, just as Gentile Abraham could. In other words, the new covenant doctrine of justification by faith means that the Mosaic doctrine of justification by the works of the law no longer applies. This means that salvation in the new covenant has nothing to do with following Moses, but with submission to the lordship of Christ.

The pattern of salvation history according to Paul is basically:

abAB

where a = disobedience and death through Adam, b = obedience and life through Abraham, A = disobedience and death through the old covenant, and B = obedience and life through the new covenant.

It also needs to be pointed out that abA has been turned into B only through the righteousness and obedience of the one man, Jesus Christ (Rom 5:18-19), so perhaps the pattern of salvation history is best written as:

abACB

where C = the cross of Christ.

SALVATION-HISTORICAL EPOCH	PAULINE TERM FOR THE WORD OF GOD	PAULINE TERM FOR FAITH RESPONSE	HISTORICAL RESPONSE	HISTORICAL RESULT
Adam in the garden	the commandment	obedience	disobedience	death for Adam and for all humanity born of Adam
“Gentile” Abraham	promise	faith	faith	inaugurated partial blessing
Israel under law	the law	the works of the law	disobedience on the part of Israel as a whole	death for the nation as a whole
the church under grace	the gospel	faith	faith on the part of mainly Gentiles but more Jews after the fullness of the Gentiles has come in	inaugurated fullness of blessing and life now leading to consummated fullness of blessing and life for believers at the return of Christ

A Salvation-Historical Approach to Paul: A Response to Dave Woolcott

Thanks, Dave. I understand where you are coming from more now. But there are a few things to think about.

You say that you do not believe that there is more than one covenant (one covenant of grace, I presume you mean), so therefore you take law in Romans to be the issue of law generally. I think Galatians should help you here. Please note Paul’s argument in Gal 4:21-26. Here Paul speaks of two covenants. Now I’m assuming that for you these two covenants correspond to the covenant of works versus the covenant of grace. If I’ve understood you correctly, I can see why you might do that; but it doesn't fit with the exegetical evidence right there in Gal 4:21-26.

Paul takes Isaac and Ishmael as symbolic of two covenants. What are these two covenants? “One is from Mount Sinai” who “corresponds to the present Jerusalem” (Gal 4:24-25). Ishmael is symbolic of the covenant made at Sinai, i.e., the Mosaic covenant, the covenant that enslaves “the present Jerusalem,” i.e., the Jews of Paul's day in their devotion to the Mosaic covenant. Isaac symbolizes “the Jerusalem above,” the new Jerusalem of the new covenant (Gal 4:26).

Now perhaps you will say, “Oh, but the Sinai covenant is singled out here as representing the covenant of works.” But this doesn’t fit the exegetical evidence either. Have a look at Paul’s argument in Gal 3:15-19. Notice what Paul says in Gal 3:17: “the law which came 430 years afterward [i.e., after the promises given to Abraham], does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void.”

Paul is contrasting law with promise, and he means by this: Mosaic covenant (law) versus Abrahamic covenant (promise). Maybe I should call my approach to Paul not simply covenantal (since you claim that your approach is too, and it is) but rather salvation-historical covenantal. Paul is interested in the various covenants of salvation history: the Abrahamic versus the Mosaic versus the new. He wants to compare and contrast them. Why? I’ll talk about that later on below.

So your system of slicing all of the particular covenants of salvation history into two parts corresponding to the covenant of works and the covenant of grace is like obliterating the Lego blocks of salvation history originally put there by God. Your system is easy to follow, easily understood intellectually, but it’s not precise, and more importantly I think it gets in the way of understanding what Paul is on about.

But anyway, back to the rest of Gal 3. I can’t see with your view how you can interpret Gal 3:18 adequately. The law talked about in Gal 3:17 is definitely the Mosaic law, and it would be unnatural to change the sense of this term in the very next verse. Paul means in Gal 3:18 that the inheritance of eternal life cannot be limited to the law of Moses (i.e., the Mosaic covenant, which is exactly what the Judaizers were doing according to Acts 15:1, 5), otherwise the promise that God made to Abraham (the same promise of the inheritance of eternal life) would made void, and God would end up contradicting himself, and be seen not to be faithful to his promise to Abraham. The issue of the day, as Acts 15:1, 5 shows, was that the non-Christian Jews and Christian Judaizers thought that salvation and righteousness could only be obtained through the Mosaic covenant. Paul's argument in Galatians and Romans is directed at that specific issue. It's a salvation-historical issue. Is the Mosaic covenant the be-all-and-end-all of God’s soteric purposes?

Getting back to Gal 3:18, Paul is arguing that the inheritance of eternal life was promised to Abraham. The subsequent channeling of the promise of inheritance through the Mosaic covenant is a temporary narrowing, not a permanent narrowing of the stream of life to just Israel such that Gentiles can't participate in it unless they give up their Gentile citizenship to become Jews through circumcision and membership in the Mosaic covenant.

This salvation-historical approach makes sense, then, of Gal 3:19. The Jewish comeback to Paul would be: okay, if God already promised life to Abraham, what's the point of Sinai? Why the law of Moses and the Mosaic covenant? Isn’t that the pinnacle of God's purposes? No, says Paul. The law of Moses was given to Israel to increase the problem of sin, not to solve it, until the promised Messianic offspring arrived on the scene.

Jump over to Gal 3:23-29. How can you explain with your approach the fact that Paul could talk about a time before faith came except by sucking out of Paul’s words his intended sense of temporality? “Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law” (Gal 3:23). The phrase the law here, following on from the discussion in Gal 3:15-19, is the law of Moses, not law in general. Notice also how the term faith is christologically defined in Gal 3:23-25. “Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed” (Gal 3:23), which parallels “until Christ came” (Gal 4:24). The coming of Christ historically means the coming of faith (by the way, just as Hab 2:4 prophesied).

In Paul’s way of thinking faith existed while Abraham was a Gentile, but the Mosaic covenant put Israel under the works of the law, but with a view to everything reverting back to faith with the coming of the Messiah. Paul’s law/faith distinction here is not anthropological, but salvation-historical. The law of Moses was “our guardian,” i.e., a guardian over Israel, “until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith” (Gal 3:24). “But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian” (Gal 3:25). Paul is not talking about abstract theological concepts, but the flow of the covenants in the salvation-historical time-space continuum.

You say that every covenant has law. That is true as a theological statement. But we need to understand Paul on his own terms. His use of terms such as law, faith, works, grace, promise, etc., is typical of a Jewish rabbi who would take a key word in a passage of Scripture to designate the whole of that section of Scripture or a particular epoch in salvation history. You say faith always exists through history, that law always exists. That is true theologically, but not true of Paul’s usage. For Paul promise solely designates the Abrahamic covenant (even though theologically and in terms of literary genre God's revelation to Abraham contains elements of both promise and law). In a similar way law generally stands for the Mosaic covenant. Grace stands for the new covenant age. Faith is the appropriate response in the ages of promise and grace. Theologically speaking faith also existed in the age of law, but Paul in his Jewish rabbinical way doesn’t use his language that way. For him, works (i.e., Mosaic faith) are the appropriate response to law. He is actually taking key terms from Scripture to designate by them the salvation-historical epochs in which they occur.

Please also consider Rom 5:12-21. On your view, how can you say that “sin was in the world before the law was given” (Rom 5:13)? For you law has always been around, but that is not Paul’s usage. Clearly in Rom 5:13, the law in question is the Mosaic law. The period where there was sin but no law corresponds in Rom 5:14 with the period from post-fall Adam to Moses at Sinai. Notice how Paul is interested in the epochs of salvation history.

Please understand Rom 5:20. This is a key verse: “the law came in to increase the trespass” in order that grace might abound. The term the law here must be defined in the context of the law in Rom 5:13. In other words, the law is the law of Moses. The trespass in the context is the trespass of the one man, Adam. Paul’s meaning is this: the Mosaic law was given to Israel in order to compound the fall of Adam, in order to highlight the grace of God revealed in Christ. It's a salvation-historical argument.

I limit Paul’s use of the law to the Mosaic law in the vast majority of instances because the exegetical evidence points that way, as does the historical evidence of Acts 15:1, 5. Romans 7 is about fleshly Israel, i.e., old covenant Israel. Romans 8 is about how enslaved Israel (and the Gentiles) can be set free (the Gentiles set free from sin in Adam) by the new covenant in Christ. That is true to Paul’s own personal experience. The law of Moses that he was serving, which he thought was the way of life, actually “deceived” him and led him to oppose Christ. He thought he was serving God, but was doing the exact opposite. But then finally he saw the risen Lord Jesus, and realized that Jesus was the Messiah, and that the Jewish zeal for the law of Moses was leading the Jews astray.

Paul is primarily talking about the law of Moses, not law in general. But there is a connection between the two—somewhat. For Paul, there is a connection between the law and the commandment. For Paul the commandment (at least in Rom 5:12-21) stands for the law given to Adam. Paul in effect argues in Rom 5:20 and Rom 7:7-11 that the Mosaic law replicates and compounds the effect of Adamic law, so there is a connection, but we have to see the salvation-historical connections before we get to that point, otherwise we are not doing justice to Paul’s use of language and his teaching.

Why is Paul interested in comparing the various covenantal epochs of salvation history? Because Jewish devotion to the Mosaic covenant was getting in the way of them receiving Christ, and getting in the way of his ministry to Gentiles. More significantly, by sticking to Moses, the lordship of Christ, God’s word, and God’s sovereignty in having the right to structure salvation history in the manner of his choosing, were being denied. The problem that Paul was dealing with in Galatians and Romans is primarily the problem of Jewish zeal for the law of Moses: see Rom 10:2 and Acts 21:20.

Now having said all that, I strongly agree with you, however, concerning how we as Christians are made to be slaves of righteousness through Christ and the Spirit. Paul obviously believed that the promise of Jer 31:33 was fulfilled in Christians. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (eschatological torah, i.e., the gospel) has set you (Jews) free from the (Mosaic) law of sin and death (Rom 8:2). Just as Jer 31:31-33 prophesies, the law of Moses (which brought about the sin and death of Israel, which compounds the problem of sin in Adam) has been transformed by Christ and the outpouring of the Spirit, that with the (eschatological) law (of the gospel) written in our hearts, we have been set free to serve God as slaves of righteousness. And the same applies to the Gentiles in Adam.

It’s ironic that, in some ways, the situation for the Jews was worse than that of the Gentiles. The Gentiles were bound up in sin through Adam, but the Jews doubly bound: in Adam and also through the law of Moses! But “thanks be to God through Jesus Christ,” who sets us free from the commandment of sin and death in Adam, as well as the law of sin and death in Moses. Gentile and Jew, both equally set free through the new covenant in Christ!