Who Received the Torah at Sinai

This claim is heard in many forms: that the Torah was given to people who had not been born again, to slaves of the flesh, and it was meant for them only until Messiah came. Its task was to hold sin back and to show people their sin, and once Messiah arrived, that task was finished.

The claim points to Galatians, where Paul calls the law a guardian that led us to Messiah and then says that we are no longer under that guardian. It seems a closed case: a guardian until a certain time, and after that, no guardian at all.

Part of this is true, for the Torah does show sin for what it is. But two words in the claim need testing: “slaves” and “until.” To whom was the Torah given? And when Paul says “no longer,” what exactly is no longer?

Who Stood at the Mountain

The Torah gives its own answer. Before God gave a single command at Sinai, He said this:

Exodus 20:2 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt, from the house of servants.

These are the first words. Before any “you shall” or “you shall not,” God tells the people who He is and what He has already done for them. The people at Sinai were not slaves waiting to be freed; they had been freed already.

The Hebrew word for servant here is ebed עֶבֶד eh'-bed, and Egypt was “the house of servants.” That is what they had been. And how had they come out? Less than three months earlier, in Egypt, they had put the blood of the lamb on their doorposts, and the LORD had said, “I will see the blood and will pass over you” (Exodus 12:13). They stood at the mountain as a people already delivered by the blood of the lamb.

The order in the Torah, then, is the same order we saw in Chapter 2: salvation comes first, and the commandments come after. The Torah was not handed to slaves so that they might earn their way out of Egypt. It was given to a redeemed people who were already out.

Picture a child who has just been adopted. The papers are signed, and he is brought home, a son now, fully and legally. Then, over dinner on that first night, he begins to learn how this family lives: when they eat, how they speak to one another, and what they do on the day of rest. No one imagines that the house rules made him a son. The rules were given to him because he was already a son.

Not Slaves, but Priests

At the foot of the mountain, God described what this redeemed people would be:

Exodus 19:5-6 And now, if you will indeed hearken to My voice and keep My covenant (berit בְּרִית ber-eeth'), then you shall be to Me a treasured possession from among all the peoples; for all the earth is Mine. And you yourselves shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which you shall speak to the sons of Israel."

No one would describe slaves of the flesh as “a treasured possession” or as “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” These are the words God uses for the people He has brought to Himself, and it was to them that He gave His covenant and His commandments.

The Law Is Not Fleshly

The claim also says that the Torah was for people of the flesh. Paul says something quite different:

Romans 7:12 So then, the nomos νόμος nom'-os(law) is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

Two verses later he shows where the problem really lies:

Romans 7:14 For we know that the nomos(law) is spiritual, but I am sarx σάρξ sarx(flesh)ly, sold under sin.

The sentence has two halves: “the nomos(law) is spiritual,” “but I am sarx(flesh)ly.” Sarx (σάρξ) is flesh. What is of the flesh is not the law but the “I.” The law stands on the side of the spirit, and the person on the side of the flesh. As we saw in Book 1, when we read the opening verses of Romans 7, Paul is not tearing down the Torah in Romans 7.

In the next chapter of Romans, Paul says which way the hostility runs:

Romans 8:7 Because the phronema φρόνημα fron'-ay-mah(mindset) of the sarx(flesh) is hostility toward God, for it does not submit to the nomos(law) of God — indeed it cannot —

The flesh does not submit to the law of God, and it cannot. The flesh and the Torah are therefore not partners but opponents, and a mind set on the flesh fights the law of God. It is very strange, then, to say that the law was made for the flesh and that the spiritual person has moved beyond it. Paul says the reverse.

The Guardian

Now we turn to Galatians itself:

Galatians 3:23-25 But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the nomos(law), being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. Therefore the nomos(law) has become our paidagogos παιδαγωγός pahee-dag-o-gos'(guardian-instructor) to lead us to Messiah, so that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a paidagogos(guardian-instructor).

The key word is paidagogos (παιδαγωγός). In Paul’s world this was not a teacher in a classroom but a household slave who watched over a child. He walked the boy to school and back, kept him out of trouble, and disciplined him when he misbehaved, and the child lived under his watch.

The other words Paul uses for that time point the same way: “kept in custody” and “shut up.” This is the language of being held under guard. Paul is describing what it was like, before faith came, to live under the law’s watch and under its condemnation.

When he says “we are no longer under a paidagogos(guardian-instructor),” then, he means that we are no longer shut up under that watch and that condemnation. He does not say that the commandments themselves have been taken away. When a son grows up, the household slave no longer walks him to school, but the way his father taught him to live does not vanish on that day. He simply lives it now as a grown son rather than as a child under guard.

Paul also says why the guardian was there at all: “to lead us to Messiah, so that we may be justified by faith.” The guardian’s whole purpose was to bring us to Messiah for justification. That is step two in the order of salvation set out in Chapter 2, and the verse says nothing about step three, sanctification, being cancelled.

Paul Saw It Coming

Paul knew that his words about the law could be misunderstood, so he closed off that reading himself:

Romans 6:15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under nomos(law) but under charis χάρις khar'-ece(grace)? May it never be!

To be “not under nomos(law) but under charis(grace)” does not mean to be free to sin; Paul’s own answer to that idea is “May it never be!” And since, as we saw in Chapter 3, sin is anomia ἀνομία an-om-ee'-ah, Torah-lessness (1 John 3:4), being under grace cannot mean being free to live without the Torah.

Yeshua had already settled the question of “until”:

Matthew 5:18 For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one iota ἰῶτα ee-o'-tah(smallest Greek letter) or one keraia κεραία ker-ah'-yah(stroke of a letter) will pass away from the nomos(law) until all things are accomplished.

Book 1 looked at these words closely. Here only the time limit concerns us. The Torah lasts “until heaven and earth pass away.” The sky is still above us and the ground still beneath our feet. The “until” in Yeshua’s words has not yet arrived.

What the Guardian Never Did

The claim, then, gets two things wrong. The Torah was not given to slaves of the flesh. It was given to a people already redeemed by the blood of the lamb, a kingdom of priests. And the “until” in Galatians does not mark the end of the commandments. It marks the end of being kept in custody under the law’s condemnation, because faith has come and we are justified in Messiah.

A harder objection still remains. Even if the Torah is holy and spiritual, can keeping it actually change a person? Many sincere believers say that it cannot: no one overcomes sin by keeping the law, and trying to become holier that way is not God’s way. The answer to that objection lies in what God Himself says His way is.