“Do We Overthrow the Law?”: Reexamining Paul’s View of Torah in Romans
Did the apostle Paul reject the Torah (the Law of Moses) as an authoritative standard of conduct for followers of the Messiah? While many interpreters believe that he did, several passages in Romans point in a different direction.
This article offers a pronomian reading of some of Paul’s statements about the Torah in Romans. In contrast to the antinomian view, a pronomian view holds that the Torah continues to function as divine instruction for believers. The discussion will begin with an examination of several passages in which Paul speaks positively about the Torah and its ongoing authority, then we will consider several statements often read as evidence that he rejected the Torah. Finally, we will examine Paul’s teaching on circumcision, food, and days to determine whether he set aside the Torah’s so-called “ceremonial” commandments.
The evidence throughout Romans suggests that Paul’s gospel is not opposed to the Torah. Rather, Paul presents the Spirit as the means by which God empowers his people to live in obedience to the Torah.
Introduction
Did the apostle Paul reject the Torah as an authoritative standard of conduct for followers of the Messiah? Some modern interpreters insist that he did. Andy Stanley, for example, argues that “Paul did not consider the law of Moses the go-to source for Christian behavior.”[1] He goes even further, insisting that the Torah “has no say in the life of a believer. None.”[2]
Several statements in Romans, however, call Stanley’s interpretation of Paul’s view of the Torah into question. Romans certainly contains passages that can sound negative toward the Law of Moses when read in isolation. Yet the same letter also contains some of Paul’s clearest affirmations of the Torah’s ongoing validity. Any assessment of Paul’s view of the Torah must therefore account for both sets of statements and consider how they fit together within the argument of Romans.
Paul’s Pronomian Statements in Romans
We will begin by considering several passages in which Paul speaks positively about the Torah and treats it as a standard of righteous conduct for believers.
In Romans 2:13, Paul writes, “For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.” In context, Paul is warning that merely possessing or hearing the Torah will not protect anyone from God’s impartial judgment. Rather, what matters is actually doing the Torah (Rom. 2:6–13). Paul applies this standard to Jews and Gentiles alike. Indeed, even Gentiles who were not raised with the Torah may sometimes “do what the law requires” (Rom. 2:14–16). As Oliver Marjot observes, Paul requires that “both groups [be] held to the same standard,” namely, “precisely the standard of the Torah.”[3]
Paul’s larger argument is that Jews and Gentiles have all sinned, so no one can secure justification before God through obedience to the Torah (Rom. 3:9–10, 20, 23). Yet Paul does not respond to this universal failure by discarding the Torah. Instead, as Marjot puts it, Paul gives “an enduring role to the Torah as the benchmark of human righteousness.”[4] In other words, God’s grace does not alter the standard by which righteous conduct is defined. The Torah still expresses the righteousness God desires, even though sinners need justification through the Messiah and the empowering work of the Spirit to live according to that standard (Rom. 3:21–26; 8:2–4).
Paul makes this point even more directly in Romans 3:31. After teaching that a person is justified by faith rather than by “works of the law” (Rom. 3:28), Paul anticipates an obvious objection: “Do we then overthrow the law by this faith?” His answer is emphatic: “By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.” In language reminiscent of Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:17–20,[5] Paul denies that his message of justification by faith invalidates the Torah. Although “works of the law” are not the basis of justification, the faith by which a person is justified does not undermine the Torah. For Paul, genuine faith does not conflict with the Torah’s continuing authority.
A number of scholars have made the same observation. Gregory Tatum argues that Romans 3:31 shows that the Torah “endures in the eschatological community.” Tatum explains further: “Distinguishing the Torah as received by the pre-justified flesh (ὁ νόμος τῶν ἔργων) from the Torah as received by the justified believers who have received the Spirit (ὁ νόμος πίστεως), Paul defends the Torah itself.”[6] Ryan D. Collman offers a similar interpretation: “[H]as the law been invalidated by trust (Rom 3:31)? Of course not—μὴ γένοιτο—Paul says. The case is actually the opposite; ‘we maintain the validity of the law.’ The difference is that they can now effortlessly fulfill the dikaioma [righteousness] of the law because they walk by the divine pneuma [Spirit] and not by the flesh.”[7] Jason A. Staples reaches a similar conclusion: “Paul asserts that he in no way opposes the Torah but instead establishes it (Rom 3:31), even arguing that one must receive the spirit in accordance with his gospel to properly fulfill the just requirements of the Torah (Rom 2:29; 8:4).”[8] These readings follow the basic flow of Paul’s argument: faith does not abolish the Torah but enables believers to obey its righteous instruction.
As the argument of Romans develops, Paul further demonstrates that justification by faith does not render the Torah irrelevant to believers. In Romans 7:7, he explains that the Torah clearly identifies sin: “If it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet’” (cf. Exod. 20:17; Deut. 5:21). Although sin can exploit the commandment as an opportunity to provoke disobedience and bring about death (Rom. 7:8–11), Paul places the blame squarely upon sin and not the Torah. The Torah itself remains “holy and righteous and good,” and Paul even says that he “delights” in it (Rom. 7:12–13, 22; cf. Ps. 19:7–14; 119:77, 92, 174). Accordingly, when Paul asks whether believers should continue in sin so that grace may abound, he responds, “By no means!” (Rom. 6:1–2) Those who have been united with the Messiah in his death and resurrection have died to sin and must no longer live as its slaves (Rom. 6:3–7, 11–14). Grace, therefore, does not give believers permission to persist in behavior that the Torah identifies as sinful (Rom. 6:15–19).
This raises an important question: how can believers actually overcome sin? Paul acknowledges that knowing and desiring what is right does not by itself provide the ability to do it: “I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out” (Rom. 7:18). He later explains that the mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God and “does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot” (Rom. 8:7). The problem, then, lies not with the Torah but with sin working through the flesh. As Staples explains, “since the Torah is good, the fact that the command resulted in death reveals the true source of that death—sin dwelling in the ‘fleshly’ (σάρκινος) inclination of those to whom the command was given, who are not only unable to keep the command but inclined to rebel against it (7:8–9; 14; 8:7).”[9] The Torah reveals and condemns sin, but it cannot by itself free people from sin’s power. Again, Paul attributes this inability not to any defect in the Torah but to the weakness of the flesh (Rom. 7:12–14; 8:3).
Romans 8 explains how God addresses this problem. Through the Messiah and the indwelling Spirit, God accomplishes what the Torah could not accomplish. By sending his Son, God condemns sin in the flesh “in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us,” those who walk according to the Spirit (Rom. 8:2–4). The Spirit changes the believer’s orientation and enables them to put sinful deeds to death (Rom. 8:5–6, 9–14). Paul’s language echoes the prophetic promises that God would write his Torah on his people’s hearts and place his Spirit within them so that they could walk in his statutes and obey his ordinances (Jer. 31:31–33; Ezek. 36:26–27). The solution to human disobedience, then, is not a Torah-free life but a Spirit-empowered life.
Romans 13 shows how this Spirit-empowered obedience operates in practice. Paul writes that “the one who loves another has fulfilled the law” and that “love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13:8, 10). Yet love does not replace the Torah. Instead, Paul appeals to the Torah to explain what love requires.[10] He cites the commandments against adultery, murder, theft, and coveting and then includes these—and “any other commandment”—under Leviticus 19:18: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Rom. 13:9).[11] Since love “does no wrong to a neighbor,” fulfilling the Torah means abstaining from adultery, violence, theft, covetousness, and every other act that harms another person (Rom. 13:9–10). For Paul, then, the Torah’s specific commandments illustrate how the love produced by the Spirit is to be lived out in practice.[12]
These statements examined above are hardly what we would expect from Paul if he had rejected the Torah after becoming a follower of the Messiah. Paul certainly denies that Torah observance can justify sinners or rescue them from sin’s power (Rom. 3:20, 28). However, he never concludes that believers are therefore free to disregard God’s commandments. Instead, he distinguishes relying on “works of the law” for justification from the Spirit-enabled obedience that follows justification. Those who walk according to the Spirit fulfill the Torah’s righteous requirement (Rom. 8:4).
Reconsidering Paul’s Apparently Antinomian Statements in Romans
Several other passages in Romans—including 6:14, 7:4–6, and 10:4—appear, at first glance, to present a more negative view of the Torah. A full treatment of each passage is beyond the scope of this article. For the present argument, however, it is enough to consider whether these passages must be read in an antinomian way or whether they can be understood consistently with Paul’s positive statements about the Torah elsewhere in Romans.
Romans 6:14 is one of the most familiar examples: “Sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” This statement is frequently taken to mean that believers are no longer subject to the Torah as a standard of conduct. The immediate context, however, concerns freedom from sin’s dominion, not freedom to disregard God’s commandments (Rom. 6:1–14). In this context, being “under law” can be understood as being under the Torah’s condemnation because of sin. By contrast, being “under grace” means that believers have been forgiven, united with the Messiah, and transferred into a new realm in which sin no longer rules them (Rom. 5:20–21; 6:4–11). Charles E. B. Cranfield makes this point when he argues that Paul has the Torah’s condemning function in view: “Paul is here thinking not of the law generally but of the law as condemning sinners; for, since χάρις [‘grace’] denotes God’s undeserved favour, the natural opposite to ὑπὸ̀ χάριν [‘under grace’] is ‘under God’s disfavor or condemnation.’”[13] Paul’s next question confirms that he is not describing a Torah-free life: “Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!” (Rom. 6:15). Whatever “not under law” means, then, it does not mean that believers may now practice what God calls sin. Paul’s point is that grace has freed believers from sin’s dominion so that they can present themselves to God as instruments of righteousness (Rom. 6:12–13, 16–19).
Paul’s statements in Romans 7:4 and 7:6 may likewise appear difficult at first glance. Paul says that believers have “died to the law through the body of Christ” and have been “released from the law.” Some interpreters take these statements to mean that the Torah’s commandments no longer have any authority over believers. For instance, as Andy Stanley remarks, “According to Paul, Jesus followers are dead the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments have no authority over you. None. To be clear: Thou shalt not obey the Ten Commandments.”[14]
But once again, the context points to the Torah’s condemning function rather than to its commandments as such. All people have sinned, and the Torah exposes that sin and announces its penalty: death (Rom. 3:20, 23; 6:23; 7:7). Through their union with the Messiah’s death, however, believers have already passed through that sentence and have been released from slavery to sin and from the condemnation that falls on those under sin’s power (Rom. 6:2–7, 20–22). This is why dying to sin and dying to the Law are closely related (cf. Rom. 6:2, 7, 10). Believers die to sin as their former master and to the Law insofar as it condemns them for serving that master.[15] Paul’s marriage analogy in Romans 7:1–3 illustrates this change in status. Just as death releases a woman from the marriage bond that kept her from belonging to another husband, death with the Messiah releases believers from their former status as slaves to sin so that they may belong to the risen Messiah and “bear fruit for God” (Rom. 7:4).
This interpretation also helps explain Paul’s contrast between serving “in the new way of the Spirit” and “in the old way of the written code” (Rom. 7:6). When people are governed by the flesh, sin uses the written commandment to provoke rebellion, and therefore the Torah can only pronounce the sentence of death (Rom. 7:5, 8–13; 8:7). But through the Messiah, believers are delivered from the realm of sin and death. Through the Spirit, they are empowered to do what the written commandment could prescribe but could not produce in sinful flesh (Rom. 7:24–25; 8:1–4). Consequently, being “released from the law” does not mean that the Torah has become unnecessary. Rather, it means that believers are released from the sin-dominated realm in which the Torah only condemns. As J. Brian Tucker writes:
To die and be released from the law means to be free from its condemning effects, now that righteousness is facilitated through Christ. The curse, including the difficulties of our day-to-day lived existence, is overturned through the Spirit, but not in a way in which life in the Spirit makes the law unnecessary or results in a law-free existence.[16]
Romans 10:4 presents one more apparent difficulty because most English translations say that “Christ is the end of the law,” which many interpreters understand to mean that the Messiah ended the law. Although τέλος (“end”) can denote an endpoint, goal, or culmination,[17] the meaning of this verse depends less on the word’s precise nuance than on how Paul’s statement functions within his overall argument. Staples contends that Romans 10:4 should be read within Paul’s larger concern for Israel’s restoration. From this perspective, Paul is participating in an early Jewish debate over the relationship between Israel’s righteousness and its restoration. The question was whether Israel must first become righteous in order to bring about its restoration, or whether God must first act to make Israel righteous.[18] This framework helps explain Paul’s use of Deuteronomy 30:11–14 in Romans 10:6–8. When Paul warns against asking who will ascend or descend to “bring” the Messiah, he opposes the idea that Israel must attain sufficient righteousness to bring about the Messiah and the promised restoration. Instead, God has already acted by sending the Messiah. As Staples summarizes, “rather than Israel’s justness bringing the messiah, the messiah already came to make Israel just.”[19] Israel’s problem, therefore, was not the Torah itself but the attempt to establish righteousness on Israel’s own terms, rather than submitting to the righteousness God had already provided through the Messiah (Rom. 9:30–10:3).
Within this framework, identifying the Messiah as the τέλος of the Torah does not mean that he abolishes the Torah. This becomes clearer in the verses that follow. Immediately after Romans 10:4, Paul quotes Leviticus 18:5: “The person who does the commandments shall live by them.” Staples understands Paul to identify the Messiah as the faithful one who fulfilled this promise. Through his obedience and resurrection, the Messiah attained the life promised by the Torah and can now extend righteousness and life to others through the Spirit. As Staples explains, “Rather than Israel fulfilling Lev 18:5b to bring the messiah and redemption, the messiah fulfilled Lev 18:5b and now has the authority to justify Israel and extend the blessing of Abraham to the nations.”[20]
The Messiah’s fulfillment of this promise, however, does not render the Torah irrelevant. Rather, it makes possible the obedience that Israel could not produce through the flesh. Those who receive the Spirit are empowered to live according to God’s commandments. As Staples writes, “in fulfillment of the new covenant promise, the ‘Messiah-fidelity’ dispensed via the spirit enables obedience for all ‘in Messiah.’”[21] This interpretation fits the pattern we have already seen elsewhere in Romans: the Messiah and the Spirit accomplish what sinful human beings could not accomplish on their own, enabling the Torah’s righteous requirement to be fulfilled in God’s people (Rom. 8:2–4). Therefore, within Paul’s larger argument, Romans 10:4 identifies the Messiah as the one through whom the Torah’s promises of righteousness and life reach their intended outcome. Rather than abolishing the Torah, the Messiah brings about the righteousness and life it promises and, through the Spirit, enables the obedience it requires.
In sum, these apparently negative passages do not overturn Paul’s positive statements about the Torah. The overall point is that the Torah cannot justify sinners, break sin’s power, or produce obedience. God accomplishes those works through the Messiah and the Spirit. Freedom from condemnation and sin’s power, however, is not freedom from the Torah as a standard of conduct. From a pronomian perspective, believers are released from the Torah as an instrument of condemnation and from the fleshly realm in which sin turns the commandment into an occasion for death. Grace frees them to serve God in the Spirit, bear righteous fruit, and fulfill the Torah’s righteous requirements.
Paul’s Teaching on Circumcision
Paul’s teaching on circumcision is also sometimes cited as evidence that he rejected the Torah, or at least its so-called “ceremonial” commandments. However, while Paul denies that physical circumcision can protect a disobedient Jew from God’s judgment, he does not reject circumcision itself. In fact, he states that “circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law” (Rom. 2:25). His criticism is directed at one’s confidence in circumcision without obedience: “If you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision” (Rom. 2:25). Conversely, an uncircumcised Gentile who keeps the Torah’s commandments will be regarded as circumcised (Rom. 2:26–27). Paul’s point is not that circumcision has become invalid, but that it cannot compensate for disobedience.
Paul develops this point by distinguishing outward circumcision from the inward faithfulness it is meant to reflect. He writes that true Jewish faithfulness is not merely outward but requires circumcision to be “a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter” (Rom. 2:28–29). Paul is not replacing physical circumcision with an exclusively spiritual circumcision. Rather, the Torah and the Prophets had already called circumcised Israelites to circumcise their hearts (Deut. 10:16; 30:6; Jer. 4:4). Paul therefore applies this familiar prophetic criticism to Jews who possess the outward sign but lack the inward faithfulness God desires. His point is not that physical circumcision has become invalid, but that the outward sign must be accompanied by circumcision of the heart. Like Moses and Jeremiah, Paul denies that physical circumcision alone is sufficient.
The question Paul asks next confirms that he did not reject circumcision itself: “Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision?” (Rom. 3:1). If Paul had just declared Jewish identity and physical circumcision irrelevant, the expected answer would be “none.” Instead, he says, “Much in every way” (Rom. 3:2). Marjot therefore argues that Paul “passionately defends” both “the real advantage of being ethnically Jewish” and “the real value of physical circumcision.”[22] Paul’s argument distinguishes the genuine value of circumcision from a false confidence in circumcision as a guarantee of justification. Circumcision has value, but it does not exempt anyone from God’s impartial judgment or eliminate the need for inward transformation.
Romans 4 makes a related distinction. Abraham was counted righteous by faith while he was still uncircumcised, and only later did he receive circumcision as “a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith” (Rom. 4:9–11; cf. Gen. 15:6; 17:10–14). As Staples observes, circumcision “was not an original component of the covenant with Abraham, nor was it the means of Abraham’s justification.”[23] Indeed, circumcision followed God’s promise and Abraham’s justification by faith. For that reason, circumcision cannot be a prerequisite for uncircumcised Gentiles to become Abraham’s children through faith. Staples therefore argues that Paul objects not to circumcision itself but to using it “as a rite of entrance into Israel for gentiles already having received the spirit.”[24] Thus, according to Romans 4, while circumcision does not justify or make Gentiles part of God’s people, this does not mean it is invalid. Paul can still say that it has “value” (Rom. 2:25; 3:1–2).
Paul’s Teaching on Days and Foods
Romans 14 is frequently cited as evidence that Paul rejected the Torah’s dietary laws and holy days (Lev. 11, 23). In this chapter, Paul describes a dispute in which some believers eat only vegetables while others believe they may eat anything (Rom. 14:2). He also mentions abstaining from wine and a disagreement over the significance of certain days (Rom. 14:5, 21). A common interpretation of this chapter is that the “weak” (Rom. 14:1–2; 15:1) were keeping the Torah’s dietary laws, Sabbaths, and festivals, while the “strong” (Rom. 15:1) understood that these commandments were no longer valid. The problem, however, is that Paul never identifies the disputed foods and days with the Torah’s dietary laws or holy days. In fact, several details in the text suggest that a different issue is in view.[25]
First, the eating practices described in Romans 14 do not readily correspond to the Torah’s dietary laws. The Torah prohibits meat from certain animals, but it does not require people to avoid meat altogether, nor does it generally prohibit wine (Lev. 11:1–47; Deut. 14:3–21).[26] The decision of some believers to eat only vegetables and avoid wine therefore seems to arise from a different concern. One plausible explanation is that these believers wished to avoid food and drink associated with idolatry. Because meat and wine sold in the Roman marketplace could have come from pagan sacrifices, abstaining from meat and wine altogether would therefore have provided a simple way to avoid consuming anything potentially associated with idol worship.[27]
Paul’s language in Romans 14:14 supports this interpretation. He writes, “I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean.” The word translated “unclean” is κοινός, which ordinarily means “common” or “shared” and can describe something regarded as defiled through association with idolatry.[28] By contrast, the Septuagint uses ἀκάθαρτος for animals designated as “unclean” in Leviticus 11. Therefore, Paul’s use of κοινός suggests that he is not referring to animals that the Torah designates as unclean.[29] Instead, he is referring to otherwise permissible food that some believers regarded as defiled because of a possible connection with idolatrous worship.
This reading becomes even more plausible when we consider the numerous parallels between Romans 14 and Paul’s discussion of idol food in 1 Corinthians 8–10. Both passages speak about “weak” believers (Rom. 14:1; 15:1; 1 Cor. 8:9; 9:22), eating with thanksgiving (Rom. 14:6; 1 Cor. 10:30–31), the danger of “destroying” another believer through one’s eating (Rom. 14:15; 1 Cor. 8:11), the fact that food does not determine a person’s standing before God (Rom. 14:17; 1 Cor. 8:8), the need to pursue what “builds up” (Rom. 14:19; 1 Cor. 10:23), and the willingness to abstain from meat rather than cause someone to stumble (Rom. 14:21; 1 Cor. 8:13). Since 1 Corinthians explicitly deals with food associated with idolatry, these parallels give us good reason to think Romans 14 addresses a similar issue.[30]
The disputed “days” in Romans 14:5 may be connected with the same concern. Paul never identifies these “days” as Sabbaths or biblical festivals. His language also does not clearly describe religious observance. The verb translated “esteems” in verse 5 is κρίνω, which commonly means to judge or make a determination, while φρονέω (“observes”) in verse 6 can mean to think about, regard, or be mindful of something.[31] Paul’s wording is therefore consistent with believers taking certain days into account for practical reasons rather than observing them as sacred days. These “days” may have been pagan festival days, when more sacrifices were performed, resulting in larger quantities of sacrificial meat and wine entering the Roman marketplace.[32] Consequently, some believers may have exercised particular caution about what they ate on these days, while others saw no reason to distinguish them from other days. Like Paul, the latter may have regarded such food as not inherently defiled by its prior association with idols (Rom. 14:14; cf. 1 Cor. 8:4, 8; 10:25–26) and therefore felt no need to avoid meat and wine sold in the marketplace on pagan festival days. If this reading is correct, Paul is not discussing whether believers should observe the Torah’s holy days at all.
Romans 14 therefore provides no clear basis for concluding that Paul rejected the Torah’s dietary laws or holy days. Instead, the dispute may have concerned food potentially associated with pagan sacrifice and particular days when such food was more likely to enter the marketplace.
Conclusion
The evidence surveyed in Romans suggests that Paul did not reject the Torah as an authoritative standard of conduct for followers of the Messiah. He denies that Torah observance can justify sinners or free them from sin’s power, but he continues to speak of the Torah as the standard of righteous conduct. He affirms that faith does not overthrow the Torah but upholds it, that the Torah remains “holy and righteous and good,” and that believers who walk according to the Spirit fulfill its righteous requirements through love. Paul’s statements about being “under grace” and dying to the Law can be understood as describing believers’ freedom from sin’s dominion and condemnation, while his identification of the Messiah as the τέλος of the Torah presents the Messiah as the one through whom the Torah’s promises of righteousness and life are realized.
Paul’s teaching on circumcision, food, and days similarly do not require the conclusion that he rejected the Torah. He denies that circumcision can justify, compensate for disobedience, or function as a requirement for Gentile inclusion, yet he still affirms its “value.” Likewise, instead of referring to the Torah’s dietary laws and holy days, the dispute over food and days in Romans 14 may be addressing concerns about consuming meat and wine potentially associated with idolatrous sacrifice, particularly on pagan festival days when larger quantities of sacrificial meat and wine may have entered the marketplace.
Overall, Romans supports a pronomian understanding of Paul’s view of the Torah: justification is by God’s grace received through faith, while the Torah continues to provide authoritative instruction for the righteous life that the Spirit empowers believers to live.
[1] Andy Stanley, Irresistible: Reclaiming the New that Jesus Unleashed for the World (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2018), 130
[2] Stanley, Irresistible, 136.
[3] Oliver Marjot, “Israel, Torah and Christ in Matthew and Romans: A Conversation ‘within Judaism’” (PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2022), 100.
[4] Marjot, “Israel, Torah and Christ,” 100.
[5] For a thorough examination of this passage, see David Wilber, How Jesus Fulfilled the Law: A Pronomian Pocket Guide to Matthew 5:17–20 (Clover, SC: Pronomian Publishing, 2024).
[6] Gregory Tatum, “‘To the Jew First’ (Romans 1:16): Paul’s Defense of Jewish Privilege in Romans,” in Celebrating Paul: Festschrift in Honor of Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, O.P., and Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., ed. Peter Pitaler (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2023), 278.
[7] Ryan D. Collman, “For Who Has Known the Mind of the Apostle? Paul, the Law, and His Syngeneis in the Messiah,” in Paul within Judaism: Perspectives on Paul and Jewish Identity, ed. Micahel Brid et al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2023), 157.
[8] Jason A. Staples, Paul and the Resurrection of Israel: Jews, Former Gentiles, Israelites (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 2024) 18.
[9] Staples, Paul and the Resurrection of Israel, 88–89.
[10] See Charles Cousar: “love does not do away with the law but confirms it and provides its correct interpretation.” Cousar, Galatians, IBC (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1982), 131–132.
[11] As Collman explains, Paul “stands well-within a Jewish interpretive tradition when he summarizes the lawby way of other commands, i.e., Lev 19:18 (cf. Philo, Spec. 2.63; Matt 7:12; 22:36–40 parr.; Jas 2:8; b. Shabb. 31a)…. Does this act of summarizing the Torah count as diminishing it? Not according to the other ancient Jews who participated in the same activity.” Collman, “Mind of the Apostle,” 157–158.
[12] See Paul T. Sloan: "He explicitly requires that believing gentiles fulfill the Law (Rom. 13:8, 10), referring to actions of Spirit-led obedience whereby they keep Leviticus's requirement 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself' (13:9). And he refers to such love as an obligation (13:8), whose performance entails the implicit keeping of 'any other commandment' of the Law (13:9)." Sloan, Jesus and the Law of Moses: The Gospels and the Restoration of Israel within First-Century Judaism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2025), 226–227.
[13] Charles E. B. Cranfield, Romans, ICC (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1975), 1.320.
[14] Stanley, Irresistible, 136.
[15] See John Stott: “[W]hat does it mean that we died to the law? The expression reminds us of the similar statement that we “died to sin” (6:2). Indeed, they appear to mean the same thing. For if to die to sin means to bear its penalty, which is death, it is the law which prescribes this penalty. Therefore to die to sin and to die to the law are identical. Both signify that through participation in the death of Christ the law’s curse or condemnation on sin has been taken away.” Stott, Romans (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 194.
[16] J. Brian Tucker, Reading Romans After Supersessionism: The Continuation of Jewish Covenantal Identity (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2018), 112–113.
[17] BDAG, s.v. “τέλος.”
[18] Staples, Paul and the Resurrection of Israel, 224.
[19] Staples, Paul and the Resurrection of Israel, 236.
[20] Staples, Paul and the Resurrection of Israel, 264.
[21] Staples, Paul and the Resurrection of Israel, 261n159.
[22] Marjot, “Israel, Torah and Christ,” 70.
[23] Staples, Paul and the Resurrection of Israel, 340.
[24] Staples, Paul and the Resurrection of Israel, 340.
[25] See Paul T. Sloan and Logan Williams, “Avodah Zarah and the Roman Messiah-Assembly: Anxieties over Pagan Holidays and Food Offered to Images in Romans 14:1-23,” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, San Diego, CA November 2024; Aaron Eby, Biblically Kosher: A Messianic Jewish Perspective on Kashrut (Marshfield, MO: First Fruits of Zion, 2012), 60–61.
[26] The Torah prohibits wine in particular circumstances, such as for those under a Nazirite vow (Num. 6:3) and for priests serving at the sanctuary (Lev. 10:9), but does not generally prohibit it.
[27] On sacrificial meat sold in the marketplace, see Luise Schottroff, 1 Corinthians, trans. Everett R. Kalin, 2nd rev. ed. (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2022), 149–55. On wine, Peter J. Tomson notes that food offered to idols could include bloodless offerings such as wine and that “wine offered to idols was as strongly forbidden as meat”; see Paul and the Jewish Law: Halakha in the Letters of the Apostle to the Gentiles (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 188–89. See also Schottroff, 1 Corinthians, 153, who relates the abstention from wine in Romans 14:21 to the frequent use of wine as a sacrificial offering.
[28] Κοινός ordinarily denotes that which is “common” or “shared.” See BDAG, s.v. “κοινός.” On the development of κοινός/κοινόω from the notion of sharing or participation to that of defilement through association, particularly in contexts involving idolatry, see Logan A. Williams, “From Communion to Contagion: An Analysis of κοινός and κοινόω in Some Jewish Greek Texts,” paper presented at Houston Christian University, Houston, TX, December 2023. Williams connects this development with the notion of participation in sacrificial meals; compare Paul’s use of the cognate κοινωνός (“participant,” “sharer”) for participation in sacrificial altars and communion with demons in 1 Corinthians 10:18–20.
[29] As David Rudolph observes, “The lack of attestation in biblical law and its relatively late entry into Jewish legal vocabulary would seem to suggest that κοινός had a meaning ‘separate and distinct’ from ἀκάθαρτος.” Rudolph, “Paul and the Food Laws: A Reassessment of Romans 14:14, 20,” in Paul the Jew: Reading the Apostle as a Figure of Second Temple Judaism, ed. Gabriele Boccaccini and Carlos A. Segovia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), 154–55. See also Clinton Wahlen, “Peter’s Vision and Conflicting Definitions of Purity,” NTS 51 (2005): 512; Colin House, “Defilement by Association: Some Insights from the Usage of κοινός/κοινόω in Acts 10 and 11,” AUSS 21 (1983): 143–53.
[30] Schottroff similarly argues that “in Romans 14 Paul once again addresses the problem of eating sacrificial meat” and observes that Paul’s arguments there “are in part the same as those in 1 Corinthians 8–10.” Schottroff, 1 Corinthians, 152–53.
[31] Compare Paul’s use of φρονέω in Rom. 8:5, where it refers to “setting one’s mind” on the things of the flesh or Spirit, and Rom. 12:3, where Paul uses the verb for how one “thinks” about oneself. BDAG likewise gives as one sense of φρονέω, “to have an opinion with regard to someth., think, form/hold an opinion, judge”; see BDAG, s.v. “φρονέω.” Similarly, κρίνω can carry the sense “judge” or “regard”; see BDAG, s.v. “κρίνω.” These usages are consistent with understanding Rom. 14:5–6 in terms of regarding or being mindful of particular days rather than necessarily observing them as religious occasions.
[32] As an example of how pagan festivals could affect the availability of sacrificial meat in an urban marketplace, Kenneth E. Bailey notes that priests at Corinth’s various temples sold meat left over from sacrifices and that, “During the numerous feasts there was an inevitable glut in the meat market, and the price would drop accordingly.” He adds that unless a buyer specifically inquired, one would not necessarily know whether a particular piece of meat had previously been offered to an idol. Bailey, Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes: Cultural Studies in 1 Corinthians (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2011), 233.
About David Wilber
David Wilber is an author, Bible teacher, and CEO of Pronomian Publishing LLC. He has written several books and numerous theological articles, with his work appearing in outlets such as the Christian Post and the Journal of Biblical Theology. David has spoken at churches and conferences across the nation and has served as a researcher and Bible teacher for a number of Messianic and Christian ministries…
Did the apostle Paul reject the Torah (the Law of Moses) as an authoritative standard of conduct for followers of the Messiah? While many interpreters believe that he did, several passages in Romans point in a different direction. This article offers a pronomian reading of some of Paul’s statements about the Torah in Romans. In contrast to the antinomian view, a pronomian view holds that the Torah continues to function as divine instruction for believers.