Depending on the version you read, Shaul refers to the Torah (Galatians 3:24) as either a guardian, custodian, or even as a schoolmaster (KJV).
But whatever which way that Greek word was interpreted, it shows that the Torah was all we had at that time to teach us how to be righteous in God’s eyes.
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To understand this passage, as well as anything we read in the Bible, we need to ensure we are looking at the entire context of what was being written, to include what comes before and after the passage, and to interpret it within the context of the entire paragraph, letter or book, who wrote it and to whom, and why.
Briefly, Shaul is writing to the Galatians who are under pressure from the Jewish population to make total conversion to Judaism in order to be saved. This strict adherence to the letter of the law, in lieu of faith, is what we know as “Legalism”. Shaul was trying to convince the Gentile Believers that they needed to be faithful, first and foremost, because following the Torah (which is too often incorrectly thought of as being “under the law”) was only to be the way until the Messiah came.
In other words, to put it without all the “Jewish logic” that Shaul uses (Jewish logic is my term for how we Jews argue- we will tell you everything something is NOT before we tell you what it is), the Torah was given to us to teach us (as a guardian or schoolmaster) how we are to act in order to be righteous in God’s eyes, and thereby to be given eternal life. i.e., to be “saved”.
The point Shaul was making is not that the Torah was not needed anymore because through Yeshua we can be saved, which is the traditional Christian use of this passage, but rather that through the faithful trusting in Yeshua as the Messiah, we can be saved not just from death, but from our failure to obey the Torah completely.
You see, the bottom line (unspoken in so many ways) is that the Torah IS life eternal, and that was proven when Yeshua was raised from the dead, which was the result of his having lived in 100% obedience to the Torah for 100% of his life.
Yeshua was the epitome of Torah obedience, which is why he never saw decay and was resurrected to eternal life in God’s presence. The truth is, people, if any one of us could do that, then we would also be resurrected to eternal life.
The problem us is that no one can do that, which is the very reason God sent us the Messiah. Through our faithful acceptance that Yeshua is the Messiah God promised, we can find forgiveness of sin.
Look- being righteous in God’s eyes can never happen if we are stained with sin, and the way we are saved is not really just through faith in Yeshua, but through being forgiven of sin. The faith in Yeshua is the means by which we are forgiven, and being forgiven is the path to eternal life.
Yeshua is not salvation: he is the means by which we can be forgiven of our sins, and when we are no longer stained with sin, we can live in God’s presence.
Now, as for the guardian no longer being necessary, let’s think about what a guardian does: he or she guards us (DUH!), but from what? The guardian guards us from making mistakes, from being hurt or hurting others, and prepares us (as a schoolmaster) to know what we need to know in order to survive in the world when we are on our own.
When you were in school (under a guardian), you learned about the world, you learned about science, social studies, history, art, etc. When you graduated, you were no longer under that guardian, but let me ask you- when you were no longer under the guardian, did you reject and ignore everything that guardian taught you?
This is what Shaul meant when he said that through faith in Yeshua, the guardianship under the Torah was not needed anymore because through Yeshua we could find the one thing that the Torah, alone, offered us to be saved: forgiveness through the sacrificial system.
That system didn’t exist after (approx.) 70 AD, when the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, and from that moment on, the only path to God (meaning being able to be cleansed of sin) was through the forgiveness we receive by means of Yeshua’s sacrifice.
When we leave school, or reach legal majority at which time we no longer require a guardian, what we learned from our experience under that guardian is (hopefully) going to be the foundation for a successful and meaningful life. Proverbs 22:6 says,
“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it“.
The same is true for the Torah as our guardian- it is to teach us the way to go, specifically the path to salvation, and so under the Torah we learned how to live, how to worship God, and how to treat each other. Certainly, Shaul would never have meant that all of that was to be rejected in lieu of faith in Yeshua!
The Torah teaches us all that we need to know to be faithful to God, and to live a righteous life. Yeshua taught us the deeper, spiritual meaning of the Torah, fulfilling not so much the law as the new covenant God made through Jeremiah (Jer. 31:31), which said that he would write his Torah on our hearts. Yeshua taught us how to have the very “heart” of the Torah on our hearts, but never to ignore it; neither did any of the disciples or apostles teach to ignore the Torah.
The Torah was our guardian, teaching us what we need to know to be righteous, and it is still a valid and necessary to anyone who professes to believe and worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as it was when God first gave it to us through Moses. The only thing that as changed is how we receive forgiveness: because we cannot do so under the Torah (no temple to bring our sacrifice), we now find that forgiveness of sin through the sacrifice Yeshua made, and that means of forgiveness (which is, again, how we are saved) is only available to those who accept Yeshua as their Messiah, the one God promised to send.
That’s how it works- the Torah as our guardian taught us how God wants us to worship him and treat each other, and just like you do not reject or ignore all that you were taught in school, the Torah is as valid today for everyone worshipping God as it has always been.
Yeshua is the means by which we can be forgiven when we sin, replacing the need to bring an animal to the temple, but he did not replace the Torah, or the need to be obedient to God’s commandments.
That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!
