The Claim
Most churches teach that when the apostles say “the law,” they mean the Law of Moses, all of it, as one undivided thing. Paul says believers are not under the law. He says they are dead to the law. He says Messiah is the end of the law, and that no one is justified by the works of the law. Put those sentences side by side, and the conclusion seems obvious. The Torah is finished.
The argument is simple, and its simplicity is its strength. It needs only one assumption: that the word law means the same thing every time it appears.
The Short Version
- The English word law stands in for at least five different Greek words. They are not the same word, and they do not mean the same thing.
- Even the main word, nomos, does several different jobs. Sometimes it means all of Scripture. Sometimes it means a pull inside a man’s own body.
- Paul names his laws, and he tells his readers plainly when he means another law.
- Before any verse about the law can be read, one question has to be answered first: which law?
- The modern teaching skips that question. Almost every abolition argument in this series begins right there.
Torah Means Instruction
The Hebrew word behind “law” is torah (H8451). It comes from yarah (H3384), a verb that means to point, to aim, or to teach. A torah is the instruction of someone who knows the way, pointing out the way to someone who does not. It is closer to a father’s teaching than to a criminal code.
And it was never one flat thing. Long before Sinai, Yahuah described what Abraham kept in four separate words:
Because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.
— Genesis 26:5
A charge, commandments, statutes, laws. Scripture itself sorts Yahuah’s instruction into kinds, and it does so before there was a nation of Israel to receive it.
One English Word, Five Greek Words
When the apostles’ writings were put into English, several different Greek words ended up wearing the same label. A reader who sees law, ordinance, or commandment on the page needs to know which word is underneath.
Nomos (G3551): law
The main word, used nearly two hundred times. It stands for the Hebrew torah. It is the word in most of the passages this series answers, and it has several jobs of its own, described below.
Entole (G1785): a commandment
One specific command. Nomos is the body of instruction; an entole is a single item within it. The two are related, but they are not the same word, and an argument about one is not automatically an argument about the other.
Dogma (G1378): a decree
A formal decree issued by an authority. The word appears only five times. Twice it names a decree of Caesar (Luke 2:1; Acts 17:7). Once it names the decisions the apostles sent out to the assemblies (Acts 16:4). The other two are Ephesians 2:15 and Colossians 2:14, both of which are answered in their own testimonies. Dogma is never once used for the Ten Commandments or for Torah as a whole.
Paradosis (G3862): tradition
Something handed down. In the gospels it names the tradition of the elders, the rules men added to Yahuah’s word. That word is treated in full in F-09.
Erga nomou: works of law
Not a single word but a phrase, and Paul uses it when the question is how a man is first made right with Yahuah. It belongs to the question of entry, not the question of daily walk. That distinction is carried in F-03.
Five words. One English label. A reader who treats all five as one has already lost the argument before reading a single verse.
Nomos Does Several Jobs, Even on Its Own
Even when the Greek word is nomos every time, it does not mean the same thing every time. Scripture shows at least these uses.
- All of Scripture. Yahushua asked, “Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?” (John 10:34). He was quoting Psalm 82:6. Paul wrote, “In the law it is written, With men of other tongues and other lips will I speak unto this people” (1 Corinthians 14:21), quoting Isaiah 28:11. In Romans 3, Paul quotes the Psalms and Isaiah, then says, “what things soever the law saith” (Romans 3:19). Psalms and prophets, called law.
- The five books of Moses, as one part of Scripture beside the others: “the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms” (Luke 24:44).
- A principle, or pattern: “I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me” (Romans 7:21). That is not a commandment from anyone. It is a pattern Paul observed in himself.
- A legal claim made by men: “We have a law, and by our law he ought to die” (John 19:7), spoken by the men demanding the death of an innocent man.
A reader who carries one meaning into every one of those verses will get most of them wrong.
Paul Named His Laws
Paul did not leave his readers to guess. In Romans alone he attaches a label to the word law again and again: the law of Yahuah, the law of her husband, the law of my mind, the law of sin, the law of sin and death, the law of works, the law of faith, the law of righteousness, and the law of the Spirit of life. To the Corinthians and the Galatians he adds the law of Messiah (1 Corinthians 9:21; Galatians 6:2).
Each one does a different job. Each one is walked through in the companion handout Paul’s Laws. The point for this foundation is simpler. A man who names ten laws is not talking about one.
Paul Said It in So Many Words
In one sentence Paul sets two laws against each other and tells the reader they are different:
But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
— Romans 7:23
The Greek word for another is heteros (G2087). It means another of a different kind. Two verses later he closes the thought: “So then with the mind I myself serve the law of Yahuah; but with the flesh the law of sin” (Romans 7:25).
Paul serves one law and is held captive by the other. If they were the same law, the sentence would make no sense. He serves the law of Yahuah. The law he wants to escape is the law of sin. The modern teaching takes Paul’s escape from the second and reads it as an escape from the first.
Inside Torah, the Parts Do Different Jobs
Even within Yahuah’s own instruction, not every part does the same work. Some parts tell a man how to live. Some parts tell what happens when he does not. The commandment says, do not steal. The curse says what follows for the man who steals:
Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them.
— Deuteronomy 27:26
The commandment and the sentence are both written in the Torah, but they are not the same thing. A man can be set free from a sentence without the commandment being torn out of the book. In any courtroom, “the law” can mean the statute, the charge, the sentence, or the procedure, and nobody confuses them. A pardoned man walks out from under his sentence. The statute he broke is still on the books.
Other parts of Torah governed the priesthood and the altar. Some of those things did change, and Scripture says exactly which. Three later foundations carry that work:
- F-02 shows that being under the law means standing under its sentence.
- F-05 shows that a covenant is not the same as the terms written into it.
- F-06 names what actually changed at the tree: the priesthood, the offering, and the penalty.
Three Questions Before Reading Any Law Verse
Every passage in this series can be met with the same three questions, asked before the verse is read and not after.
- Which word is on the page? Nomos, entole, dogma, paradosis, or works of law.
- If it is nomos, which law? Scripture as a whole, the books of Moses, a commandment, the sentence for breaking it, the law of sin, or a law Paul has named.
- What is the writer doing with it? Paul never praises a law and escapes the same law. If he calls it holy, it is not the one he is glad to be free of.
These three questions do not decide any verse by themselves. They make sure the verse is read for what it actually says.
What This Foundation Does Not Claim
Stating the limits keeps the case from being overstated.
- It does not claim that nomos in Paul never means Torah. It very often does. Paul calls Yahuah’s law holy, and he means it.
- It does not claim that every hard verse is answered by a word study alone. Many need the work of a later foundation, and every one gets its own testimony.
- It claims only this: the word must be identified before the sentence is judged. That step is never optional, and the modern teaching never takes it.
The Verdict
The case for an abolished Torah depends on one assumption, that law always means the same thing. Scripture does not allow that assumption. The apostles used five different words. The main word does several jobs. Paul named his laws and set them against each other in plain sentences.
Once the reader asks which law, each passage returns to its own subject. Those passages are answered one at a time in the testimonies that rest on this foundation.
Paul himself put two of his laws in the same paragraph and showed how they relate. In Romans 3:27 he speaks of the law of faith. Four verses later he asks what that law does to the law of Yahuah:
Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.
— Romans 3:31
Two laws, side by side. One does not cancel the other. It makes the other stand.