Study Desk

For their lives show that the conduct the Torah dictates is written in their hearts . Their consciences also bear witness to this, for their conflicting thoughts sometimes accuse them and sometimes defend them

an instructor for the spiritually unaware and a teacher of children, since in the Torah you have the embodiment of knowledge and truth;

as it says in the Tanakh, "For it is because of you that God's name is blasphemed by the Goyim."

For circumcision is indeed of value if you do what Torah says. But if you are a transgressor of Torah, your circumcision has become uncircumcision!

For the real Jew is not merely Jewish outwardly: true circumcision is not only external and physical.

"But," you say, "if, through my lie, God's truth is enhanced and brings him greater glory, why am I still judged merely for being a sinner?"

So are we Jews better off? Not entirely; for I have already made the charge that all people, Jews and Gentiles alike, are controlled by sin.

For in his sight no one alive will be considered righteous on the ground of legalistic observance of Torah commands, because what Torah really does is show people how sinful they are.

and it is a righteousness that comes from God, through the faithfulness of Yeshua the Messiah, to all who continue trusting. For it makes no difference whether one is a Jew or a Gentile,

God put Yeshua forward as the kapparah for sin through his faithfulness in respect to his bloody sacrificial death. This vindicated God's righteousness; because, in his forbearance, he had passed over [with neither punishment nor remission] the sins people had committed in the past;

So what room is left for boasting? None at all! What kind of Torah excludes it? One that has to do with legalistic observance of rules? No, rather, a Torah that has to do with trusting.

For if Avraham came to be considered righteous by God because of legalistic observances, then he has something to boast about. But this is not how it is before God!

For what does the Tanakh say? "Avraham put his trust in God, and it was credited to his account as righteousness."

Now is this blessing for the circumcised only? Or is it also for the uncircumcised? For we say that Avraham's trust was credited to his account as righteousness ;

For the promise to Avraham and his seed that he would inherit the world did not come through legalism but through the righteousness that trust produces.

For if the heirs are produced by legalism, then trust is pointless and the promise worthless.

For what law brings is punishment. But where there is no law, there is also no violation.

The reason the promise is based on trusting is so that it may come as God's free gift, a promise that can be relied on by all the seed , not only those who live within the framework of the Torah, but also those with the kind of trust Avraham had — Avraham avinu for all of us.

For he was past hope, yet in hope he trusted that he would indeed become a father to many nations , in keeping with what he had been told, "So many will your seed be."

for he was fully convinced that what God had promised he could also accomplish.