the Law: God's revealed will given to Israel through Moses, the whole body of commands at the heart of the covenant.
This is by far the most common use in the New Testament, and almost all of Paul's. It names the law God gave Israel at Sinai, recorded by Moses: not just a list of rules but the whole arrangement that bound Israel to God, with its commands, its sacrifices, its festivals, and its way of life. When a New Testament writer says simply "the law," without explaining which law, this is normally what is meant.
The writers do not all relate to it the same way, and that range lives inside this one meaning rather than splitting it.
- Paul can call the law holy and good and at the same time argue that no one is put right with God by keeping it.
- James calls it a perfect law that sets people free.
- Hebrews says the priestly side of it has been changed and set aside, while still quoting the promise that God will write his law on human hearts.
- John can speak of Jesus surpassing what came through Moses.
In every case the word points to the same thing, the Sinai law, even as each writer asks what it now means after Christ.
The sharpest fights gather here, especially around Paul's phrase "works of the law." Scholars disagree over whether Paul is attacking human effort to earn God's favor or the use of the law to keep Jews and non-Jews apart. That debate is recorded below; what is not in doubt is that in these passages the word means the law of Moses.
Nuances
Disputed
What Paul means by "works of the law" (Romans 3:20, 28; Galatians 2:16; 3:2, 5, 10), and so what is wrong with relying on the law for right standing with God.
- contestedThe traditional reading: the phrase covers all that the law of Moses requires, understood as human performance offered to God as the basis for being accepted. Paul's deepest objection is human sin and inability, not ethnic boundaries. The Qumran text 4QMMT is read as covering the whole of law-keeping, and Second Temple Judaism did tie final vindication to obedience, so Paul really is opposing confidence in one's own obedience.; C.E.B. Cranfield, "The Works of the Law in the Epistle to the Romans," Journal for the Study of the New Testament 43 (1991); Thomas R. Schreiner, "'Works of Law' in Paul," Novum Testamentum 33 (1991); Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul (2004); Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, NICNT (1996); Simon J. Gathercole, Where Is Boasting? (2002); D.A. Carson, Peter T. O'Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid, eds., Justification and Variegated Nomism, 2 vols. (2001, 2004)
- contestedThe New Perspective: the phrase singles out the Torah practices that served as badges of Jewish identity and covenant membership, above all circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath. Paul opposes them as instruments of keeping non-Jews out, not as human effort. This rests on E.P. Sanders's case that Judaism was a religion of grace ("covenantal nomism") rather than legalism, and reads the Qumran phrase in 4QMMT as supporting boundary markers.; James D.G. Dunn, "The New Perspective on Paul," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 65 (1983); James D.G. Dunn, "Works of the Law and the Curse of the Law (Galatians 3.10-14)," New Testament Studies 31 (1985); N.T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant (1991); E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977)
- minorityThe Paul-within-Judaism reading: Paul never left Judaism and never criticized Torah-observance for Jews. His target is only the proselyte conversion rites by which non-Jews would become Jews; "works of the law" are Gentile attempts to take on Jewish identity, not Torah itself.; Mark D. Nanos, "Re-framing Paul's Opposition to Erga Nomou as 'Rites of Conversion,'" Journal of the Jesus Movement in Its Jewish Setting (2017); Lloyd Gaston, Paul and the Torah (1987); Pamela Eisenbaum, Paul Was Not a Christian (2009); Stanley K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans (1994)