Christ or Torah?

What appears to be Paul’s first recorded statement on justification comes in Acts 13, in a sermon at Pisidian Antioch. He briefly recounts the history of Israel, concluding with the resurrection that the promise of forgiveness and justification.

Verse 39 (v. 38 in the Greek text) states that “through Him everyone who believes is justified from all things, from which you could not be justified through the law of Moses.” Several elements are well-known Pauline themes: justification through faith, the contrast of justification by faith and justification by law.

Several features of this passage, though, are unusual, and may point to fresh angles on Paul’s discussions of justification in his letters. First, the addition of Mouseus specifies that Paul is not speaking of legal regulations in general but specifically of the Mosaic legislation.

Second, Paul speaks here of being justified from (apo) all things. Typically, Paul writes of being justified without any indication that there is something to be justified from. This hints that dikaioo here is not so much a verdict as an act of liberation, and many translators have followed that hint by translating the word as “freed.”

Finally, the contrast is not strictly between justification by faith and justification, but between justification from all things dia toutou, through this (resurrected) one, and justification en nomo. The contrasting instruments – or, better, subjects – of the liberation are not faith and works but Jesus and the law of Moses. As Paul says in Romans 8, God has done what the law could not do, sending His son in the likeness of flesh as an offering for sin.

In Acts 13:39, then, justification is “liberation from all (enslaving) things through Christ, including those enslavements that the law could not liberate from.”