This article is part of the Gospel and New Covenant series. It builds directly on In Christ and Fulfilment Theology. The definitions established in those articles are assumed here.

There is a question that sits at the centre of every serious religious life - and it is more personal than any theological debate about feast days or Sabbath observance or dietary laws. It is the question that matters when the argument is over and the room is quiet and it is just you before God.

Am I righteous before him?

Not - am I improving? Not - am I trying hard enough? Not - am I more observant than I was last year? But the foundational question underneath all of those: what is my standing before the God who sees everything, who knows every motive, who measures not just the act but the heart behind it - and what is that standing resting on?

The Hebrew Roots Movement has a sophisticated answer to that question. It is more carefully constructed than its critics usually acknowledge, which is why it is so persuasive to serious believers who genuinely want to please God. This article will state that answer fairly, define the terms precisely, and then show - carefully and with Scripture at every step - where the argument breaks down and what the gospel offers instead.

Three Definitions That Must Not Be Confused

Before we can engage the HRM argument we need to establish three definitions clearly - because the HRM's position depends, at a critical point, on collapsing the distinction between them. Once the distinction is clear the argument loses its foundation.

What Is Righteousness?

Righteousness in Scripture is fundamentally a relational and legal term before it is a moral one. To be righteous before God is to be in right standing with him - to meet the standard his holiness requires, to have an account before him that is clean. The Hebrew word is tsedaqah and the Greek word is dikaiosyne - both carrying the sense of conformity to a standard, of being what one ought to be in a given relationship.

The HRM correctly observes that Psalm 119:172 says "all your commandments are righteousness" - and concludes that righteousness therefore means Torah-conformity. A righteous person is a Torah-observant person. But this is a partial reading. The Torah defines the conduct that righteousness requires. It does not define the ground on which a person is counted righteous before God. Those are two different questions - and the New Testament is at pains to separate them.

Paul in Romans 3:21-22 writes: "But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it - the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe." The righteousness of God - his own righteous character expressed in saving action - has been revealed. It is received through faith. It is not produced by law-keeping. The law and prophets witnessed to it - they pointed to it - but they did not and could not produce it.

This is the righteousness that matters before God. Not our moral performance. Not our Torah conformity. But the righteousness of God himself, given to us in Christ.

What Is Justification?

Justification is the forensic act by which God declares a sinner righteous. It is a legal verdict - not a process of moral improvement but a once-for-all declaration made on the basis of Christ's work received through faith. The judge of all the earth looks at the person who is in Christ and declares - righteous. Not because they are morally perfect. Because Christ's perfect record has been credited to their account.

Romans 3:28: "For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law." Romans 4:5: "And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness." Romans 5:1: "Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."

Notice the tense in Romans 5:1. We have been justified - past tense, completed action, settled reality. The peace with God that follows is not being maintained by ongoing obedience. It rests on a verdict that has already been rendered. Justification is an event, not a process. It happens once and its effects are permanent.

Galatians 2:16 states it three times in a single verse, as though Paul cannot say it emphatically enough: "Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified." Three times. Not by works of the law. By faith in Christ. No one - no one - will be justified by works of the law.

What Is Sanctification?

Sanctification is the ongoing process by which the person who has been justified is progressively transformed into the likeness of Christ. It is not the ground of standing - that is justification, already complete. It is the fruit of standing - the Spirit's work in a person who has been declared righteous, producing actual righteousness of character from the inside out.

Romans 8:29: "For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son." Conformed - shaped, transformed, made like. This is an ongoing work. 2 Corinthians 3:18: "And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit." Being transformed - present tense, continuous action, not yet complete.

Sanctification is the Spirit's work. It is not the believer's work of Torah observance. And Galatians 3:3 is the most devastating possible statement of this distinction - Paul has just established that the Galatians received the Spirit by faith and asks: "Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?"

Read that question carefully because it is addressed precisely to the HRM position. You began the Christian life through the Spirit's work - through faith, through the new birth, through the justification that is God's act, not yours. Now you are trying to complete and perfect that life through the flesh - through external religious performance, through Torah observance, through covenant markers you can see and measure and count. Paul does not call this spiritual maturity. He calls it foolishness. He calls it turning back. He says in verse 4 - "Did you suffer so many things in vain?"

The progression the HRM proposes - begun by faith, perfected by Torah - is precisely the progression Paul calls foolish. Sanctification is not the Torah's work. It is the Spirit's work. And the Spirit does not work through external law observance - he works through the indwelling of Christ, through the renewal of the mind, through the transformation that union with Christ produces from within.

The HRM Conflation - And Why It Matters

The Hebrew Roots Movement builds its position by deliberately - though not always consciously - collapsing the distinction between justification and sanctification, and between righteousness as forensic standing and righteousness as moral performance. Once those distinctions are collapsed the argument becomes very difficult to attack because every verse about moral righteousness gets read as support for Torah observance, and every verse about ongoing obedience gets read as qualification of justification by faith.

This is not an accident of sloppy thinking. It is a coherent - if mistaken - theological move. By treating righteousness as a single unified category that means Torah-conformity, the HRM can quote Psalm 119, Romans 2:13, Genesis 26:5, and Matthew 5:17-19 as though they all support the same conclusion. The distinctions that Paul works so hard to establish - the very distinctions that his letter to the Galatians exists to defend - disappear into a single category called Torah-righteousness.

The result is a theological system that sounds thoroughly biblical because it uses biblical vocabulary - righteousness, justification, sanctification, obedience - while filling those words with content that Paul spent his entire ministry arguing against. Let us now state their position layer by layer - and then answer each layer directly.

The Six Layers - Stated and Answered

Layer 1: Righteousness Is Defined by Torah

Their claim: Psalm 119:172 says all God's commandments are righteousness. Therefore to be righteous is to keep the Torah. The definition of righteousness is Torah-conformity and always has been.

The answer: Psalm 119:172 says God's commandments are righteous - that is, they reflect and express God's righteous character. This is true and Paul agrees - Romans 7:12: "the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good." But there is a critical difference between the law being righteous and the law being the ground of the believer's righteous standing before God. The law reveals what righteousness looks like. It does not produce or constitute the standing of righteousness before God. Romans 3:20 is explicit: "by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin." The law's function is diagnostic - it reveals the standard and exposes the failure. The standing of righteousness before God comes from somewhere else entirely - from the righteousness of God received through faith in Christ. (Romans 3:22)

Layer 2: Justification and Sanctification Flow Together

Their claim: The sharp Protestant distinction between justification as a forensic declaration and sanctification as a process is an artificial theological imposition on the text. In Scripture righteousness is a unified reality - you are saved by faith and you live righteously by Torah. The two cannot and should not be separated.

The answer: Paul separates them explicitly and at length - which is why Galatians exists. In Galatians 2:16 he establishes justification as a specific act by faith apart from law. In Galatians 3:3 he immediately turns to sanctification and asks the Galatians why they are trying to complete by the flesh what was begun by the Spirit. The distinction is Paul's own, not a later theological imposition. And the distinction matters enormously - because if justification and sanctification are conflated then every failure in sanctification threatens justification. The anxiety that produces is precisely what Paul is dismantling when he says in Romans 8:1 - "there is therefore now no condemnation." No condemnation is only possible if the ground of standing - justification - is completely separate from the progress of transformation - sanctification. If they flow together as one reality then condemnation is always potentially in play depending on how the transformation is going. That is not good news. That is the law.

Layer 3: Torah Observance Is What Righteousness Looks Like for the Justified Believer

Their claim: They accept imputed righteousness as the entry point. Faith justifies. But righteousness for the already-justified believer is expressed and lived through Torah observance. The Torah tells you what a righteous life looks like. You are declared righteous by faith and you then live righteously by Torah. These are not competing claims - they operate at different stages of the same journey.

The answer: This is the most sophisticated layer of the HRM argument and it deserves the most careful answer. Paul addresses it directly in Galatians 5:2-4 - and he addresses it to already-believing Gentiles who are considering Torah observance not as a means of salvation but as the lifestyle expression of covenant faithfulness. Not to get in. To live rightly once in. And Paul says: "Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you... You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace." Severed from Christ. Fallen from grace. This is Paul's verdict on Torah observance adopted as the framework of the already-justified believer's life before God. Not a mild caution. A declaration of severance. Because to adopt Torah as the lifestyle framework of righteousness is to make Torah - rather than Christ - the operating ground of your standing. Even if you say you believe the entry was by faith, if the ongoing life is Torah-shaped as a matter of covenant obligation, the ground has shifted. Christ has become the door and Torah has become the house. But Christ is not the door. He is the house. He is the fullness in whom you dwell. And there is no room for another framework alongside him.

Layer 4: Romans 2:13 - Doers of the Law Will Be Justified

Their claim: Romans 2:13 says "it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God but the doers of the law who will be justified." Paul himself connects doing the Torah with justification. This verse alone establishes that Torah-doing and justification belong together.

The answer: Romans 2:13 must be read in its context - which is Paul's argument that all humanity stands condemned before God, both Jew and Gentile. Paul is not prescribing a path to justification through Torah-doing. He is establishing the standard that would be required for justification by law - and then demonstrating in chapters 3 and 4 that no one meets that standard. Romans 3:10: "None is righteous, no, not one." Romans 3:23: "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Romans 2:13 raises the bar - doers of the law would be justified. Romans 3 closes the door - there are no doers of the law. Everyone falls short. Which is precisely why the righteousness of God through faith in Christ is necessary and why Paul introduces it in Romans 3:21 as the solution to the universal condemnation he has established in chapters 1-3. To use Romans 2:13 as support for Torah observance as a pathway of righteousness is to read the setup as the solution - to mistake the problem statement for the answer.

Layer 5: Abraham Kept Torah Before It Was Given

Their claim: Genesis 26:5 says Abraham obeyed God's commandments, statutes, and laws - before Sinai. Therefore Torah observance was always the expected expression of covenant faith, even before Moses. Abraham doesn't undermine their argument. He confirms it.

The answer: Paul's argument about Abraham in Romans 4 and Galatians 3 is precisely sequenced and the sequence is everything. Abraham was counted righteous - Genesis 15:6 - before circumcision, which came in Genesis 17, fourteen years later. Before any covenant sign. Before any formal law. On the basis of faith alone. Paul's point in Romans 4:10-11 is explicit: "How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised." The sequence establishes that the ground of righteousness precedes and is independent of any covenant marker or law observance. As for Genesis 26:5 - this is God speaking to Isaac about Abraham's faithfulness. The Hebrew words used - commandments, statutes, laws - describe Abraham's general obedience to God's instructions, not specifically the 613 Mosaic commandments which did not yet exist. To read Genesis 26:5 as evidence that Abraham kept the Mosaic Torah is to import a later legal category back into a pre-Sinai narrative. More importantly - Paul knew Genesis 26:5. He had read all of Genesis. And his argument about Abraham's justification by faith before circumcision is not weakened by it. The order of events in Genesis 15 and 17 is Paul's foundation - and that order stands regardless of Genesis 26:5.

Layer 6: Christ's Imputed Righteousness Is His Torah Observance

Their claim: They accept the great exchange of 2 Corinthians 5:21 - our sin to Christ, his righteousness to us. But they define his righteousness as his perfect Torah observance. So what is imputed to us is his perfect law-keeping life. And since that is what we have received, the logical expression of living in that righteousness is ourselves living Torah-observant lives.

The answer: This is the most theologically subtle layer and it contains the most fundamental error. If Christ's righteousness is defined as his Torah observance, then the Torah remains the ultimate standard - and Christ is merely the means of accessing it. He becomes the vehicle and Torah becomes the destination. But Romans 10:4 says: "Christ is the end - telos - of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes." Telos means end, goal, termination, fulfilment. Christ is not the means of reaching the Torah's standard. He is the point at which the Torah's role as the ground of righteousness terminates - because he himself is the righteousness of God in person. 1 Corinthians 1:30 states this with absolute clarity: "And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption." Christ became our righteousness. Not Torah-conformity. Not law-keeping. Him. His person. His obedience understood not merely as commandment-following but as the complete covenantal faithfulness of the Son of God to the Father - a faithfulness infinitely deeper than any law code could describe or require. To reduce his righteousness to Torah observance is to diminish both him and the imputation.

What Galatians 3 Actually Teaches About the Whole Picture

Galatians 3 is Paul's most sustained treatment of the relationship between faith, law, righteousness, justification, and the Spirit - and it addresses the HRM position comprehensively. Let us walk through it carefully.

Verse 2: "Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?" The Spirit - the very presence and power of God in the believer's life - was received by faith. Not by Torah observance. The most fundamental reality of the Christian life arrived before any law was observed.

Verse 3: "Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" The beginning was Spirit. The attempted completion is flesh - external religious performance. Paul calls this foolishness. Not immaturity that can be gently corrected. Foolishness.

Verse 6: "Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness." The model is faith credited as righteousness. Not obedience credited as righteousness. Faith.

Verse 10: "For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, 'Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law and do them.'" The law is all-or-nothing. Partial Torah observance is not a reduced righteousness. It is a curse - because the law demands complete and continuous obedience, and no one delivers it. This is why the HRM position is not just theologically incorrect - it is spiritually dangerous. To place yourself under Torah observance as the framework of your covenant life is to place yourself under a standard you cannot meet and a curse you cannot escape by your own effort.

Verse 11: "Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for 'The righteous shall live by faith.'"

Verse 13: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us - for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.'" He entered the curse. He absorbed it. He exhausted it. So that the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles - not through Torah observance but through Christ Jesus, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. (verse 14)

Verse 24: "So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith." The law was a guardian - a paidagogos, a child-minder, a temporary supervisor whose role was defined by the period before the heir came of age. Christ has come. The guardian's role is complete. We are no longer under the guardian. We are heirs.

Verse 28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." The categories that the Torah encoded and maintained - the distinctions between peoples, the boundary markers of covenant identity - have been superseded in Christ. Not abolished. Arrived at their destination, which is a unity in him that the Torah was always pointing toward and could never itself produce.

What True Sanctification Looks Like

Having established what sanctification is not - it is not Torah observance adopted as the lifestyle framework of the justified believer - we must say clearly what it is. Because the HRM raises a legitimate concern when it asks: if not Torah, then what shapes the believer's life? What does obedience look like? What prevents the gospel of grace from collapsing into moral indifference?

Paul answers this in Romans 8:3-4: "For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit."

The righteous requirement of the law - its moral content, the actual character of God that the law was encoding - is fulfilled in those who walk according to the Spirit. Not by their own Torah observance. By the Spirit's work in them. The moral reality that the law was pointing to - love, justice, faithfulness, purity, honesty, compassion - is produced from within by the Spirit of the one in whom all of those qualities perfectly dwell.

Galatians 5:22-23: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law." The fruit is produced by the Spirit. Not cultivated by the flesh through external law-keeping. And Paul adds with quiet brilliance - against such things there is no law. The Spirit-produced life does not need the law to define it because it exceeds what the law demands. Love fulfils the law not by observing its every particular but by embodying the reality the law was pointing to.

Romans 13:10: "Love is the fulfilling of the law." Not Torah observance. Love - the love that is itself the fruit of the Spirit poured into our hearts (Romans 5:5), the love that flows from being loved completely and unreservedly by the God who sent his Son while we were still sinners.

A Pastoral Conclusion - From Everything We Have Learned

We began this series asking whether Christ is enough. We defined the gospel precisely as the announcement of completed historical events. We stood in front of Colossians 1 and beheld who Christ actually is. We traced the false staircase that both charismatic excess and Torah observance construct. We established union with Christ as the objective reality of the believer's position. We walked through the entire old covenant and showed that every type, every shadow, every messianic prophecy, every Christ-figure in the narrative arrived in him.

And now we arrive at this - the forensic declaration that holds everything together. You are justified. Declared righteous. Not because you are morally perfect. Not because your sanctification is complete or your Torah observance is sufficient. Because you are in Christ - and his righteousness, his complete and perfect covenantal faithfulness, his entire unblemished record before the Father - has been credited to your account as though it were your own.

That is not the beginning of a journey that Torah observance completes. That is the whole ground. The entire foundation. The finished thing that the Spirit now works from - not toward.

To the person who has been in the Hebrew Roots Movement and is genuinely seeking - we say this with real love and without condescension. The desire to live a life that honours God is not wrong. The hunger for something more than comfortable, shallow Christianity is not wrong. The love for the Old Testament and its richness is not wrong. All of those instincts are good. But they are being fed at a table that cannot ultimately satisfy - because it places the ground of your standing in your hands rather than in his.

You began by the Spirit. The completion is also by the Spirit. The same Spirit who brought you to faith is the one who is conforming you to Christ - not through the external pressure of a law code but through the internal reality of a new nature that loves what God loves because it has been given God's own love.

"For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified." (Hebrews 10:14)

Perfected for all time. Already. In him. That is your standing. And the sanctification that follows flows from that perfected standing - it does not constitute it, maintain it, or improve upon it.

Rest in that. Build from that. Live from that.

It is enough. He is enough.

Continue reading: Adoption - You Are Not a Servant, You Are a Son

Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? - Galatians 3:3