Promise, Law, Faith: Covenant-Historical Reasoning in Galatians, by T. David Gordon. Hendrickson, 2019, xiv + 303 pages, $39.95.

Promise, Law, Faith in Romans: Covenant-Historical Reasoning Continued, by T. David Gordon. Hendrickson, 2025, xii + 138 pages, $39.95.

Paul’s view of the law has been a major topic in biblical studies in recent decades, as debates surrounding the so-called New Perspective(s) on Paul (NPP) attest. Paul’s view of the law is also relevant for recent controversies about justification in Reformed circles and our perennial discussions about the ongoing applicability of the Mosaic law. When one considers how frequently Paul uses the term “law” in Galatians and Romans, and how important these epistles are for Reformed theology, serious Reformed Christians cannot help but be interested in Paul-and-the-law debates.

T. David Gordon contributed to this topic with a 2019 book on the law in Galatians (henceforth, Galatians) and now with a 2025 sequel on the law in Romans (henceforth, Romans). Gordon, a retired PCA minister and former professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and Grove City College, argues that neither the NPP nor the standard Reformed interpretation satisfactorily interprets what Paul meant by “the law” and hence that both misunderstand important aspects of Paul’s arguments in Galatians and Romans. While Gordon agrees with the doctrine of salvation Reformed theologians have taught from these epistles, he believes they have often misjudged the arguments of the epistles themselves.

Although Romans is much longer than Galatians, Gordon’s Galatians is considerably longer than his Romans. Galatians also contains extensive interaction with Pauline scholarship, which Romans lacks. This reflects Gordon’s purposes. The main attraction is Galatians, where he sets forth his main case with detail and rigor. Romans is secondary. Here Gordon seeks to confirm that Paul’s use and interpretation of “the law” is the same as in Galatians and describes how to read Romans accordingly. Readers may be disappointed by the lack of engagement with contrary voices in Romans, but that is the decision the author has made.

In this review article, therefore, I first summarize Gordon’s arguments about “the law” in Galatians and then, more briefly, his claims about Romans. I judge that in the big picture Gordon is correct—indeed, profoundly correct: Paul uses “the law” in the way Gordon claims, and this should shape our reading of Galatians and Romans. In the latter part of this article, however, I critically engage with some aspects of Gordon’s interpretation, particularly regarding the integration of traditional Reformed doctrines with Gordon’s non-traditional interpretation of these epistles.

Gordon on Galatians

Gordon’s key claim is that when Paul uses “the law” (Greek: νόμος, nomos) without qualification, he refers to the Mosaic law. (Paul’s appeal to “the law of Christ” in Galatians 6:2 is an example of a qualified use indicating that he means something other than the law of Moses.) More specifically, Paul consistently uses “the law” as a synecdoche for the Mosaic covenant. That is, because the giving of the law was the most prominent feature of the Mosaic covenant, Paul could use “the law” to describe that covenant as a whole. This key claim leads to a big-picture conclusion about Paul’s argument in Galatians: His reasoning was covenant-historical. According to Gordon, Galatians treats redemptive history in terms of three distinct covenants: the Abrahamic, the Sinai, and new covenants, which Paul describes through the synecdoches of “promise,” “law,” and “faith,” respectively. God made unconditional promises to Abraham, one of which was that all nations would be blessed through his seed, and Abraham received these promises by faith. Centuries later, God gave the law to Israel alone. This law promised blessing in the promised land if Israel obeyed and threatened judgments—ultimately exile—if Israel disobeyed. The purpose of the law was not to overturn the Abrahamic promises but, primarily, to keep Israel separate from the nations in order to keep alive memory of the Abrahamic promises and protect Abraham’s descendants from intermarriage and idolatry. Finally, God sent Christ as the promised seed to provide salvation for all nations, in fulfillment of the Abrahamic promises. Unlike the Sinai covenant, the new covenant in Christ was for all peoples.

Gordon also draws the surprising conclusion that Paul argues from justification rather than for justification: Paul took the doctrine of justification by faith alone as common ground shared with his Galatian audience. Paul did not need to defend this doctrine but sought to show that the Galatians were living in ways inconsistent with it. That is, although the Galatian Christians knew that they were justified only by believing the Abrahamic promises fulfilled in Christ for Jew and Gentile alike, they insisted on observing the Mosaic law which demanded exclusion of Gentiles from the covenant community.

These are Gordon’s main claims about Galatians. He compares his claims with the traditional Protestant belief that the Galatian church’s main problem was legalism or works-righteousness, which also plagued contemporary Judaism. Thus, Protestants have typically thought that Paul’s remedy was to convince the Galatians that justification was by faith alone, not by doing good works. To support this interpretation, then, the Reformed have taken “the law” in Galatians in several ways: in some texts as a reference to God’s universal moral will, in other texts as a legalistic misuse of God’s law, and sometimes as the Mosaic law. For Gordon, the Reformed are correct to believe that Paul affirms justification by faith in Christ alone but have misunderstood the problem Paul was trying to address in Galatians and thus also his solution to the problem.

Gordon also compares his interpretation to that of the NPP. For the NPP, the Galatian church’s main problem was not works-righteousness. The problem instead concerned Jew-Gentile relations and the demand that all Christians adhere to requirements of the Mosaic law that distinguished Jew from Gentile, such as circumcision. Gordon believes that the NPP basically gets this right. But he concludes that the NPP gets other important things wrong, such as what justification is and its identification of “righteousness” with covenant membership.

Gordon takes readers through the text of Galatians in chapters 3–6 to make his case in detail. Chapter 7 reflects on some broader implications of his conclusions. The volume concludes with three excurses, which take up almost a quarter of the book. Readers interested in recent Pauline-studies debates may find Excursus 2, regarding what “righteousness” means in Galatians, especially useful.

Gordon on Romans

Gordon’s sequel argues that, despite many differences between the two epistles, Paul consistently used “law” (when unqualified) as a reference to the Sinai covenant in Romans, as he did in Galatians. Gordon seeks merely to show that Romans makes good sense when “law” is understood in this way.

Chapter 1 identifies five aspects of the Sinai covenant: commanding, condemning, atoning, prefiguring, and segregating (Jew from Gentile). When Paul speaks positively about the law, according to Gordon, it is ordinarily with respect to its commanding and atoning aspects, and when he speaks negatively about it, it is ordinarily with respect to its condemning and segregating aspects. Focusing on only one of these aspects makes it difficult to reconcile Paul’s positive and negative assessments.

The remaining five chapters take readers through Romans, giving attention only to sections of the epistle that use the term “law.” Romans 2 and 7 use “law” more often than any other chapter of Romans, so Gordon gives extended consideration to these texts. With respect to controverted issues in these passages, Gordon argues that 2:13 does not refer to an actual future justification based on doing the Mosaic law: “Will be justified” is “a logical/hypothetical future rather than a predictive future” (53). Those who claim otherwise make Paul’s view of the law incoherent, since elsewhere (Rom 3:20; Gal 2:16) Paul states that no one can or will be justified by works of the Mosaic law. Gordon also argues that 2:14–15 does not refer to intuitive knowledge of the natural law, although he affirms the idea of natural law. These verses, instead, simply refer to hypothetical Gentiles (whether Christian or not) who perform actions corresponding to what the Mosaic law prescribes and thus receive that law’s approval insofar as they do. Commenting on Romans 7:7–25, Gordon argues that Paul uses “I” not to describe his personal subjective experience (whether as converted or not) but to represent corporate Israel’s experience under the Mosaic law.

Assessment of Gordon’s Work

Whatever one thinks of Gordon’s conclusions, readers will appreciate his clear and engaging writing style. Readers should also appreciate the spirit in which he writes. These are polemical books inasmuch as Gordon challenges well-entrenched interpretations of Galatians and Romans and knows that most of his readers will not be instinctively sympathetic. Yet he does not write in an angry or defensive way but mounts a cheerful defense in the face of the odds stacked against him. Gordon comes across as the proverbial happy warrior.

With respect to the book’s substance, I indicated above that I find his big-picture claim persuasive. Gordon makes his case that Paul ordinarily uses “law” to refer to the Mosaic law, and even to the Sinai covenant generally. There are places in Galatians and Romans where “law” undoubtedly refers to the Mosaic law. And Gordon correctly notes that in an organically unified, tightly interconnected argument (such as in Galatians and Romans), an author is unlikely to use a key word (such as “law”) in alternating ways without clear indication that he does so. It is also implausible that Paul could have intended “under the law” and similar expressions to mean something like “under a legalistic misinterpretation/misuse of the law,” as many Protestant interpreters have thought. Otherwise, Jesus himself would have been under a misinterpretation of the law (see Gal 4:4), which surely no one wishes to grant. One can question or disagree with particular points of Gordon’s exegesis, as I do, and still agree that his case as a whole stands. Readers should know, however, that I have held this basic view for a long time, independently of Gordon, so I did not need to be convinced. I encourage readers to read Gordon and see what they think for themselves.

I do wish to engage Gordon on three issues that may also be of interest to readers. The first is a pressing one for readers who (like Gordon) subscribe to the Westminster Standards and wonder whether Gordon’s views accord with them. Gordon himself occasionally calls attention to the potential problem, which, in simplified form, is that the Standards often treat the law (“moral law”) as universally obligatory while Paul viewed the law as temporary and thus binding only for old-covenant Israel. In Galatians, Gordon hints at how he resolves this issue but does not really tie his thoughts together. This is a somewhat unsatisfying feature of the book, since confessional Protestants are an important part of Gordon’s intended audience. He does, however, address the issue directly in a short but helpful appendix to his second chapter in Romans. He notes that the Standards use “law” in a variety of ways. Some of them, in fact, match Paul’s: For example, “under the law” in Westminster Confession of Faith 7.5 means the Mosaic covenant. Gordon also says he affirms the idea behind the Standards’ “moral law,” although he prefers to call it “God’s moral will,” or the like. Gordon has concluded that he need take no exception to the Standards on this issue.

Second, Gordon’s claim that Paul, in Galatians, argues from justification rather than for justification is very interesting, and one likely to strike most readers as highly implausible. Yet Gordon at least has a point. Paul does, for instance, speak of himself and his readers knowing that a person is justified by faith in Jesus Christ, not by works of the law (2:16). And when we think about it, why would this not be so? These were professing Christians, after all. How could recipients of the apostles’ teaching not have heard and confessed that salvation is by faith in Christ alone? Yet while Gordon suggests that the doctrine of justification was not a problem in Galatia, I suspect the reality was more complicated. Even if the troublemakers in Galatia were not formally expositing a bad doctrine of justification, they were not simply living inconsistently with a good doctrine of justification. They had justification problems, as statements such as 5:4 indicate. I suspect Paul was reminding them of something they indeed knew but had in fact lost sight of. It is perhaps like someone appealing to Americans who disrespect others’ free-speech rights: “We Americans know that everyone has a right to free expression!” Yes, Americans know this at some level and may not formally deny it, and yet come to think and act in a very different way. It would be helpful, I think, to recognize Gordon’s insight at this point, but to do so in a nuanced fashion.

Finally, on some occasions Paul speaks of all Christians as having been delivered from the law (unqualified). If we say, with Gordon, merely that this is the Mosaic law, it is difficult to understand how this makes sense, since Gentile Christians were never under the Mosaic law. Surely something more is going on. Consider this issue in Romans 6–7. In 6:14–15, Paul states that Christians are not under the law but under grace. This is in the midst of an explanation of the doctrine of salvation relevant for all believers. While it’s technically true that Gentiles Christians are not under the (Mosaic) law, it seems odd to explain their salvation in this way, since they were not under Moses even before they heard the gospel. The problem becomes more acute in 7:1–6. Paul addresses his readers as “brothers” (7:1, 4), obviously encompassing all his Christian readers and not Jews alone. And he states that all these Christians have died to the law and been released from it (7:4, 6). Gentile believers, therefore, have been delivered from the law. With Gordon, I believe there are good reasons to think Paul still has the Mosaic law in view, but if so, then Gentile Christians too have died to it. There must be some sense in which they were under Moses. For a solution, I would look back to 5:20, where Paul wrote that the (Mosaic) law entered in order to increase the trespass (of Adam). One purpose of the Mosaic law, this text indicates, was to show forth the plight of the entire human race fallen under Adam. Israel was a microcosm, an idea Gordon raises, albeit briefly, in Galatians (214–15). Thus, Gentile Christians could see, in Israel’s sin and condemnation under Moses, their own judgment in Adam, and thus could also see, in the transition from old covenant to new covenant, a picture of the ultimately more important transition from being under Adam to being under Christ.

However readers put this and other issues of Pauline theology together, I believe they will find an open-minded and charitable reading of Gordon profitable. Gordon himself does not claim to have the final word on Galatians and Romans, but these books can certainly stimulate us to keep reading Paul better.

David VanDrunen is a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and serves as the Robert B. Strimple professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics at Westminster Seminary California, Escondido, California. Ordained Servant Online, January, 2026