Don’t let yourself get distracted by The one word “telos” (end). Churchianity taught us to treat the Text with scissors and glue but that is not for those who care what is true. To find the truth we need to focus on the whole thing in its context. Telos can mean termination or culmination. And there’s as much evidence in this passage to make it mean either. We need to reset the lexicon if we want to find the original meaning and intent. Not just defining this one word. But for the sake of brevity here let’s just fix these five words first.

“Christ”
“End”
“Law”
“Righteousness”
“Believe”

Christ is a 2nd century Greek replacement term for Hebrew Meshiach. Technically both mean “anointed”. But the use of each is unlike the other. (A pile of cash and a pile of crap are both piles but nothing alike at all.) Christ comes from khriein meaning to rub or pour upon. By inference “anoint” and khristos was something that was rubbed into or poured upon. By inference, a thing annointed. Its use was most often grease rubbed into leather to treat it or salve and balm applied to wounds. Contrariwise, Meshiach is a “chosen one”, a person, not a thing selected by the Most High to serve a specific purpose.
So right off the bat we have to get rid of that church word “Christ” because it has no business there.
Next we need to knock out the term “law” because that is our English translation of the Greek “nomos”. But what we are speaking about is the Hebrew “Torah”. And though it was a Greek colloquialism, Torah does not mean “law”. Torah is the law of YHWH, but the word “Torah” does not mean law. Torah means “teaching, principle, instruction, guidance”.
How about “Righteousness”?
In the Greek version of Romans the scribes gave us “dikaiosyne” but the Hebrew would have been “tsadakah”.
And as for “believe” the translators left us with “pisteuo” which is always actually rendered as “faith”. And that would be “emuna” in Hebrew.

So if we revert all these terms back to their original usage what do we find? Should we understand “end” to mean culmination or termination?

Let’s see: Put right Romans 10:4 should actually read - “For Meshiach is the “end” of the Torah for tsadakah to all who have emuna.”

In other words, The Most High annointed Yeshua for a specific purpose. What purpose? To be the “end” of the Torah. Termination? Culmination? Well, it doesn’t just say end does it? It says the “end for righteousness”. Sin is defined by the Bible as being “breaking of Torah”. So what would that mean that righteousness is? It would be keeping the Torah. If Messiah is the termination of the Torah for the keeping of Torah, that creates a contradiction.
And beyond “end of the Torah for righteousness” we have also “to all who have emuna”. Emuna is very poorly translated as faith. Faith is an English word derived from French which itself comes from Latin “fides” which just means trust and by extension to believe without seeing. Contrariwise emuna is little to do with believing and trusting and everything to do with living and doing. Emuna is action in loyalty to a cause or person.
This means Meshiach is the End of the Torah for all those which keep the Torah in deeds loyal to the Author of the Torah. If “end” means termination in this context, we have yet another contradiction.

But aside from all those reasons why end should not be thought as termination we should plug in the meanings of Torah and see if it makes any sense to see it that way.
“Meshiach is the end of the Teaching for righteousness…?” Should we think the teaching of righteousness is terminated?

“Meshiach is the end of the Principles for righteousness…?” Should we count the principles of righteousness to be terminated?

“Meshiach is the end of the Instruction for righteousness…?” Are we no longer to be instructed in righteousness? Is that too terminated?

“Meshiach is the end of the Guidance for righteousness…?” Did the Creator really send the Meshiach to destroy the guidance in righteousness or was it to guide us in righteousness?

We are very familiar in our world with “laws”. They exist for one reason or another for one period of time or another, and another can be enacted to replace a previous or to repeal it.

But does Almighty YHWH behave this Way? Does He give His people His teaching, principle, instruction, guidance and punish those who disobey for 2000 years only to discard those people and destroy those rules? Not so much. YHWH does not demand we be righteous and then behave in righteously Himself.

Rather we should look at this passage through the lense of all Scripture and see that Meshiach is the culmination of the Torah, the aim, purpose, and goal of all the teaching principles and instructions and guidances that the Father Almighty has ever given us.

But suppose for a second that culmination is not an option for meaning? Suppose we are left only with the meaning of ending that says “it’s over, abandon it, obey it no more.” What then would we make of this passage? Again we must take it in light of all Scripture. If “Meshiach is the end of the teaching for righteousness to all who have emuna” and end means “it’s over”, what do we do with that?

Well, what do we do with anything we have been taught once we’ve been taught it?…We apply it.
Is Meshiach the end of the principles? Is He the end of the Instructions? The end of our Guidance? Then that simply means it’s time we live out those principles. It is time we follow those instructions. It is time we heed the guidance we’ve been given.

Torah is like mathematics or music. It’s like a martial art or an athletic achievement. It’s like a navigational instrument or a construction site.

In our infancy we learned 2+2=4. And this remains true forever when we move on to higher math forms but we no longer need be taught that 2+2=4. We’ve internalized it and know it, so no one need keep teaching us these rudimentary elements.

Or if we learn a musical instrument, unless we are geniuses we must be taught and practice practice practice…but to what “end”? Termination? Or culmination? Do we master the guitar or the piano and then never play again? No. We learned it all to be able to play well.

Suppose we practiced countless hours to prepare our minds and bodies for baseball. We learned the rules of the game and memorized signals and ran drills and cultivated trust among our teammates and spent money on uniforms and equipment and then…never played the game? What would it have all been for?

A builder makes a house and then what? Burns it down? No. He builds it to the “end” of people living in it.

Or take GPS for example…if we don’t know where we are going we turn navigation on on the phone and we follow the route we are given to get there. After taking the trip a few times we no longer need the GPS to tell us how to get there because we now know The Way. Do we no longer take the trip because we know? No. Does knowing how to get there now if no value? No. We have simply internalized the GPS. We have become the GPS.

It is the same with the Torah. We were taught The Way. And once we are taught we no longer need be taught again…we only need to live out that teaching through emuna that we may become righteous.

Meshiach is not the end like a finish line. Crossed and now it’s done. Rather He’s the end of the Torah in the way and author will pen those words on the last page “The End”. His work is done. Yours is just begun. He wrote it. Now you read it.

Or yet again “end” in the sense of the last in a line. If a story is a trilogy and we only have books one and two, we can have no clue how it all ends and what it was all for.
Meshiach is the end of the Torah for righteousness to all who have Emuna because He does what the Torah did not. He provided redemption for mortal sin.
And now that we have He, we have everything. How we are to live. The example to follow. And a sacrifice for all our times we did not follow.

Question Everything
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