BIG IDEA:
PAUL’S AUTHORITY DEMONSTRATED IN REBUKING PETER’S ERROR —
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH LEAVES NO ROOM FOR HYPOCRISY OR LEGALISM
INTRODUCTION:
Kenneth Wuest: Here the argument for Paul’s apostolic independence has come to the highest level yet attained. In Jerusalem Paul faced Peter as an equal in rank and in the gospel ministry. At Antioch he faced him as his superior in character and courage.
Kathryn Greene-McCreight: The conflict at Antioch depicted in Gal. 2:11–14 is possibly the most theologically significant episode in the development of early Christianity. It reflects the problem that Paul encounters among his congregations in Galatia and sheds light on the boundaries of Jewish Christianity as it incorporates Gentile Christians while releasing them from Jewish Christian Torah observance.
Thomas Schreiner: Rebuke of Peter substantiates Paul’s authority (2:11–21)
I. Rebuke (2:11–14)
(1) Paul’s opposition to Peter (2:11)
(2) Peter’s withdrawal from Gentiles (2:12)
(3) Consequences of Peter’s actions (2:13)
(4) Paul’s response to Peter (2:14)
II. Transition: The Nature of the Gospel (2:15–21)
(1) Righteousness only by faith, not works of law (2:15–16)
(2) Sin does not come from Christ (2:17)
(3) Sin comes from returning to the law (2:18)
(4) Believers died to the law at the cross (2:19–20)
(5) Believers live by faith in Christ (2:20)
(6) To return to the law is to reject grace of the cross (2:21)
George Brunk: When is legitimate, necessary, and wise? And when is compromise an expression compromise of unfaithfulness, lack of courage, or duplicity? When is it a courageous expression of love, and when is it a betrayal of the truth? When does “religious adaptation” reflect loving cultural adaptation (as perhaps in 1 Cor 9:20-23), and when does it reflect betrayal of the gospel or even hypocrisy (as perhaps in Gal 2:11-13)? Oh, if the church knew how to answer that question!
This part of the letter takes us to the very center of those knotty questions. It marks a major transition in the letter. Paul seems to be continuing the narrative of events in his own life when he recounts his confrontation with Cephas at Antioch. But in the midst of the paragraph, Paul’s writing takes on the characteristics of a theological treatise. That style then dominates the remainder of the letter, except for his autobiographical comments in 4:12-20. The precise point of transition is unclear. For that reason we are treating 2:11-21 as a unit.
Ben Witherington: Justification is not the main subject of this letter, it is brought into the discussion about how the Galatians should behave as Christians and whether they should ‘add’ obedience to the Mosaic Law, to their faith in Christ. Paul’s response is that precisely because they did not come to be in Christ by obeying the Law (initial salvation and justification was by grace through faith), they should not now add obedience to the Mosaic Law to their faith in Christ. Rather they should continue as they started in Christ, walking in the Spirit and according to the Law or Norm or Example of Christ.
I. (:11-13) PETER’S HYPOCRISY DESERVED PAUL’S STRONG OPPOSITION
A. (:11a) Responsibility to Confront Hypocrisy –
Paul Did Not Shrink Back from Confronting Peter’s Hypocrisy
“But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face“
Timothy George: The first point to be made is that we are dealing with an event that occurred early in the history of the church. True, the gospel had already broken through to the Gentiles, and Peter himself had played a crucial role in this development (cf. Acts 10). However, the full implications of how Jewish Christianity and Gentile Christianity could together form a spiritual symbiosis was yet to be realized. Not even Paul’s agreement with the pillar apostles over respective missionary strategies for reaching Jews and Gentiles contemplated all of the difficult and dynamic possibilities of Jewish and Gentile believers living and worshiping together in a mixed congregation. The incident at Antioch was thus a necessary if painful stage in the development of a mature NT ecclesiology.
Max Anders: Having presented his acceptance by the Jerusalem leaders, Paul turns to an incidence that illustrated his apostolic clout. He exercised his apostolic authority with the strongest church leader—Peter. Paul’s authority as an apostle is confirmed through this correction of Peter. In this section, Paul comes to Antioch and corrects Peter, the leader of the Jews, because he was clearly in the wrong by giving the appearance that he was siding with the false teachers. By assuming the authority to correct Peter, Paul shows his authority and the truth of his message of grace.
Craig Keener: Probably the empire’s third largest city, Antioch held a strategic position as the “mother city” and most powerful city in the massive province of Syria. Scholars lack consensus regarding its population. Many estimate 500,000 or even 600,000; others estimate as low as 100,000 or 150,000. The disparity in estimates today mirrors that in antiquity. Strabo, writing in the first century BCE, indicates a population of 300,000; in the first century CE (perhaps due to increased urbanization), Pliny’s estimate is double that of Strabo; in the fourth century CE, however, Chrysostom cites only 200,000.
Antioch was a “free” city, mostly permitted self-governance, and “was a typical Hellenistic Roman metropolis.” The city was divided in four parts and was laid out along a traditional Hellenistic and Roman gridiron plan. It had a theater, an amphitheater, and a circus. Colonnades, wide walkways, and many shops lined its marble-paved main street, which ran for roughly two miles.
Besides the usual smattering of pagan religion, Antioch was known for the nearby cult center of Daphne. But Josephus claims a very large Jewish population there; rough estimates generally range from 20,000 to 40,000. Its ties to the east and the proximity of Judea, then governed as part of Syria, probably gave Antioch’s Jewish community stronger Judean connections than most other Diaspora cities. Jews and Christians continued in active contact in Antioch at least into the fourth century.
Josephus: [summarizes the situation of Jews at Antioch during the first century as follows:] The Jewish race, densely interspersed among the native populations of every portion of the world, is particularly numerous in Syria, where intermingling is due to the proximity of the two countries. But it was at Antioch that they especially congregated, partly owing to the greatness of that city, but mainly because the successors of King Antiochus [i.e., Antiochus I Soter] had enabled them to live there in security. For, although Antiochus surnamed Epiphanes sacked Jerusalem, and plundered the temple, his successors on the throne restored to the Jews of Antioch all such votive offerings as were made of brass, to be laid up in their synagogue, and, moreover, granted them citizen rights on an equality with the Greeks. Continuing to receive similar treatment from later monarchs, the Jewish colony grew in numbers, and their richly designed and costly offerings formed a splendid ornament to the temple. Moreover, they were constantly attracting to their religious ceremonies multitudes of Greeks, and these they had in some measure incorporated with themselves (J. W. 7.43–45, tr. H. St. J. Thackeray, LCL).
B. (:11b-13) Repercussions of Hypocrity —
Peter’s Hypocrisy Was Causing Serious Problems — for Himself and Others
- (:11b) His Own Actions Condemned Him
“because he stood condemned“
- (:12-13) His Bad Example Was Leading Others Astray
a. His Hypocrisy
(1) Acted first one way
“For prior to the coming of certain men from James,
he used to eat with the Gentiles“
Reference is probably to the fellowship meals, the agape love-feasts of the early church.
Douglas Moo: Paul of course realizes that he has jumped ahead in his narrative of this incident, and so he now backs up to explain (hence the γάρ, gar, for) what led to the need for him to resist Peter to his face. . .
The text indicates some kind of relationship between these people who arrived in Antioch and James, one of the “pillars” of the Jerusalem church (v. 9). Interpreters have often tended toward opposite poles in assessing this relationship.
- Some think the envoys accurately conveyed James’s own message (e.g., R. Longenecker 1990: 73; Martyn 1997: 233; Bockmuehl 2000: 71–73; Schnabel 2004: 1003–4; Elmer 2009: 104–5).
- Others, however, insist that the envoys only claimed to be representing the apostle and were in reality seeking authority for their message by a bogus appeal to James (e.g., Lightfoot 1881: 112; Barnett 1999: 285–86).
Our text does not allow us to make a clear decision between these options (Silva 2003: 101). But what we can be sure of is that on the two occasions when James is called on to make a decision about the inclusion of Gentiles as Gentiles within the Messianic community, he sides with those who insist that Gentiles should not be required to “Judaize” (Acts 11:1–18 [James is not mentioned, but we can assume that he was involved] and Acts 15).
Bruce Barton: When Peter arrived in Antioch, he already knew that God had broken down the barriers between Jews and Gentiles, and he understood the true meaning of Christian freedom. So he would gladly eat with the Gentiles. The imperfect tense of the verb indicates that this was not one occasion but a repeated pattern, meaning that Peter joined with the other Jews in eating with their Gentile brothers and sisters in Christ on a regular basis. This pattern undoubtedly went beyond sharing common meals and included taking the Lord’s Supper together.
But all that was before certain men came from James. These men were the legalists, members of “the circumcision group”, and most likely not sent by James. The wording here means they came “from James’s group,” that is, from the Jerusalem church. James, as leader of the Jerusalem church, had a vast range of people to deal with, and these men were part of the legalistic group of his church (almost every modern-day church has its own group of these!). Among the entourage from Jerusalem, there must have been “certain men” who frowned on fraternizing with Gentiles. These may have been rigid and legalistic Jewish Christians, but they were probably associated with the same “false brothers” that had disrupted Paul’s visit to Jerusalem.
Though this group probably tried to trade on James’s authority, he later firmly denied sending them. In the letter sent back to the Gentile Christians in Antioch after the Jerusalem council, James wrote, “We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said” (Acts 15:24 NIV).
George Brunk: The key issue has to do with table fellowship between Jewish and Gentile Christians. This may have involved both regular meals and the Lord’s Supper, which the early church typically celebrated in a meal context. Jews were careful not to associate closely with Gentiles because it violated the regulations of ritual purity and dietary laws. Eating at the same table compromises these standards. James and Peter are not technically inconsistent with the stance they had taken in Jerusalem in the previous account. There the issue was circumcision and mission responsibility. Here the question is table fellowship. The former agreement recognized and blessed two separate spheres for Jewish and Christian believers. Table fellowship, however, raises a new kind of question because here the two groups must be together—as equals.
David deSilva: When Peter came to Antioch, he found Christians of Jewish and gentile backgrounds worshiping together and expressing their unity by taking their meals together. This picture accords with Luke’s account of the mission to Jews and Greeks, which seems to have been distinctive to Syrian Antioch (Acts 11:19–20). Peter appears to have understood that such an arrangement, though in violation of Jewish sensibilities regarding unguarded or overly close association with gentiles, was perfectly in keeping with the purity of the new people God had formed from Jews and gentiles. Indeed, he may have been prepared for this situation himself by his previous experience with the centurion Cornelius and his household in Caesarea (Acts 10:1 – 11:18), though this history would make his subsequent change in behavior all the more disappointing. Peter therefore joined freely in the practice of the Antiochene church, eating alongside fellow believers in Christ without regard for their ethnicity.
(2) Then another way
“but when they came,
he began to withdraw and hold himself aloof“
Ralph Martin: Literally, “he cut himself off”—a possible pun, meaning “he played the Pharisee” (“Pharisee” is built on a Semitic root meaning “to separate”). These Jewish leaders were self-styled “separated ones,” anxious to preserve their ritual purity and ethnic distinctiveness as elites within God’s covenant people.
F. F. Bruce: What was their message? It may have been something like this: ‘news is reaching us in Jerusalem that you are habitually practising table-fellowship with Gentiles. This is causing grave scandal to our more conservative brethren here. Not only so: it is becoming common knowledge outside the church, so that our attempts to evangelize our fellow-Jews are being seriously hampered’ (cf. T. W. Manson, Studies, 178–181).
Nijay Gupta: Imagine that the Christian community in Antioch was a network of house churches. Believers met often in their separate house communities but also gathered once in a while as a large group for apostolic instruction and unifying fellowship. When Cephas initially came to town, various house churches would have invited him for a meal and to show this distinguished visitor hospitality. In the before period, he presumably said “yes” to all kinds of invites, from Jewish believers and gentile believers alike. Oakes argues that after these “certain men” arrived, Peter stopped accepting invitations from gentile churches. Cephas “[drew] back,” which may mean he felt the need to spend time with the Jewish Christian visitors from Jerusalem (v. 12). Paul saw that these outsiders had a negative impact on Cephas, leading him (and others) into sin and hypocrisy.
(3) Motivated by Peer Pressure
“fearing the party of the circumcision“
b. Its Negative Effect on the other Jewish Believers
“And the rest of the Jews joined him in hypocrisy“
Craig Keener: Paul does not indicate a theological difference with Peter here. This is a disagreement over behavior, not over the content of the gospel message; that is why Paul charges Peter with hypocrisy, of living differently from what he believes, not with believing error. The point is not that Peter wrongly thinks it inappropriate to eat with gentiles; Peter has been eating with gentiles when no one was present to criticize this behavior. (Paul probably also knows Peter’s own accounts about Jesus eating with sinners; see Mark 2:15–17 and comment on Gal. 2:15, 17.) The point is that Peter knows that it is not wrong to eat with gentiles yet withdraws from them anyway to avoid criticism. It is acting differently from what he knows to be true that earns the label hypocrisy.
c. Its Negative Effect on His Ministry Partner = Barnabas
“with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy“
Bruce Barton: Paul mentioned Barnabas separately, probably because Paul was especially surprised that Barnabas would be led astray by their hypocrisy. Barnabas was Paul’s traveling companion; together they preached the gospel to the Gentiles, proclaiming Jews’ and Gentiles’ oneness with Christ. Barnabas was not from the Jerusalem church and would not have had the personal and relational stake in this that Peter had. And Barnabas should have known better (in reality, so should Peter have known better). Yet, like Peter, Barnabas was human, and for some unknown reason he followed Peter’s example.
Timothy George: Even Barnabas! Paul’s sorrow and embarrassment over the defection of his close friend and colleague was still a painful memory as he related it to the Galatians. Barnabas had introduced Paul to the Jerusalem believers when others in that city thought he was still a persecutor in disguise. It was Barnabas who had sought out Paul in Tarsus and persuaded him to become a part of the ministry team at Antioch. Barnabas too had stood with Paul in Jerusalem when he defended the liberty of the gospel against the false brothers. And, of course, Barnabas had accompanied Paul on the first missionary journey when many Gentile believers were won to Christ and the churches of Galatia themselves were established. For “even Barnabas” to be carried away was a severe blow!
II. (:14) PETER’S HYPOCRISY COMPROMISED THE TRUTH OF THE GOSPEL
A. Integrity of the Gospel Must Be Maintained
“But when I saw that they were not straightforward
about the truth of the gospel“
George Brunk: According to Paul, truth involves both right belief and right behavior. Here Paul emphasizes moral integrity. The word translated acting consistently means (lit.) to walk straight. It is related in form to the English word orthodoxy, but it refers to one’s manner of life rather than to one’s doctrinal beliefs. So it would be equivalent to our word orthopraxis, or right action. In keeping with his Jewish background, Paul takes truth to involve both behavior and belief (ethics and theology).
Ronald Fung: From Paul’s point of view, Peter’s personal inconsistency carried an even more sinister significance. When Paul says that the conduct of Peter and the other Jewish Christians “did not square with the truth of the Gospel,” the verb he uses implies that to him Peter’s conduct was tantamount to the beginning of an attack on the position he was maintaining at Antioch (though it was certainly not so intended by Peter). Measured by this position, which in Paul’s estimation clearly represented “the truth of the Gospel,” Peter’s play-acting was, in fact, nothing short of a defection or deviation from that truth. How that gospel truth was conceived by Paul (already intimated in the exposition on 1:12, 16) becomes explicit in Paul’s address to Peter and indeed is given repeated expression in the rest of the letter.
B. Public Error Demands Public Censure
“I said to Cephas in the presence of all“
F. F. Bruce: The rebuke was thus public as well as personal (‘to his face’). It has been asked why Paul did not follow the injunction of Mt. 18:15, ‘If your brother sins, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone’ (where εἰς σέ after ἀμαρτήσῃ may be an addition to the original text). Paul may or may not have known this injunction in its Matthaean form, but he certainly knew the spirit of it, for he reproduces it in 6:1 below. For aught we know, he may have remonstrated with Cephas privately before rebuking him publicly. But perhaps he would have said that, since the offence was public, the rebuke had also to be public. Even Augustine confessed, in another connexion, that he had difficulty at times in deciding whether to follow Mt. 18:15 or 1 Tim. 5:20, ‘Those who sin (or who persist in sinning, τοὺς ἁμαρτάνοντας) rebuke in the presence of all, that the rest may stand in fear’ (Ep. 95.3).
C. Inconsistency is the Essence of Hypocrisy
“If you, being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews,
how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?”
Scot McKnight: As can be seen, the whole issue is the place of the law in the life of the Galatian Christian. Put differently and more realistically, it is the place of Jewish distinctives and social regulations that governed Jewish behavior and separated them from the Gentiles and the Galatian converts. We should not at this point separate these two dimensions of the law for first-century Jews; they did not perceive their social distinctives (circumcision, table purity, etc.) as something other than straightforward life under the law of Moses (moral principles). The struggle for Peter (and somewhat earlier for Paul) was how to live as a Christian Jew and how that life was to be governed. Were they to submit to the Jewish law? And, if so, did that mean they were to remain Jews and expect converts to Christ eventually to embrace the whole law (to become proselytes to Judaism)? Regardless of how hard this perception is for us today, this was the central issue for first-century Jewish converts. Were they, in turning to Christ, abandoning their Jewish heritage, fulfilling it, or simply adding to it? Peter’s struggle was similar to that of other Jews: Are we Jews? Jewish Christians? or Christians? Are we reformers of Judaism or are we starting the church?
Here is the nub of the issue for Paul as he looked at Peter’s behavior in Antioch: Peter, in finding acceptance with God in Christ, apparently failed to realize the comprehensiveness and sufficiency of the new covenant in Christ and life in the Spirit. To Paul, Christ’s work was complete and the law was thereby relegated to its proper time in history. Paul contends that Christian morality and life before God are not to be found in “observing the law”; rather, they are found in death and resurrection with Christ and in the “fruit of the Spirit.” True life before God, he argues, is through Christ and in the Spirit.
III. (:15-21) JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH UNITES US ALL (JEW AND GENTILE) TO CHRIST SO THAT WE CAN WALK BY FAITH
A. (:15-16) Both Jews and Gentiles Can Only Be Justified by Faith Alone
Peter Fung: This verse and the next form a single, overloaded sentence in the Greek; they have been aptly described as “Paul’s doctrine of justification in a nutshell” and must be examined in considerable detail. . .
The upshot of Paul’s statement in vv. 15f., then, is (a) that justification is attained by faith in Christ alone and not by legal works, and (b) that this principle—which is illustrated in his own experience and that of the other Jewish Christians and, at least in what it denies, is supported by Scripture—applies universally to Jew and Gentile alike. That he should here (as also in Phil. 3:7–9) describe or interpret his conversion experience as an experience of justification by faith is in perfect accord with the conclusion derived from Gal. 1:12, 16 that the gospel of justification by faith in both its negative and positive aspects was implicitly involved in the revelation of Jesus to him as the Messiah, Lord, and Son of God: ultimately the knowledge to which he refers in v. 16 (“we know”) is grounded in his encounter with Christ, and the conviction thus gained is then supported by his new understanding of Scripture.
Timothy George: We should remember that the problem in Galatia was not the overt repudiation of the Christian faith by apostates who formerly professed it but rather the dilution and corruption of the gospel by those who wanted to add to the doctrine of grace a dangerous admixture of “something more.” In order to counter this tendency, Paul developed a series of daring contrasts throughout this passage.
- Thus “Jews by birth” are contrasted to “Gentile sinners”;
- justification “by observing the law” is contrasted to justification “by faith in Jesus Christ.”
- The rebuilding of the old structures of salvation by works is contrasted to their destruction by the gospel.
- And, finally, Paul’s “dying to the law” is contrasted to his “living for God.”
All of this was intended to impress upon the Galatians the radical choice that confronted them. This is the reason Paul immediately, without so much as a break in his narrative, extrapolated the doctrine of justification from the incident at Antioch.
Douglas Moo: The paragraph divides into three basic parts.
- As we have noted, verses 15–16 state the essential theological point of the paragraph: Jews like Paul and Peter understand that they have been justified by faith in Christ and not by “works of the law.” In place of the agitators’ synthesis of faith in Christ and the law, Paul insists on an antithesis: it is Christ and therefore not the law. The rest of the paragraph elaborates on this negative claim about justification and the law.
- Verses 17–20 spell out how finding justification “in Christ” has implications for the law; and
- verse 21 shows why righteousness (e.g., the status granted by justification) cannot come via the law.
- Different Spiritual Pedigree
a. Jews
“We are Jews by nature”
b. Not Gentiles
“and not sinners from among the Gentiles”
George Brunk: In good debate style, Paul begins with a point on which his opponents will agree. This affirmation expresses the typical perspective of a good Jew. All non-Jews were commonly referred to as sinners. Jews are by birth (lit. by nature) in a class of their own, meaning that they are natural-born Jews and beneficiaries of covenant status with God. This is where Paul’s argument begins. But it ends in verse 17 with another perspective entirely: both Gentiles and Jews are sinners (cf. Rom 1:18 – 3:20).
- Same Gospel of Justification by Faith in Christ Alone (Apart from the Works of the Law)
Same principle stated 3 times for emphasis
a. Stated Once
“nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of
the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus,”
George Brunk: Paul never implies that this doctrine is being expressly denied in the controversies. What is in dispute is the implication of justification by faith for the Christian life and whether it is necessary to supplement this bedrock belief with submission to the Law of Moses.
Timothy George: In its most basic meaning, justification is the declaration that somebody is in the right. McGrath observes that in Pauline vocabulary the verb dikaioō “denotes God’s powerful, cosmic and universal action in effecting a change in the situation between sinful humanity and God, by which God is able to acquit and vindicate believers, setting them in a right and faithful relation to himself.” In Pauline usage the term has both forensic (from Latin forum, “law court”) and eschatological connotations. Justification should not be confused with forgiveness, which is the fruit of justification, nor with atonement, which is the basis of justification. Rather it is the favorable verdict of God, the righteous Judge, that one who formerly stood condemned has now been granted a new status at the bar of divine justice.
The classical Protestant understanding of justification is set forth with great clarity in Question 60 of the Heidelberg Catechism: “How are you righteous before God?” The following answer is given:
“Only by true faith in Jesus Christ. In spite of the fact that my conscience accuses me that I have grievously sinned against all the commandments of God, and have not kept any one of them, and that I am still ever prone to all that is evil, nevertheless, God, without any merit of my own, out of pure grace, grants me the benefits of the perfect expiation of Christ, imputing to me his righteousness and holiness as if I had never committed a single sin or had ever been sinful, having fulfilled myself all the obedience which Christ has carried out for me, if only I accept such favor with a trusting heart.”
According to this definition, justification is by imputation, that is, the righteousness of Christ is counted or reckoned to the sinners so that their standing before God is “as if” they possessed the kind of standing before the Father that would allow him to say of them, as he did of Christ, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” . . .
The “works of the law,” then, refer to the commandments given by God in the Mosaic legislation in both its ceremonial and moral aspects, precepts commanded by God and thus holy and good in themselves. Because of the fallenness of human beings, however, “no flesh” could ever be justified by observing the law. Moreover, God himself knew and intended for it to be thus from the beginning. But why would God give a law no one could keep or issue commands no one could obey? Paul would struggle with this question in Gal 3 and 4 as he described the divine purpose for the law in the history of salvation.
Paul said that we are not justified by works of the law but rather dia pisteōs Iēsou Christou, which the CSB translates “by faith in Jesus Christ.” This translation assumes the traditional view that Iēsou Christou is an objective genitive, so that the faith in question is that of those who believe in Jesus Christ. More recently, however, other scholars have argued that this expression should be read as a subjective genitive, referring to the faith or faithfulness of Jesus Christ. While the faithfulness of Jesus Christ is a prominent theme in Paul’s theology (cf. the kenotic hymn of Phil 2:5–11), what is being contrasted in Galatians is not divine fidelity versus human fickleness but rather God’s free initiative in grace versus human efforts toward self-salvation. Thus, when Paul spoke of faith as essential for justification, he was thinking of the necessary human response to what God has objectively accomplished in the cross of Christ. At the same time, it is crucial to recognize the instrumental character of such faith. Paul always says that we are justified “by” faith (dia plus the genitive), not “on account of” faith (dia plus the accusative). Evangelical Christians must ever guard against the temptation to turn faith itself into one of the “works of the law.” Saving faith is a radical gift from God, never a mere human possibility (Eph 2:8–9). Faith is not an achievement that earns salvation anymore than circumcision is. Rather faith is the evidence of saving grace manifested in the renewal of the heart by the Holy Spirit.
Thomas Schreiner: The term “works of law” most likely refers to all the works prescribed by the Mosaic law. In support of this, Paul emphasizes in 3:10b the obligation to do all that the law requires, and hence limiting “works of law” to only a part of the law fails to convince. This also fits with 5:3 as well, where Paul reminds the Galatians that those who adopt circumcision are required “to do the whole law,” not just part of the law. We should also bring in Rom 3:20 at this point, where Paul affirms that “no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law.” Here Paul summarizes the argument of Rom 1:18 – 3:20 as a whole and emphasizes that all deserve judgment since all have sinned and violated God’s law (cf. 3:23). It is hardly credible to claim that the Jews were condemned for their bad attitude of excluding Gentiles. They were liable to judgment because they had not kept the entirety of God’s law.
b. Stated Twice
“even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the Law;”
Scot McKnight: Paul knew that implicit in conversion to Christ was a confession that a proper standing before God could not be had through a commitment to the law. Christ was the fulfillment of the law and went beyond it in his revelation (Rom. 10:4; Gal. 3:19–25). To do the law after Christ was to deny his sufficient work; it was to step back in salvation-history to a period before Christ. For Paul, this was abominable and denied the very purpose of Christ’s coming. Thus, Paul reasons with Peter that they were agreed that a person is not justified by observing the law; commitment to Christ negates a commitment to the law as the means of being accepted by God. Paul would say, “You cannot serve Christ and the law at the same time.”
On the other hand, Paul is not against “good works.” For him, “works” has three primary ideas.
(1) There is the principle of works that appears in Rom. 3:27, and here we are close to the idea of merit or doing (see also Gal. 3:12) as the way one finds acceptance with God. This sense of works Paul opposed; the principle of works is never a means of acceptance with God.
(2) There is the notion of Mosaic works, or works of the law, as found predominantly in Galatians, that describes the behavior of certain persons who were expressing their conviction that acceptance with God could only be had if one lived according to the law of Moses (e.g., 2:3, 11–14). What these people were doing was perverted by why they were doing it: to express their faith in Moses rather than in Christ alone. There was nothing wrong with living according to the law when it was done properly; after all, Paul circumcised Timothy (Acts 16:3) and later himself took steps to be purified so as to offer sacrifices in the temple (21:26). But when one obeyed the law to express one’s confidence in it as a necessary step for acceptance by God, Paul took serious umbrage.
(3) There is the idea of good works as found in Eph. 2:10. What Paul means here is that people are called by God’s grace in order to serve him in good works, a lifestyle that is attractive, moral, and godly. We might say, for Galatians, that the “fruit of the Spirit” (Gal. 5:22–23) is a description of “good works.” This kind of works is the primary thrust of how Paul thinks Christians should live.
Therefore, when we say Paul taught that justification was not by works, we need to clarify which kind of works he had in mind. In Galatians, he is concerned primarily with the second sense and perhaps at times (but perhaps not at all) with the first sense. But Paul is not, or never was, against “good works” as an adequate description of a Christian’s moral life and relations with others. Indeed, Paul says we will be judged by our works (Rom. 2:5–6; 1 Cor 3:10–15; 2 Cor 5:10; 11:15).
c. Stated Three Times
“since by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified.”
David deSilva:
(1) In Galatians, Paul is concerned with what will bring people into alignment with God’s standards of what is “righteous,” and thus be declared righteous before God’s court on the last day.
(2) Aligning oneself with the practices prescribed in the Torah (“works of the law”), which Paul regards as a complete package, though some particular works have come to the fore in the Galatian situation, will not bring people into such alignment.
(3) Trust in Christ (the linguistically and contextually more probable solution of the disputed phrase pistis Christou) has opened up the path to becoming righteous and thus to receiving God’s approbation; but believers must continue to trust in Jesus’s mediation and, specifically, in the efficacy and sufficiency of the gift that Jesus’s death has secured for those who trust, namely, the Holy Spirit, to lead them into and empower them for the righteous lives that God will affirm. . .
The rival teachers were promoting conforming one’s life to the vision for life communicated in the law as a path toward being “set right” in God’s sight and therefore “acquitted” before God at the judgment (thus the use of the verb in 5:4). Paul’s converts were, at the very least, interested in this as a possible path to advance their own interest in attaining that righteous verdict.
B. (:17) Our Inconsistent Practice of Sin Can Never be Attributed to Our Perfect Savior
“But if, while seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have also been found sinners, is Christ then a minister of sin? May it never be!”
David deSilva: Accusation: If Jewish Christians start neglecting the behaviors that keep them set apart from gentile “sinners”—becoming in this way “sinners” themselves and no different from gentiles (2:15), contrary to God’s express command to and purpose for Israel (Lev 20:22–26)—then Jesus has become the excuse for violating the historic covenant and disobeying God through neglect of the Torah.
Kenneth Wuest: Paul repudiates the false assumption of the Judaizers who charged that Christ is the promoter and encourager of sin in that He causes the Jew to abandon the law as a justifying agency, and in doing so, puts himself on the common plane of a Gentile whom he calls a sinner and a dog. The Judaizers argued that in view of the fact that violation of the law is sin, therefore, abandonment of the law in an effort to be justified in Christ is also sin. Thus Christ is the promoter of sin.
Herman Ridderbos: The objection has reference to the seeming ethical danger of the doctrine. Does it (the doctrine of justification by faith alone) not make for godless and normless living? The objection begins by saying something that cannot be denied: if even we (Jews) ourselves, quite as much as the Gentiles, are found to be sinners, and there is, therefore, no essential difference between those who observe the law and the sinners of the Gentiles … And thence the question which, on the basis of that clause, can be asked, and is as a matter of fact always being asked anew: Is this Christ, then, a minister of sin, serving in its cause? The answer could not be more definitely negative. Paul nowhere does injustice to the gravity of sin or to the holiness of the law. Both are always totally assumed.
Bruce Barton: The Judaizers saw justification as a “theological” excuse to get out from under Jewish law (that is, changing from Jew to Christian). But Paul (and the Jewish Christians who had experienced justification) knew that while offering freedom from the restrictive law, justification by faith demanded lifestyle and behavioral changes. When God truly gets hold of a life, nothing can remain the same. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV). At the end of this letter, Paul wrote, “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation” (Galatians 6:15 NIV). Grace does not abolish the law with its standards and morality; rather, it moves it from an external standard impossible to keep to an inner motivation for living a pure and God-honoring life.
Douglas Moo: The meaning of this verse [:16] and the next one [:17] (which are closely related) and their contribution to the argument of this paragraph are unclear. Two main options confront us, determined according to whether “find ourselves to be sinners” takes place at conversion or after conversion and, correspondingly, what “sinners” refers to.
- One interpretation holds that Paul is reflecting on the experience that he, Peter, and other Christian Jews had when they first came to Christ to be justified. At that moment, they found themselves to be sinners—that is, they understood that they were truly as sinful as the Gentiles they had scorned, and accordingly they needed to depend on Christ alone for justification. But this discovery did not make Christ a servant of sin, for their sin existed all along. Verse 18 explains: it is when people (whether Jewish Christians or Gentile Christians, such as the Galatians) try to go back to the law (again) that they become “transgressors,” either in the sense that they become guilty of their sin again or in the sense that they break the fundamental “law of the gospel.” (For this general interpretation, see, e.g., Lightfoot 1881: 116–17; Ridderbos 1953: 101–3; Smiles 1998: 147–59; Lambrecht 1978; 1987; 1996; Hunn 2010).
- Other interpreters think that Paul has in view a postconversion situation. Peter, Paul, and other Jewish Christians are seeking to find ultimate justification in their union with Christ and, in doing so, have recognized the implications that Paul states in verse 16: they have abandoned the law as a means of finding that justification. They therefore “find themselves” to be in the same category as the Gentiles (v. 15): “sinners” who do not live by God’s law. But this does not make Christ the servant of sin (in the ultimate sense of that word). This would be the case only if Jewish Christians would “rebuild” the law as a fundamental authority; they would then truly be “transgressors.” (So, in general, Burton 1921: 124–30; Betz 1979: 119–21; Dunn 1993a: 141–42; Martyn 1997: 254–56; Kruse 1996: 69–71; Winger 1992: 142–45.)
Neither interpretation is without its problems (and hence the division of opinion among scholars), but the second reading has fewer problems.
C. (:18-21) The Key to Righteousness is Living by Grace Through Faith
- (:18) Seeking Righteousness by Law Keeping Is Futile
“For if I rebuild what I have once destroyed,
I prove myself to be a transgressor.”
Craig Keener: Paul argues further: if I rebuild the things that I once tore down (2:18)—ritual purity customs that separate me from gentiles—then I am showing that I should not have torn them down to begin with, and I am admitting that I really am breaking the law by fellowshiping with gentiles.
C. F. Hogg: Re “those things which I destroyed” — kataluo, = to loosen down, used of the demolition of a building, Matt. 24:2, of the death of the body, 2 Cor. 5:1, of the failure of purposes, Acts 5:38, 39, and of the marring of a person’s spiritual well-being, Rom. 14:20. The Lord Jesus declared that He came ‘not to destroy [kataluo] the law’, Matt. 5:17, that is to say, not to lower the standard of Divine righteousness, not to abrogate the least of God’s requirements, but, on the contrary, in His own life to ‘magnify the law and make it honourable’, Isa. 42:21.
Bruce Barton: Justification by faith destroyed the Jewish “merit system” with all its laws and good deeds that attempted to rack up points with God. To rebuild that, to be justified by faith and then return to that legal system as a basis for one’s relationship with God, would erroneously imply that Christ’s death was not sufficient. The truth, however, is that it was not necessary for the Gentiles to place themselves under the law in order to discover that the law could not add to their justification. Paul saw the situation in Antioch with Peter as a clear illustration of the unnecessary burden that some wanted to place on Gentile believers. Peter, through his act of pulling away from the Gentile fellowship, was giving law a place of authority that it no longer held.
Peter Fung: If Peter and the other Jewish Christians upheld again the observances of the law as a necessary condition for justification (as the Judaizers were urging upon Paul’s Galatian converts), then they were thereby submitting themselves afresh to the dominion of the law and were bound to become transgressors of it (cf. 5:2f.; 2:16).
Thomas Schreiner: If Paul rebuilds the OT law, which is abolished now that Christ has come and a new era in redemptive history has arrived, then he has violated God’s will and is to be deemed a transgressor. Hence, for Peter to say, in effect, that Gentiles must observe the OT law to belong to the people of God is contrary to God’s will. Reinstituting the law transgresses God’s will because it denies that righteousness is in Christ and returns to the old era of salvation history. Therefore, to reach back to the law for righteousness constitutes sin since it denies righteousness is in Christ. The old age was dominated by sin and the law, but the new age in Christ is marked by righteousness and life. This interpretation is preferable because it also explains the ground “for” (γάρ) in 2:19. Paul would prove himself to be a transgressor if he reinstituted the law because he had already died to the law when he died with Christ. The era of the law had ceased with the death and resurrection of Christ.
- (:19) The New Principle of living by faith in Christ involves living to God
“For through the Law I died to the Law, that I might live to God.”
Timothy George: What did Paul mean when he said, “I died to the law”? We must avoid two errors in interpreting these words. In the first place we must avoid reducing the law in this context to its ceremonial aspect. True, the burning issues in Galatia were circumcision, feast days, and food laws, all of which were external rites or ceremonies called for by the law of Moses. However, the issue at stake was not these ceremonies as such, for to Paul they were “disputed matters” (Rom 14:1); his concern was rather the theological baggage the false teachers were placing on such rites. As J. G. Machen put it, “Paul is contending in this great epistle not for a ‘spiritual’ view of the law as over against externalism or ceremonialism; he is contending for the grace of God as over against human merit in any form.”
When Paul said he died to the law, he was referring to nothing less than the God-given commandments and decrees contained in OT Scriptures. However, he was not saying here that the law of God had lost all meaning or relevance for the Christian believer. This is the error of antinomianism, which Paul was at pains to refute both here in Galatians as well as in Romans. Later in Galatians, Paul would exhort his readers to carry one another’s burdens and thus “fulfill the law of Christ” (6:2). An ethical imperative in the Christian life flows from a proper understanding of justification. Paul would return to this theme in the last two chapters of the epistle.
Elsewhere Paul used the expression “to die to” not only with reference to the law but also in relation to the self, sin, and the world. In each of these cases Paul meant that his relationship to these entities—self, sin, world, law—had been so decisively altered by his union with Christ that they no longer control, dominate, or define his existence. By saying that he died to the law “through the law” Paul is anticipating his later discussion of the provisional role of the law in the history of salvation. The law itself, by revealing the inadequacy of human obedience and the depth of human sinfulness, set the stage, as it were, for the drama of redemption effected by the promised Messiah who fulfilled the law by obeying it perfectly and suffering its curse vicariously.
Bruce Barton: The law itself could not save because no one can keep its perfect standards. The law thus cannot give eternal life; instead, it offers only failure and death. So what is its usefulness? The law was a necessary instrument to show people the ultimate futility of trying to live up to God’s standard on their own. But that very hopelessness created by the law can have a positive impact if it leads a person to the true hope, Christ himself. Christ took upon himself that death penalty—the death we deserved for being lawbreakers. His action freed us from the jurisdiction of Moses’ law. When Paul understood that the law was completely incapable of giving salvation, and when he embraced the one who could give salvation, he knew he could never go back to the law. Paul felt this so intensely that he expressed it in terms of death, I died to the law. Paul went from a law-centered life to a Christ-centered life.
George Brunk: To have a living relationship with God, the believer must end a relationship to the Law. Such a claim is nonsense to the average Jew, who sees the Law precisely as the means of cultivating covenant life with God. Indeed, Deuteronomy emphasizes the point again and again.
So what is the basis for Paul’s claim? Perhaps we find some hint later in the letter. The Law cannot make alive (3:21). Only the Spirit can overcome the flesh and create the true fruit of righteousness (5:18, 23). The Law cannot do so. It simply does not have the capability to bring about spiritual and moral renewal. In the coming of Christ, God has now given the Spirit (4:6), who provides the power that the Law lacks. The implication is that the Law by its own limitation has brought death to the authority it had over Paul. In one sense the Law is the agent of its own death. But in another sense the new gift of life in Christ and in the Spirit is the cause of that death. As a result, it is important to notice the link that Paul is making between death to the Law and being crucified (and made alive) with Christ in the next sentence. They are two aspects of the same event. To die with Christ is to die to the Law. This thought is expressly stated in Romans 7:4.
Romans 7 lays out a fuller explanation of death to the Law and how the Law itself is the means of death to the Law. Although the Law tells me what is right, it does not empower me to do the right. Knowing the Law makes me more responsible for my conduct (it “is holy and just and good”), but without the power to overcome sin, this knowledge only gives sin more leverage over me, causing spiritual death. In this way, the Law becomes the agent that ends my relationship with it. By implication, the Law itself tells me to seek life elsewhere. To do that is to die to the Law as the governing authority in my life.
The expression live to God is key to Paul’s larger argument. (Note how life and live mark the next verse as well.) It might also be translated live for God. Paul is picking up on the Jewish Christian concern for upright living. He grounds his response in the assertion that coming alive to God and living for God is precisely what his view of the gospel and of justification entails. Here and throughout Scripture, life (v. 20) has rich connotations of human existence in its many dimensions and in its ideal and fulfilled form. To live to someone speaks of a vital, nourishing relationship with that one. For Paul, life encompasses the right-making action of God in justification in the totality of its effects. Justification in Christ (2:16) begins in the court-like declaration from God that we are children of God, but it results in a new relationship with God that is life-changing because our whole life is given godlike shape by an encounter with Christ, the Son of God (2:20).
- (:20) Our Union with Christ in His Death and Resurrection makes this new life of faith possible
“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but
Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by
faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.”
C. F. Hogg: Faith is the characteristic function of the new life.
Timothy George: The new life Paul had received flowed from his identification with the passion and death of Christ. Elsewhere Paul could speak of being buried and raised with Christ, an identification portrayed liturgically in the ordinance of baptism (Rom 6:1–6). Indeed, Betz has suggested that Paul’s more developed baptismal theology in Romans may have evolved from this more succinct statement in Galatians.
But what does it mean to be “crucified with Christ”? In one sense this is presumptuous language because the mystery of atonement requires that the death of Christ be unique, unrepeatable, and once for all. The two thieves who were literally crucified with Christ did not bear the sins of the world in their agonizing deaths. On the cross Christ suffered alone forsaken by his friends, his followers, and finally even his Father, dying, as J. Moltmann puts it, “a God-forsaken death for God-forsaken people.” With reference to his substitutionary suffering and vicarious death, only Jesus, and he alone, can be the Substitute and Vicar. And yet—this was Paul’s point—the benefits of Christ’s atoning death, including first of all justification, are without effect unless we are identified with Christ in his death and resurrection. As Calvin put it, “As long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us.” Thus to be crucified with Christ is, as Paul said elsewhere, to know him in the “fellowship of his sufferings” (Phil 3:10). To be crucified with Christ is the same as being dead to the law. This means we are freed from all the curse and guilt of the law and, by this deliverance, are set free to “live for God.” As Calvin said again, “Engrafted into the death of Christ, we derive a secret energy from it, as the shoot does from the root.” This experience of divine grace makes the doctrine of justification a living reality rather than a legal fiction.
“I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” Paul set forth in this expression his doctrine of the indwelling Christ. Probably no verse in the letter to the Galatians is quoted more frequently by evangelical Christians than this one. Much harm has been done to the body of Christ by well-meaning persons who have perpetuated erroneous interpretations of these words. Properly understood, Paul’s words give sanction neither to perfectionism nor to mysticism. Paul was not saying that once a person becomes a Christian the human personality is zapped out of existence, being replaced somehow by the divine logos. The indwelling of Christ does not mean we are delivered from the realm of suffering, sin, and death. Paul made this abundantly clear in his next phrase, “the life I now live in the body.” So long as we live in the body, we will continue to struggle with sin and to “groan” along with the fallen creation around us (Rom 8:18–26). Perfectionism this side of heaven is an illusion.
Nor did Paul advocate here the kind of Christ mysticism that various spiritualist leaders have advanced throughout the history of the church. We are crucified with Christ, that is, identified with his suffering and death, which occurred once for all outside the gates of Jerusalem some two thousand years ago. Christ is not crucified in us. Similarly, we must be born again: Christ has no need to be born anew, in the “core of the soul.” The doctrine of justification by faith stands opposed to every idea of mystical union with the divine that obscures the historicity of the incarnation, the transcendence of God, or the necessity of repentance and humility before an awesome God whose “ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts.”
Having discounted these false interpretations, we must give full weight to the meaning of Paul’s words. Being crucified with Christ implies a radical transformation within the believer. The “I” who has died to the law no longer lives; Christ, in the person of the Holy Spirit, dwells within, sanctifying our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit and enabling us to approach the throne of God in prayer. Paul gave a fuller explanation for what it means for Christ to live in us: “Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out ‘Abba, Father’” (Gal 4:6 NIV).
Kenneth Wuest: The new life is no longer, like the former one, dependent upon the ineffectual efforts of a man attempting to draw near to God in his own righteousness. The new life is a Person within a person, living out His life in that person. Instead of attempting to live his life in obedience to a set of rules in the form of the legal enactments of the Mosaic law, Paul now yields to the indwelling Holy Spirit and cooperates with Him in the production of a life pleasing to God, energized by the divine life resident in him through the regenerating work of the Spirit. Instead of a sinner with a totally depraved nature attempting to find acceptance with God by attempted obedience to a set of outward laws, it is now the saint living his life on a new principle, that of the indwelling Holy Spirit manifesting forth the Lord Jesus.
Max Anders: Whatever Paul meant about having died in Christ, the point is that his death severed him from the requirements of the law. Therefore, for Peter and the Judaizers to go back to the law is to visit the graveyard. Paul goes on to say that he can live for God because Christ lives in him. Finally, Paul says that faith is the principle that unlocks the life of Christ in the believer. The more we exercise faith in Christ the more he is free to live through us. The more we are obedient to the Scripture and the leading of the Holy Spirit, the more our life approximates what Jesus would do if he were in our shoes. In that sense, the life he lives, he lives by faith in the Son of God.
David Platt: This is the key to the Christian life: faith in Christ—not just the Christ who died on the cross for you, but the Christ who lives in you. We live by faith when we believe Christ every moment of every day. We believe Him to be our sustenance and our strength. We believe Him to be our love and joy and peace. We believe Him to be our satisfaction—more than money and houses and cars and stuff. We believe Christ to be our purity and our holiness and our power over sin. This is Christianity: believing Christ to be everything you need for every moment you live. You live by faith in the Son of God.
- (:21) Contradiction of Continued Dependence on the Law
a. Compromises the Grace of God
“I do not nullify the grace of God”
David deSilva: Will the Galatians appreciate and accept what God has done for humanity in the cross of Christ? Will they trust the efficacy of that single act of costly obedience to join them to the family of Abraham and the family of God, without trying to turn the clock back to a time before Jesus’s death by aligning themselves with the Torah’s prescriptions? Will they place sufficient value upon the resource God has provided in the Spirit—ever so much more effective and empowering a guide to God’s heart than the Torah—to lead them into righteousness? All of these questions are wrapped up in the catchwords “grace” and “trust” that so dominate this letter.
b. Minimizes the Atonement of Christ
“for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly“
Robert Gromacki: The heresy of the Judaizers discredited the divine program of redemption in two ways.
- First, “it frustrates the grace of God.” If a man can earn salvation, then God must give him what he deserves. However, the essence of grace is for God to give men what they do not deserve…
- Second, it deprecates the cross of Christ (“then Christ is dead in vain”). He died unnecessarily if a man can gain the righteousness of God through legal obedience. The issue is clear: Did Jesus Christ completely satisfy the righteous demands of God on the cross? What did He mean when He said, “It is finished.”
Max Anders: Paul concludes his correction of Peter by showing the utter absurdity of turning back to the law. The very reason Christ died on the cross to pay for sin was because the law could not remove sin or impart righteousness. Grace provides what the law was powerless to provide—righteousness.