Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Galatians 2:19

For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.

19. For it was through the law, through the conviction of its inability to give life, that I became dead to the law. The law demanded a perfect obedience, as a condition of justification. This none can render; and it was when I experienced its condemning power, that I fled to Christ for salvation. “When the commandment came, sin revived, and I died”, Rom 7:9. Thus it was through the law that I died to the law.

am dead to the law ] Better, died to the law. The reference is to the time when deeply convinced that he could not be justified by his own obedience, he abandoned for ever all trust in his own “righteousness, which is of the law”; that he might “win Christ and be found in Him”, and might so possess the righteousness which is of God on the condition of faith only, Php 3:9. We observe that St Paul does not regard faith and works, Christ and the sinner, as supplementing one another. He is ‘dead to the law’, he has no more to do with it, as a means of justification or ground of merit, than if he were dead. The same expression occurs Rom 7:4, where the figure employed is that of the marriage tie, which is entirely dissolved by death.

that I might live unto God ] not, that I might live in sin or carelessness. The Gospel which provides a perfect righteousness in Christ, which is justification, provides also a life of holiness by the Spirit, a life unto God, which is sanctification. These are distinct, but inseparable nay, the latter is the end and the result of the former.

To live unto God, is to live with the eye of the soul ever turned upward, to have the affection set on things above. Its motto is ‘sursum corda’, its prayer ‘fiat voluntas tua’. The same form of expression occurs Rom 6:11, ‘Reckon ye yourselves dead unto sin, but living to God in Christ Jesus’.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

For I through the law – On this passage the commentators are by no means agreed. It is agreed that in the phrase am dead to the law, the Law of Moses is referred to, and that the meaning is, that Paul had become dead to that as a ground or means of justification. He acted as though it were not; or it ceased to have influence over him. A dead man is insensible to all around him. He hears nothing; sees nothing; and nothing affects him. So when we are said to be dead to anything, the meaning is, that it does not have an influence over us. In this sense Paul was dead to the Law of Moses. He ceased to observe it as a ground of justification. It ceased to be the grand aim and purpose of his life, as it had been formerly, to obey it. He had higher purposes than that, and truly lived to God; see the note at Rom 6:2. But on the meaning of the phrase through the law ( dia nomou) there has been a great variety of opinion.

Bloomfield, Rosenmuller, and some others suppose that he means the Christian religion, and that the meaning is, by one law, or doctrine, I am dead to another; that is, the Christian doctrine has caused me to cast aside the Mosaic religion. Doddridge, Clarke, Chandler, and most others, however, suppose that he here refers to the Law of Moses, and that the meaning is, that by contemplating the true character of the Law of Moses itself; by considering its nature and design; by understanding the extent of its requisitions, he had become dead to it; that is, he had laid aside all expectations of being justified by it. This seems to me to be the correct interpretation. Paul had formerly expected to be justified by the Law. He had endeavored to obey it. It had been the object of his life to comply with all its requisitions in order to be saved by it; Phi 3:4-6. But all this while he had not fully understood its nature; and when he was made fully to feel and comprehend its spiritual requirements, then all his hopes of justification by it died, and he became dead to it; see this sentiment more fully explained in the note at Rom 7:9.

That I might live unto God – That I might be truly alive, and might be found engaged in his service. He was dead to the Law, but not to every thing. He had not become literally inactive and insensible to all things, like a dead man, but he had become truly sensible to the commands and appeals of God, and had consecrated himself to his service; see the note at Rom 6:11.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Gal 2:19

For I through the law am dead to the law.

Death and life

I. Those who are justified are qualified for the highest service–living to God.

II. Living to god is dying to sin.

1. The aim of crucifixion was the death of the body.

2. Its means: the Cross.

3. The death painful and protracted. So

(1) the aim of soul crucifixion is the death of sin (Rom 6:6).

(2) Its means: the Cross of Christ (Gal 6:14).

(3) The death,

(a) painful (Mat 5:29),

(b) protracted (Rom 7:23).

As Jesus lived to God by dying on the cross, so Christians live to God by dying to sin.

III. The power by which the cross of christ is made effectual to the death of sin.

1. By faith.

2. By the indwelling of Christ.

3. By the inspiration of Christs love. (W. Harris.)

Death to the law

I. What it means–freedom from its dominion in respect of–

1. The accusing and condemning sentence (Rom 8:1).

2. Its power (Rom 7:8).

3. Its vigour.

4. The obligation of conscience to conform to its ceremonies.

II. The instrument–the law itself.

1. It accuses, terrifies, condemns, and thus urges us to fly Christ who is the cause of our death to the law.

2. The law goes before, and effects an entrance for law-killing grace.

III. The end–living to God (Tit 2:12), which may be urged by the facts:

1. That through Christ we belong to God (1Co 6:20);

2. That the purpose of our justification and redemption is practical godliness;

3. That heaven hereafter depends on godliness here.

4. That this is the supreme end of the ministry. (W. Perkins.)

The paralyzing power of the sense of being alive to the law

Sir Walter Raleigh to find a gold mine at Guiana for the king, went out on his last voyage under an unremitted sentence of death that had been passed upon him fifteen years before. No wonder that the magnetic consciousness of a sword dangling over him by a hair should benumb his brain, distract his faculties, and turn his enterprize into a long tangle of blunders and calamities. Pity the adventurer who goes out on an evangelistic enterprize under the unremitted sentence of the law, a preacher of Christ crucified who has himself to be crucified; alive to the law and dead to God. (C. Stanford, D. D.)

Death to the law and life to God

When he said I died, lest any one should say, How then dost thou live? he subjoined also the cause of his life, and showed indeed that the law killed him when living, but that, Christ taking hold of him when dead, quickened him through death; and he exhibits a double wonder, both that Christ had recalled the dead to life, and through death had imparted life. (Chrysostom.)

The Christian dead to the law

What a collection of paradoxes might be made from St. Pauls Epistles.

I. Let us examine the state in which the apostle describes himself to be–I am dead to the law; but what can he mean by this? that the moral law of God has no longer any authority over him? We dare not say so. That moral law is the law of Gods universal empire, of heaven and earth, and of all the worlds that are. The believer continues under its dominion as long as he is a creature. He must escape from existence before he can escape from the law of God. He means that he is dead to the law as a covenant between God and himself. The law in its relation to us is more than a simple authoritative declaration of Gods will Besides commands, it consists of a promise and a threatening. This gives it the character of a covenant. He is dead to all hope from the law, to all expectation of salvation from it; he has no fear of condemnation from it. A man in his grave is free from every relationship of his former life; the servant is free from his master. So the believer, dead to the legal covenant, rests from it.

II. The means whereby the apostle has been brought into the state he describes–I through the law am dead to the law. This excludes a great number of those who call themselves Christians; who as regards their own feelings are utterly dead to it. They are dead to the law, to God, to Christ, to everything but the petty affairs of this life. But the apostles deadness was brought about by the law itself. The extent of the law and its unbending denunciations render it impossible for us to make our way to God by it. It penetrates within a man; it reaches to the affections, the will, the thoughts, the whole mind and heart. You say this is hard and unreasonable. Holy angels do not think so; they live under this law in happiness. But who, with a law like this before him, can hope for salvation from it? But this only partially accounts for St. Pauls deadness to the law. It explains how the law itself robbed him of all hope from it, but it does not tell us how he was saved from the fear of it. He was crucified with Christ. I have endured in the Person of my Redeemer the curse of the law, the chastisement of my sins has been laid upon him; and now when my faith is firm I no more fear the law than a debtor fears the bond which has been cancelled.

III. The design of this deadness to the law in the Christians soul–That I might live unto God. Naturally we know nothing of such a life as this. Through the influence of education, or the power of conscience, there may be some reference in our lives to God; it is but occasional and slight. Self is the ruling principle of our lives. This living to God dethrones self within the soul. The origin of this Divine life is that deadness to the law, which I began with describing. It is not a mere accompaniment of the deadness, but the effect of it; a life proceeding out of that death. His renunciation of his self-righteousness has gradually brought on other renunciations of self. The law driving him to Christ has been the happy means of driving him out of self altogether. It has brought him into the sphere of the gospel, and among those soul-stirring feelings connected with it. I can serve my God now, for He has set me free to serve Him. I can obey Him now and with delight, for He has brought me to love Him. It is not so much I who live this heavenly life; it is the God who dwells in heaven, who in condescension dwells in my soul. Learn:

1. to think more, in the first instance, of the law; to endeavour more to understand its character, and to be brought under its power. There is no greater mistake than to imagine that the gospel has destroyed the law; the gospel is indeed based on it; you will never rightly estimate the gospel till you have rightly understood the law, as a covenant of condemnation.

2. Are we amongst those who have taken refuge from the condemnation of the law in the blood and righteousness of Christ? Then the law has done its work in us. (C. Bradley.)

The law an obstacle in the way of salvation

Suppose a man anxious to pass from one country to another, from a dangerous and wretched country to a safe and happy one. Directly in his road stands a mountain which, it would appear, he must pass over, and which he at first imagines he can without much difficulty climb. He tries, but scarcely has he begun to breast it, when a precipice stops him. He descends and tries again in another direction. There another precipice or some other obstacle arrests his course; and still ever as he begins his ascent, he is baffled, and the little way he contrives to mount serves only to show him more and more of the prodigious height of the mountain, and its stern, rugged, impassable character. At last, wearied and worn, heart-sick with labour and disappointment, and thoroughly convinced that no efforts of his can carry him over, he lies down at the mountains foot in utter despair; longing still to be on the other side, but making not another movement to get there. Now ask him as he lies exhausted on the ground, what has occasioned his torpor and despair, he will say, that mountain itself; its situation between him and the land of his desires, and its inaccessible heights and magnitude. So stands the law of God between the Christian and the land he longs for. At first he thought he could obey it, so obey it as to find his way to God by it, and he made the effort, made perhaps many and long-continued efforts, but the result of them all has been disappointment and despair. The law itself has stripped him of all hope of getting to heaven by means of it. He is exactly in the situation of that traveller by the mountains side, whom you can no longer prevail on to move. Of what use is it? he says. I will try no more. I know the difficulty of the work, and I know my own weakness too well. Here lies the difficulty, or rather the impossibility to such creatures as we are, of making our way to God by means of the law, here in these two things–the extent of that Jaws requirements, and the unbending, inexorable character of its denunciations. (C. Bradley.)

Dead to the law

1. They are dead unto the law in the matter of justification, as it holdeth forth the condition of the covenant of works; in this respect they are dead unto the law (Rom 7:3; Rom 7:6), for, by obedience to the law in their own persons, they are not now to expect justification by the works of the law.

2. They are dead unto the curse and condemning power of the law, whereby it adjudgeth all that transgresseth it unto death, and the wrath of God. The law threateneth death to all that transgress it, and bindeth this wrath on all that are alive to it, and not yet delivered from it. Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them. Hence it is, that he that believeth not is condemned already, and the wrath of God abideth on him (Joh 3:18; Joh 3:36). For there is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1).

3. They are dead unto the law, as to its libels, indictments, and accusations, tending to bring them again under the lash or curse of the law, and sentence of its condemnation; and this clearly floweth from the former; for from it they are delivered from the sentence of death in the law; they are delivered from all accusations tending thereunto (Rom 8:33).

4. They are dead to the law, as it exacteth full obedience, under pains of breach of the covenant.

5. They are dead unto the law, as it exacts full obedience in their own strength, without any help from another, in whole or in part; for, now, help for them is laid upon one who is mighty (Psa 39:19), and God worketh all their works in them (Isa 26:12), and worketh in them both to will and to do (Php 2:13), so that in Christ that strengtheneth them, they can do all things (Php 4:13), and in Christ do they bring forth fruits (Joh 15:5).

6. They are dead to the law, as to its rigid obedience in their own persons; for the law, as such, doth not point out a contrary way; nor doth it positively admit of one, though it doth not positively exclude or refuse one. Adam, and all his posterity, were bound to personal obedience; but now the believer is freed from that rigidity, and has a cautioner, with whom he is one in law, to fulfil the law, and answer all its demands; and, by his obedience, they are made righteous, and attain to justification of life (Rom 5:15; Rom 5:19), so that they are complete in Him (Col 2:10).

7. They are dead unto the law, as to its rigid exacting full and actual performance, not regarding any sincerity of intention.

8. They are dead unto the law, as to its enslaving power, keeping the soul in bondage for fear of the curse, and pressing obedience on the unwilling, with arguments only taken for fear of the curse; for, now, though all fears are not fully removed, yet are they under sweeter and milder motives and encouragements to obedience–the love of Christ now constraineth them (2Co 5:14). Thoughts of the benefits of redemption lay on strong and sweet ties, and oil the wheels of the soul; so that obedience now is sweet, filial, and kindly, not forced and constrained; for the heart is willing, and the soul delighteth in the law of the Lord after the inner man, and duties now flow out more natively.

9. They are dead to the law, in respect of its being the strength of sin, as the apostle terms it (1Co 15:36), so that they are now more free from sin than formerly, both as to its guilt and dominion; the law cannot now so charge home guilt upon them as formerly, Christ being now accepted of as cautioner (Mat 12:18), and having made full satisfaction for the sinner of his own, the law cannot require double payment, or payment of both the cautioner and principal debtor; and therefore the believer is free of making any satisfaction to justice.

This lets us then see what a change is made on the state of believers from what it formerly was.

1. A great change, from being alive to the law and under its power, to a being dead unto the law.

2. It is a great change, and no imagined but a real change, having real effects, though it be a relative change; and this believers experience in themselves.

3. It is a necessary change, for, without it, no life nor salvation is obtained.

4. It is an honourable change. From slavery to freedom (Joh 8:36).

5. Therefore it is a most desirable change; for every one would desire to be free of a heavy yoke of slavery, and from under tyranny. How desirable, then, must it be to be free of this spiritual yoke, and this souls tyranny,

6. It is a most advantageous and profitable change: For

(1) There is much inward peace, quietness, and serenity of soul had hereby; the soul is now freed of these tossings and perturbations of mind that it was obnoxious unto before, by being under the restless and continual challenges and accusations of the law, and dreadful fear following thereupon; for the mouth of the law being stopped, the man is dead thereunto.

(2) This change yieldeth much joy and consolation to the soul that formerly was tossed with tempest, and had no comfort, but filled with heartbreaking sorrow and grief, as seeing no outgate, but living in the fearful expectation of the terrible sentence of the law, which was as water to their wine; but this sorrow is now abated, by this freedom from the law.

(3) This change is accompanied with a lively hope, which keepeth up the head, while before the poor soul was drowned in despair, sinking in that gulf, crying out, undone I and that it was cut off for its part, and so refused to be comforted! But it is not so now when dead unto the law.

(4) It addeth courage to the soul that was before heartless for any duty, and casten down with despondency of spirit; for now the law is removed out of the way: And so,

(5) It emboldeneth the soul, and gives it confidence in approaching to God. (J. Brown.)

That I might live unto God

I. We shall show what it is to live unto God, by pointing out some principal heads of, or ingredients in, as requisite to a living to God.

1. A reconciliation with God. Enemies cannot please one another.

2. A new principle of life. A dead man, as such, cannot live to God.

3. A hearty complying with the law of God as their rule.

4. It includeth a walking by the guidance of the Spirit of God.

5. It taketh in a holy life in all manner of conversation, and the study of sanctification.

6. It taketh in a lively, holy, divine, and spiritual manner of performing commanded duties.

7. It taketh in an eying of God and His glory, with singleness of heart in what they are doing.

8. It includeth a fixed, stayed, and constant walking thus, not by fits and starts.

II. That such as are alive yet unto the law cannot thus live unto God.

1. They are yet married to their old husband, and not brought out of that state of enmity wherein they were and are (Rom 7:4).

2. They have no principle but the old principle of nature, helped a little with some education; for they are growing still upon the old stock of nature.

3. They are not subject unto the law of God, neither indeed can be (Rom 8:7), their will, ease, pleasure, etc., is all their care, with this their heart complieth.

4. Their guide is the flesh; for they walk after the flesh (Rom 8:4).

5. Instead of holiness, they are yielding themselves servants of unrighteousness unto sin, and sin is reigning in them, and being the servants of sin, they are free from righteousness (Rom 6:13-20).

6. All the service they do is in the oldness of the letter (Rom 7:6), and not in newness of the Spirit; it is carnal, vain, and selfish, every way corrupt.

7. Their ultimate end is themselves; their own peace, quiet, ease, profit, esteem, to get a name, or to make a price to buy heaven to themselves, that they may have whereof to boast.

8. Their constant trade of life, is either to serve Satan, by following vile affections, their own lusts and pleasures, or the world; and thus their days are spent. (J. Brown.)

Living unto God

That which tells, says Professor Henry Drummond, speaking of Mission work, is the Shepherds life, his daily moving in and out amongst the people, and what is now wanted for Africa is a great many white men, with gentleness and kindness, and Christ-likeness, to simply go there and do nothing but live. If they can educate the people, so much the better.

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 19. For I through the law am dead to the law] In consequence of properly considering the nature and requisitions of the law, I am dead to all hope and expectation of help or salvation from the law, and have been obliged to take refuge in the Gospel of Christ. Or, probably the word , LAW, is here put for a system of doctrine; as if he had said, I through the Gospel am dead to the law. The law itself is consigned to death, and another, the Gospel of Christ, is substituted in its stead. The law condemns to death, and I have embraced the Gospel that I might be saved from death, and live unto God.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Through the law of Christ, as some say; or rather, through the law of Moses, of which he had been before speaking: that is, say some, through the death of the law; the law itself being dead, as a covenant of works, Rom 7:6. Or rather, by means of the law, giving me a knowledge of sin, and condemning me for sin.

Am dead to the law, as to any expectation of being justified by obedience to it.

That I might live unto God; not that I might live in disobedience to it, as it is a rule of life, but that I might live more holily unto God: so as my being dead to the law, as a covenant of works, or as to any expectation of being justified from my obedience to it, gives me no liberty to sin at all; for this is the end why God hath freed me from the bondage and rigour of the law, that I might live unto him, and serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

19. Here Paul seems to pass fromhis exact words to Peter, to the general purport of hisargument on the question. However, his direct address to theGalatians seems not to be resumed till Ga3:1, “O foolish Galatians,” c.

ForBut I am not a”transgressor” by forsaking the law. “For,” &c.Proving his indignant denial of the consequence that “Christ isthe minister of sin” (Ga2:17), and of the premises from which it would follow. Christ, sofar from being the minister of sin and death, is the establisher ofrighteousness and life. I am entirely in Him [BENGEL].

Ihere emphatical. Paulhimself, not Peter, as in the “I” (Ga2:18).

through the lawwhichwas my “schoolmaster to bring me to Christ” (Ga3:24) both by its terrors (Gal 3:13;Rom 3:20) driving me to Christ,as the refuge from God’s wrath against sin, and, when spirituallyunderstood, teaching that itself is not permanent, but must giveplace to Christ, whom it prefigures as its scope and end (Ro10:4); and drawing me to Him by its promises (in the prophecieswhich form part of the Old Testament law) of a better righteousness,and of God’s law written in the heart (Deu 18:15-19;Jer 31:33; Act 10:43).

am dead to the lawliterally,”I died to the law,” and so am dead to it, that is,am passed from under its power, in respect to non-justification orcondemnation (Col 2:20; Rom 6:14;Rom 7:4; Rom 7:6);just as a woman, once married and bound to a husband, ceases to be sobound to him when death interposes, and may be lawfully married toanother husband. So by believing union to Christ in His death, we,being considered dead with Him, are severed from the law’s past powerover us (compare Gal 6:14;1Co 7:39; Rom 6:6-11;1Pe 2:24).

live unto God (Rom 6:11;2Co 5:15; 1Pe 4:1;1Pe 4:2).

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

For I through the law am dead to the law,…. The apostle further replies to the objection against the doctrine of justification, being a licentious one, from the end of his, and other believers, being dead to the law: he owns he was dead unto it, not in such sense as not to regard it as a rule of walk and conversation, but so as not to seek for life and righteousness by it, nor to fear its accusations, charges, menaces, curses, and condemnation: he was dead to the moral law as in the hands of Moses, but not as in the hands of Christ; and he was dead to it as a covenant of works, though not as a rule of action, and to the ceremonial law, even as to the observance of it, and much more as necessary to justification and salvation: and so he became “through the law”; that is, either through the law or doctrine of Christ; for the Hebrew word , to which answers, signifies properly doctrine, and sometimes evangelical doctrine, the Gospel of Christ; see Isa 2:3 and then the sense is, that the apostle by the doctrine of grace was taught not to seek for pardon, righteousness, acceptance, life, and salvation, by the works of the law, but in Christ; by the doctrine of the Gospel, which says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved; he became dead to the law, which says, do this and live: or through the books of the law, and the prophets, the writings of the Old Testament, which are sometimes called the law, he learnt that righteousness and forgiveness of sins were only to be expected from Christ, and not the works of the law; things, though manifested without the law, yet are witnessed to by the law and prophets: or through the law of his mind, the principle of grace formed in his soul, he became dead to the power and influence of the law of works, he being no longer under the bondage of that, but under grace, as a governing principle in his soul: or the word law, here twice used, may signify one and the same law of works; and the meaning be, either that through Christ’s fulfilling the law in his room and stead, assuming an holy human nature the law required, and yielding perfect obedience to it, and submitting to the penalty of it, he became dead to it; that is, through the body of Christ, see Ro 7:4 and through what he did and suffered in his body to fulfil it; or through the use, experience, and knowledge of the law, when being convinced of sin by it, and seeing the spirituality of it, all his hopes of life were struck dead, and he entirely despaired of ever being justified by it. Now the end of his being dead unto it, delivered from it, and being directed to Christ for righteousness, was, says he,

that I might live unto God; not in sin, in the violation of the law, in neglect and defiance of it, or to himself, or to the lusts of men, but to the will of God revealed in his word, and to his honour and glory; whence it most clearly follows, that though believers are dead to the law, and seek to be justified by Christ alone, yet they do not continue, nor do they desire to continue in sin, or indulge themselves in a vicious course of living, but look upon themselves as under the greater obligation to live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

I through the law died to the law ( ). Paradoxical, but true. See Rom 7:4; Rom 7:6 for picture of how the law waked Paul up to his real death to the law through Christ.

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

For [] . Justifying the previous thought that the reerection of the law as a standard of Christian life and a means of justification is a condemnation of the faith which relies on Christ alone for righteousness. I, through the law, am dead to the law [ ] . For am dead, render died. Faith in Christ created a complete and irreparable break with the law which is described as death to the law. Comp. Rom 7:4, 6. The law itself was the instrument of this break, see next verse Egw is emphatic. Paul appeals to his personal experience, his decided break with the law in contrast with Peter’s vacillation.

Might live unto God [ ] . With death to the law a new principle of life entered. For the phrase, see Rom 6:10, 11.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

BARREN OR EMPTY OBLIGATION TO THE LAW

1) “For I through the law,” (ego gar dia nomon) “For I through the law,” through the teaching of the law that pointed me to Christ, Gal 3:19; Gal 3:24-25; Act 10:43.

2) “Am dead to the law,” (nomon apethanon) “am dead, barren, empty, unfruitful, or unproductive,” to or toward the law. It is not my master. The Spirit of life in Christ has liberated me from any moral or racial obligation to it, Rom 8:2; Col 3:17; Rom 6:14; Rom 7:4; Rom 7:6.

3) “That I might live unto God,” (hina theo zeso) “In order that I might live to (the honor of) God,” by giving Him glory, praise and glory service through His church, Eph 2:10; Eph 3:21; 1Co 10:31; Rom 6:11; 2Co 5:15; 1Th 5:10; Heb 9:14; 1Pe 4:2.

As means of justification before God, or merit of salvation one (as Paul), is to consider himself as if he were dead “to the law”, as no law has jurisdiction over service of a dead man, Col 2:20.

(Christian Obedience is Motivated by Grace, Love – Not by the Law)

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

19. For I through the law. Now follows the direct reply, that we must not ascribe to Christ that work which properly belongs to the law. It was not necessary that Christ should destroy the righteousness of the law, for the law itself slays its disciples. As if he had said, “You deceive wretched men by the false notion, that they must live by the law; and, under that pretext, you keep them in the law. And yet you bring it as a charge against the Gospel, that it annihilates the righteousness which we have by the law. But it is the law which forces us to die to itself; for it threatens our destruction, leaves us nothing but despair, and thus drives us away from trusting to the law.”

This passage will be better understood by comparing it with Rom 7:0. There Paul describes beautifully, that no man lives to the law, but he to whom the law is dead, that is, has lost all power and efficacy; for, as soon as the law begins to live in us, it inflicts a fatal wound by which we die, and at the same time breathes life into the man who is already dead to sin. Those who live to the law, therefore, have never felt the power of the law, or properly understood what the law means; for the law, when truly perceived, makes us die to itself, and it is from this source, and not from Christ, that sin proceeds.

To die to the law, may either mean that we renounce it, and are delivered from its dominion, so that we have no confidence in it, and, on the other hand, that it does not hold us captives under the yoke of slavery; or it may mean, that, as it allures us all to destruction, we find in it no life. The latter view appears to be preferable. It is not to Christ, he tells us, that it is owing that the law is more hurtful than beneficial; but the law carries within itself the curse which slays us. Hence it follows, that the death which is brought on by the law is truly deadly. With this is contrasted another kind of death, in the life-giving fellowship of the cross of Christ. He says, that he is crucified together with Christ, that he might live unto God. The ordinary punctuation of this passage obscures the true meaning. It is this: “I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live to God.” But the context will read more smoothly thus: “I through the law am dead to the law;” then, in a separate sentence, “That I might live to God, I am crucified with Christ.”

That I might live to God. He shews that the kind of death, on which the false apostles seized as a ground of quarrel, is a proper object of desire; for he declares that we are dead to the law, not by any means that we may live to sin, but that we may live to God. To live to God, sometimes means to regulate our life according to his will, so as to study nothing else in our whole life but to gain his approbation; but here it means to live, if we may be allowed the expression, the life of God. In this way the various points of the contrast are preserved; for in whatever sense we are said to die to sin, in the same sense do we live to God. In short, Paul informs us that this death is not mortal, but is the cause of a better life; because God snatches us from the shipwreck of the law, and by his grace raises us up to another life. I say nothing of other interpretations; but this appears to be the apostle’s real meaning.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

(19) In the last verse the Apostle had been putting a supposed case, but by a not unnatural process of thought he gradually takes the I rather more in earnest, and appeals directly to his own personal experience. The I of Gal. 2:18 is really St. Peter or the Judaisers; the I of this verse is St. Paul himself. The object of his appeal is to make good his assertion that to restore the dethroned Law to its old position is positively sinful.

Once having done with the Law I had done with it for ever. The Law itself had prepared me for this. It was a stage which I could not but pass through, but which was in its very nature temporary. It carried with it the sentence of its own dissolution.

For . . .This assigns the reason for the use of the word transgressor in the verse before. It is a transgression to rebuild the demolished fabric of the Law, because the true Christian has done with the Law once for all.

Through the law am dead to the law.In what sense can this be said? The Apostle himself had got rid of his obligations to the Lawnot, however, by simply evading them from the first, but by passing through a period of subjection to them. The road to freedom from the Law lay through the Law. The Law, on its prophetic side, pointed to Christ. The Law, on its moral side, held up an ideal to which its votaries could not attain. It did not help them to attain to it. It bore the stamp of its own insufficiency. Men broke its precepts, and its weakness seemed to lead up to a dispensation that should supersede its own. St. Paul would not have become a Christian if he had not first sat at the feet of Gamaliel. If we could trace the whole under-current of silent, and perhaps only half-conscious, preparation, which led to the Apostles conversion, we should see how large a part was played in it by the sense, gradually wrought in him, of the Laws insufficiency. Thus the negative side was given by his own private meditation; the positive side, faith in Christ, was given by the vision on the road to Damascus.

That I might live unto God.We might not unnaturally expect here unto Christ, instead of unto God. But the Christian lives unto Christ in order that he may live unto God. The ultimate object of the Christian scheme is that he may be presented righteous before God. By the Law he could not obtain this righteousness. It is obtained in Christ.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

19. For I am dead to the law As a means of justification and life; and that, too, through the law, which provides penalty, but not pardon, for the sinner; death, not life.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘For I through the Law died to the Law, that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. Yet I live, and yet no longer I, but Christ lives in me. And that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith which is in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.’

Paul points out that the Law crucified Christ. He died as a supposed lawbreaker. But the wonderful thing is that when He died Paul, and all those who are in Christ and believe in Him, died with Him. His crucifixion counts as their crucifixion. For because they are in Christ they were crucified with Him. Thus they are made dead to the Law by the body of Christ (Rom 7:4). For in Him the Law has carried out its verdict and its execution, not only on Him but on all who are His. He had done no sin, but He was made sin for us (2Co 5:21). So once we have become members of His body what happened to Him is also counted as having happened to us. And as our sins are placed on Him, so His righteousness covers us (2Co 5:21), and we are made the righteousness of God (as righteous as God) in Him. The Law has done its worst by condemning and punishing our sin at the cross, and is now therefore rendered powerless, for full punishment for all breaches of it have been exacted on Him. Even the Law cannot punish again a dead man who has already died for his sins. For then justice has been satisfied with the ultimate penalty. The result is that those who are His, and have been crucified with Him, are no longer under the law. The law has condemned them and has done its utmost. It can do no more. They have faced their punishment in Christ. And now the law cannot touch His people any more for they are ‘dead’ in Christ, justly punished for all their sin, whether past or future.

But he then stresses that those who are His have died to the law for a purpose. And that is so that they may live to God (compare Rom 7:6). There is to be no complacency here. There is to be no suggestion that therefore sin does not now matter. Rather there is to be experienced a divine compulsion. Those who have been crucified with Christ now recognise that it is because they are in Christ and Christ is in them that they are acceptable to God. Yes, it is because the risen Christ now lives in and through them. So they recognise that they are now responsible for Christ’s reputation, for Christ lives in them. Thus they are deeply aware that they must live the Christ life, that they must manifest Christ in their lives. To genuinely say that I have been crucified with Christ and so have died to the law and its condemnation, and not then to let Him live through me is not possible, says Paul. The tree is known by its fruit.

‘I through the Law, died to the Law.’ The Law had condemned Paul and had sentenced him, and had carried out his execution ‘in Christ’. So that was the end of the old Paul. There was no coming back from crucifixion! And the same is true for all who put their trust in Christ and what He has done for them on the cross.

‘That I might live unto God.’ And the purpose of this is not to free us to do whatever we like, but so that we might live ‘unto God’. So that we might live as in the presence of God. So that all our hopes and aspirations may be to serve and please God. That is what salvation is all about. It is not an easy way into Heaven, it is the way back to God that we might live to and for Him. It is to allow Him to work in us to will and to do of His good pleasure (Php 2:13).

‘I have been crucified with Christ.’ The verb is in the perfect tense, ‘I have been and therefore now am, crucified with Christ’. It is a continuing experience, for once having been accomplished in us, it has permanent results down to the present time. Paul speaks of himself as an individual and of all Christians as individuals. All who have believed in Him were ‘crucified with Him’ and are now in the state of being ‘crucified ones’. This is true firstly because He acted as our substitute. When He died it was in our place. As Jesus Himself said, ‘The Son of Man came — to give His life a ransom instead of many’ (‘lutron anti pollon’ – Mar 10:45 – ‘anti’ is unquestionably substitutionary). As man He was the true Mediator (the one who acts between two parties) giving Himself ‘as a ransom on behalf of all’ (1Ti 2:5-6). It was something offered as a benefit open to all. But in the end it would only be effective in the ‘many’ who responded in faith. For the ransom was ‘in the place of’ many. The whole point of a ransom is that it takes the place of those who are ransomed, it pays the price for their deliverance. Thus once we truly believe in Jesus Christ we can say that we ‘are bought with a price’ (1Co 6:20; 1Co 7:23).

Although sinless Himself Jesus Christ took the place of each believing sinner, and of all believing sinners, and it was so that the believing sinner may be ‘ransomed’, freed from sin, wholly forgiven and reconciled with God. As Paul puts it elsewhere, ‘He was made sin for us, He Who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him’ (2Co 5:21), and ‘He gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify for Himself a people of His own, dedicated to good works’ (Tit 2:14).

For this is ‘the redemption that is in Christ Jesus’, that ‘God set Him forth to be a means of propitiation (removing the threat of His judgment), through faith, by His blood (His death accepted as a sacrifice)’ (Rom 3:25). The meaning of propitiation is that God’s antipathy against sin is fully satisfied by the death that takes place, because the requirement of the Law has been met. And this is because He was ‘delivered up for our acts of law breaking and was raised for our justification’ (Rom 4:25). This is why we can be ‘justified (counted as righteous) by faith’.

But secondly it is true because He acted as our full representative, not only in our place but actually ‘as us’. Once we have truly believed we are ‘in Him’ and become ‘members of His body’ (Eph 5:30; 1Co 12:27). As all men are summed up in Adam, for they all come from him, so all redeemed men are summed up in Christ, ‘the second man’ (1Co 15:47), ‘the last Adam’ (1Co 15:21-22; 1Co 15:45), for as a result of believing they are all in Him. Even the term ‘Son of Man’, which Jesus emphasised for Himself, also represented His people (Dan 7:13-14 with 18, 27), for Jesus is One with His people. He said to Paul when he was persecuting Christians, ‘why do you persecute ME’ (Act 9:4). Thus when He died, all Who are His died with Him. We have been crucified with Christ, and it is an ongoing situation. All who become His have been crucified with Him, and all who are His are crucified with Him.

When considering the mystery of ‘the atonement’ we must recognise that one picture alone cannot do it justice, as we have seen here. It is substitution, it is representation, it is propitiation, it is reconciliation, it is expiation, it is atonement. It is all these and more. It is ‘God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them’ (2Co 5:19). And who can fully understand it?

But one thing is clear. This could not have been accomplished by a mere man. Although He died as man, representing all who are His, it was because He was God, and only because He was God, that His sacrifice was sufficient. Only the Creator could substitute for His creation. God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, because none other could do so.

And this crucifixion is personal. Once I come by faith to Christ and ‘am crucified with Him’ my old life ceases. I recognise that I am dead to all that has gone before. I recognise that I no longer have any right to live my life as I want to. For that is why I have been crucified.

‘Yet I live, and yet no longer I, but Christ lives in me.’ Having ‘died with Christ’ Paul recognises that he is still alive. But no longer now as the same person. Rather as a Christ indwelt person. The old Paul has died, with all his views, hopes and beliefs. He has become Christ indwelt through faith (Eph 3:17), and it is Christ Who holds the reins and must be allowed to control the thoughts of his heart. It is He Who now lives in and through Paul. It is His views and hopes and beliefs that must be followed. And as He dwells in him by responsive faith Paul has the mind of Christ (1Co 2:15). And the same is true for all who believe in Him.

‘And the life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, which is in the Son of God Who loved me and gave Himself for me.’ Every believer lives in a fleshly body, but he lives ‘in faith’, faith in the Son of God Who loved him and gave Himself for him. He therefore does not follow the desires and aims of the flesh, but follows the desires and aims of the Spirit, for that faith is in the One Who sacrificed Himself for him, the Son of God. With Christ indwelling him he puts his faith not in his flesh but in Christ, recognising that the dynamic power of the One Who lives within him is to be expressed through him. He is to live Christ. Christ has superseded the Law. And paradoxically by this he himself will be able to fulfil the essence of the Law (Gal 5:13-14), for no one could fulfil the Law as He did.

‘The Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.’ In this is expressed the incredible thought, that the Son of God Himself gave Himself up for us. Well did the hymnwriter say, ‘Tis mystery all, the immortal dies’. Who can understand it? The Son of God, He Who was before all worlds and created all things (Joh 1:1-3; Heb 1:2), He Who upholds all things by His powerful command (Heb 1:3; Col 1:17), He Who rules over the hosts of Heaven (Mat 26:53; Rev 19:11-16), has so loved me that He gave Himself for me, that He might live out His life through me. How can I believe that and ever be the same again?

Notice in this whole section the ‘I’. While Paul would have immediately agreed that it was true for all Christians, and that that was what he meant, he applied it to himself as an individual. For the message is not only that Christ died for all, but that He died for me. I have been crucified with Christ. And each of us can take this personally for ourselves. We can then say, ‘All I have been has gone. It has been put to death in Him. I have begun anew.’ So while salvation is of the whole body of Christ, it is also a very individual thing, it is  my  salvation.

All the world has not been crucified with Christ. It is an individual thing demanding individual response. It is only those who have come to the crucified Christ in responsive faith who have been crucified with Him. It is ‘the many’, but not all. And it is ‘the many’, the believers, who are now to live out His resurrection life.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Gal 2:19. Through the law By the tenor of the law itself. See ch. Gal 3:24-25 Gal 4:21, &c. Rom 3:21; Rom 11:14 comp. with Rom 7:4. What St. Paul says here seems to imply, that living under the law was to live not acceptably to God;a strange doctrine certainly to the Jews! and yet it was true now under the gospel: for God the Father having put his kingdom in this world wholly under his Son, in a peculiar sense, when he raised him from the dead, all who, after that, would be his people in his kingdom, were to live by no other law but the gospel, which was now the law of his kingdom; and we see that God cast off the Jews, because, cleaving to their own constitution, they would not have this man to reign over them. So that what St. Paul says here is, in effect, this: “By believing in Christ, I am discharged from the Mosaical law, that I may wholly conform myself to the rule of the gospel, which is now the law to be owned and observed by all those who, as God’s people, would live acceptably to him.” This appears visibly to be the Apostle’s meaning,though the accustoming himself to antithesis may possibly be the reason why, after having said, I am dead to the law, he expresses his putting himself under the gospel by living to God.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

f

Gal 2:19 f., containing the “summa ac medulla Christianismi” (Bengel), furnishes the confirmation of Gal 2:18 ; for which purpose Paul makes use of his own experience (not as Olshausen and Baumgarten-Crusius hold, contrary to the context designating himself as representative of believers generally ) with sublime self-assurance and in a way sufficient to shame Peter: For I for my own part (to give utterance here to the consciousness of my own experience, apart from the experience of others) am through the law dead to the law, in order to live to God . In this view the contrast to is not expressed already by this (Hofmann); but only by the of Gal 2:20 . The point confirmatory of Gal 2:18 lies in ; for he, who through the law has passed out of the relation to the law which regulated his life, in order to stand in a higher relation, and yet reverts to his legally-framed life, acts against the law , . The in both cases must be the Mosaic law, because otherwise the probative force and the whole point of the passage would be lost; and because, if Paul had intended to refer to the gospel (Jerome, Ambrose, Erasmus, Luther, Vatablus, Zeger, Vorstius, Bengel, Michaelis, Koppe, Morus, Rosenmller, Borger, Vater), he must have added some distinguishing definition (Rom 3:27 ; Rom 8:2 ; Rom 9:31 ; comp. 1Co 9:21 ). The immediate context, that is, the . . . which closely follows (and not Gal 2:16 ), supplies precise information how Paul intended the to be understood. By the crucifixion the curse of the law was fulfilled in Christ (Gal 3:13 ); and so far Christ died through the law , which demanded, and in Christ’s death received, the accomplishment of its curse. In one, therefore, who is crucified with Christ , the curse of the law is likewise fulfilled, so that in virtue of his ethical fellowship in the death of Jesus he knows himself to be dead [106] and consequently at the same time dead to the law (comp. Rom 7:4 ); because, now that the law has accomplished in his case its rights, the bond of union which joined him to the law is broken; for , , Rom 7:6 . So, in all essential points, Chrysostom [107] and others, Zachariae, Usteri (Schott wavers in his view, Rckert still more so): comp. Lipsius, l.c . p. 81 f.; Weiss, bibl. Theol . p. 363; Mller on de Wette, p. 50. This is the only interpretation which keeps closely to the context, and is therefore to be preferred to the views of others, who understand to refer to the Messianic contents of the law and the prophets, by which Paul had been induced to abandon the law (Theodoret, Corn. a Lapide, Hammond, Grotius, and others; also Baumgarten-Crusius), and of others still, who find the insufficiency of the law for salvation expressed, as Winer (“ lex legem sustulit ; ipsa lex, cum non posset mihi salutem impertire, mei me juris fecit atque a suo imperio liberavit”), Olshausen, Matthias, and likewise Hofmann, who understands it to refer to the knowledge acquired through the law, that it was impossible to attain righteousness in the way of the law, which righteousness, therefore, could only be attained by means of faith; comp. Hilgenfeld, Reithmayr, also Ewald, whose interpretation would seem to call for . Neither is there suggested in the context the reference to the pedagogic functions of the law, Gal 3:24 , which is found by Beza (“ lex enim terrens conscientiam ad Christum adducit , qui unus vere efficit, ut moriamur legi, quoniam nos justificando tollit conscientiae terrores”), Calvin, Wolf, and others; also by Matthies, who, however, understands as quite through (“having passed quite through the law, I have it behind me, and am no longer bound to it”). De Wette thus explains the pedagogic thought which he supposes to be intended: “By my having thoroughly lived in the law and experienced its character in my own case, I have become conscious of the need of a higher moral life, the life in the Spirit; and through the regeneration of my inner man I have made my way from the former to the latter.” So also, in all essential points, Wieseler, although the usus paedagogicus of the law does not produce regeneration and thereby moral liberation from its yoke (which, however, must affirm), but only awakens the longing after it (Rom 7:21 ff.), and prepares the ground for justification and sanctification. The inner deliverance from the yoke of the law takes place (Gal 5:18 ; Rom 8:2 ). A clear commentary on our passage is Rom 7:4-6 .

] that I might live to God , that my life (brought about by that ) might be dedicated to God , and should not therefore again serve the , [108] which is the case with him who (Gal 2:18 ). Comp., moreover, Rom 6:11 .

] Situation in which he finds himself through that , and accompanying information how this event took place in him. Corresponding with this, afterwards in Gal 2:20 , contains information as to the way in which was realized in him. With Christ I am crucified , thus expressing the consciousness of moral fellowship, brought about by faith, in the atoning death of Christ, a subjective fellowship, in which the believer knows that the curse of the law is accomplished on himself because it is accomplished on Christ (comp. Gal 3:13 ) ( ), and at the same time that his pre-Christian ethical state of life, which was subject to the law, is put an end to ( ). Comp. Rom 6:6 ; Rom 7:4 , and on Col 2:20 . Observe also how in this very passage it is evident from the whole context, that in . and in the corresponding expressions (Rom 6:8 ; Col 2:12 ; Col 2:20 , et al .) denotes not the mere typical character of Christ or the resemblance to Him (Baumgarten-Crusius), but the actual fellowship , which, as accomplished and existing in the consciousness of faith, is matter of real experience. On the perfect , which expresses the blessed feeling of the continuance of what had taken place, comp. Gal 6:14 . Here it is the continuance of the liberation of the moral personal life from the law, which was begun by the crucifixion with Christ.

[106] Not, therefore, as Hermann interprets, , through the law rejected by myself.

[107] He indeed also specifies the interpretation, by which is understood of the gospel , as well as the view, which takes of the Mosaic law, but elucidates the relation of by Deu 18:18 . He nevertheless evidently gives the preference to the interpretation given above.

[108] is therefore not (with Chrysostom, Cajetanus, Calvin, and others) to be joined to ; for it essentially belongs to the completeness of the thought introduced by .

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

DISCOURSE: 2057
TRUE USE OF THE LAW

Gal 2:19. I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.

THE knowledge of the law is indispensably necessary to the knowledge of the Gospel. Even persons who have some views of Christ as a Saviour, have, in general, a very inadequate idea of the extent to which we need a Saviour. This can be known only by considering the requirements of the law, and the measure of guilt which we have contracted by our violation of them. In unfolding to us this subject, the Epistle to the Galatians stands, perhaps, preeminent above all others, not excepting even that to the Romans; and the words which I have just read will furnish me with an occasion to submit it somewhat fully to your view.
In these words is declared the use of the law,

I.

In relation to our hopes from it

The law, in the first instance, was ordained unto life; and it would have given life to those who perfectly obeyed it. But to fallen man it is no longer a covenant of life: it rather destroys all our hopes of acceptance by our obedience to it; so that every one who understands it aright must say with the Apostle, I through the law am dead to the law. It produces this effect,

1.

By the extent of its precepts

[If these comprehended nothing beyond the letter, the generality, of Christians at least, might account themselves, as touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. But it extends to every thought and disposition of the soul. It forbids us to entertain even so much as an inordinate desire. It does not say merely, Thou shalt not steal, but, Thou shalt not covet. And our blessed Lord, in his sermon on the mount, declares, that an angry feeling is, in Gods estimation, as murder, and an impure look as adultery. Now then, when the commandment is so exceeding broad, who will pretend to have kept it? or who will build his hopes of salvation on his obedience to it? It is manifest, that there is not a man upon earth who has not, in numberless instances, violated it; and who therefore must not shut his mouth with conscious shame, and acknowledge himself guilty before God [Note: Rom 3:19.].]

2.

By the inexorableness of its threatenings

[For every violation of its commands it denounces a curse, saying, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them [Note: Gal 3:10.]. We must not merely wish to do them, but actually do them; and not only some, but all; and that not for a season only, but continually, without interruption from first to last: and in default of this, every one, even every child of Adam, is cursed, even with an everlasting curse. As for any lighter penalty than this, it knows of none: it admits of no relaxation of it, no mitigation whatever: so that, of all that are under the law, there is not so much as one that is not under the curse and wrath of God. To hope for salvation, therefore, from such a law as this, is quite out of the question. A man in the contemplation of these threatenings can do nothing but lie down in despair, even as Paul himself did: for though, previously to his understanding the true tenour of the law, he supposed himself to be alive, he no sooner saw the extent of its commands, and the awfulness of its sanctions, than he died, and became sensible that he was nothing but a dead, condemned sinner before God [Note: Rom 7:9.].]

3.

By its incapacity to afford us any remedy whatever

[When it requires obedience, it does not offer us any strength for the performance of it: nor, when we have violated it in any respect, does it speak one word about repentance: nor does it make known to us any way whereby pardon may be obtained. The only thing which it says to any man is, Do this, and live: offend, and die. What hope, then, can any man entertain of salvation by such a law as this? It precludes a possibility of hope to any child of man: so that we must be dead to the law, not merely because the Gospel requires it, but because it is the very intent of the law itself to make us so: Through the law itself we must become dead to the law.]

We must not, however, imagine that all observance of the law is unnecessary: for the very reverse will appear, whilst we consider the law,

II.

In relation to our obedience to it

As a covenant of works, the law doubtless is set aside: but as a rule of life, it is as much in force as ever: and, though delivered from its curse, we are bound as much as ever to obey it:

1.

From a sense of gratitude

[Will a man delivered from the law say, I will continue in sin, that grace may abound? No: if upright, we shall shudder at the thought. We have not so learned Christ, if we have been taught of him. On the contrary, the first dictate of our minds will be, What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits towards me? The love of Christ, in redeeming us from the law, will have a constraining influence upon us, and stimulate us to live to him who died for us [Note: 2Co 5:14-15.]. No other end than this did the Apostle Paul contemplate. He was not dead to the law, that he might live to the world, but that he might live unto God [Note: Rom 12:1.]: and to God will every one live, who has a just sense of his mercy in giving us a better covenant, wherein we are called, not to earn life by our works, but to receive it as a gift in and through the Lord Jesus Christ.]

2.

From a sense of duty

[The law is still, and ever must be, the one standard of holiness to which we are to be conformed: and our obligation to obey it can never be reversed. God himself, if I may so speak, cannot dispense with our observance of it. It is of necessity our duty to love God with all our heart and mind and soul and strength, and our neighbour as ourselves. Our having a better covenant to found our hopes upon, can never abrogate the essential laws of our nature. If we be in heaven, earth, or hell, love must be our duty: and every man feels it to be his duty to walk according to that unerring and unchanging rule. Our freedom from the law, so far from being a reason for disregarding this rule, is the strongest reason for our most diligent adherence to it. St. Paul, by means of an easy illustration, places this matter in a clear light. He supposes us, in the first instance, married to the law; and afterwards, on the death of our husband, married to a second husband, the Lord Jesus Christ. But are we then content to be barren, as to the fruits of righteousness? No; quite the contrary: Being dead to the law, we are married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. We are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held, that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter [Note: Rom 7:4; Rom 7:6.]. Our obligation to obedience, so far from being relaxed by that change, is strongly and unalterably confirmed.]

3.

From a sense of interest

[Though we can never hope to be justified by our obedience to the law, our reward in heaven will be proportioned to our obedience. The day of judgment is appointed for the express purpose of manifesting the righteousness of God in all his dispensations. And, in reference to our obedience, we may safely say, He that soweth plenteously shall reap plenteously; and he that soweth sparingly shall reap sparingly. Now, the expectation of this issue remains with every man, whatever be his hopes in reference to his first acceptance with God. But with him who has trembled for his lost estate, and has fled for refuge to Christ as to the hone set before him in the Gospel, there will be an ardour of desire to secure a testimony in his favour. He will not be content to leave any thing in doubt. He is well assured, that not the person who merely says to his Saviour, Lord, Lord, shall inherit the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of his Father that is in heaven. Having therefore this prospect, he will of necessity say, What manner of person ought I to be, in all holy conversation and godliness!]

The subject, as you see, lies deep: yet is it very important. To all then I would say, respecting the law, endeavour,
1.

To understand its nature

[The generality regard it solely as a system of restraints and precepts. But, in truth, it is a covenant of life and death: of life to man in innocence; and of death, if I may so speak, to fallen man. It is now given, not to justify, but to condemn: not to save, but to kill; not to be a ground of hope to any, but to shut men up to the Gospel, and to Christ as revealed in it [Note: Gal 3:23.], even to him who is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth [Note: Rom 10:4.]. I would to God that this matter were better understood. In fact, it is but rarely stated, even by those who, in the main, preach the Gospel: and it is owing to this that mens views of the Gospel are so very inadequate and superficial. But let me entreat of you to improve the instruction given you in relation to this matter. See that the law does nothing but curse you, yea, deservedly, and eternally curse you. See that the new covenant, that has been made with us in Christ Jesus, is our proper refuge, that we may flee to it, and lay hold upon it, and find acceptance by it: and let this covenant be all your salvation and all your desire.]

2.

To fulfil its purposes

[It was intended, as we have said, to drive you to Christ. Let it operate in this manner. Look not to it, for a single moment, as affording you any hope towards God. Be content to renounce, in point of dependence, your best actions, as much as your vilest sins: and look to Christ precisely as the wounded Israelites did to the brazen serpent in the wilderness. They did not attempt to combine with Gods appointment any prescriptions of their own; but simply turned their eyes to that object, in faith. I pray you to bear this in mind, and to imitate their conduct in this respect. Fear not respecting the interests of holiness: they are well provided for in this blessed ordinance: and the more dead you arc to the law, the more, I pledge myself, you will live unto your God.]

3.

To honour its requirements

[The world will have a jealousy on this head: they will always suppose, that if you do not seek for justification by the law, you have no motive for obeying it. Shew them how greatly they err in this respect. Indeed, they stand in this respect self-condemned: for at the moment that they complain of your sentiments as licentious, they find fault with your lives as too strict and holy. You are regarded by them as righteous over-much; and as making the way to heaven so strait, that none but yourselves can walk in it. This is as it should be; I mean, as far as it respects you; for it is in this way that you are to make your light shine before men, and to put to silence the ignorance of foolish men by well-doing.]

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)

19 .] For (the (agst Ellic.) retains, on our view of , its full exemplifying force) I ( , for the first time expressed, is marked and emphatic. The first person of the last verse, serves as the transition point to treating, as he now does, of HIS OWN state and course. And this , as that in Rom 7 , is purely and bona fide ‘I Paul;’ not ‘I and all believers’) by means of the law died to the law (Christ was the end of the law for righteousness: the law itself, properly apprehended by me, was my to Christ: and in Christ, who fulfilled the law, I died to the law: i.e. satisfied the law’s requirements, and passed out of its pale: the dative, as Ellic. remarks, is a sort of dativus commodi, as also in ) that I should live to God (the end of Christ’s work, LIFE unto God. Isa 1 aor. subj. in subordination to the aor. preceding: not fut., as stated in former edd. [before 1865]. See Ellic.). Many of the Fathers (some as an alternative ), Luther, Bengel, al., take the first here to mean the Gospel (the of Rom 8:2 ); but it will be manifest to any who follow the argument, that this cannot be so. This is in fact a compendium of his expanded experience in Rom 7 ; and also of his argument in ch. Gal 3:4 below.

I am (‘ and have been ,’ perf.) crucified with Christ (specification of the foregoing : the way in which I died to the law was, by being united to, and involved in the death of, that Body of Christ which was crucified): but it is no longer I that live, but (it is) Christ that liveth in me (the punctuation . , , . ., as in E. V., &c. is altogether wrong, and would require before . The construction is one not without example, where the emphatic word is repeated in two parallel clauses, each time with . Thus Eur. Iph. Taur. 1367, , : Xen. Cyr. vi. 2. 22, , , , . So that our second is not sondern , ‘ not I, but ,’ but aber , as the first q. d. ‘but the life is not mine, but the life is Christ’s within me.’ Notice, not .: Christ is the vine, we the branches: He lives, He, the same Christ, through and in every one of His believing people) but (taken up again, parallel with ) that which (i.e. ‘the life which,’ as E. V.) I now (since my conversion, as contrasted with the time before: not, as Rck., al., the present life contrasted with the future ) live in the flesh (in the fleshly body; which, though it appear to be a mere animal life, is not. So Luth.: “in carne quidem vivo, sed ego hanc vitam quantulacunque est, qu in me agitur, non habeo pro vita. Non enim est vere vita, sed tantum larva vit, sub qua vivit alius, nempe Christus, qui est vere vita mea”) I live in (not ‘ by ,’ as E. V., Chr. ( ), c., Thl., Thdrt. ( ): . corresponds to : faith , and not the flesh , is the real element in which I live) faith, viz. that (the article particularizes, what sort of faith) of (having for its object, see on Gal 2:16 ) the Son of God (so named for solemnity, and because His eternal Sonship is the source of His life-giving power, cf. Joh 5:25-26 ) who loved me (the link, which binds the eternal Son of God to me) and (proved that love. in that He) gave Himself up (to death) for me (on my behalf).

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Gal 2:19 . . The stress laid on the personal pronoun shows that Paul is here referring to the facts of his personal history. He singles out his own conversion for the sake of the crucial example which it afforded of the difficulty of reconciling the commands of Christ with the traditional law of Israel, for he was actually bearing the commission of the high priest, and carrying out the orders of the Sanhedrim when Christ met him in the way and laid His commands upon him. He had to choose between the two: and at Christ’s word he flung up his office and renounced for ever the service of the Law. : though under law . The translation of these words in our versions through the law seems to me fatal to the sense: for the death to Law which is here recorded was not due to the instrumentality of Law, but was the immediate effect of the vision and words of Christ; and the express object of this reference to the conversion of Saul is to show how union with Christ annihilates the authority of an outward law. is really akin to in Rom 2:27 , and to in Rom 4:11 . In all these cases denotes the environment, whether of the letter, of circumcision, of uncircumcision, or of law, which was subsisting at the time. Saul was on official duty, surrounded by the circumstances and machinery of Law when Christ stayed him, and he became at once dead to the claim of Law upon him. . These words give a vivid description of the spiritual revulsion produced by his conversion in the heart of Saul. Whereas, hitherto, his whole mind had been set on fulfilling the whole Law, and he had counted its obligations all in all to him, he now entirely renounced the duty of obedience to its commands and repudiated its authority. And just as death works a final change, and leaves behind an indelible effect, so did his conversion affix a permanent stamp of lifelong change on all his after years: thenceforth he served another Master, owned absolute obedience to His will, listened for His inward voice or outward revelation, and drank of His Spirit.

The absence of the article before is noteworthy; whereas the Law of Moses, being the one revealed Law, is always designated the Law ( ), denotes law in the abstract, so that this clause comprehends emancipation from all control of external law. The freedom was, of course, purely spiritual: Paul continued fully to acknowledge the duty of outward submission to all duly ordained authority, but maintained the absolute independence of his spirit and conscience from its dictates. . This clause adds the motive for this death to Law. It was a veritable death unto life: Saul had striven in vain to obtain life before God by zealous fulfilment of every commandment; he now acknowledged his utter failure, surrendered all the pride and ambition of his life, and cast himself in humble trust at the feet of Jesus to receive from Him that precious life which he had sought in vain by his most zealous efforts under the Law.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

through. Greek. dia. App-104.

am dead = died.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

19.] For (the (agst Ellic.) retains, on our view of , its full exemplifying force) I (, for the first time expressed, is marked and emphatic. The first person of the last verse, serves as the transition point to treating, as he now does, of HIS OWN state and course. And this , as that in Romans 7, is purely and bona fide I Paul; not I and all believers) by means of the law died to the law (Christ was the end of the law for righteousness: the law itself, properly apprehended by me, was my to Christ: and in Christ, who fulfilled the law, I died to the law: i.e. satisfied the laws requirements, and passed out of its pale: the dative, as Ellic. remarks, is a sort of dativus commodi, as also in ) that I should live to God (the end of Christs work, LIFE unto God. is 1 aor. subj. in subordination to the aor. preceding: not fut., as stated in former edd. [before 1865]. See Ellic.). Many of the Fathers (some as an alternative), Luther, Bengel, al., take the first here to mean the Gospel (the of Rom 8:2); but it will be manifest to any who follow the argument, that this cannot be so. This is in fact a compendium of his expanded experience in Romans 7; and also of his argument in ch. Gal 3:4 below.

I am (and have been, perf.) crucified with Christ (specification of the foregoing : the way in which I died to the law was, by being united to, and involved in the death of, that Body of Christ which was crucified): but it is no longer I that live, but (it is) Christ that liveth in me (the punctuation-. , , . .,-as in E. V., &c.-is altogether wrong, and would require before . The construction is one not without example, where the emphatic word is repeated in two parallel clauses, each time with . Thus Eur. Iph. Taur. 1367, , : Xen. Cyr. vi. 2. 22, , , , . So that our second is not sondern,-not I, but,-but aber, as the first-q. d. but the life is not mine,-but the life is Christs within me. Notice, not .: Christ is the vine, we the branches: He lives, He, the same Christ, through and in every one of His believing people)-but (taken up again, parallel with ) that which (i.e. the life which, as E. V.) I now (since my conversion, as contrasted with the time before: not, as Rck., al., the present life contrasted with the future) live in the flesh (in the fleshly body;-which, though it appear to be a mere animal life, is not. So Luth.: in carne quidem vivo, sed ego hanc vitam quantulacunque est, qu in me agitur, non habeo pro vita. Non enim est vere vita, sed tantum larva vit, sub qua vivit alius, nempe Christus, qui est vere vita mea) I live in (not by, as E. V., Chr. ( ), c., Thl., Thdrt. ( ): . corresponds to : faith, and not the flesh, is the real element in which I live) faith, viz. that (the article particularizes, what sort of faith) of (having for its object, see on Gal 2:16) the Son of God (so named for solemnity, and because His eternal Sonship is the source of His life-giving power, cf. Joh 5:25-26) who loved me (the link, which binds the eternal Son of God to me) and (proved that love. in that He) gave Himself up (to death) for me (on my behalf).

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Gal 2:19. , for I) The reason assigned [aetiologia] for, God forbid. Christ is not the minister of sin and death, but the Establisher [Stator] of righteousness and life. I am entirely in Him. This is the very sum and marrow of Christianity.- ) by the law of faith [I am dead] to the law of works, Rom 3:27. I do not do an injustice to the law; I depend on a law, not less divine. This is set forth as it were enigmatically, and is presently explained by the definition of the law of faith. In the same sense in which transgressor [] is used, law,[17] is used, in speaking of faith.-, ) Rom 7:4; Rom 7:6, note.

[17] Referring to the law of works.-ED.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Gal 2:19

Gal 2:19

For I through the law died unto the law,-Paul was brought by the law to Christ. Jesus said: Ye search the scriptures, because ye think that in them ye have eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of me. And, “For if ye believed Moses, ye would believe me; for he wrote of me. (Joh 5:39; Joh 5:46). Of Timothy it is said: From a babe thou hast known the sacred writings which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. (2Ti 3:15). [To die to a thing is to cease to have any relation to it, so that it has no further claim upon or control over one. (Rom 6:2; Rom 6:10-11; Rom 7:6). That to which reference is here made is evidently the law as a legalistic system, a body of statutes legalistically interpreted. It was on the basis of the law in this sense that it was demanded that the Gentile believers should be circumcised and keep the law of Moses. It was under this that Paul had lived as a Pharisee, and under which he had ceased to live-died to it. How the necessity of abandoning the law was made evident to him by law, Paul does not here state, but it is most probable that he had in mind his experience under the law, which he describes in Rom 7:7-25, where he tells us that his own experience under it taught him his own inability to meets its requirements and its own ability to make him righteous, and thus led him finally to abandon it, and seek salvation through Christ. (Php 3:5-9).]

that I might live unto God.-In entering into Christ he died unto the law, that in Christ he might live unto God. [This implies that subjection to the law in reality prevented the unreserved devotion of the life to God-this is one vice of legalism, that it comes between the soul and God-and that it had to be abandoned if the life was really to be given to God.]

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

through: Gal 3:10, Gal 3:24, Rom 3:19, Rom 3:20, Rom 4:15, Rom 5:20, Rom 7:7-11, Rom 7:14, Rom 7:22, Rom 7:23, Rom 8:2, Rom 10:4, Rom 10:5

dead: Rom 6:2, Rom 6:11, Rom 6:14, Rom 7:4, Rom 7:6, Rom 7:9, Col 2:20, Col 3:3, 1Pe 2:24

that: Gal 2:20, Rom 14:7, Rom 14:8, 1Co 10:31, 2Co 5:15, 1Th 5:10, Tit 2:14, Heb 9:14, 1Pe 4:1, 1Pe 4:2, 1Pe 4:6

Reciprocal: Deu 31:26 – a witness 2Ch 34:19 – the words Psa 19:8 – enlightening Mar 12:34 – Thou Joh 5:46 – had Act 13:39 – from which Rom 3:31 – yea Gal 2:16 – that Gal 3:21 – for Col 3:1 – risen 2Ti 2:11 – For Heb 12:20 – For they Jam 2:9 – transgressors

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Gal 2:19. -for I through the law died to the law. cannot mean on account of the law. The has its full force: If I build up that law which I pulled down, I prove myself a transgressor of it, for by it I became dead to it; or as Lightfoot happily expresses it, In abandoning the law, I did but follow the leading of the law itself. The position and expression of are alike emphatic-I for my part; it being the revelation of his own experience. The is not merely representative in its nature, as is held by Olshausen, Baumgarten-Crusius, Kamphausen, and Wieseler who understands it von Paulus und seinen judenchristlichen Gesinnungsgenossen. This is true as an inference. But Paul’s personal experience had been so profound and decided, and had so moulded the entire course of his life, that it may certainly isolate him from other believing Jews,-even from those who could trace in themselves a similar change,-even, in a word, from Peter, whose momentary reaction had challenged this discussion. So far as the result is concerned, the experience of believers generally is pictured out; but the apostle puts himself into prominence. The experience of others, while it might approximate his, could never reach a perfect identity with it in depth and suddenness. That both words, , should by necessity refer to the same law, has not been universally admitted. The genitive has been referred by very many to the law of the gospel,-such as Jerome, Ambrosiast., Erasmus, Luther, Calovius, Hunnius, Vatablus, Vorstius, Bengel, Koppe, Morus, and Borger. It is also an alternative explanation of the Greek fathers and Pelagius. Kttner quietly says, Intellige quod omisit ut elegantior et acutior fieret sententia.

But this signification cannot be received as even plausible. It is true that is a term occasionally applied to the gospel, but some characterizing element is added,-as , Rom 3:27; . . , Rom 8:2; , Rom 9:31; Justin Mart. Dial. cum Tryph. p. 157, ed. Thirlby. The word can bear here no meaning but the law of Moses, the law of God embodied in the Jewish economy. The Mosaic law is the point of dispute, the only divine law known to the speaker and his audience. The article is not necessary. The want of the article in some clauses, even when the reference is to Mosaic system, may express to some extent the abstract idea of law, but it is ever divine law as exemplified or embodied in the Jewish economy. See pp. 163, 164.

How, then, did the law become the instrument of the apostle’s dying to itself,-for has the stress upon it? How through the instrumentality of the law was he released from obligation to law; or, more briefly, How did the law free him from itself?

1. Some find this power in the outspeaking of the law as to its own helplessness to justify. Thus Winer: Lex legem sustulit, ipsa lex cum non posset mihi salutem impertire mei me juris fecit atque a suo imperio liberavit. Similarly Olshausen, Matthies, Hilgenfeld, and Matthias. But this statement does not contain the whole truth.

2. Some ascribe to the law the peculiar function of a . Thus Beza: Lex enim terroris conscientiam ad Christum adducit. So Calvin, Schott, Bagge, Trana, and virtually Lightfoot. But surely this abandonment of the law forced upon sinners by its terrors does not amount to the profound change described in the very significant phrase .

3. Some refer this instrumental power to the Messianic deliverances of the law, as Gen 15:6, explained in Rom 3:21, or Deu 18:18 – , Theophylact. Theodoret, Hammond, Estius, Wetstein, and Baumgarten-Crusius. It is also an alternative explanation of OEcumenius, Pelagius, Augustine, Crocius, and Grotius. But the written law would be , and it did not as such embrace the prophets by whom those utterances were most fully and vividly given. Besides, as Lightfoot remarks, such an appeal based on type and prophecy would be an appeal rather to the reason and intellect than to the heart and conscience. The apostle’s words are indeed an argument,-one not based however on written external coincidences or propaideutic and typical foreshowings, but drawn from the depths of his spiritual nature. Marian. Victor. puts it peculiarly: Ego enim per legem, quae nunc spiritualiter intelligitur legi mortuus sum, illi scilicet legi quae carnaliter intelligebatur.

But to aid inquiry into the meaning of , the meaning of must be first examined. The noun is a kind of dativus commodi as it is called. Such a dative is found with this verb Rom 6:2; Rom 6:10; Rom 7:4; Rom 14:7. To die to the law, is to die as the law demands-to bear its penalty, and therefore to be no longer under its curse and claim. In Rom 7:4 the apostle says, The law has dominion over a man as long as he liveth; but that dominion over him ceases at his death. This is a general principle; and for the sake of illustration he adds, that the dies to the law of marriage in her husband’s death, and therefore may marry another. So believers died to the law in the death of Christ- . They were freed from the law (, nullified), and so are discharged from it. The common reading in Rom 7:6 is to be rejected-that being dead in which we were held; for the true reading is -we having died to that -in which we were held bound, and so we are freed from it. But how can a man die by the law to the law and be relieved from its curse? The apostle explains in the following verse-

-I have been crucified with Christ. Wondrous words! I am so identified with Him, that His death is my death. When He was crucified, I was crucified with Him. I am so much one with Him under law and in suffering and death, that when He died to the law I died to the law. Through this union with Him I satisfied the law, yielded to it the obedience which it claimed, suffered its curse, died to it, and am therefore now released from it-from its accusations and its penalty, and from its claim on me to obey it as the means of winning eternal life. By means of law He died; it took Him and wrought its will on Him. As our Representative in whom we were chosen and in whom we suffered, He yielded Himself to the law, which seized Him and nailed Him to the cross. When that law seized Him, it seized at the same time all His in Him, and through the law they suffered and died to it. Thus it is that by the law taking action upon them as sinners they died to the law. This is the view generally of Meyer, Ellicott, Alford, and Gwynne. At the same time, the passage is not parallel to the latter portion of the seventh chapter of Romans; for there the apostle shows the powerlessness of the law to sanctify as well as to justify. Yet the law is not in itself to blame, for it is holy, and just, and good; and it has its own functions-to reveal sin in the conscience, to irritate it into activity, and to show its true nature as being exceeding sinful. When sin revives, the sinner dies-not the death referred to in the passage before us, but spiritual death and misery. And now certainly, if the law, avenging itself on our guilt, has in this way wrought our release from itself-has set us for ever free from its yoke, and we have died to it and have done with it; then he who would re-enact legalism and bring men under it, proves himself its transgressor, nay, opposes its deepest principles and its most gracious design. See Usteri, Paulin. Lehrb. p. 171, 5th ed.

But release from law is not lawlessness. We die to sin as well as to the law which is the strength of sin,-and Christ died unto sin once. But death to the law is followed by life to God as its grand purpose:

-that I might live to God, even as Christ liveth unto God. Life in a high spiritual form succeeds that death to the law-life originated and fostered by the Spirit of God-the life of faith-the true life of the soul or Christ living in it. The dative is opposed to , and with the same meaning. The verb is the subjunctive aorist (Winer, 41, p. 257), in keeping with the historical tense of the principal sentence. The phrase , vivere alicui, is common: , opposed to , Rom 14:7; , Euripides, Ion, 646; , Demosth. Philip. Epist. vol. i. p. 100, ed. Schaefer; , Dion. Halicar. Gal 3:17, vol. i. p. 235, ed. Kiessling, 1860; , Menander in Philadelpho, Stobaeus, Flor. 121, 5, ed. Gaisford; , Plutarch, Ag. et Cleom. Opera, vol. iv. p. 128, ed. Bekker; , 1Ma 16:25; , Philo, de Nom. Mut. p. 412, Op. vol. iv. ed. Pfeiffer; , Quis rer. Div. do. p. 50; non sibi soli vivere, Ter. Eun. 3.2, 27; mihi vivam, Hor. Ep 18:107; vive tibi, vive tibi, Ovid, Tr. 3.4, 4. These current phrases were therefore well understood. To live to one’s self is to make self the one study-to bend all thoughts, acts, and purposes on self as the sole end; so that the inquiry, how shall this or that tell upon self either immediately or more remotely, deepens into a species of unconscious instinct. To live to God is to be in Him-in union with Him, and to feel the assimilating influence of this divine fellowship-to give Him the first place in the soul, and to put all its powers at His sovereign disposal-to consult Him in everything, and to be ever guided by His counsel-to do His will, because it is His will, at all times-to regard every step in its bearing on His claims and service, and to further His glory as the one grand end of our lives. Such is the ideal in its holy and blessed fulness. Alas, how seldom can it be realized! Such a life must be preceded by this death to the law through the law, for the legal spirit is one of bondage, failure, and unhappiness,-works done in obedience to law to ward off its penalty, with the consciousness that all the while the perfect fulfilment of the law is impossible,-God being viewed as the lawgiver and judge in their sterner aspects, and not in His grace, so as to win our confidence and our unreserved consecration. The clause is connected with the one before it, and not with the following one.

Fuente: Commentary on the Greek Text of Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians and Phillipians

Gal 2:19. Through the law am dead to the law. The law itself predicted its own end, to be replaced by the law of another prophet who was to be raised up from among the Jews. (See Deu 18:18-20.) Hence a Christian was to be regarded dead to the law (for religious purposes), that he might live unto God through Christ.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Gal 2:19. For I through law died to law (a dative of disadvantage) that I might live to God (dative of advantage). The same idea is expressed in Rom 7:4-6; Col 2:20. Paul gives here, in a single sentence, the substance of his own experience, which he more fully explains in the seventh chapter of Romans. The I is here Paul himself, and not Peter (as in Gal 2:18). The law itself led him to Christ, so that it would be sinful and foolish to return to it again, as Peter did. As well might a freedman become a slave, or a man return to childhood. The law is a schoolmaster to lead to Christ (Gal 3:24), by developing the sense of sin and the need of redemption. But the very object of a schoolmaster is to elevate the pupil above the need of his instruction and tuition. His success in teaching emancipates the pupil. So children nurse at their mothers breast, that they may outgrow it, and by passing through the school of parental authority and discipline they attain to age, freedom, and independence. The law is therefore to be taken in the same sense in both cases of the Mosaic law. Comp. Rom 7:6-13. Those who (with many of the fathers, and even Luther and Bengel) refer it in the first clause to the law of Christ (Rom 8:2), and in the second clause to the law of Moses, miss the drift and beauty of the passage. Law without the article has a wider sense, and is applicable to all kinds of law, as a general rule or principle, but chiefly and emphatically to the Mosaic law, which is usually indicated by the definite article.

That I might live unto God, a new life of obedience to the law of Christ, and gratitude for the redeeming mercy of God. The death of the old man of sin is followed by the resurrection of the new man of righteousness. This cuts off all forms of antinomianism.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

Here the apostle shews, that believers are so far from being justified by the law, that they are dead to the law, so as to put no confidence in their obedience to it for justification; particularly,

1. They are dead to the law; that is, they are delivered from the rigorous exactions of the law. Perfect, personal and perpetual obedience, is the duty which the law exacts at the believers’s hand, and he has performed it, though not in himself, yet in the person of Christ his Surety, who yielded as absolute and complete obedience to the law, as it could require or demand.

2. The law is dead to believers, and they to that, in regard to the condemnatory curse and sentence of the law; Christ hath redeemed them from the curse of the law: being made a curse for them, Gal 3:13. True, the believer’s violation of the royal and righteous law of God, in the smallest measure and degree, doth in its own nature, deserve the curse and condemnatory sentence; but Christ has discharged him from obnoxiousness to the curse, by being made a curse.

3. The law is dead to believers, as to its authority, to justify and save them. This is that the law cannot do, being made weak through the flesh? though properly speaking, the law is not weak to us, but we are weak to that; the law has not lost its authority to command, but we our ability to obey; it is as impossible for a fallen sinner to keep the law of God perfectly, as it is for a lame cripple to run a race swiftly.

Yet, 4. Believers are not dead, but alive to the law, as a rule of life and holy living; the law binds the believer (in Christ’s hand) as strictly to endeavour obedience to it, as it did Adam in innocency: But here is the believer’s privilege, that God the Father, upon the score of the covenant of grace, which the blood of Christ has ratified and confirmed, doth graciously accept the faithful endeavours of his children, instead of perfect performances; which obedience the law-covenant did rigorously exact and require.

Thus may every believer say with the apostle, I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God, namely, a life of righteousness and true holiness.

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

For I through the law died unto the law, that I might live unto God

Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)

2:19 For I through the law am dead to the {t} law, that I might live unto God.

(t) The Law that terrifies the conscience brings us to Christ, and he alone causes us to indeed die to the Law, because by making us righteous, he takes away from us the terror of conscience. And by sanctifying us, he causes the mortifying of lust in us, so that it cannot take such occasion to sin by the restraint which the Law makes, as it did before; Rom 7:10-11 .

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

This verse means that the Law condemns or kills everyone. If someone is dead, he has no more responsibility to what killed him. He is in that sense free (cf. Romans 7). He can from then on devote his energy as a resurrected person not to pleasing the Law but to pleasing God.

"By virtue of his incorporation into Christ (cf. Gal 2:17) and participation in Christ’s death Paul has undergone a death whereby his relation to the law has been decisively severed and the law has ceased to have any claim on him (cf. Rom 7:4; Rom 7:6). But since the vicarious death of Christ for sinners was exacted by the law (cf. Gal 3:13) and was ’first an affirmation of [the law’s] verdict,’ Paul’s death to the law through participation in Christ’s death can be said to be ’through [Gr. instrumental dia] the law." This death ’through the law . . . to the law’ means not only that the law as a false way of righteousness has been set aside but also that the believer is set free from the dominion of the law (under which there is transgression, Rom 4:15) for a life of consecration to God (cf. Rom 7:6)." [Note: Ibid., p. 123.]

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

Chapter 10

THE PRINCIPLES AT STAKE.

Gal 2:19-21

PAULS personal apology is ended. He has proved his Apostolic independence, and made good his declaration, “My Gospel is not according to man.” If he owed his commission to any man, it was to Peter; so his traducers persistently alleged. He has shown that, first without Peter, then in equality with Peter, and finally in spite of Peter, he had received and maintained it. Similarly in regard to James and the Jerusalem Church. Without their mediation Paul commenced his work; when that work was challenged, they could only approve it; and when afterwards men professing to act in their name disturbed his work, the Apostle had repelled them. He acted all along under the consciousness of a trust in the gospel committed to him directly by Jesus Christ, and an authority in its administration second to none upon earth. And events had justified this confidence.

Paul is compelled to say all this about himself. The vindication of his ministry is forced from him by the calumnies of false brethren. From the time of the conference at Jerusalem, and still more since he withstood Peter at Antioch, he had been a mark for the hatred of the Judaising faction. He was the chief obstacle to their success. Twice he had foiled them., when they counted upon victory. They had now set on foot a systematic agitation against him, with its headquarters at Jerusalem, carried on under some pretext of sanction from the authorities of the Church there. At Corinth and in Galatia the legalist emissaries had appeared simultaneously; they pursued in the main the same policy, adapting it to the character and disposition of the two Churches, and appealing with no little success to the Jewish predilections common even amongst Gentile believers in Christ.

In this controversy Paul and the gospel he preached were bound together. “I am set,” he says, “for the defence of the gospel”. {Php 1:16} He was the champion of the cross, the impersonation of the principle of salvation by faith. It is “the gospel of Christ,” the “truth of the gospel,” he reiterates, that is at stake. If he wards off blows falling upon him, it is because they are aimed through him at the truth for which he lives-nay, at Christ who lives in him. In his self-assertion there is no note of pride or personal anxiety. Never was there a man more completely lost in the greatness of a great cause, nor who felt himself in comparison with it more worthless. But that cause has lifted Paul with it to imperishable glory. Of all names named on earth, none stands nearer than his to that which is “above every name.”

While Paul in chaps. 1 and 2 is busy with his own vindication, he is meantime behind the personal defence preparing the doctrinal argument. His address to Peter is an incisive outline of the gospel of grace. The three closing verses are the heart of Pauls theology {Gal 2:19-21}. Such a testimony was the Apostles best defense before his audience at Antioch; it was the surest means of touching the heart of Peter and convincing him of his error. And its recital was admirably calculated to enlighten the Galatians as to the true bearing of this dispute which had been so much misrepresented. From Gal 2:15-21 onwards, Paul has been all the while addressing, under the person of Peter, the conscience of his readers, and paving the way for the assault that he makes upon them. with so much vigour in the first verses of chap. 3. Read in the light of the foregoing narrative, this passage is a compendium of the Pauline Gospel, invested with the peculiar interest that belongs to a confession of personal faith, made at a signal crisis in the authors life. Let us examine this momentous declaration.

1. At the foundation of Pauls theology lies his conception of the grace of God.

Grace is the Apostles watchword. The word occurs twice as often in his Epistles as it does in the rest of the New Testament. Outside the Pauline Luke and Hebrews, and 1 Peter with its large infusion of Paulinism, it is exceedingly rare. In this word the character, spirit, and aim of the revelation of Christ, as Paul understood it, are summed up. “The grace of God” is the touchstone to which Peters dissimulation is finally brought. Christ is the embodiment of Divine grace-above all, in His death. So that it is one and the same thing to “bring to nought the grace of God,” and “the death of Christ.” Hence Gods grace is called “the grace of Christ,”-“of our Lord Jesus Christ” From Romans to Titus and Philemon, “grace reigns” in every Epistle. No one can counterfeit this mark of Paul, or speak of grace in his style and accent. Gods grace is not His love alone; it is redeeming love-love poured out upon the undeserving, love coming to seek and save the lost, “bringing salvation to all men”. {Rom 5:1-8; Tit 2:2} Grace decreed redemption, made the sacrifice, proclaims the reconciliation, provides and bestows the new sonship of the Spirit, and schools its children into all the habits of godliness and virtue that beseem their regenerate life, which it- brings finally to its consummation in the life eternal. {Eph 1:5-9; 2Ti 1:9; Rom 3:24; Heb 2:9; 2Co 5:20-21; 2Co 6:1; Gal 4:5; Tit 3:5-7; Tit 2:11-14; Rom 5:21}

Grace in God is therefore the antithesis of sin in man, counterworking and finally triumphing over it. Grace belongs to the last Adam as eminently as sin to the first. The later thoughts of the Apostle on this theme are expressed in Tit 3:4-7, a passage singularly rich in its description of the working of Divine grace on human nature. “We were senseless,” he says “disobedient wandering in error, in bondage to lusts and pleasures of many kinds, living in envy and malice, hateful, hating each other. But when the kindness and love to man of our Saviour God shone forth,” – then all was changed: “not by works wrought in our own righteousness, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, that, justified by His grace, we might be made heirs in hope of life eternal.” The vision of the grace of God drives stubbornness, lust, and hatred from the soul. It brings about, for man and for society, the palingenesia, the new birth of Creation, rolling back the tide of evil and restoring the golden age of peace and innocence; and crowns the joy of a renovated earth with the glories of a recovered heaven.

Being the antagonist of sin, grace comes of necessity into contrast with the law. Law is intrinsically the opposer of sin; sin is “lawlessness,” with Paul as much as with John. {Rom 7:12; Rom 7:14; 2Th 2:4-8; etc.} But law was powerless to cope with sin: it was “weak through the flesh.” Instead of crushing sin, the interposition of law served to inflame and stimulate it, to bring into play its latent energy, reducing the man most loyally disposed to moral despair. “By the law therefore is the knowledge of sin; it worketh out wrath.” Inevitably, it makes men transgressors; it brings upon them an inward condemnation, a crushing sense of the Divine anger and hostility. {Rom 3:20; Rom 4:15; Rom 5:20; Rom 7:5; Rom 7:24; Gal 2:16; Gal 3:10-11; Gal 3:19} That is all that law can do by itself. “Holy and just and good,” notwithstanding, to our perverse nature it becomes death. {Rom 7:13; 1Co 15:56} It is actually “the strength of sin,” lending itself to extend and confirm its power. We find in it a “law of sin and death.” So that to be “under law” and “under grace” are two opposite and mutually exclusive states. In the latter condition only is sin “no longer our lord”. {Rom 6:14} Peter and the Jews of Antioch therefore, in building up the legal principle again, were in truth “abolishing the grace of God.” If the Galatians follow their example, Paul warns them that they will “fall from grace.” Accepting circumcision, they become “debtors to perform the whole law,”-and that means transgression and the curse. {Gal 5:1-4; Gal 3:10-12; Gal 2:16-18}

While sin is the reply which mans nature makes to the demands of law, faith is the response elicited by grace; it is the door of the heart opening to grace. {Rom 3:24; Eph 2:8; etc.} Grace and Faith go hand in hand, as Law and Transgression. Limiting the domain of faith, Peter virtually denied the sovereignty of grace. He belied his confession made at the Council of Jerusalem: “By the grace of the Lord Jesus we trust to be saved, even as the Gentiles”. {Act 15:11} With Law are joined such terms as Works, Debt, Reward, Glorying, proper to a “righteousness of ones own.” {Rom 4:1-4; Rom 11:6; Gal 2:16; Gal 3:12} With Grace we associate Gift, Promise, Predestination, Call, Election, Adoption, Inheritance, belonging to the dialect of “the righteousness which is of God by faith.” Grace operates in the region of the Spirit, making for freedom; but law, however spiritual in origin, has come to seek its accomplishment in the sphere of the flesh, where it “gendereth to bondage”. {Gal 4:23-31; Gal 5:1-5; 2Co 3:6; 2Co 3:17} Grace appears, however, in another class of passages in Pauls Epistles, of which Gal 1:15; Gal 2:9 are examples. To the Divine grace Paul ascribes his personal salvation and Apostolic call. The revelation which made him a Christian and an Apostle, was above all things a manifestation of grace. Wearing this aspect, “the glory of God” appeared to him “in the face of Jesus Christ.” The splendour that blinded and over whelmed Saul on his way to “Damascus, was the glory of His grace.” The voice of Jesus that fell on the persecutors ear spoke in the accents of grace. No scourge of the Law, no thunders of Sinai, could have smitten down the proud Pharisee, and beaten or scorched out of him his strong self-will, like the complaint of Jesus. All the circumstances tended to stamp upon his soul, fused into penitence in that hour, the ineffaceable impression of “the grace of God and of our Saviour Jesus Christ.” Such confessions as those of 1Co 15:8-10, and Eph 2:7; Eph 3:7-8, show how constantly this remembrance was present with the Apostle Paul and suffused his views of revelation, giving to his ministry its peculiar tenderness of humility and ardour of gratitude. This sentiment of bound less obligation to the grace of God, with its pervasive effect upon the Pauline doctrine, is strikingly expressed in the doxology of 1Ti 1:11-17, -words which it is almost a sacrilege to put into the mouth of a falsarius: “According to the gospel of the glory of the blessed God, herewith I was intrusted who was aforetime a blasphemer and persecutor But the grace of our Lord abounded even more exceedingly. Faithful is the saying, worthy to be received of all, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners-of whom I am chief. In me as chief Christ Jesus showed forth all His long-suffering Now to the King of the ages be honour and glory for ever. Amen.” Who, reading the Apostles story, does not echo that Amen? No wonder that Paul became the Apostle of grace; even as John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” must perforce be the Apostle of love. First to him was Gods grace revealed in its largest affluence, that through him it might be known to all men and to all ages.

2. Side by side with the grace of God, we find in Gal 2:21 the death of Christ. He sets aside the former, the Apostle argues, who by admitting legal righteousness nullifies the latter.

While grace embodies Pauls fundamental conception of the Divine character, the death of Christ is the fundamental fact in which that character manifests itself. So the cross becomes the centre of Pauls theology. But it was, in the first place, the basis of his personal life. Faith in the Son of God, “who loved me and gave Himself up for me,” is the foundation of “the life he now lives in the flesh.”

Here lay the stumbling-block of Judaism. Theocratic pride, Pharisaic tradition, could not, as we say, get over it. A crucified Messiah! How revolting the bare idea. But when, as in Pauls case, Judaistic pride did surmount this huge scandal and in spite of the offence of the cross arrive at faith in Jesus, it was at the cost of a severe fall. It was broken in pieces, -destroyed once and for ever. With the elder Apostles the change had been more gradual; they were never steeped in Judaism as Saul was. For him to accept the faith of Jesus was a revolution the most complete and drastic possible. As a Judaist, the preaching of the cross was an outrage on his faith and his Messianic hopes; now it was that which most of all subdued and entranced him. Its power was extreme, whether to attract or repel. The more he had loathed and mocked at it before, the more he is bound henceforth to exalt the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. A proof of the Divine anger against the Nazarene he had once deemed it; now he sees in it the token of Gods grace in Him to the whole world.

For Paul therefore the death of Christ imported the end of Judaism. “I died to law,” he writes, – “I am crucified with Christ.” Once understanding what this death meant, and realising his own relation to it, on every account it was impossible to go back to Legalism. The cross barred all return. The law that put Him, the sinless One, to death, could give no life to sinful men. The Judaism that pronounced His doom, doomed itself. Who would make peace with it over the Saviours blood? From the moment that Paul knew the truth about the death of Jesus, he had done with Judaism for ever. Henceforth he knew nothing-cherished no belief or sentiment, acknowledged no maxim, no tradition, which did not conform itself to His death. The world to which he had belonged died, self-slain, when it slew Him. From Christs grave a new world was rising, for which alone Paul lived.

But why should the grace of God take expression in a fact so appalling as Christs death? What has death to do with grace? It is the legal penalty of sin. The conjunction of sin and death pervades the teaching of Scripture, and is a principle fixed in the conscience of mankind. Death, as man knows it, is the inevitable consequence and the universal witness of his transgression. He “carries about in his mortality the testimony that God is angry with the wicked every day” (Augustine). The death of Jesus Christ cannot be taken out of this category. He died a sinners death. He bore the penalty of guilt. The prophetic antecedents of Calvary, the train of circumstances connected with it, His own explanations in chief-are all in keeping with this purpose. With amazement we behold the Sinless “made sin,” the Just dying for the unjust. He was “born of a woman, born under law”: under law He lived-and died. Grace is no law-breaker. God must above all things be “just Himself,” if He is to justify others. {Rom 3:26} The death of Jesus declares it. That sublime sacrifice is, as one might say, the resultant of grace and law. Grace “gives Him up for us all”; it meets the laws claims in Him., even to the extreme penalty, that from us the penalty may be lifted off. He puts Himself under law, in order “to buy out those under law”. {Gal 4:4-5} In virtue of the death of Christ, therefore, men are dealt with on an extra-legal footing, on terms of grace; not because law is ignored or has broken down; but because it is satisfied beforehand. God has “set forth Christ Jesus a propitiation”; and in view of that. accomplished fact, He proceeds “in the present time” to “justify him who is of faith in Jesus”. {Rom 3:22-26} Legalism is at an end, for the Law has spent itself on our Redeemer. For those that are in Him “there is now no condemnation.” This is to anticipate the fuller teaching of chap. 3; but the vicarious sacrifice is already implied when Paul says, “He gave Himself up for me-gave Himself for our sins”. {Gal 1:4}

The resurrection of Christ is, in Pauls thought, the other side of His death. They constitute one event, the obverse and reverse of the same reality. For Paul, as for the first Apostles, the resurrection of Jesus gave to His death an aspect wholly different from that it previously wore. But the transformation wrought in their minds during the “forty days” in his case came about in a single moment, and began from a different starting-point. Instead of being the merited punishment of a blasphemer and false Messiah, the death of Calvary became the glorious self-sacrifice of the Son of God. The dying and rising of Jews were blended in the Apostles mind; he always sees the one in the light of the other. The faith that saves, as he formulates it, is at once a faith that Christ died for our sins, and that God raised Him from the dead on the third day. Whichever {1Co 15:3-4; 1Co 15:11; Rom 4:24-25; Rom 10:9; 1Th 4:14} of the two one may first apprehend, it brings the other along with it. The resurrection is not an express topic of this Epistle. Nevertheless it meets us in its first sentence, where we discern that Pauls knowledge of the gospel and his call to proclaim it, rested upon this fact. In the passage before us the resurrection is manifestly assumed. If the Apostle is “crucified with Christ,” – and yet “Christ lives in him,” it is not simply the teaching, or the mission of Jesus that lives over again in Paul; the life of the risen Saviour has itself entered into his soul.

3. This brings us to the thought of the union of the believer with Christ in death and life, which is expressed in terms of peculiar emphasis and distinctness in Gal 2:20. “With Christ I have been crucified; and I live no longer; it is Christ that lives, in me. My earthly life is governed by faith in Him who loved me and died for me.” Christ and Paul are one. When Christ died, Pauls former self died with Him. Now it is the Spirit of Christ in heaven that lives within Pauls body here on earth.

This union is first of all a communion with the dying Saviour. Paul does not think of the sacrifice of Calvary as something merely accomplished for him, outside himself, by a legal arrangement in which one person takes the place of another and, as it were, personates him. The nexus between Christ and Paul is deeper than this. Christ is the centre and soul of the race, holding towards it a spiritual primacy of which Adams natural headship was a type, mediating between men and God in all the relations which mankind holds to God. {Rom 5:14; 1Co 15:23; 1Co 15:45-48; 1Ti 2:5} The death of Jesus was more than substitutionary; it was representative. He had every right to act for us. He was the “One” who alone could “die for all”; in Him “all died”. {2Co 5:14-15} He carried us with Him to the cross: His death was in effect the death of those whose sins He bore. There was no legal fiction here; no federal compact extemporised for the occasion. “The second Man from heaven,” if second in order of time, was first and fundamental in the spiritual order, the organic Head of mankind, “the root,” as well as “the offspring” of humanity. {1Co 15:45-49; comp. Col 1:15-17; Joh 1:4; Joh 1:9; Joh 1:15-16} The judgment that fell upon the race was a summons to Him who held in His hands its interests and destinies. Pauls faith apprehends and endorses what Christ has done on his behalf, “who loved me,” he cries, “and gave Himself up for me.” When the Apostle says, “I have been crucified with Christ,” he goes back in thought to the scene of Calvary; there, potentially, all that was done of which he now realises in himself the issue. His present salvation is, so to speak, a rehearsal of the Saviours death, a “likeness” {Rom 6:5} of the supreme act of atonement, which took place once for all when Christ died for our sins.

Faith is the link between the past, objective sacrifice, and the present, subjective apprehension of it, by which its virtue becomes our own. Without such faith, Christ would have “died in vain.” His death must then have been a great sacrifice thrown away. Wilful unbelief repudiates what the Redeemer has done, provisionally, on our behalf. This repudiation, as individuals, we are perfectly free to make.” The objective reconciliation effected in Christs death can after all benefit actually, in their own personal consciousness, only those who know and acknowledge it, and feel themselves in their solidarity with Christ to be so much one with Him as to be able to appropriate inwardly His death and celestial life, and to live over again His life and death; those only, in a word, who truly believe in Christ. Thus the idea of substitution in Paul receives its complement and realisation in the mysticism of his conception of faith. While Christ objectively represents the whole race, that relation becomes a subjective reality only in the ease of those who connect themselves with Him in faith in such a way as to fuse together with Him into one spirit and one body, as to find in Him their Head, their soul, their life and self, and He in them His body, His members and His temple. Thereby the idea of one for all receives the stricter meaning of all in and with one.”

Partaking the death of Christ, Paul has come to share in His risen life. On the cross he owned his Saviour-owned His wounds. His shame, His agony of death, and felt himself therein shamed, wounded, slain to death. Thus joined to his Redeemer, as by the nails that fastened Him to the tree, Paul is carried with Him down into the grave-into the grave, and out again! Christ is risen from the dead: so therefore is Paul. He “died to sin once,” and now “liveth to God; “death lords it over Him no more”: this Paul reckons equally true for himself. {Rom 6:3-11} The Ego, the “old man that Paul once was, lies buried in the grave of Jesus.

Jesus Christ alone, “the Lord of the Spirit” has risen from that sepulchre, -has risen in the spirit of Paul. “If any one should come to Pauls doors and ask, Who lives here? he would answer, not Saul of Tarsus, but Jesus Christ lives in this body of mine.” In this appropriation of the death and rising of the Lord Jesus, this interpenetration of the spirit of Paul and that of Christ, there are three stages corresponding to the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of Eastertide. “Christ died for our sins: He was buried; He rose again the third day”: so, by consequence, “I am crucified with Christ; no longer do I live; Christ liveth in me.”

This mystic union of the soul and its Saviour bears fruit in the activities of outward life. Faith is no mere abstract and contemplative affection; but a working energy, dominating and directing all our human faculties. It makes even the flesh its instrument, which defied the law of God, and betrayed the man to the bondage of sin and death. There is a note of triumph in the words, – “the life I now live in the flesh, I live in faith!” The impossible has been accomplished. “The body of death” is possessed by the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus {Rom 6:12; Rom 7:23-25; Rom 8:1-2} The flesh-the despair of the law-has become the sanctified vessel of grace.

Pauls entire theology of Redemption is contained in this mystery of union with Christ. The office of the Holy Spirit, whose communion holds together the glorified Lord and His members upon earth, is implied in the teaching of Gal 2:20. This is manifest, when in Gal 3:2-5 we find the believers union with Christ described as “receiving the Spirit, beginning in the Spirit”; and when a little later “the promise of the Spirit” embraces the essential blessings of the new life. Gal 3:14; Gal 4:6-7; 1Co 6:17; 1Co 6:19; Rom 8:9-16. The doctrine of the Church is also here. For those in whom Christ dwells have therein a common life, which knows no “Jew and Greek; all are one man” in Him. Gal 3:28; Col 3:11; Rom 15:5-7. Justification and sanctification alike are here; the former being the realisation of our share in Christs propitiation for sin, the latter our participation in His risen life, spent “to God.” Finally, the resurrection to eternal life and the heavenly glory of the saints spring from their present fellowship with the Redeemer. “The Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, dwelling in us, shall raise our mortal body” to share with the perfected spirit His celestial life. The resurrection of Christ is the earnest of that which all His members will attain, -nay, the material creation is to participate in the glory of the sons of God, made like to Him, the “firstborn of many brethren”. {Rom 8:11; Rom 8:16-23; Rom 8:29-30; Php 3:20-21}

In all these vital truths Pauls gospel was traversed by the Legalism. countenanced by Peter at Antioch. The Judaistic doctrine struck directly, if not avowedly, at the cross, whose reproach its promoters sought to escape. This charge is the climax of the Apostles contention against Peter, and the starting-point of his expostulation with the Galatians in the following chapter. “If righteousness could be obtained by way of law, then Christ died for nought!” What could one say worse of any doctrine or policy, than that it led to this? And if works of law actually justified men, and circumcision is allowed to make a difference between Jew and Greek before God, the principle of legalism is admitted, and the intolerable consequence ensues which Paul denounces. What did Christ die for, all men are able to redeem themselves after this fashion? How can any one dare to build up in face of the cross his paltry edifice of self-wrought goodness, and say by doing so that the expiation of Calvary was superfluous and that Jesus Christ might have spared Himself all that trouble!

And so, on the one hand, Legalism impugns the grace of God. It puts human relations to God on the footing of a debtor and creditor account; it claims for man a ground for boasting in himself, {Rom 4:1-4} and takes from God the glory of His grace. In its devotion to statute and ordinance, it misses the soul of obedience, the love of God, only to be awakened by the knowledge of His love to us. {Gal 5:14; 1Jn 4:7-11} It sacrifices the Father in God to the King. It forgets that trust is the first duty of a rational creature toward his Maker, that the law of faith lies at the basis of all law for man.

On the other hand, and by the. same necessity, Legalism is fatal to the spiritual life in man. Whilst it clouds the Divine character, it dwarfs and petrifies the human. What becomes of the sublime mystery of the life hid with Christ in God, if its existence is made contingent on circumcision and ritual performance? To men who put “meat and drink” on a level with “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost,” or in their intercourse with fellow-Christians set points of ceremony above justice, mercy, and faith, the very idea of a spiritual kingdom of God is wanting. The religion of Jesus and of Paul regenerates the heart, and from that centre regulates and hallows the whole ongoing of life. Legalism guards the mouth, the hands, the senses, and imagines that through these it can drill the man into the Divine order. The latter theory makes religion a mechanical system; the former conceives it as an inward, organic life.

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary