02.06. ESSAY NO. 6
ESSAY NO. 6 In Galatians 2:19-21, Paul glides out of his personal rebuke of Peter into a compressed exposition of the fundamentals of Christianity. If these verses, as some think, were not spoken to Peter, nonetheless they explain why Paul was so much concerned about Peter’s ceasing to associate with Gentile brethren. They show why he thought Peter’s defection under the circumstances forfeited constitutional principles of Christianity and perverted the gospel even unto changing its very heart and pulse beat. This scripture focuses Paul’s interpretation of Christianity and furnishes the key to his teaching and life.
Dead to the Law
God’s written law through Moses was "holy . . . righteous . . . good . . . spiritual" (Romans 7:12-14), but it was addressed to the flesh, not to the spirit of men. It served its purpose in God’s unfolding economy for fifteen centuries, until men were ready for a religion addressed to the spirit. To the obedient, this law promised life; to those who broke it, death. Inasmuch as every Jew without exception broke it, it became to Jews "the ministration of death." Simultaneously, Gentiles without exception, and with the same fatal result, broke God’s unwritten moral law. Consequently, Paul’s unqualified statement: "By the works of law shall no flesh-be justified." Justification by law, good works, character, and merit is utterly impossible. Under the reign of law, through no default of law however, both Judaism and Heathenism failed to justify, and universal condemnation hung over men. Could they justify men, the grace of God and the cross of Christ would be useless (See Galatians 2:21). The gracious Father of mankind, knowing that his human children would not render the perfect obedience that legal justification requires, never intended the covenant of law to be final. Rather, he was giving men an opportunity to learn by their unvarying failure in obedience that under law they were hopeless, doomed sinners. In this manner, men might be led in despair to abandon Gods’ provisional, educative system of law for his perfected system of grace when it became accessible to them.
"I, through the law, died unto the law, that I might live unto God," says Paul. He had to give up all hope of being justified by the law before he could be justified by grace. The covenant of law and the covenant of grace, therefore, cannot run concurrently. God cannot save sinners until they cease trying to save themselves by law and their own merit. There is no need of a man’s thinking he can live unto God before he is dead to law as a means of salvation. He must, so to speak, attend his own funeral, "for the old man was crucified with him." A clean break must be made with legality and self-righteousness. The two systems are so different that either annuls the other. The law demands unattainable righteousness while the gospel bestows righteousness upon all who will take it. Though Peter did not realize it, to use legal rites as if they were needed to supply deficiencies of the gospel is to go back to law and self-effort, which inevitably means death. This is to fall "away from grace" and stab Christianity through its heart. That Paul saw the subtle poison of Judaism and the danger to the whole structure of Christianity accounts for his rebuking Peter and writing this warning letter to Galatia. The two systems simply will not mix. "They shall not cleave . . . even as iron doth not mingle with clay."
What does Paul’s saying, that he "through the law died to the law," mean? He was a breaker of law, subject to God’s inexorable decree, "The wages of sin is death." But in amazing grace, Christ took his place as condemned sinner to die for him. Paul felt most poignantly that his sins nailed Christ to the cross and that he himself, not Christ, should have died there. Hence, he means that because God’s judgment against his sins was executed upon Christ, he himself died, representatively, on the cross with Christ. Law could not execute him again. (See John 5:24).
Note that not law, but Paul, died. When at Damascus he realized how inhuman, steely, and bloody his years of devotion to the law had left him, he, despairing of ever getting any good from it, fled to the gracious "Jesus of Nazareth," who was unbelievably kind and ready to forgive and forget his terrible past. The law still speaks as sternly and fatally to men in the flesh as ever. Only men who forsake law as the means of salvation (die to it), thus making it possible for them gratefully to accept Christ’s vicarious death in lieu of their own, deserved death, can ever escape God’s eternal death penalty for breakers of his law.
Alive Unto God In further explaining the practical workings of Christianity, Paul writes: "It is no longer I (the old man born of the flesh) that lives, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I (the new man born of the Spirit) now live in the flesh (bodily frame) I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me" (Galatians 2:20). Later, from his Roman prison, Paul distilled this into, "For me to live is Christ" (Php 1:20). With respect to his flesh and the world, Paul was born into Christ crucified; with respect to his spirit, he lived a risen, Christ-absorbed life. Before he became a Christian, religion was to Paul a grim, hopeless struggle to please God and improve himself by living up to God’s moral code. Upon becoming a Christian he exchanged this ineffectual striving to toe a legal chalk line for a grateful, joyous response of his whole personality to the indwelling Christ, and found "a well of water springing up unto, eternal life." Instead of Christ being a dead man that belonged to the past, he was a living, personal companion, living and working in him. Christianity was to Paul a beautiful, warm, fragrant friendship—a personal experience ("Operation Experinece"), "-a divine-human encounter," whereas his religion had been impersonal and traditional. All this sent Paul over land and sea attending to Christ’s business as other men were attending to their own business. He lost his life to find it. A Christian is dead to law, sin, flesh, world, and alive to God, to the measure that he really desires to be, but no more. There can be no outer compulsion and no inner reluctance; all must be personal and spontaneous. "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27).
In what sense were both Judaism and Heathenism failures?
Inasmuch as law is ’’holy, and righteous, and good," and eternal, why is legal justification for men impossible?
In what sense was Paul, when he wrote Galatians, dead to law?
Why cannot a sinner be saved before he is dead to law?
Why cannot sinners be saved by a mixture of law and gospel grace?
In Christian conversion, does law, or the sinner, die?
How does Christ’s death deliver breakers of law from their own deserved death?
Can you justify calling Christianity "a divine-human encounter"?, or "Operation Experience"?
Show that Galatians 2:20 is Paul’s interpretation of Christianity, and the key to his own life.