Galatians 2:18

These words close Paul’s account of what happened at Antioch (Galatians 2:11–14). Peter had been eating freely with Gentile believers. When certain men came from James, he withdrew and separated himself, because he feared those of the circumcision, and the other Jewish believers followed him until even Barnabas was carried away. Paul saw that this denied the truth of the gospel. It told the Gentile believers that they were unclean, or incomplete, until they took up Jewish customs and food laws. So Paul rebuked Peter openly, and verses 15 to 21 are the reason he gave. They are also the heart of the whole letter.

Behind the quarrel stood the great question of the early church: how Gentiles who believed belonged to God’s people. Some Jewish believers insisted that Gentile converts must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses, with its food laws and its Sabbath, to be truly saved or fully accepted. For centuries circumcision, the food laws and the purity rules had marked Israel out as a people set apart by covenant, and letting them go felt to many Jewish believers like betraying their heritage. The church in Jerusalem faced the same question and settled that Gentile believers are saved by grace through faith, free of circumcision and the law of Moses (Acts 15). Peter’s withdrawal shows how strong the old pressure still was. Paul treats any message that adds the law to Christ as another gospel (Galatians 1:6–9), and he argues the point at length in Galatians 3.

Paul begins from where he and Peter stood by birth. Ioudaîos, Jew, means one who belongs to Judah, a Judaean, and so a member of the Jewish people. Phýsis, nature, comes from a word for growth, and here it means what a person is by birth and descent. “Jews by nature” are Jews from birth. Paul and Peter were born into the covenant people, and the law and the promises of God came to them as an inheritance with their birth.

“Sinners of the Gentiles” was the common Jewish way of speaking of everyone else. Hamartōlós means a sinful person, a transgressor. Among Jews it was used for people who habitually broke the law, and more broadly for Gentiles, who lived outside the law and were counted idolatrous and unclean. The words “of the Gentiles” (ek ethnōn) mark where such people came from. Paul writes of the same divide in Ephesians, where Gentiles were called “Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands”, and were “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:11–12).

People ask why Paul uses a phrase like “sinners of the Gentiles” when he is about to show that all stand alike before God. He names the line the way Peter’s table had just drawn it, so that he can erase it in the next verse. Even “we”, born Jews with every privilege, had to believe in Christ to be justified. So the Jew turns out to be in the same need as the Gentile, as Paul says in Romans: “we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:9–10), and “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

Christ bore the sin of both, and through his cross he has broken down “the middle wall of partition” between Jew and Gentile (Ephesians 2:14–16). So Paul can say later in this letter, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

Verse 16 is the center of the passage. To be justified, dikaióō, is to be rendered just or innocent, that is, shown or regarded as just. It is the language of a courtroom. God the judge declares a person righteous, acquits him of his sin and brings him into a right relationship with himself. Justification is God’s verdict on a person, and it comes as a gift.

Paul presses the point by saying it again and again. The phrase “the works of the law” stands three times in verse 16, and each time it is set against faith in Christ. Works, érgon, means toil or effort, and so an act. “The works of the law” are the deeds the law of Moses required, such as circumcision, the food laws and the Sabbath, which some held were needed to gain or keep a righteous standing with God. Faith, pístis, means persuasion or credence, a conviction of the truth of God, and above all reliance upon Christ for salvation. It is a trust that rests its whole weight on Christ as Savior and Lord.

“Even we have believed in Jesus Christ.” Paul counts himself and Peter in. They were Jews by nature, raised under the law, and they still came to Christ to be justified like any Gentile. If the law could have justified anyone, it would have justified them.

The verse ends with the reason. The word for “for”, dióti, gives the ground of all that went before: “for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.” Sárx, flesh, covers a wide range, from meat to the body to human nature with its frailties, and it can mean a human being as such. Here it means every human being, without exception. Paul says the same in Romans: “by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20), and “a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law” (Romans 3:28). The law shows us our sin and leads us to Christ: “the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (Galatians 3:24). “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9). Paul’s own hope was to be found in Christ with “the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Philippians 3:9).

All of this rests on Christ himself. He kept the law perfectly on our behalf, and so he is “the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” (Romans 10:4). By the obedience of one, many are made righteous (Romans 5:19). God “hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). His righteousness is counted to everyone who believes, so our standing with God rests on his finished work, and it holds steady while our own performance rises and falls.

Paul answers this question with “God forbid,” the strongest refusal he has. The Greek is mē genoito, from mḗ, a word of negation, and gínomai, to become or to happen, so it means “May it not happen!” or “Let it not be!” Paul uses it often, and in Romans he uses it against a near relation of this question: “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid” (Romans 6:1–2). A minister, diákonos, is an attendant, a waiter at table or one who does other humble service, and in the church a Christian teacher or deacon. To call Christ “the minister of sin” would make him sin’s servant, the one who helps it along.

The question grows out of the words “we ourselves also are found sinners”, and believers differ on what Paul means by them. On one reading, Jewish believers who leave the law behind to seek justification in Christ, and who eat with Gentiles as Peter had done, are counted sinners by those who judge by the law, under the very name they had given the Gentiles in verse 15. The legalist then concludes that Christ has led them into sin. On the other reading, believers who are justified in Christ still find sin in themselves, because the law goes on exposing it, and someone who misunderstands grace concludes that Christ’s way has failed them or that he is to blame. On either reading Paul’s answer is the same. Christ is the sinless Lamb who came to take away sin, and the sin a believer finds in himself belongs to fallen human nature, which drives him back to Christ for grace. Christ died for us while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8), to redeem us from both the power and the penalty of sin.

The verse also guards the line between justification and sanctification. Justification is God’s single act of declaring a believing sinner righteous, a change in our standing that is complete when we first believe: “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). Sanctification is the Holy Spirit’s lifelong work of making us like Christ in character and conduct. The struggle that belongs to sanctification leaves our justification untouched, and grace itself leads to holiness and a hatred of sin. Christ raises his people to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4), and Paul, crying out “who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”, answers, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7:24–25). So the verse shuts out two errors at once, trying to earn salvation by the law and using grace as a cover for sin.

In verse 18 Paul speaks of himself, and the words fit Peter and anyone else who goes back. To build, oikodoméō, means to build or construct, and figuratively to build up or edify. With pálin, “again”, it means to put back up what had been taken down. To destroy, katalýō, means to loosen down, to demolish or dissolve. What Paul had demolished was the law as his way of being justified. He had once been a zealous Pharisee who tried to earn God’s favor by keeping it, and when Christ was revealed to him he let that hope go. Building it again means teaching that the law is needed for righteousness, or living as though it were, which is what Peter’s withdrawal from the Gentiles’ table said without words.

A transgressor, parabátēs, is one who breaks or disobeys the law. Paul says the man who rebuilds would “make myself a transgressor”. He means that rebuilding the law as a way to God would set him against the gospel of grace he had received and preached, and he would condemn himself by denying that Christ’s work was enough. To raise the law up again as a path to righteousness implies that Christ’s sacrifice left something unfinished. Hebrews says that the old commandment was set aside, “For the law made nothing perfect”, and that a better hope brings us near to God (Hebrews 7:18–19). By his blood Christ has opened “a new and living way” into God’s presence (Hebrews 10:19–20), and he is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes (Romans 10:4).

Verse 19 opens with gár, “for”, which gives the reason for what Paul has just said. Nómos, law, means first the law of Moses, the whole body of commands given to Israel through Moses, and in Paul’s argument it also stands for any attempt to earn God’s favor by works. In “through the law” the word diá marks the means, so the law itself brought about Paul’s death to the law. The law is holy, and by its perfect demands it showed him his sin and his inability to keep it, and so it put to death every hope of being righteous by his own keeping of it.

Apothnḗskō, “am dead”, is the ordinary verb to die. Paul uses death as his picture because a dead man is out of reach of the laws that bound him. In the same way Paul has finished with the law as a system for earning God’s favor and as the thing that defined his standing with God. Romans says it with another picture: “ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead” (Romans 7:4).

This death took place at the cross. Christ kept the law and then bore its curse in our place: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). Joined to him in his death, believers die to the law’s demands and its condemnation, and the handwriting of ordinances that was against us has been blotted out and nailed to his cross (Colossians 2:14). His resurrection begins the new life, lived in the power of the Spirit: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1–4).

Paul died to the law “that I might live unto God”, and hína, “that”, gives the purpose. Záō means to live, to be alive. The new life is lived toward God, in union with him through Christ and in the strength of his Spirit, out of love and gratitude. Romans tells believers to reckon themselves “dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:11).

Verse 20 is the high point of Paul’s answer. “Crucified with” is one Greek word, systauróō, to crucify together with someone, literally or figuratively. Through faith the old “I”, whose identity lay in the law and who was in bondage to sin, has been put to death with Christ on his cross. This is already true of every believer. Romans speaks of all who were baptized into Christ’s death and raised with him to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:3–4), and Colossians says, “ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3–4).

“Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” The verb záō comes back again and again in this verse. A new life has begun, and its source and strength is Christ himself, dwelling in the believer by his Spirit. The old self stays in the grave, and the new life comes from Christ, who now animates and directs the one he lives in. Jesus promised that he and the Father would come to the one who loves him and make their abode with him (John 14:23), and the Spirit was poured out at Pentecost (Acts 2:1–4). Paul could say elsewhere, “For to me to live is Christ” (Philippians 1:21). This is the new creature of Galatians 6:15, and the life begun in the Spirit that Paul will later plead with the Galatians to keep living in the Spirit (Galatians 3:3).

“And the life which I now live in the flesh.” In verse 16 flesh meant a human being, and here it means ordinary bodily life in this world. Christ’s life in us is lived out in real days, and it is sustained “by the faith of the Son of God”, which holds together Christ’s own faithfulness and our steady trust in him. He is “the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2).

“Who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Here the whole verse comes to rest. To give, paradídōmi, means to surrender, yield up or entrust, and joined with heautoû, “himself”, it describes Christ’s free and deliberate giving of himself to death for others. The words are personal: the Son of God loved Paul and gave himself for him, in his place. Paul uses like words of Christ’s love for the whole church, which “hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:2). This love is the ground of everything else in the verse. The death with Christ, the indwelling life and the life of faith all come from his initiative and his sacrifice.

Paul ends with a sentence that holds the whole argument. “I do not frustrate the grace of God.” To frustrate, athetéō, is built from a negative particle and a word from the verb to place or set, and it means to set aside, to disesteem, to neutralize or to violate. To seek righteousness by the law is to set God’s grace aside as worthless or unnecessary. Paul refuses to do it, and with that he answers Peter’s withdrawal one last time.

“For if righteousness come by the law.” The ei, “if”, sets up a condition. Righteousness, dikaiosýnē, means equity of character or act, and here it is justification, the standing of one declared right in God’s sight. “By the law” uses diá and nómos again, the law pictured as the channel through which righteousness might be sought.

“Then Christ is dead in vain.” Ára, “then”, marks what follows from the “if”. “Christ is dead” uses Christós with apothnḗskō, the verb of verse 19. In vain, dōreán, is a form of the word for a gift used as an adverb, and it means gratuitously, without a cause, for naught. If anyone could be made righteous by keeping the law, Christ’s death would have been needless and its purpose would have come to naught. Since the law cannot make us righteous, his death was necessary, and it is enough. “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12), and we are “justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24).

This passage puts every believer on the same ground. Peter, born a Jew with the law and the promises, and the Gentile at his table, once counted among the sinners, were justified in the same way, by faith in the same Christ. Family, upbringing and religious standing all fall away at the foot of the cross, where the ground is level and every one of us stands as a sinner who needs the same Savior.

It shows us God’s grace as a gift. Righteousness comes to us as God’s verdict, received by faith and resting on Christ’s finished work, so our peace with God holds steady on the days when we fail. The good works that follow are thanks for what has already been given.

And it shows us who Christ is to each believer. The Son of God loved Paul and gave himself for him, and every believer may say the same words of himself. The life we now live is Christ’s life in us, lived by trusting him. Paul would sooner die than set that grace aside, and the cross shows what it cost.