15"We who are Jews by birth and not 'Gentile sinners' 16know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified.
17"If, while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! 18If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I am a lawbreaker. 19For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. 20I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!"
Dig Deeper
There is a memorable scene in the Disney movie "The Lion King," in which the main character Simba is confronted and told that, in effect, he is wasting his life. He has not been living up to the fact that he is the king. He is told that he is more than what he has become because he has forgotten who he really is. The task for Simba, then, is to remember who he is so that he will once again act the way that he should be acting.
According to Paul, the task for Christians is similar but actually the exact opposite. All human beings are born with the proclivity to sin going all the way back to our common ancestor Adam. That is why in Romans 5 Paul says, in essence, that we are all born in Adam. The great call for those who would become Christian is to realize that there is no hope in remaining in Adam and trying to preserve that life. We are dead spiritually in Adam and will die physically as well as remain spiritually dead if we remain in Adam. We are called to lay down our life, die to self and enter into the life of the Messiah (Rom. 6:3-4). This is why Jesus told his followers that He was the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). This is the reason that the task for the Christian is precisely the opposite as it was for the young lion. We don’t need to remember who we are, we need to forget who we were. We need to retrain ourselves to our new life in Christ and walk according to the animating power of the Spirit rather than walk according to the animating power of the flesh (see Romans 8). All Christians need to lose their old identity and reconstruct a new one, the life of Christ in them.
That’s precisely why Paul was so adamant about what was going on in Antioch and why he wants to make this point very clear to the Galatians. What is going on isn’t a mere minor doctrinal difference or varying opinions on Scriptural interpretation. The issue of whether Gentiles must become Jews first to be considered full members of the body of Christ is part of the central issue of the new family created in the Messiah. This is a matter of Christian identity and who people are in Christ. The real question is who are the true people of God? Is it all those who have died to themselves and entered, through the waters of baptism, into the life of the Messiah (Rom. 6:3-4) or is it only Jewish Christians (and those Gentiles who have converted to Judaism by being circumcised and following the law) with Gentile Christians remaining a sort of second-tier level of Christian? Were all people who had entered into the life of Christ be accepted as the Messiah’s people or were they not?
Paul’s answers focuses on the point that God’s true Israel was one person, the Messiah. This is what Jesus meant in John 15:1 when He said, "I am the true vine." Based on Old Testament passages like Isaiah 5, the vine had become a powerful symbol of God’s Israel. Jesus was the true Israel and the true king. In the Jewish mind, the king represented the people so that what was true of him was true of his people (David fighting Goliath and representing all Israel is an example of this). Thus, if Jesus is God’s son, then those who enter into His life and become His people are as well.
Paul beings this section by addressing his fellow Jews reminding them that, as Christians, they know that salvation does not come through strict observance of the law. It should be noted that Paul never forbids anyone from following the law. If it makes them feel more comfortable or their conscience yet demands that they follow it, that is fine. What they cannot do is to begin to believe that it is necessary to their status in Christ to follow the law, nor should they ever demand that anyone else do so. The only way to be justified (which is Paul’s shorthand word for covenant membership) is to have faith that the only way to the life of the age to come, both now and after the resurrection when the age to come is fully consummated, is to enter into the life of the Messiah. Jews may have liked the law, and Paul does not have a problem with that at one level, but they must remember that they will never be justified by following the law, no one will be justified by observing the law.
Paul asks the question that if while seeking to be in Christ, what happens if it becomes obvious that someone is a sinner? Is this a category mistake proving that the person is not in Christ after all? Is he trying to imply that Peter and the others are in sin and not in Christ at all? This is not at all what Paul is trying to say. Those in Christ are not sinless, nor does the evidence of some sin in their life demonstrate that they are automatically trying to rebuild the life in Adam that they destroyed by entering into Christ. Learning to live up to the new identity given us in Christ through God’s grace is a process that takes time.
If one were to understand that the whole of the law pointed to the need for Christ, then they would understand that through the law we die to the law and the old way of life so that we might live for God. All those in Christ have been crucified with Christ and no longer live. If we no longer live then who are we? That’s the whole point. Our life no longer belongs to us, it belongs to Christ. We are the Messiah’s people with his life now at work in us. When Paul says we live by faith then, he’s not referring to some sort of mental assent to the fact that Jesus died, was resurrected, and is the Son of God. He means that we die to ourselves and, by faith, live the life of the Messiah. That is the badge that the true people of God have. We don’t try to find anything else to justify us, nor do we seek to live our own lives. We realize that for us to live is to be the life of Christ and to die to ourselves is to gain the true life of Christ (Phil. 1:21).
Paul ends the chapter with more reminders that trying to add the Jewish law to the life in Christ is to actually set aside the grace of God. If the life of the age to come and resurrection could be gained through the law then there was absolutely no need for Christ. If there was no need for Christ then he died for nothing. Paul’s obvious, but unspoken point, is that the life of Christ is the only way, so, of course, he did not die for nothing. Their task and ours is to live as though that is the case.
Devotional Thought
The central call of the Christian faith is to die to our lives, to no longer have faith in ourselves or anything else in the present age, and to enter into the life of Christ; to have faith in that and that alone. When was the last time you contemplated what that means for you on daily basis? If it’s been a while, take some time to do that today.
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