Galatians 2:15-21

I invite you to read the passage first.

One way to read this section is as a continuation of the argument of Paul with Peter. Betz suggests that verse 14b-21, which he views a speech by Paul to Peter, is a summary of the letter. However, in the context of this letter, it reflects his concern with his opponents in Galatia. Paul is stating that it is impossible for him to turn back and accept again that it is possible for human beings to be justified by means of the Law. He is also making a forceful statement that his apostleship, far from being inferior to that of Peter, as his opponents suggest, is on equal footing with that of Peter.

            The text is concerned with the theological fall out created by the actions of Peter and the others in Antioch.  Jews by birth and Gentiles sinners shows the most basic insider/outsider distinction.  Despite his privileged position as a Jew, Paul now declares that the Law does not offer justification.  Nothing human beings can do, not even obeying the Law, can create this rightness.  Nowhere here does Paul dismiss the Law as useless.  He only denies that it serves any purpose in justifying anyone before God. 

            This text forms the crux of Paul's aggressively polemical letter to the churches of Galatia: Those who seek to justify themselves by obeying the Law given to God's people Israel are doomed to failure in the light of God's justifying and salvific work in Christ's death and resurrection.

In 2:15, Paul is still narrating his encounter with Peter. After having accused Peter of hypocrisy “before them all” (2:14), Paul reminds Peter that they share a common bond in their Jewish heritage (“we are by nature Jews and not Gentile sinners”), clearly an attempt to temper his harsh words. However, Paul’s conciliatory gesture is not a precursor to compromise, for he continues by asserting that freedom from the Law is brought to the believer through justification by faith (2:16).

The specific point in question was table fellowship between Jews and Gentiles. While Jewish Law forbade (and forbids) observant Jews to eat Gentile meat, no prohibition prevented shared meals, provided basic dietary restrictions were observed. Paul accuses Cephas of hypocrisy in his vacillation between strict separatism and a more accommodating stance toward Gentile table fellowship, depending on who (and especially whether "the circumcision faction," v. 12) was watching.

            In characteristic fashion (see also Romans 9:3; 2 Corinthians 11:22), Paul emphasizes his own Jewish identity (v. 15) in order to make the point that he came to acceptance of Jesus as the promised Christ/Messiah from within the Jewish tradition, not as one of the "Gentile sinners," a harsh and asymmetrical phrase found only here in the entire Bible. The obvious rhetorical balance for "Jews" would simply be "Gentiles" as Paul writes in the preceding verse. It is unclear what point Paul is seeking to drive home by lumping all non-Jews into the category of "Gentile sinners," especially since his audience in Galatia would have included a sizable number of people who would have been considered Gentiles by the Judaizing faction Paul is opposing. Betz suggests that “Jews by birth” was a self-definition of Jewish Christians. This was how Paul began to distinguish early Christianity from Judaism. “Gentile sinners” was how Paul began to distinguish between Jewish sinners and non-Jewish sinners.

To be "justified" (or "reckoned as righteous," v. 16) is a prominent theme in Galatians - more prominent, in fact, than in any other book in the New Testament except Romans (see, e.g., in addition to this verse, 2:17; 3:8, 11, 24; 5:4).

The term has an important place in theology. Luther, as one can imagine, expounds upon the notion that justification means no “self-merit” when it comes to being made right with God. Christ is no Law-giver, but a Life-giver, a Forgiver of sins. Barth will also stress justification, nothing that as Paul gained the insight that one becomes right with God through faith, he also became convinced of the impossibility of justification through the Law. He has quite good discussion of the phrase “faith of Jesus Christ,” the debate being over whether it is an objective genitive (faith in Jesus Christ) or a subjective genitive, “faith of Jesus Christ.” If the latter, which Barth thinks likely, it would that the faith of Christ, revealed in the cross, is the basis for “our” justification. To return to the courtroom imagery, the faithfulness of Jesus (presumably in his death on the cross) is the basis of the judge’s (God’s) verdict of “not guilty” that is handed down to the defendant (believer). This does not apparently negate the significance of the “faith” of the believer in Jesus (“and we have come to believe in Christ Jesus”).

In verse 16, we find one of the most succinct and dense statements about faith in Jesus Christ anywhere in the letters of Paul. The first clause, “a person is justified not by the works of the Law,” draws on courtroom imagery to describe the status of the believer before God. Here and in other places in his letters, Paul seems to envision God as a judge, while the believer is a defendant who stands accused of a crime (i.e., exhibiting sinful behavior, or in some cases simply possessing a sinful nature). The question, then, is the way in which the defendant can gain an acquittal (i.e., be “justified”). Paul here asserts that Torah observance (“works of the Law”) is not sufficient for such a verdict. Rather, he continues, a person is justified “through the faith of Jesus Christ,” or, “through faith in Jesus Christ.” Faith is the means of justification. Barth stresses that the point Paul is making is not that faith is “better,” but rather, salvation is through Christ and not Law.

In any case, verse 17 lets us know the argument of those who advocated that Gentiles must become Jews before they can become Christians. As Betz puts it, the phrase "found to be sinners" means that the opponents of Paul were calling Gentile Christians "sinners" because they have not come under the grace of Torah. They do not abide by key portions of the Law, and are therefore "sinners." Yet, Christ is not the servant of sin. 

In fact, Paul has died to the Law in order to live to God. To "build up again the very things" he once tore down (v. 18) would be, for Paul, to transgress into his former state of captivity to the law from which his faith in the "Son of God" (v. 20) has freed him. In this context, Paul's faith in Christ is his renunciation of the world, including its established moral precepts. Paul expresses that renunciation as his having "been crucified with Christ" (v. 19), an expression he uses here and in Romans 6:6 to describe the utterly profound nature of his conversion in baptism.

Verse 19 could have two meanings. In either case, it seems like linking this phrase to the death of Christ, by interpreting it as referring to the fact that the believer participates in the death of Christ, is preferable. First, it could mean that Christians are dead with Christ and thus to Mosaic Law, and so already share the life of the risen Christ. Second, it could mean that Christians are dead to the Law in order to obey a higher law of faith and the Spirit.  This means that the Jewish people in particular need to die to the Law in order to receive the freedom that God offers in Christ. A change of lordship has occurred, and one cannot be under Law and under Christ.

Barth says it has become impossible for Paul to try to go further along this impossible way of the Law. Now, we might ask, in what sense can we die to the law through the law?  First, its character was immediately present.  Second, it reveals sin.  The Law provides no remedy.  Paul finds a valid use for the Law in v. 19, but hardly one his opponents would expect.  If it was shocking for Paul's listeners to hear him declare that he had died to the Law, it was even more startling to hear him claim he had also died with Christ.  Under the Law, a right relationship with God was dependent upon how obediently Paul followed the works of the Law.  Paul specifies two unmerited, unexpected acts of God's Son that makes commitment to Christ, not to the Law, so easy.  Because Christ loves me and gave himself for me, Paul will not nullify the grace of God.

In verse 20, by faith Christ becomes the subject of all the living acts of a Christian.  Though Christians are still living in the flesh, they already have the Spirit. In the previous verse, death was release from past obligations.  In the present verse, it is annihilation of old sins.  Crucifying and rising are tied together.  The "now" is his new life in Christ.  Barth says that for Paul, his life in the flesh has become an opportunity for faith in Christ, the Son of God, who loved me and has given himself for me. The bridge behind him has been broken. The boats on which he might have set out on the way back have been burned. He has no basis for any other life. Any such life that seeks justification by the Law would only mean that he rejects the grace of God, that he thinks Christ might have died in vain, that he transgresses the true law under which he stands. Pannenberg stresses that here, Paul can refer to the cross as an expression of the love of Christ, while in Romans 8:39, it expresses the love of the Father.

Paul concludes this portion of his argument by casting in absolute terms the contrast between justification through faith and justification through works: If the Law justifies, then God's grace has been nullified and "Christ died for nothing" (v. 21). Justification through faith in Christ and not through works of the Law is, of course, a fundamental and recurrent theme through all of Paul's writings (see, for example, his discussions of and variations on this theme in Romans 3:9-20, 6:1-14, 8:9-17, 11:1-16; 2 Corinthians 5:14-21; Ephesians 2:1-10; Philippians 3:2-11.) It is not an exaggeration to say that justification through faith is the center of Pauline theology, and increasingly became so as Paul sought to spread the message of the gospel to an ever wider and more influential audience.