The Gospel is of Faith, Not Law (No Other Gospel #9)
The end of the historical section has Paul rebuking Peter. Up to this point, Paul has been mainly working to show where the gospel came from. Now he dives into discussing exactly what it is.
We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God forbid. For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor. For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain. (Galatians 2:15-21)
To get the general sense of this passage, we have to start with the first verse and then go on from there. “We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles.” The Jews referred to all Gentiles as sinners because they did not know the true God and were mostly lost in complete idolatry or even agnosticism. The Jews knew the true God even if they didn't always know the proper way to please Him; the Gentiles, by in large, did not. But the point is that Paul here is speaking as a Jew speaking to Jews.
This is a gross oversimplification, but for the sake of simplicity, we can say that the Jews fell into one of two schools regarding salvation, regarding being right with God. Those two schools were Legalism and Covenantal Nomism--the belief that salvation comes through obeying the Jewish law or by being part of the Jewish covenant. For many Jews, especially the more zealous and devout, these ideas were burned into their mind--that the only way to be right with God was through one of these things.
Remember, there were many Jews who did not accept Jesus--who believed he a false prophet, a deceiver, even a Satanist. There may have still been some who believed he was a good man and a prophet but nothing more. But the controversy in Galatians centers around those who DID accept Jesus, at least in theory, who believed that he was the Christ, the Messiah, and that He was the Son of God, that He “gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father” as Paul said in chapter 1. They accepted in theory the idea that our salvation was through Jesus. Otherwise, they would have been simply Jews and not Judaizers. We are looking here at Christians--at least, at people who claimed to be Christians. And probably at least some of them were true Christians who simply had difficulty in understanding and living out their faith, like many even of the apostles had been at first, while others fit into the class Paul described earlier: “false brethren unawares brought in.” Some of them were struggling to change their own ideas to match the gospel, while others were trying to change the gospel to match their own ideas. But the point is that they were all, in theory, Christians and, in some sense, accepted the gospel. Remember back in chapter 1 Paul spoke some trying to introduce “another gospel.” The Judaizers weren't explicitly trying to move people back from Christianity to Judaism. They were still trying to maintain some semblance of the gospel.
So we have this class of people who were Jews and also Christians. That class, of course, included most of the early church, especially before Antioch. And within that class, we have the Judaizers who were trying to combine Christianity with the ideas of Legalism and Covenantal Nomism. In this passage, Paul is addressing Jewish Christians (he will turn back to the Gentile Galatians in chapter 3); probably as part of his address to Peter since Peter, though he knew the true gospel, was acting in practice like the Judaizers.
Paul's point is this. You cannot combine the Jewish ideas of salvation with Christianity. You cannot at the same time expect salvation through the Jewish law and the Jewish covenant and also expect it through Christ. And any Jewish Christian ought to have realized that. This is Paul's proposition here: “The gospel is of faith, not of the law.” Salvation cannot be obtained through the law, either by obedience and morality nor by membership in the Jewish covenant; but only through faith in Jesus Christ.
Before we start breaking down this passage, we need to talk about this word “justify” which Paul uses four times throughout this passage and quite a few more times throughout all of his writings. The word traces back to a Greek word meaning that which is right or that which is just. It is a word heavily connected with the idea of a court setting. So we can picture a man who has been accused of a crime and has been brought to trial for his crime. If he is found guilty, two things will happen. First, he will become “guilty” in the eyes of the law--the court makes an official statement that recognizes that he has done a certain act and that act was contrary to the law. Second, a penalty of some kind is imposed as a consequence of that, whether it is a fine or a term in prison or even the death sentence. When we think of the consequence of a crime, we usually think of the punishment, but the other side--the recognition of guilt--is also a serious side as well. You can pay your fine or do your time in jail and then go on with life--but that guilt, that criminal record remains and will haunt you the rest of your life: “When you have a criminal conviction, the record of your offense doesn't just go away. This can make it problematic to get on with your life. It makes it tougher to find a job, gain admission to a college or university, enter the military, secure a financial loan, or obtain a housing lease. Your criminal history may show up not only in employment background checks, but also in records checks by nosy neighbors who want to know everyone else's business.” (Oklahoma Legal Group)
So, if a person is brought into trial, how can they be justified? The most obvious way is by acquittal. The procedure of a trial is aimed at finding out the truth of what happened, and if it turns out that the accused did not commit the act in question or that the act was not wrong, then they will be acquitted--the court will judge them not guilty. So, if they are accused of stealing something, they would be acquitted if it turned out that they didn't take it or that they did but they actually had a right to take it. In either case, they are recognized as innocent and no guilt or punishment comes on them and they have no record of crime.
But, in a legal setting, even if a person is convicted of a crime, there is still a way to be justified; a way which includes two separate things. The first thing is pardon. Nolo's Plain-English Law Dictionary defines pardon as “to use the executive power of a governor or president to forgive a person charged with a crime or convicted of a crime, thus preventing any prosecution and removing any remaining penalties or punishments.” When someone is pardoned, that means they no longer have to face the penalty for their crime. They are free from the legal consequences of their actions. It becomes illegal for the government to prosecute or punish them for the action in question. Even though they have been deemed guilty by the court, they are as free from punishment as if they had been innocent.
But while pardon removes the punishment for a crime, it does not remove the guilt. Before the law, the person in question has still committed a crime and is guilty, is a criminal, even if they never do any time for their crime. They still have that record of a criminal. But there is another legal process called expungement. This seals a criminal's record, essentially nullifying their guilt. There are different forms of expungement, but here is what Oklahoma law says about one form: once a crime has been expunged, “the subject official actions shall be deemed never to have occurred, and the person in interest and all criminal justice agencies may properly reply, upon inquiry in the matter, that no such action ever occurred and that no such record exists with respect to such person.” When a crime has expunged, in this way, all legal records of it are gone. That removes all the legal guilt of a crime.
And while this gets a little more complicated, we can broadly say that these two methods of justification can be divided into “justice” and “mercy.” An acquittal is an act of justice. To condemn as guilty a man whom the evidence clearly shows to be innocent is unjust; it is wrong. Justice demands that an innocent man be acquitted and not treated as guilty. Acquittal is demanded by justice, by the law. To be acquitted can be broadly said to be justified by the law. Pardon on the other hand is an act of mercy on the part of the governor or president. You cannot force a pardon; it is not a violation of justice if it is not given. It is an act of mercy. It is not contrary to the law; the law allows for a pardon and sets up the parameters of a pardon. But it comes from outside the law and legal processes cannot create a pardon. (And I think the same is true of expungement, but on that point, I defer to legal experts.)
All mankind has been called into court by God for his sins. In the first several chapters of Romans, Paul goes through and proves the sinfulness of both Jews and Gentiles, ending by a summary which he quotes from the Psalmist: “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one.” (Romans 3:10) Every person who is living, has lived, or will live stands with an indictment against them of a very serious nature. The question, then, is how we may be justified in that court.
The Jews were, of course, very well aware of God's requirements and that they were being called before God's judgment bar; that there was, therefore, a need for some form of justification. Legalism and Covenantal Nomism were both attempts to find justification--one through obedience to the law and the other through membership in the Jewish covenant. In either case, they were seeking justification through the law, through the Jewish law and covenant. And when these Jews embraced Christianity--to whatever degree they truly embraced it--they carried these ideas into Christianity, teaching that a Christian could only be justified through the law, and therefore only by obey the Jewish law or becoming part of the Jewish covenant.
Both of these are appeals to justice, rather than mercy. The legalist believes that it would be unjust for God to punish a good man, to punish him for his wrong deeds if they had been outweighed by his good deeds. The idea is that they could earn justification through good works. The problem is that that doesn't work. When you are brought into trial for a crime, any amount of other good work is irrelevant. It might be brought in as a mitigating factor, but it does not destroy the reality of crime. No good works can make up for a wrong act, especially since it is our duty to do good works anyway. On the ground of justice, there can be no justification through obedience to the law.
Covenantal Nomism is in a different position. Basically, the claim here was that God had established a covenant with the Jews through which justification could be attained. In one sense, it was an appeal to mercy, since they realized it was a merciful gift that God had created the Jewish covenant and allowed them to be part of it, but the case was that as part of the covenant God was bound in justice to acquit them for their sins as long as they remained in the covenant. “[A]s long as the Israelite did not renounce God's right to command, he need not fear an eschatological judgment in which God would closely scrutinize his individual deeds. Such a judgment would not occur.” This, while very different from legalism, is still a hope for justification through the law and is an appeal to justice. And the problem with this is that it also doesn't work because that isn't what God created the Jewish covenant to do. The Jewish covenant was not an umbrella that gave man a blanket justification. One of the primary signs of the covenant was sacrifice; but Isaiah 1:11 tells what God sometimes thought about these sacrifices: “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.” Why did God not accept their sacrifices? Go down a few verses and you'll find out why--it was because of their sins. Being part of the Jewish covenant and fulfilling some of the requirements of it did not provide acquittal for sin. God had made it very clear through the prophets that the main point of the law was not “burnt offerings or sacrifices” but obedience and loyalty to God. (Jeremiah 7:22-23)
Because man has sinned, he has no claim for justification through the law, for justification on the grounds of justice. And here's the important point to notice. Paul had received a revelation from God about the gospel; he speaks in other places about mysteries which had been revealed to him and the other apostles. But this isn't one of those cases. Notice the word that begins verse 16: “Knowing.” This wasn't some strange, surprising new revelation that Paul was giving. The Jews had always known or, at least, SHOULD have known that justification could not come through the law, the covenant. In this passage, Paul references Psalm 143:1-2: “Hear my prayer, O LORD, give ear to my supplications: in thy faithfulness answer me, and in thy righteousness. And enter not into judgment with thy servant: for in thy sight shall no man living be justified.” This psalm was part of the law, the Old Testament, and is generally believed to have been written by David, a good Jew who was very well aware of the requirements of the law and was (usually) faithful in fulfilling them. And yet he realized and recorded the fact that there was no way to righteousness through human effort. We have here the two doors, the two ways of approaching God--the door of justice and the door of mercy. David realized that no man could safely come to God through the door of justice, but only through the door of mercy. David knew his only hope for God to hear his prayer was through grace--by throwing himself in faith on God's mercy--not through the works of the law.
The Judaizers believed that justification could be found through the works of the law--either by obeying the law or by being part of the Jewish covenant. But obviously, if anyone could have found justification that way, it would have been David who was a good man, who lived a good life, and was a faithful and devout Jew. Yet he recognized that none of that was enough to justify him before God. The Jewish law could not bring justification. And the Jews should have already known that. Note the words of Peter regarding the Jewish law at the Jerusalem Council: “Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?” (Acts 15:10) The attempt to find salvation through the law had brought nothing but frustration to the Jews.
In verse 19 Paul says: “I through the law am dead to the law.” There's disagreement about exactly what that means, but I think what Paul is saying that he was dead to the law--he had realized that he could not find salvation through it, that it could not justify--BECAUSE of the law. It was from reading and studying the law that he had learned that the law was not sufficient. Because, after all, God had never intended for people to use the law in the way the Jews were using it. That simply wasn't its purpose. Jewish Christians, with a knowledge of Jewish law, should have realized that there is no salvation through the works of the law. This wasn't some strange, new idea, but something that God had already taught the Jews for years, even if some of the Jews hadn't understood. Paul was not going against the law, but rather following the revelation of the law to look beyond the law.
Now, for the last dozen or paragraphs, I have been trying to get this picture of a courtroom into your minds as relating to justification. And now I want you to forget it, at least temporarily. The problem with a courtroom is this. Legal processes are a human convention. The laws we make and the penalties we attach to them are to some degree arbitrary and always fallible. A good society tries to make good laws and a fair justice system; to make sure that crime is attributed to the right person and that the punishment fits the crime. But we realize that we don't always succeed. There is no perfect civil law. That's why we give judges leeway in deciding a sentence and why there is an executive right to pardon. We, as a society, make laws and that is how we, as a society, give to the proper authorities the power to pardon. That which man makes, man can unmake. The penalty which is humanly imposed can be humanly removed.
But when we come to God's law, things are different. God's law is an expression of His nature, which is to say, they are an expression of reality. They are not arbitrary nor fallible but fully founded on the very bedrock of reality. Certain expressions of God's law may be variable, but the core of God's law--of what He demands and what follows the transgressions of those demands--that is absolute and could never have been otherwise than what it is. God's laws are perfect and his judgments are also perfect. There is no need for a margin of error in God's court. There is no need for second thoughts and reprieves and reviews and appeals. Whatever God judges is right.
Therefore, the conventions that apply to human legal systems do not apply to God's. God need not and cannot simply dispense a pardon for sin in the way a governor can simply dispense a pardon for a crime.
We can think of it this. We've talked a lot about criminal law. Now we need to think of a different kind of law. Imagine holding some object in your hand. If you let go of it, what will happen? It will fall and hit the floor, naturally. No matter what other sterling qualities it may have, no matter what its feelings about the matter are nor what your feelings are, that is what will happen, because of the law--the law of gravity. We can't just issue that object a pardon and say it doesn't have to hit the floor because here we are dealing with an objective law which (within a limited sphere) CANNOT be altered.
Or let's move from physical laws to mathematical laws. Suppose a man has a hundred dollars and he lends ten dollars to his friend. How much money does the first man have? He still has one hundred dollars, since he has a right to all that money, even if ten dollars of it are no longer physically in his possession. Suppose the friend to whom he lent the money loses it and is unable to pay it back. How much money does he have then? He still has one hundred dollars because he still has a right to one hundred dollars. Both men may feel bad about the situation but that does not change anything, because the laws of mathematics are not affected by our feelings. Ninety will never equal one hundred no matter how much we may want it to.
When we are dealing with objective laws, like the laws of science or mathematics, the laws cannot be simply altered, like a civil law can be. And so God's moral law, while it is like a civil law in some ways, is also like a law of science or math in that it is objective. The guilt and punishment that come about because of sin cannot simply be canceled like the guilt and punishment in a civil case, because they are objective facts.
But there is a caveat to all that. I said before if you were holding up an object and let go of it, it would fall and hit the floor. But that isn't necessarily true--it would be possible to catch it before it hit the floor. Would that change the law of gravity? No. But something else would interfere with the situation to change the outcome of the law. Or take the idea of the debt. If the man with a hundred dollars chose to forgive the debt; suppose he just tore up his IOU. That would cancel the debt, and yet the laws of math were not broken. Ninety still does not equal one hundred. However, a price has been paid (since tearing up an IOU does cost you something) allowing the debt to be canceled. We can loosely speak of debt being forgiven, but in reality, a debt is always paid, if only by the creditor.
Both of these cases point to the same truth. In the realm of objective facts, it is possible for a law to be “broken” only by the interference of something else. A dropped object within earth's gravity will always fall to the ground--UNLESS someone catches it. A debt unpaid will always be owed--UNLESS the creditor or someone else pays it. With God's law, justification (that is, the removal of the guilt and consequence of sin) cannot happen--UNLESS someone interferes to make it possible.
And that brings us to the second half of verse 16: “Even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law.” And then look at the very end of verse 20: “the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” In Romans 4:24-25 Paul explains this more fully: “[To us righteousness] shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.” Justification is possible, though not by the law. Through the atonement provided by the death and resurrection of Christ, it is possible for us to be justified--fully freed from the penalty and guilt of sin--the only condition is that we receive it by faith. We can be freed from the guilt of sin and brought into a right relationship with God--the NET Bible translates 2 Corinthians 5:19 with these words which sum up the matter: “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting people's trespasses against them.” That is what justification does and the only way we can obtain it is through Christ.
So this is the background we have to get firmly in our mind. Man was called into the courtroom of God because of his sin. It was not possible for him to be justified by the law, because he was in fact guilty of sin. And it was not possible for God to simply ignore that guilt, because that not how God's law works. The only way to justification was through the blood of Christ received by faith. The Jews had the law and should have known that justification was not possible through the law, since the Old Testament explicitly says that. The purpose of the law was not to justify but rather to point forward to Christ; those who were saved in the OT were not saved by the law but by faith, even if they didn't fully understand that at the time.
Jews should have known that the law couldn't justify. And the Jewish Christians should have known that justification was only possible through Christ because--well, because they were Christians. Look at verse 21: “I do not frustrate, or render useless, the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.” If salvation could have come through mere Judaism; if the Jewish law and covenant could have brought salvation, then there was no need for Christ to come and die. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If a man can find justification through the law--that is, if he is acquitted in a trial--then there is no need to pardon him. If justice can save a man, there is no need for mercy. And while in civil law, a pardon is sometimes issued simply to avoid a trial, in this case, we are dealing with mercy which was obtained with a price. If there was already in place a perfectly functional way of providing salvation through Judaism, then God would never have bothered to provide a new way--especially not when that new way involved the death of His Son on the cross.
To be a Christian, by definition, means giving up on seeking salvation on our terms because if there was salvation on any other terms, then Christ never would have come to die and there would be no meaning in putting our faith in him. If salvation comes by the law, there is no need to put your faith in Christ. And if salvation comes by Christ, there is no need to put your faith in the law. It is impossible to put final and ultimate trust in two separate things. It made no sense for those who claimed to be Christians, who professed to put their faith in Christ, to be, at the same time, putting their faith in obedience to the Jewish law or membership in the Jewish covenant.
So, to sum up the argument thus far: the only way to justification is through faith in Jesus Christ, in his atonement by which he made it possible for the guilt and penalty of sin to be removed. Our own efforts to obey the law cannot do it. Being part of a specific people group, even the chosen people, the Jews, cannot do it. But faith in the atonement provided by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ can--it does objectively what pardon and expungement do by a legal function; it removes the guilt and penalty of the sin.
But there was one objection which Paul knew the Jewish Christians might make. And that was that by saying that we were not saved by the law but instead by putting our faith in Christ, that would lead to sin. After all, if the law doesn't bring salvation then people won't worry about following it. If the governor granted a free pardon to every condemned criminal, nobody would be afraid to commit crimes. That would lead to moral chaos. In New Testament times, you had the Antinomians, those who taught exactly that--that because Christians are saved by faith and not by the law they could therefore live any way they want. That clearly was not consistent either with the Old Testament or the New. If we claim to be justified by Christ and yet are found to be sinners--that is to say, if the doctrine of justification through Christ naturally and invariably led to sin--then that would mean that Jesus was a minister, an agent of sin--which is obviously nonsense.
So we have to go back and think about crime again. When you commit a crime, what follows legally is guilt and punishment. So far as the law is concerned, that is all that matters. But there is also another consequence that follows--when a person commits a crime, it changes them as a person. It has consequences, not just before the law, but in their own heart. And sin against God's law does not just bring guilt and punishment, but a change in nature; it brings corruption. A sinner is not just someone guilty before the law, but someone whose very nature is opposed to God and is divided from God.
Because guilt and punishment are legally imposed they can be legally removed. But giving a man a pardon does not change his nature. Quite often, in the news, you will read an account of someone on trial who has been on trial previously and at that time were granted leniency and then they went right back out and started doing exactly the same things that got them in trouble the first time. Justification can change a person's record but it can not change their nature.
Which is why we have to add another word on top of “justification” and that is “regeneration.” In speaking to Nicodemus, Jesus explained it this way: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3) This is the most famous passage where salvation is compared to birth, but there are actually quite a few others that use the same metaphor or another similar one. Look, for instance, at 2 Corinthians 5:17 where Paul says that in Christ we are a new creature or a new creation. The point is that salvation does not merely change our legal status and remove the guilt and penalty of sin but also changes our nature and removes the corruption of sin. (c.p. 1 Corinthians 1:30, 6:11) Speaking of the metaphor of birth for salvation, Peter Kreeft says: “It is an accurate image because only birth is as radical a change as this--a change not only in one's thought but in one's being...” (Socrates Meets Jesus, 154)
That is the idea of verse 20: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith [or by the faithfulness] of the Son of God.” Jesus died and rose from the dead. In salvation, through faith, we are identified with Him in His death and resurrection so that we can say that we are dead and yet live. But this is a new life, a new birth, a regeneration---because this life is the life of God living in us. The corruption of sin has been removed and a new life has been put in its place.
Imagine you were out working in your yard and you found an old plastic water bottle, half crumpled, buried in the mud. What would you consider it? Trash; garbage. But suppose that on that same day (probably a warm day in summer), someone brought you an ice-cold bottle of clear, clean water. That would be a blessing and a gift. Often in church, you'll hear someone say something along the lines of: “Without God, we're nothing.” I'm sure someone from the outside hearing a statement like that would think it was false humility. But it is almost literally true. We were created to live in union with God, as Adam walked with God in the garden of Eden. Without God, we are nothing--just like a water bottle without water is nothing, because the sole reason, explanation, and context of its existence is to be filled with something. Filling a water bottle with water does not destroy its identity but rather fulfills its identity. That's why Paul says that he lived and yet it was Christ living in him. He did not lose his life by becoming a Christian, even though it did involve a kind of death--he was alive because he was filled with Life for he was filled with Jesus who is the way, the truth, and the life. That is the sort of change regeneration makes--changing trash into treasure; the dead into the living.
The corruption of human nature and its division from God has been cured through regeneration so that if any man is in Christ he is a new creation and his life is in reality of the life of Christ living through him. That being so, obviously, sin should no longer be a part of his life. The whole work of salvation--of justification and regeneration--is to destroy sin--to destroy its guilt, penalty, and corruption. And if, after God has destroyed sin in our life, we try to build it back up again, we make ourselves transgressors. (v. 18) “How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” (Romans 6:2)
In short, this is what Paul is saying. Man has a problem, the problem of sin. Ultimately, the final and most important of life is the question of how we deal with sin. The Judaizers believed the way to salvation was through good works or membership in the Jewish covenant. But Paul makes it clear that there is salvation only through faith in the atonement provided by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ when received by faith. This brings justification--that is, pardon from the penalty and expungement of the guilt of sin--and regeneration or new life which delivers us from the corruption of sin. That was the good news which God had given to Paul and which he had preached to the Galatians. There is only one true gospel, and that gospel is a gospel of faith, not of the law.
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