In Step With The Gospel
Out of Step
But in addition, racial pride must have entered into it. It had been drilled into Peter, and all the Jews, since their youth that Gentiles were “unclean”. While hiding beneath the facade of religious observance, Peter and other Jewish Christians were probably still feeling disdain for Christians from “inferior” national and racial backgrounds. Peter was allowing cultural differences to become more important than gospel unity
Christian living is therefore a continual realignment process—one of bringing everything in line with the truth of the gospel.
The verb ὑποστέλλω (“withdraw”) occurs as a description of military and political maneuvers of retreating to an inconspicuous or sheltered position. The term takes Cephas’ move to have been a tactical maneuver: he had the same theological convictions as Paul, but he did not dare to express them. This kind of double-dealing must have been part of Cephas’ image, because in the anti-Pauline Kerygmata Petrou Peter explicitly defends himself against it. The second verb is more concrete: ἀφορίζειν ἑαυτόν (“separate oneself”) is a Jewish technical term describing cultic separation from the “unclean.” If Cephas’ shift of position resulted in “separation,” this must have been the demand made by the “men from James,” If they made this demand, it was made because of their understanding of the implications of the Jerusalem agreement
In Paul’s terms, Cephas “feared” the “political” consequences of losing his position of power. Peter chose the position of power and denied his theological convictions.
The verb συναπάγομαι τινί (“be carried away with someone”) has a strong connotation of irrationality, implying that Barnabas was carried away by emotions. Barnabas was thus a different case compared with Cephas and “the other Jews”; he did not manipulate, but was the victim of manipulation.
The “truth of the gospel” is not the true gospel, but the truth which it contains or embodies—evidently the great doctrine of justification by faith, implying the non-obligation of the ceremonial law on Gentile converts, and the cessation of that exclusiveness which the chosen people had so long cherished.
Hypocrisy is one of the most common charges leveled against Christians. While in this life our lives will never perfectly match what we know the Bible teaches, as believers that must be our goal. And when we inevitably fall short, we must be quick to confess, repent, and pursue growth in those areas.
Keeping with walking as a metaphor for the Christian life, perhaps the latter is best. Thus Peter, Barnabas, and the other Jewish Christians who stopped table fellowship with gentile Christians had left the path that expresses the truth of the gospel. Their actions were inconsistent with what they claimed to believe. The specific truth of the gospel in view here is likely that “a person is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ” (2:16; see notes at 2:5).
The gospel is not merely the way we begin the Christian life; it is the means by which we continue to live the Christian life. It sets out a path for us as believers to walk. And when we inevitably step off the path set out by the gospel, it is essential that other believers confront us with the goal of getting us back on the right path.
Justification By Faith
“By birth” means a lot more than just being a natural-born Jew. It refers to the covenant privileges Jews possessed by virtue of their being descended from Abraham. As God’s chosen people they were automatically “in,” while the Gentiles were by the same token automatically “out.”
Paul did not mean that only Gentiles were sinners. The Old Testament is as clear as the New that all human beings are inherently sinful. Paul is here using “sinner” from a Jewish standpoint to refer to people who did not follow the Mosaic regulations and keep themselves pure before God. Gentiles were sinners in a way that did not apply to Jews: They were not just morally sinful but guilty of cultic sin by disregarding God’s laws
Such language coming from Paul’s pen is shocking until one realizes that he is taking his opponents’ words as a starting point for dismantling their position. In the argument that follows, Paul will make clear that a simple identification between “gentile” and “sinner” ignores the more fundamental reality that all human beings—Jew and gentile alike—have failed to live a life of obedience to God and are therefore in need of redemption.
It is clear that the works of the law are inadequate, but there is debate among interpreters over why this is so. We need to understand the exact nuance of “works of the law” in this context, and there have been three stages of understanding it since the Reformation:
1. The understanding from Luther until recent times involved seeing “works of the law” in terms of Jewish legalism. These works, actions performed before God to gain favor with him, could never be enough because fallible human beings could never perform them completely and consistently enough to be justified.
The problem with this view is that the Jewish emphasis was not on merit but on covenantal relationship. These works centered on obedience to divine actions specified in the law rather than on attaining favor.
2. Under the “new perspective on Paul” (see “Occasion and Opponents” in the introduction) these works are viewed as “boundary markers” used to keep Judaism distinct from the Greek world. The Mosaic law was intended to protect God’s people from pagan ways and to preserve the covenant for Israel. Paul’s purpose here, then, was to remove those distinctions and unite Jew and Gentile under Christ. These works—signs of the old separation between these people groups—could never have brought them together. They belonged to the age of Torah, and Christ has established a new paradigm.
The problem with this approach is that it takes a salvation-historical tack and sees the entire difference in the coming of Christ. More likely Paul is teaching a combination of this option and option 1. The Jewish people were dependent on obeying the law to remain right with God, and the coming of Christ brought about a new era of salvation. The concept of works as human achievement was very much a part of this, and while Judaism was not a legalistic religion there were elements of legalistic merit in the practical observance of the people.
3. So the best option is a combination of the first two. The central issue is the actual deeds stipulated in the Mosaic law—like the rite of circumcision, the food laws, and the Sabbath laws. Both the legalistic and the salvation-historical elements play a part. Since Christ came and died on the cross for our sins, the enslaving power of sin has been broken, and salvation by faith is a free gift. Performing the works of the old covenant law cannot suffice to solve the sin problem, which has been resolved in Christ. Neither Peter nor anyone else may dare to depend on works. Faith, and faith alone, is necessary and sufficient. Salvation is a free gift attained through faith in Jesus and his sacrificial death for us.
James D. G. Dunn have argued that works of the law refer to those requirements of the law that specifically mark the person as a member of the Jewish nation. As such the focus of the phrase is not obedience to the law in general but specifically those obligations that distinguish Jews from gentiles, such as circumcision, food laws, and keeping the Sabbath. Understood this way, Paul is not describing an effort to earn God’s favor through obedience to the law, but an effort to maintain the distinction between Jew and gentile.
Thus the point of disagreement between Paul and Peter is not on the basis of justification; it is whether requiring gentiles to keep the Mosaic law is consistent with justification by faith.
One key reason the gospel is offensive to people is that it stresses there is nothing a person can do to earn a right standing before a holy God. The only hope anyone—regardless of their ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic status—has of being declared not guilty before God on the last day is faith in Jesus Christ. Faith is the means by which a person receives what Christ has done on the cross for his people.
In what sense, then, would it follow that Christ is ‘a servant of sin’? Not because Peter’s action implied that Christ’s justifying work was unable to remove sin (although this interpretation was preferred by R Bultmann, ‘Zur Auslegung …’, Exegetica, 395f.), but because, in the argument of Paul’s opponents, if law-abiding Jews had now to be reckoned as ‘sinners’, just like those who lived without the law, then the number of sinners in the world was substantially increased, and so (as they understood Paul’s position) Christ was made a servant or agent of sin. But the law-free gospel of justification by faith did not make them sinners for the first time; it revealed that they were already sinners, that they were included among the ‘all’ who, as Paul puts it in Rom. 3:23. ‘have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’. The gospel did not increase the sum-total of sinners—it was, in fact, the law that did that, according to 3:19—and therefore Christ was in no sense an agent of sin
If law-abiding Jews take the position of sinners and turn to Christ for justification, that does not make him a minister of sin, for the fact is this: any one who, having received justification through faith in Christ, thereafter reinstates law in place of Christ makes himself a sinner all over again—and Christ cannot be held responsible for that. If the law was still in force, as the Galatians were being urged to believe, then those who sought salvation elsewhere were transgressors by its standard; if it were no longer in force—if Christ occupied the place which was now rightly his in salvation history—then those who sought their justification before God anywhere but in Christ remained unjustified, that is to say, they were still in their sins. It is the latter contingency that Paul has in mind as he writes to the Galatians: if they sought their justification in the law by submitting to circumcision, Christ would be of no advantage to them
For those who come from religious backgrounds where one’s performance determined one’s standing before God, it can be tempting to revert back to old, familiar patterns of relating to God and others. But Christ gave his life so that we might escape the bondage of performance, never to return to it again.
19a*] 1. “through [the] Law I died to [the] Law, in order that I might live for God”
19b*] 2. “I have been crucified with Christ”
20a*] 3. “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me”
20b*] 4. “what I now live in [the] flesh, I live in [the] faith
in the Son of God
who loved me and gave himself up for me”
The “I” (ἐγώ) to which Paul refers is not so much the personal “I” but the paradigmatic “I,” which had occurred already in v 18*.
Is Gal 2:19–20* a condensation of Romans 6? Most interpreters answer affirmatively and, therefore, interpret Romans 6 into Gal 2:19–20*
Surprisingly, Paul declares the “I” to be dead; if he speaks of “living for God” as the goal of Christian existence, that “life” must be different from the “life” of the “I”. “Crucifixion together with Christ” implies not only “death to the Law” (2:19*), but also “death to the ‘I.’ ” The “I” belongs to the sinful “flesh with its passions and desires” (5:24*), and thus to “the world.” For Paul, “crucifixion together with Christ” also means “crucifixion to the world” (6:14*), and for that reason he can declare the “I” to be “dead.”
Paul’s understanding that life has some kind of object is strange: ὅ (“what”) can be understood to simply refer to “life,” it can be taken to limit that life (“to the extent that I have life”), or if can point to the following “in the faith.”97 A decision is difficult. At any rate, Paul’s concept of life requires not only a subject which lives the life, but also a content-object: those who live, live something, i.e., a life. What the Apostle means is clear: Christian life takes place “in the flesh” (ἐν σαρκί). This statement, simple as it is, may be polemical. It rejects widespread enthusiastic notions, which may have already found a home in Christianity, according to which “divine life” and “flesh” are mutually exclusive, so that those who claim to have divine life also claim that they have left the conditions of mortality.99 The Christian life “in the flesh” is at the same time a life ”in faith” (ἐν πίστει ζῶ). In other words, the “divine life” which the Christian receives through the indwelling of Christ expresses itself as “faith.”101 This faith is of course “faith in Christ Jesus” (2:16*).
Having died with Christ in his death, the believer now lives with Christ in his life—i.e. his resurrection life. In fact, this new life in Christ is nothing less than the risen Christ living his life in the believer. The risen Christ is the operative power in the new order, as sin was in the old (cf. Rom. 7:17, 20)
There is, nevertheless, an unmistakable tension set up by the coexistence of life in mortal body and life in Christ—by the fact that the life of the age to come ἐν Χριστῷ has ‘already’ begun while mortal life ἐν σαρκί has ‘not yet’ come to an end.
To be crucified with Christ is to be united with him in his death—to have died to sin, this world, and the law. We cannot ultimately begin to live until we have died to that which will keep us from God and Christ. We do that by uniting with Christ in his death.
The results of dying with Christ are essential to the Christian life: “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” The first clause could be translated “the I [the ego] no longer lives.” This “I” is linked with the “old self” (KJV: “old man”), and there is a double meaning in the concept. First, the old self is humankind in Adam (Eph 4:22; Col 3:9), enslaved by sin and controlled by the flesh. That old self was crucified with Christ and the “body of flesh” nullified (Rom 6:6), so that each of us has become a new self in Christ, “created to be like God” (Eph 4:24). At the same time the “I” (the sinful, egotistical control of the self) has been done away with in Christ. Sin is no longer an internal force controlling us but an external power that tempts and tries to regain control through the “flesh”—or sinful tendency—in each of us. The key to victory is surrendering totally to the “Christ who lives in” us and drawing strength from the Spirit to defeat the flesh (Rom 8:5–13).
There cannot be two equal avenues to justification—the way of Christ and the cross, on the one hand, and the way of obedience to the law on the other. The second cancels out the first, since salvation attained through works would render the free gift of grace unnecessary. If by keeping the law we could on our own have gained righteousness (become right with God and capable of living morally upright lives), Christ’s death would have been pointless—just one more sad ending to the life of an innocent (and in this case misguided) man. It is grace alone, not law, that leads to justification. God can give his justifying law-court verdict only because Christ has paid for our sins. His grace is not only uppermost but exclusive and absolute.