§11 Paul’s Continuing Defense of His Gospel in the Face of Peter’s Hypocrisy (Gal. 2:18–21)

2:18–21 / Paul continues to argue with Peter by pointing out that adding the law to the gospel would be to go backward, to rebuild what has already been destroyed and so to admit that one was mistaken all along. If Paul were now to adopt the law it would effectively prove that he was a lawbreaker when he believed in Christ as the means of justification. Paul reasons that rather than becoming a “lawbreaker” he has become one able to live for God. He has not broken the law but rather died to the law, and through the law itself Paul was able to die to the law. He explains this new condition by saying that he has been crucified with Christ.

Paul’s shift to the first person may be for rhetorical purposes, in order to bring home the force of his argument by encouraging his readers to identify personally with the consequences of their view. The shift may also indicate that Paul is responding to the charge that he had advocated the law at one point but has now changed his mind. Note that the words what I destroyed may be read in parallelism to those in verse 19, “for through the law I died to the law.” At other places in the letter Paul seems to be defending himself against such an allegation (e.g., 1:10; 5:11). In each place Paul denies this charge.

In the context of verse 18, in which Paul appears to be responding to the accusation that he is rebuilding the Judaism that he once tore down, the law refers to the whole Jewish way of life. Paul died to the Jewish way of life through two aspects of Jewish law. First, Paul’s zeal for the traditions of his fathers (1:14) was in some way a preparation for God’s choice of him (1:15). So by means of devotion to the law he came to die to the law. And second, Christ’s death, in which Paul shares and which is now the key to righteousness, was through the law. Later in the letter Paul directly connects Christ’s death with the demands of the law (3:13). By being crucified with Christ Paul shares in the circumstances and consequences of Christ’s death, which are through the law dying to the law.

Being “crucified with Christ” is a central feature of Paul’s understanding of the meaning of the Christian life. The believer becomes conformed to Christ and Christ’s death. Paul makes his meaning especially plain in verse 20, where he juxtaposes “I” with “Christ.” In the first clause he states that he no longer lives and in the second that it is Christ who now lives in him.

For Paul the power of the Christian life resides not in intellectual assent to truth, nor in personal rigor, nor even in the simple power of confidence in God, but in recognizing that one has become incorporated into Christ. The Christian life is one of conformity with Christ. Paul uses the Greek aorist (past) tense when he says that he died to the law and the Greek perfect tense (which indicates that an event in the past has continuing results in the present) when he says he has been crucified with Christ. This suggests that Paul thought of his death to the law as having happened in the past, but he defines his life in the present as one of being crucified with Christ. This is why Paul can say 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. At the start of his letter Paul connects Christ’s self-sacrifice with overcoming sin and rescuing believers from the present evil age (1:4). Now Paul connects the sacrifice of Christ with the believers’ conformity with Christ, which involves sharing in Christ’s crucifixion.

The idea of sharing in Christ’s death is a central one that Paul uses to describe the type of religious life he has experienced and seeks to convey. For Paul, belief in Jesus Christ entails identifying with Christ’s death and resurrection. As noted in the Introduction, when Paul refers to the faith of Christ he is speaking of the type of human life Jesus lived and in which believers too may partake. Believers do not dedicate themselves to an example but are incorporated into the archetypal human being. Paul speaks most often of the believer in Christ participating in Christ’s death and resurrection. In Romans and Galatians, in particular, Paul speaks of believers conforming to Jesus’ death (see esp. Rom. 6; 8). For Paul the Christian life is one of conformity to Christ, of being “in Christ,” of “dying with Christ” and so being raised with Christ.

Paul’s connection in verse 20 of the idea of Christ’s death with the idea of being “in Christ” is consonant with his statements elsewhere (e.g., Rom. 3:24–25; 8:1–4). Scholars have often thought of Paul’s “in Christ” language as mystical and seen this as a separate and sometimes antithetical theological approach from his juridical interpretation of the meaning of Christ’s death, in which Christ’s death is thought to atone for humanity’s sin and allow believers to be righteous in God’s sight. Yet here as elsewhere, Paul combines the idea of Christ living in the believer with reference to Christ’s death. This suggests that Paul’s understanding of the meaning of Christ’s death was both a juridical and a mystical one. Paul could write about righteousness, the word that has typically been associated with a juridical understanding of Christ’s death, and in the same breath he could refer to being in Christ. So Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “God made him who had no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” In Galatians 2:16, when Paul speaks of Christ’s death he refers to what has been called its “mystical” result instead of its juridical consequences.

Paul’s understanding of the consequences of Christ’s death cannot then be easily compartmentalized. Even to characterize part of his understanding as mystical requires qualification. Unlike ancient mystical understandings, which regarded the body as a grave for the soul and so looked forward to the separation of body and soul in order that the soul might achieve union with the incorporeal God, Paul speaks of the whole being of believers, including their “body,” as being vitally affected by faith in Christ’s death and resurrection (cf. Rom. 8:11).

Paul maintains a dialectic between the historical fact of the death of Christ, “who loved me and gave himself for me,” and the personal appropriation of that fact (“who loved me and gave himself for me”; also “I have been crucified with Christ”).

Paul typically speaks of the idea of conformity with Christ by speaking of being “in Christ” (e.g., 1:22; 2:4; 3:14, 26, 28; 5:6, 10). It is unusual for him to speak of Christ being “in him.” But in verse 20 he may be saying what he said in 2:16—that faith in Christ results in justification through sharing the faith of Christ (see Introduction). That is, justification is being as Christ is, having the same faith that Christ has, which occurs because Christ lives in the believer.

“By faith” (en pistei) reads literally in Greek “in faith.” This phrase resonates with “in Christ” and also with Paul’s statement in 1:16 that God “revealed his Son in me.” If a subjective genitive reading of 2:16 be accepted, thereby giving the sense of Christ’s faith as that in which believers participate through their faith (see Introduction), then in 2:20 Paul would be saying that his life in the flesh is life lived in the faith of the Son of God. The quality of Paul’s life of faith is that of Jesus Christ—it is Christ’s faith in which Paul lives. The demonstration of that faith is that Christ loved Paul and gave himself for him. These actions are the actions of faith. And in them Paul now lives.

Righteousness translates the same Greek word as “justification” (dikaiosynē). Paul asserts that through the death of Christ God’s righteousness is now available for those who believe, and he will go on to claim that since Christ’s death the law’s role of guiding toward righteousness has ceased. Therefore, the problem is not that Paul is setting aside the grace of God by disregarding the law as a means to righteousness. Rather, the problem is that the rival evangelists do not understand that the grace of God is now manifested in the death of Christ. Faith in Christ allows one to be joined to Christ, to live in Christ, and to have Christ live in oneself—to be as Christ and so to live out of the same faithfulness as Christ. This is righteousness.

The role of Christ’s death is to deal with sin. The role of faith in Christ is to be able to share in Christ’s death and resurrection and furthermore to live with a faith that is similar to Christ’s. It may be significant that in 2:20, when speaking of identification with Christ through faith, Paul refers to Christ as “the Son of God,” exactly the phrase that Paul later uses to describe the identity of those who have believed in Christ Jesus. At 3:26 he writes, “you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.”

The switch Paul made to the first person at verse 18 continues until the end of chapter 2. In the verses in which Paul is most personal (2:18–21) he vividly describes identification with Christ: his co-crucifixion with Christ, and the fact that Christ, not Paul, is living in Paul’s body. The use of the first person makes explicit Paul’s own faith convictions and highlights that for Paul, individual believers become incorporated into Christ. This results in a unity of believers in Christ and so is diametrically opposed to the rival evangelists’ contention that there should be a division between circumcised and uncircumcised. Paul’s adversaries would probably respond that the division need not be there if all believers in Christ were to follow the law. Paul’s vision, however, is of a single community of Gentiles and Jews in which Gentiles can remain as Gentiles. For Paul, law observance for Gentiles is a denial of the efficacy of Christ’s death (2:21). For Paul, the only way for circumcised and uncircumcised believers to live is with the understanding that “in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value” (5:6). Paul’s attitude to unity in Christ requires not that all Jews become Greeks or all Greeks become Jews but only that, whether Jew or Greek, all live in Christ.

Paul’s record of his confrontation with Peter at Antioch speaks directly to the Galatian situation. Paul lets the Galatians know that in front of eminent Jewish Jerusalem Christians, he called even Peter to account. Paul now turns his attention to the Galatians’ own experience of the power of the gospel.