Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Galatians · About this commentary
I Died to the Law
Galatians 2:17-19
17 But if while we sought to be justified in Christ, we ourselves also were found sinners, is Christ a servant of sin? Certainly not! · WEB
Two objections are raised and dismissed, and the second answer turns on the law itself being what ended Paul's relation to it.
Verse 17 raises the objection any hearer would raise. If seeking justification in Christ means we turn out to be sinners like everyone else — the Jews by nature included — then has Christ become a servant of sin, an agent for putting us in that category? Paul's answer is the strongest negative available: certainly not.
The reasoning is compressed but recoverable. Being found a sinner is a discovery, not a change of state. Christ did not put anyone in that condition; he revealed it, and the revelation is what makes justification necessary.
Verse 18 answers from the other direction, aimed at Peter's withdrawal. If I build up again those things which I destroyed, I prove myself a law-breaker. The transgression is in the rebuilding. A man who dismantles a barrier on gospel principle, then quietly re-erects it when company arrives, has convicted himself by his own two actions.
Then verse 19, and it is the paradox the chapter turns on: I through the law died to the law, that I might live to God.
The law is the instrument, not the obstacle. It pronounced a sentence, the sentence fell, and the man who died under it is no longer in the relation to it that he was — the relation of a defendant awaiting verdict. What the verse does not say is that the law was wrong or that its standard lapsed. The purpose clause names what the death was for, and it is not freedom in the abstract: that I might live to God.
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