NOTES for Gal 2:11-21

¹¹But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.

¹²For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision.

¹³And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation.

¹⁴But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?

¹⁵We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles,

¹⁶Knowing 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.

¹⁷But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God forbid.

¹⁸For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.

¹⁹For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.

²⁰I 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.

²¹I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.

Speaking about the new life, the life of the Kingdom, Paul contrasts it with what he calls "works of the Torah" ("works of the Law," v. 16). It would seem that the works of the Torah should be the main occupation of those who seek to fulfill the commandments. But the matter, as can be seen, was not quite like that. In the time of Christ and Paul, works of the Torah were often understood as roughly what we today call religious duties. Formally, all of them were connected, of course, with the need to fulfill one or another norm of the Torah, but in fact many of them had long since ceased to have any relation to it, being based solely on tradition, often only loosely connected with the Torah. The fulfillment of these religious duties turned, in circles of religiously active people, such as the Pharisees, into a kind of religious sport, in which successes and achievements were valued very highly. After all, according to the opinion generally accepted in the religious environment, the reward for those who succeeded was the Kingdom, toward which religious activists sometimes strove with complete sincerity, though at times without a very clear idea of what that Kingdom was, the one they were so eager to reach.

Paul, as can be seen, understands perfectly well that no successes in religious life have any relation to solving the main task: they cannot bring anyone closer to the Kingdom. The apostle never tires of reminding us that a sinful person is not able to follow the Torah to the end, that for this he will have to die; otherwise sin will never leave him, and no religion has the power to change anything here (vv. 19-21). The former, natural life must disappear in order to give way to another, new life, the life of the Kingdom, by which the risen Christ lives. But this is a difficult path, and fallen human nature begins quite naturally to look for easier paths, turning among other things to religion. For Paul, all such attempts are nothing other than a desire to return to the former, sinful life, refusing the path to which the Savior calls His faithful ones (vv. 17-18). It is a refusal of the Kingdom for the sake of human opinions, human concepts, and human religiosity. It is a refusal that never passes without a trace for those who have refused.

Other notes

For Gal 2:19-21

¹⁹For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.

²¹I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.

Paul expresses the essence of Christian life simply and briefly. Christianity is life with Christ in His Kingdom, in which we share His life so fully... Read more

Paul expresses the essence of Christian life simply and briefly. Christianity is life with Christ in His Kingdom, in which we share His life so fully that He Himself, as it were, lives in our heart, and His will determines our life not from outside, but from within. But in connection with circumcision another question inevitably arose: the question of following the Torah, with which the demand for obligatory circumcision for Christians was actually linked. Apparently the supporters of circumcision simply asked Christians whether they intended to follow the Torah, and if they did, how they thought they could do this without being circumcised. Circumcision, after all, had already been commanded to Abraham, and there was no arguing with that.

Paul begins his answer by reasoning about what the Torah is for a Christian in general. Righteousness is not from the Torah, but from following it. The Torah can make a person righteous only if the person is sinless, but there are no such people. Here the same problem is clearly visible that Paul describes in detail in another letter, the Letter to the Romans: here, as there, Paul says that the Torah kills those who strive to follow it. Not because it is deadly in itself, but because fallen humanity, while alive, cannot be free from sin, and to follow the Torah seriously means to become oneself a living Torah, to live only by it and by nothing else. But this is exactly what fallen humanity cannot do, trying to replace quality with quantity, the state of living Torah with the fulfillment of many religious duties, which the apostle calls 'works of the Torah,' or 'works of the law.'

Meanwhile, such a path turns out to be a dead end: no multitude of religious duties fulfilled by a person changes qualitatively his spiritual state. The law of transition from quantity to quality does not work here; religiosity does not make a person spiritual. If the fullness of life can be gained, it is through Christ and in Christ, while trying again to go by the old path, again to seek righteousness in religion, means moving spiritually backward, not forward.

For Gal 2:19-20

¹⁹For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.

It is necessary to go deeply into the meaning of the word "live" in order to estimate all the magnificence of this formulation. Does our entire pastime deserve this appellation? It seems that Paul accentuates specially intervals of time or events... Read more

This is exactly what life is for him, and he considers that the possibility of such a life is brought by Christ, it is His righteousness that comes true in Paul's life, and thus it is Christ's life in Paul.

But there are other moments in our being, when everything is not so well. Paul calls it life in the flesh, and, in principle, as Paul himself wrote, it is not so much life, than death. But there is also a possibility of transfiguration here: faith in the Son of God becomes the way for overcoming death.

For Gal 2:7-14

⁷But contrariwise, when they saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me, as the gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter;

⁸(For he that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the Gentiles:)

⁹And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision.

¹⁰Only they would that we should remember the poor; the same which I also was forward to do.

¹¹But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.

¹²For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision.

¹³And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation.

It is interesting how specifically the Lord divides responsibilities, callings, and duties in the Church. Paul is called not simply... Read more

It is interesting how specifically the Lord divides responsibilities, callings, and duties in the Church. Paul is called not simply to preach the Gospel, but to preach it to the Gentiles. The Lord distinguishes the particular grace of apostleship among the circumcised from that among the uncircumcised. These might seem like purely technical details: here we speak about this but not that, and there the reverse... Perhaps this reduction of the work to technical matters is precisely what the Lord does not want. The Apostle Paul says that Peter behaved inconsistently, first abandoning observance of Jewish rites and then beginning to “hide.” In a particular situation, one probably needs to decide clearly which system one lives within and not try to conform to two at once. The division of callings is important for this, among other reasons.

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