NOTES for Gal 2:19-21
Paul expresses the essence of the Christian life simply and briefly. Christianity is life with Christ in His Kingdom, in which we share His life so deeply that He Himself lives, as it were, in our heart, and His will shapes our life not from outside, but from within. Yet circumcision inevitably raised another question: that of following the Torah, with which the demand that Christians be circumcised was actually connected. Those advocating circumcision probably simply asked new converts whether they intended to follow the Torah, and, if so, how they planned to do that without being circumcised. After all, circumcision had been commanded as far back as Abraham; there was no disputing that.
Paul begins his answer by considering what the Torah is for a Christian at all. Righteousness comes not from the Torah, but from following it. The Torah can make a person righteous only if that person is sinless, yet no such people exist. Here we can clearly see the same problem Paul describes in some detail in another letter, the Letter to the Romans: here, as there, the apostle says that the Torah kills those who strive to follow it. Not because it is deadly in itself, but because fallen human beings cannot be free from sin while they live, whereas following the Torah in earnest means becoming a living Torah oneself, living by it alone and by nothing else.
But this is precisely what fallen human beings cannot do. They try to replace quality with quantity, the state of being a living Torah with the fulfilment of numerous religious duties, which the apostle calls ‘works of the Torah’ or ‘works of the law’. Yet this path proves to be a dead end: no quantity of fulfilled religious duties qualitatively changes a person's spiritual state. The law of the transformation of quantity into quality does not work here; religiosity does not make a person spiritual. If the fullness of life can be attained at all, it is only through Christ and in Christ. To try to take the old path again, to seek righteousness in religion once more, means moving spiritually backwards, not forwards.