At the end of our last episode, Paul is relaying a story to the Galatians about a visit that Peter makes to Antioch and the problem that arises from it. Even though Peter, James, and John had verified Paul’s gospel as authentic, and Peter had even declared that Christ’s grace has gone out to all, circumcised and uncircumcised alike, and even though they had not forced Titus to be circumcised, Peter turned his back on fellowshipping with Gentiles when Jewish Christians from the Jerusalem Church arrive in Antioch.
Paul calls it like it is: hypocrisy.

I can see this to be yet another proof to the Gentile Galatians of his trustworthiness. “See,” he says, “I defended your race against those of my very own. I stuck my neck out for you.” So I’m called; I never ingratiated myself to you; my life has changed completely; my gospel was verified by the Church; AND I stood up to my own people for your full inclusion into the Church—just as you are.

In verses 14 to the end of the chapter Paul gives Peter and the other Jewish Christians there what we call nowadays a “come-to-Jesus.”

"14 But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in the presence of all, “If you, being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?"

“In front of all the others,” Paul criticizes Peter for his hypocrisy. “Since you, a Jew by birth, have discarded the Jewish laws and are living like a Gentile, why are you now trying to make these Gentiles follow the Jewish traditions?” (14 NLT)

So, it seems that these Jewish Christians may not have been simply keeping their distance from their Gentile compatriots but trying to force them to adopt a Jewish way of life. There is no live-and-let-live here. But here is the opportunity to share with the Galatians theological truth—the preeminence of Christ in salvation over practicing ritual behaviors and traditions.

“You and I are Jews by birth,” Paul says to Peter in verse 15, “not ‘sinners’ like the Gentiles.” I can see Paul makes flesh-bunnies when he says sinners. The word used here is hamartolos. It can refer to a person who commits depraved acts—to someone who is wicked—or to one who falls short of what God approves—living against God’s will—or even to tax collectors, or heathen, or one who does not keep orthodox traditions and behaviors. It is this final possibility—one who does not keep orthodox traditions and behaviors—that Paul has in mind, I think.

"16 nevertheless, knowing that a person is not justified by works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the Law; since by works of the Law no flesh will be justified."

With this, Paul is saying to Peter, “We grew up keeping orthodox traditions and behaviors, but we know that that doesn’t make us right with God: only faith does. ‘For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law.’(16)”

He adds to the gravity of Peter’s and the other’s insistence that the Gentiles become like the Jews when Paul says in verse 18, “I am a sinner if I rebuild the old system of law I already tore down.” This would be a radical thought for Jews, since that system is the thing that defined and separated them as a people from all other nations. To use an in-vogue word: The Law of Moses gives the Jews their identity.

Jewish Christians like Paul, Peter, and James’ friends are in the same situation as their Gentile brothers and sisters. They must rely upon Jesus for their justification and cannot make themselves worthy of ultimate salvation. This is why Paul states that he would become a sinner if he were to take back up the Law. By not fulfilling the Law—or even one part of it—he dies to it so that he might live the life of Christ. We will come back to this later in Romans.

Paul then begins a detailed, Christ-centric theology in which he redefines what it means to be a person. In verses 19 and 20, Paul gives the Galatians a new definition of human existence:

“For through the Law [capital L, meaning the works of the Law of Moses through which a person intends to make oneself deserving of a relationship with God] I died to the Law, so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me…” (19,20a)

Here Paul is laying the foundation for something that he will later flesh out in chapter 3—a thought to which he will return in 2 Corinthians 5:17, 1 Corinthians 6:19, Colossians 3:11, and one to which he will devote his letter to Rome. This is: Our lives are no longer our own.

Of course, this is not necessarily a novel thought to Paul or any Jew—even though they ignore it when they take back up the Law—since in Jeremiah 10:23 the prophet prays, “I know, LORD, that our lives are not our own. We are not able to plan our own course.” (NLT), but to the Galatians this would be radical—and maybe even to some of us!

Paul states here that the Christian’s identity is replaced by Christ’s—that our very being is changed. We are no longer what we were and have become Someone different—which is yet again revisited in Philippians 3:5-9 when the apostle to the Gentiles disregards the entirely of his past, who he had always been and worked to become—rejecting it even to point of calling it bio-waste—for the sake of taking Christ’s life as his own.

"5 circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless.

7 But whatever things were gain to me, these things I have counted as loss because of Christ. 8 More than that, I count all things to be loss [c]in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them mere rubbish, so that I may gain Christ, 9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith…"

In fact, later in Revelation, it can be argued that this is the sin that the church at Laodicea is accused of committing: not letting Christ be their life fully. But more on that in a later series.

Paul claims Christ’s crucifixion as his own crucifixion—the death of what was. Here, he is urging the Galatians to let themselves die to the world and its practices and to resist those who would force the Galatians to take the Law up for the first time—or in Peter’s case, again.

Although taking up the Law is well intentioned, it is, nevertheless, grounded in pride and in the self. Paul sets about explaining this as the verse continues. And by way of a warning, this is what we call in the biz “some heavy theology”.

When Paul was alive to the Law, he was the controlling force in his life—he was what mattered to himself. But now, he no longer lives—Christ lives within him—so that he—Paul—is alive to God. Christ has replaced Paul’s old self. We’ll see this again in Romans where the apostle gives a nod, I think, back to James, where he declares that our problems in our faith as Christians all stem from the sin that keeps on clinging. To put this simply…
Christ has replaced the I.