An objection met.
"For if, while we are seeking to be justified in Christ"—our union with Christ being the spring and fount of all our blessings—"we ourselves also"—as well as these Galatians who are sinners and Gentiles—"were found to be sinners, is Christ a minister of sin? God forbid!"
I. THE TRUE ATTITUDE OF ALL JUSTIFIED PERSONS IN RELATION TO SIN AND CHRIST.
1. They renounce all legal righteousness, such as the Judaists boast of, and reduce themselves to the level of Gentile "sinners." There is no difference between Jew and Gentile at the first point of contact between the soul and the Saviour. They are alike guilty before God.
2. They look for justification only in Christ. They are pronounced just by God because they are in Christ.
3. Because the Jewish Christians, in renouncing the Law, reduced themselves to the level of sinners like the Gentiles, Christ did not therefore become a minister of sin, because that renunciation was carried out under his authority. Yet Peter seemed to say by his conduct that the renunciation was altogether wrong.
II. THE INCONSISTENCY OF PETER'S CONDUCT. "For if I build again"—as you, Peter, are proposing—"the very things which I destroyed, I am proving myself a transgressor" Because the work of legal reconstruction would imply that my work of demolition was wrong. You, Peter, prove by your conduct that your former setting aside of the Law was a transgression.
III. THE LAW WAS ITSELF DESIGNED TO MAKE WAY FOR SOMETHING BETTER THAN ITSELF. "For I through the Law died to the Law, that I might live unto God."
1. The apostle's death to the Law. "I died to the Law." The Law in question is the Mosaic Law. The apostle's readers could understand it in no other sense. This death came through "the body of Christ." "Ye also became dead to the Law by the body of Christ" (Romans 7:4). He bore its penalty, and was therefore no more under its curse; and therefore, as "I have been crucified with him "(verse 20), so that his death is my death, died to the Law in him.
2. The Law itself led directly to that death. "I through the Law died to the Law." Not merely because it was a schoolmaster to lead me to Christ or manifested its own helplessness to justify, but because it was through the Law that sin wrought death in me (Romans 7:8). The Law took action upon me as a sinner. It wrought its will upon Christ when it seized him and put him to death. But in that death the Law lost its dominion over him, and therefore over us. Thus Christ is shown to be the "end of the Law for righteousness." Thus the apostle might say to Peter that "in abandoning the Law he did but follow the leading of the Law itself."
3. Death to the Law is followed by life to God as its great purpose. "I died to the Law that I might live unto God." It is suggestive that this was the very end of Christ's death. "For in that he died, he died unto sin once; in that he liveth, he liveth unto God" (Romans 6:10). We are, therefore, to reckon ourselves" alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." This death to the Law does not involve lawlessness or freedom from moral restraints; for in its very nature it involves "death" to that sin, which is the strength of the Law. As we live in Christ, and Christ lives in God, our life is wrapped up in God. Therefore we cannot "serve him any longer in the oldness of the letter, but in the newness of the Spirit"—"in the newness of life;" "bringing forth fruit unto God."