2:11 Paul continues to present his relationship with the Jerusalem Christians to the Galatians. In the next verses he recounts an incident with Peter that occurred at Antioch. It is almost certain that the Galatians had already heard of this incident, for before describing it Paul declares the sides in the case (Paul opposed Peter to his face) and pronounces the verdict (Peter was in the wrong). But it seems that the Galatians have understood this incident from a different perspective—one in which Peter, not Paul, is the hero.
If later church tradition is correct regarding Peter as the first bishop of the church at Antioch, Paul’s presentation of the incident becomes all the more impressive. Paul claims that at Antioch he demonstrated that Peter—the most eminent Christian—was in the wrong. The Greek participial construction translated “in the wrong” (kategnōsmenos ēn) expresses Paul’s perception that Peter had been “in the wrong” over a period of time but that when Paul opposed him Peter discontinued his actions. Consequently Peter is now not condemned. Paul may be using this story in part to counter any rumors that he and Peter remain at odds after the incident. The record follows naturally from Paul’s record of his triumph at the Jerusalem meeting: at Jerusalem Peter and Paul are recognized as partners in the gospel; at Antioch Paul’s law-free gospel is accepted by Peter.
2:12 Paul says that before certain men came from James, it was Peter’s practice to eat with the Gentiles. According to Paul, Peter changed his behavior not on principle or in line with the faith but because he was afraid. Paul portrays Peter in this incident as one who draw[s] back out of fear and who therefore exhibits his “hypocrisy.” Paul’s presentation of Peter implicitly reflects well on himself, since Paul is unafraid, even in the face of the most significant people from the Jerusalem church.
One function of this story is to acknowledge the difficulties of a situation in which, even though there was an agreement at Jerusalem (2:1–10), people from Jerusalem who did not accept the law-free gospel for Gentiles have a continuing and formidable influence, even over the likes of the apostle Peter. The “men from James” are a fearsome group. By recounting this story Paul lets the Galatian readers know that their experience of being persuaded by the rival evangelists is neither unprecedented nor shameful.
Throughout this section Paul has been making a distinction between the Jews/circumcised and the Gentiles/uncircumcised. His reference here is framed slightly differently. The Greek reads literally “those of the circumcision,” and the parallelism in the verse makes it clear that the circumcision group is the same as “certain men … from James.” Perhaps this is the same group of people who let the false believers into the Jerusalem meeting and who, despite the agreement of James, Peter, and John to Paul’s gospel (2:9), remained convinced of the rightness of law-observant Gentile Christianity.
If we can trust early church tradition that Peter was the founder of the church at Antioch, then the statement in Galatians 2:12—along with the corroborative evidence in Acts that Peter recognized that the gospel was for Gentiles (Acts 10:1–11:18)—suggests that Peter established a church in which Jewish and Gentile believers saw themselves as a single social unit. The fact that subsequently Peter could be influenced by those promoting separation indicates the degree of social pressure that fell on a new religious movement that did not fit within the Jewish or the pagan ethos. A religion that embraced Jews and non-Jews, requiring only faith in Christ, faced the daunting task of creating a new social space for itself.
The Greek for the verb to eat (synesthiō) is in a progressive tense, which suggests that it was over a period of time that Peter joined Gentiles for meals. There are several reasons to understand the meals Peter was eating as ordinary as opposed to eucharistic meals. First, whereas in other places Paul clearly refers to the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:20–21), here he does not. Secondly, given that Paul elsewhere connects eating the Lord’s Supper with the principle of social harmony among the participants (1 Cor. 11:17–34), we may assume that if the meals at Antioch had been eucharistic he would have appealed to this principle in service of his position. Furthermore, on the presumption that if Paul does not mention the Lord’s Supper we should understand his references to eating are to ordinary meals, we have corroborative evidence in Romans (ch. 14) for Jewish and Gentile believers eating ordinary meals communally, or at least for Christian Jews and Gentiles having close enough social contact that they knew what each other ate.
The translation circumcision group conveys the sense that these men from James were on a circumcising campaign. While we know that Paul is concerned about such people in Galatia (6:12), it is far from clear that his opponents in Antioch were preaching circumcision. In the Greek the phrase means simply “those of the circumcision,” that is, Jews. Read in the context of the preceding passage, in which the circumcision refers to the Jews (2:7), verse 12 most likely indicates the ethnic identity of the men from James. Paul’s clarification that these men were Jews draws the Galatians’ attention to the investment in being respected by his kinsfolk held by Peter, the apostle to the Jews.
The dynamics of hypocrisy and truth play loudly in these verses. Paul has no doubt but that he is on the side of truth. Paul charges that Peter’s change of behavior when the visitors from Jerusalem came was not “in line with the truth of the gospel” (v. 14). Until the arrival of the “men from James” the Jewish Peter had, on account of the gospel, lived “like a Gentile and not like a Jew.” With the arrival of the Jerusalem contingent, however, Peter separated himself from his Gentile brothers and sisters in Christ and adopted the stance of the “circumcision group”—a stance that would “force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs.” Paul’s charge is that this is contrary to Peter’s previous practice, in which he had demonstrated his understanding that there is no distinction between Gentile and Jew in Christ.
2:13 Peter and those who followed his lead changed their direction out of hypocrisy and fear. Paul’s comment that even Barnabas was swayed by Peter’s response to the Jerusalem Christians may give the Galatians a means of retreating in a dignified fashion from the position they have now put themselves in. The fact that even Barnabas—who along with Paul had convinced the Jerusalem Christians of the validity of Gentile Christianity—could be led astray makes the Galatians’ temptation to follow the rival evangelists at least understandable.
Paul makes clear that Peter changes his behavior in response to “the circumcision group” rather than to the “men from James.” This suggests that the circumcision group was a smaller subgroup of the “men from James.” Just as there was dissension over Paul’s gospel at the meeting in Jerusalem between “some false brothers” and the church’s leaders, so it may be that the visitors from Jerusalem display discord among themselves when they visit Antioch.
Paul’s mention of other Jews who join in Peter’s response to the people from James gives evidence that the congregation at Antioch had a significant number of Jewish Christians; that initially these Jewish Christians had felt comfortable with close interaction with Gentile Christians; and that Peter had played a leadership role among Jewish Christians at Antioch.
Additional Notes
For a detailed exegesis of Gal. 2:11–18 that includes analysis of Jewish texts regarding table fellowship, see Dunn, “The Incident at Antioch, pp. 129–82.
2:11 Theoretically there are two possible geographical references for Antioch: either Antioch in Syria or Antioch in Pisidia. Pisidian Antioch was geographically closer to the addressees and so the Galatians would have had more reason to be interested in what occurred there. Yet almost all Pauline scholars understand him to be referring to the more distant Syrian Antioch. There is strong church tradition regarding Peter’s influence at Antioch in Syria. Eusebius, referring to Syrian Antioch, writes that Ignatius was “the second after Peter to succeed to the bishopric of Antioch” (Ecclesiastical History 3.36.2 [Lake, LCL]). Paul’s account gives evidence that Peter and others from the Jerusalem church took a strong interest in the Antiochene Christian congregation. In light of later church tradition that connects Peter with Syrian Antioch, Paul’s reference to Antioch is most probably to that in Syria.
Along with Rome and Alexandria, Syrian Antioch was one of the major cities of the Greco-Roman world, drawing commercial and political visitors from all over that world. The Christian community at Antioch included a number of Jews, as 2:13 indicates. The Jewish population in Syrian Antioch was large, perhaps because it was such a politically and economically strategic city and perhaps also because this city, being under Roman government, offered Diaspora Jews the protection of Roman law. Josephus describes the relations between Greeks and Jews at Antioch as fairly harmonious (War 7.44) and says that the Jews were constantly “attracting to their worship a great number of Greeks” (War 7.45; trans. Williamson). He mentions also that during the war Jews were spared only in Antioch, Sidon, and Apamea (War 2.479). Yet the sixth-century chronicler Malalas records that in A.D. 40 the Jews of Antioch were attacked and many killed by the pagan residents, who also burned their synagogues. G. Downey suggests that among the reasons for the pogrom may have been the preaching of Christianity (A History of Antioch in Syria from Seleucus to the Arab Conquest [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961], p. 194). If Malalas’s record is historically credible it helps to explain why the circumcision group might have been concerned to keep the church within the bounds of Judaism. If there was friction between Jew and Gentile in Antioch at this time, from their point of view fragmentation within the Jewish community could only lead to more tensions. A group of people with feet in both Jewish and non-Jewish circles (i.e., Gentile Christians) would unsettle further an already tenuous host environment for the Jewish community.
2:12 O. Cullmann is correct in describing Peter’s understanding of the gospel as very close to Paul’s (Peter: Disciple, Apostle, Martyr: A Historical and Theological Study [trans. F. V. Filson; 2d ed.; \'7bLondon: SCM, 1962\'7d, p. 66]).
There are some parallels between the Galatian situation and the story of the circumcision of Izates, in which Izates is convinced to become a full proselyte by the strong argument of Eleazar (Josephus, Ant. 20.17–96 [noted by J. M. G. Barclay, Obeying the Truth: A Study of Paul’s Ethics in Galatians (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988), pp. 55–56]). The significance of the food laws to Jews is made clear in the story of Eleazar, who who would rather face death than even pretend to disobey these laws (2 Macc. 6:21, 24; 4 Macc. 6:15, 17). Yet while many Jewish texts command dietary restrictions, few enjoin Jews to avoid eating with Gentiles. Jub. 22:16 is the one exception, and this anomaly may be the result of its provenance in a sectarian environment. E. P. Sanders notes that there are Jewish texts, such as the Letter of Aristeas, that display comfort with Gentiles and Jews eating together (in Studies in Paul and John: In Honor of J. L. Martyn [ed. R. T. Forna and B. R. Gaventa; Nashville: Abingdon, 1990], pp. 170–88, esp. p. 178). Sanders and others point out that in the Diaspora there is evidence for Jewish involvement in civic life and therefore for social interaction between Jew and Gentile.
Scholarship on this passage often equates dietary purity with segregation from Gentiles on the presumption that this was both what Torah required and how Jews enacted the law. That is, scholars often presume that Jews in general considered following the food laws and eating separately from Gentiles as the same thing. However, there is no law requiring Jews to eat only with other Jews. Moreover, those traditions regulating what to do with food touched by Gentiles, for instance in Avodah Zarah, give evidence that Jews might eat in close proximity to Gentiles while keeping their dietary laws. The Mishnah’s prescriptions about how to maintain the law when in contact with Gentiles and/or Gentile food (e.g., Eruvin 6:1) are evidence that Jews did not isolate themselves. For one thing, the population density of the ancient city and the closeness of village life would have made social contact inevitable between Jew and Gentile. It was possible in the first century to be both an observant Jew and occasionally to share a table with Gentiles.
There was, however, one Jewish group that allowed for casual contact with Gentiles but that required meals to be eaten separately from the uncircumcised. The Pharisees, whom J. Neusner dubs a “table-fellowship group” (From Politics to Piety: The Emergence of Pharisaic Judaism [Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973], p. 80), advocated eating everyday meals in ritual purity. Unlike the Essenes, the Pharisees remained part of urban life, but they still separated themselves from Gentiles at meals. The “circumcision group” appears to have been influenced by this branch of first-century Judaism.
Paul’s Record of His Conversation with Peter
2:14 Paul records that he challenged Peter by saying “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?” In the Greek construction the first clause is an “if clause” (“If you, though a Jew”), and Paul’s challenge works on the basis that the “if clause” is true. The resulting question is, how then does it make sense for Peter to compel Gentiles to live in a Jewish manner? It is a curious retort, since from the way that Paul recounts the Antioch incident it appears as if the issue was that Peter was expecting Jews to live in a Jewish manner. It is likely that Paul styles the retort he gave at Antioch so that it fits the Galatian situation, in which Gentiles are being compelled to live like Jews. As Paul presents his confrontation with Peter he continues to play on the theme of Peter’s hypocrisy, underscoring that Gentiles cannot be required to adopt Jewish practice on the basis of Peter’s actions or authority. The same Greek word translated “force” (anankazeis) is used here and in 2:3, where Paul describes how Titus was not “compelled [or forced] to be circumcised” at Jerusalem, even though Peter was there. This repetition of the word brings home Peter’s hypocrisy: at one point he agreed that it was acceptable to commune with Gentiles, but at Antioch, perhaps under the influence of the same group who helped the false believers to sneak into the Jersualem meeting (2:4), Peter is willing to reverse his position and compel Gentiles to live like Jews.
The Greek verb orthopodousin, translated in the phrase not acting in line, gives the impression that Paul was willing to allow some room for error to those who had not had such a direct revelation of the truth of the gospel as he had been privileged with, as long as they were heading on the right course. But Paul considers that by their actions at Antioch Peter and the others got off the road that leads toward the truth. Consequently when Paul saw this he challenged Peter in front of them all. Thus Paul was the courageous defender of truth in a situation comparable to the one in which the Galatians find themselves.
2:15–16 Before their conversion the Galatians were pagans, so when Paul writes we who are Jews he is obviously referring to himself and the Jewish Christians he addressed at Antioch. This suggests that verse 15 is part of Paul’s record of his words to Peter. Rehearsing what Peter had come to know and believe—that a person is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ—Paul exposes more clearly the fact that Peter acts contrary to his convictions. Paul reminds Peter that he and others have put their faith in Christ Jesus that they may be justified by faith in Christ. Given that Peter, like Paul, is a Jew by birth, such faith is all the more remarkable. Peter’s Jewish background would have emphasized the centrality and nonnegotiability of the law for justification. Thus when Peter accepted the “truth of the gospel” and began to live “like a Gentile and not like a Jew,” he, like Paul, had made a significant break with his Jewish roots. After faith in Christ he recognized that observing the law did not make one righteous. Paul’s statement in verses 15–16 emphasizes that if even he and other Jews have come to know that a person is not justified through the law but rather through faith in Christ, then Gentiles, such as the Galatians, should not be tempted to follow law.
By underscoring that Peter and the others are born Jews, Paul distinguishes between their Jewish ethnicity and their new “in Christ” religious identity and foreshadows what will be a major theme in his letter. While Paul’s adversaries may try to discredit his law-free gospel as the product of a misguided traitor, Paul asserts that his gospel is in line with God’s promises and revelation to the Jewish people (see 3:6–20). As always, God’s revelation comes to the Jews first. Paul and some other Jewish Christians know that justification comes from faith in Christ and not from observing the law. To bolster his point and underscore the continuity of his gospel with Judaism Paul uses a scriptural quotation—no one will be justified (Ps. 143:2).
Paul chooses to refer to non-Jews as Gentile sinners rather than as Gentiles, his more customary term. He is likely trying to unmask the mistaken presuppositions of the Jewish Christians: that for believers the distinction between Jew and Gentile remains.
The Jewish world regularly referred to non-Jews, who were without the law, as “sinners.” For instance, the author of the Jewish apocalyptic book Jubilees speaks of “the sinners, the gentiles” (23:24; see also 1 Sam. 15:18; 1 Macc. 1:34; Tobit 13:6; Psalms of Solomon 1:1; 2:1). As the psalm says, the blessed person is one whose “delight is in the law of the Lord” (Ps. 1:2). In Jewish writings contemporary with Paul the effectiveness of the law for producing virtue was contrasted favorably with Greek philosophy. Philo, while recognizing that virtue was to be found in all peoples, extolls the life of the Jewish group known as the Essenes, who dedicated themselves to rigorous observance of the Jewish law. He calls them “athletes of virtue produced by a philosophy free from the pedantry of Greek wordiness” (Good Person 88 [Colson, LCL]).
The phrase “faith in Christ” occurs three times in verse 16. It has been argued that Paul is not really repeating himself, and that the first and third instance of this phrase refer to the faithfulness of Christ and the second instance refers to the faith of the believer (see Introduction). The Greek phrases pisteōs Iēsou Christou in the first instance and pisteōs Christou in the third may be rendered as subjective genitives. Verse 16 would then read: “knowing that a person is justified not through works of the law but through Jesus Christ’s faith. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by Christ’s faith, and not by doing the works of the law.”
The Greek word translated “justified” (dikaioutai) is the verb from the same root as the noun “righteousness,” a noun that is also translated at times as “justice.” Righteousness was the goal of Jewish religion. As Deuteronomy 16:20 says, “Follow justice (dikaiosynē) and justice alone.” The Jewish faith held that God’s character is righteous and the point of observing the law was to begin to take on the character of God—righteousness. Paul was convinced that in Christ God had revealed God’s righteousness in an unprecedented way (Rom. 1:17; 3:21). The consequence of the death and resurrection of Jesus is that the “righteousness of God” is now available to those who have faith in Jesus Christ and are “in Christ.”
Righteousness, or justice, was also a concern of ancient Greek philosophers. Plato’s Republic deals extensively with the issue of justice. Aristotle regards justice, along with courage, as the most important virtue (Rhetoric 1.9.1366b). Plutarch regards justice as the most enviable virtue, saying that “the common folk … do not merely honour the just … they actually love the just, and put confidence and trust in them” (Cato the Younger 44.8 [Perrin, LCL]). To be just was to be like a god (Plutarch, Aristeides 6.2).
The battle between Paul and his opponents, then, was over convincing the Galatians not of the desirability of righteousness but of the correct means of becoming righteous. The hook that the rival evangelists had in the Galatians was that their way—the way of works of law—resonated both with the Jewish tradition to which Paul’s converts were attracted and with the Greek philosophical tradition that thought virtue was achieved through human agency (e.g., Aristotle, Eth. nic. 3.3.13).
The final phrase of verse 16 reads literally “by works of law all flesh (sarx) will not be justified.” Flesh for Paul has several different meanings. It refers to bodily existence, in which case it has a neutral, straightforward meaning (4:13–14). It also has theological meaning. The “flesh” is not justified (2:16) but is capable of being transformed through faith (2:20 reads lit. “the life I now live in the flesh”). Flesh is opposed to Spirit (3:3; 5:16) and remains a dynamic in the Christian life—a force that tempts the believer to serve its needs rather than God and the needs of others (5:13, 16).
2:17 There is some question whether verse 17 should be read as a question Paul is now putting to his Galatian hearers or as a question he asked of Peter at Antioch. The continued use of we suggests that Paul is still recounting what he said to Peter at Antioch. If this is so then the absolutely not! at the end of the verse would be Peter’s exclamation as he comes to grips with the theological consequence of separating himself from Gentiles believers.
The Jewish Christian opponents of Paul’s law-free gospel work with the presupposition that the only remedy for sin is the law. To be without the law is to be a sinner. Paul’s response in verse 17, which is clarified in verse 21, is that for these Jewish Christians to place their trust in the law is to reject the work of Christ, for “if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing.” To regard the law as necessary for dealing with sin is to think that Christ promotes sin. If the law is added to the gospel, the logical conclusion would be that Christ is inadequate to deal with sin and that a Christ-centered, law-free gospel promotes sin.
For Paul it is either Christ or the law: there can be no compromise. As he says later, “if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you” (5:2); and “you who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace” (5:4). To rely on the law to curb sin and attain righteousness is to reject Christ. Such a result is, Paul hopes, unthinkable for his Galatian readers, and so when he records Peter’s emphatic “absolutely not,” Paul expects that his readers will join with him in discarding the preposterous idea that Christ promotes sin. Paul hopes that through this demonstration he may dispel the influence of the rival evangelists.
Paul’s choice of the words seek to be justified in Christ may be more than descriptive. He appears also to be making a value judgment—striving is antithetical to what it means to be in Christ. Paul uses a type of “if” clause that indicates that his readers are in fact striving for justification in Christ. He criticizes their framework (giving credence to law) and their method (effort).
Additional Notes
2:14 The words follow Jewish customs translate a Gk. adverb (Ioudaikōs) that means “to live Jewishly.” It occurs only here in the NT. In the OT it can be found at Esth. 8:17, where it speaks of acting in a Jewish manner in a context where such behavior is motivated by fear.
On becoming full proselytes through circumcision, see K. G. Kuhn, “prosēlytos,” TDNT 6:727–44, esp. p. 731.
2:15–16 Many commentators understand 2:15 to be part of Paul’s address to Peter (see W. Schmithals, Paul and James [trans. D. M. Barton; London: SCM, 1965], pp. 72–73).
An alternative reading of 2:15–16a is: “we who are born Jews and not Gentile sinners know that a person is not made righteous through works of law unless such are done in accordance with the faithfulness of Jesus Christ (to the law).” This reading relies on two translation decisions: translating pistis Christou as a subjective genitive and translating ean mē as exceptive. Such a reading has Paul saying that Jewish believers in Jesus, such as himself and Peter, know that the only acceptable kind of law observance is that evidenced by Jesus. This viewpoint was expressed most effectively in the generation after Paul (perhaps also as a result of the Antiochene situation) by the Gospel of Matthew. In Matthew we see reflected a Jewish Christian community committed to keeping Torah because it understood Jesus as the one who correctly interpreted the law (see A. Saldarini, “The Gospel of Matthew and Jewish-Christian Conflict,” in Social History of the Matthean Community: Cross-Disciplinary Approaches [ed. D. L. Balch; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991], pp. 41–42). For the Matthean community and other Jewish Christians with whom Paul might agree to disagree, the law is to be kept in accordance with Jesus’ interpretation. For instance, in Matthew Jesus is presented as the correct interpreter of the law who nonetheless includes Gentiles without circumcision. The Jewish Christianity that Paul can work alongside, and to which he wants to call Peter back, is one that considers Jesus’ law observance as a demonstration of a new way of being holy.
Paul’s position is somewhat different from what he affirms in 2:15–16a. He clarifies his own understanding in the rest of Gal. 2: Paul considers that it is through participation in Christ’s faithfulness and Christ’s death that a believer, whether Jew or Gentile, becomes righteous as Christ is righteous. Therefore, for Paul the law is no longer in effect as a means of righteousness.
No one will be justified is a quote from Ps. 143:2. Paul did not quote Scripture in all of his letters. The bulk of his scriptural quotations are in Galatians, Romans, and 1 and 2 Corinthians. It is likely that he used Scripture in his evangelistic preaching. Romans, which contains forty-five scriptural quotations, may be read as an example of Paul’s missionary preaching; see L. Ann Jervis, The Purpose of Romans: A Comparative Letter Structure Investigation (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991). The apostle also used Scripture when he felt compelled to respond to his opponents’ own use of Scripture. For example, the reference to Abraham in Galatians is almost certainly a rebuttal of the rival evangelists’ use of the story.
On the righteousness of God and its connection with believers’ faith, see Jervis, “Becoming Like God through Christ.”
Paul’s Continuing Defense of His Gospel in the Face of Peter’s Hypocrisy
2:18–21 Paul continues to argue with Peter by pointing out that adding the law to the gospel would be to go backward, to rebuild what has already been destroyed and so to admit that one was mistaken all along. If Paul were now to adopt the law it would effectively prove that he was a lawbreaker when he believed in Christ as the means of justification. Paul reasons that rather than becoming a “lawbreaker” he has become one able to live for God. He has not broken the law but rather died to the law, and through the law itself Paul was able to die to the law. He explains this new condition by saying that he has been crucified with Christ.
Paul’s shift to the first person may be for rhetorical purposes, in order to bring home the force of his argument by encouraging his readers to identify personally with the consequences of their view. The shift may also indicate that Paul is responding to the charge that he had advocated the law at one point but has now changed his mind. Note that the words what I destroyed may be read in parallelism to those in verse 19, “for through the law I died to the law.” At other places in the letter Paul seems to be defending himself against such an allegation (e.g., 1:10; 5:11). In each place Paul denies this charge.
In the context of verse 18, in which Paul appears to be responding to the accusation that he is rebuilding the Judaism that he once tore down, the law refers to the whole Jewish way of life. Paul died to the Jewish way of life through two aspects of Jewish law. First, Paul’s zeal for the traditions of his fathers (1:14) was in some way a preparation for God’s choice of him (1:15). So by means of devotion to the law he came to die to the law. And second, Christ’s death, in which Paul shares and which is now the key to righteousness, was through the law. Later in the letter Paul directly connects Christ’s death with the demands of the law (3:13). By being crucified with Christ Paul shares in the circumstances and consequences of Christ’s death, which are through the law dying to the law.
Being “crucified with Christ” is a central feature of Paul’s understanding of the meaning of the Christian life. The believer becomes conformed to Christ and Christ’s death. Paul makes his meaning especially plain in verse 20, where he juxtaposes “I” with “Christ.” In the first clause he states that he no longer lives and in the second that it is Christ who now lives in him.
For Paul the power of the Christian life resides not in intellectual assent to truth, nor in personal rigor, nor even in the simple power of confidence in God, but in recognizing that one has become incorporated into Christ. The Christian life is one of conformity with Christ. Paul uses the Greek aorist (past) tense when he says that he died to the law and the Greek perfect tense (which indicates that an event in the past has continuing results in the present) when he says he has been crucified with Christ. This suggests that Paul thought of his death to the law as having happened in the past, but he defines his life in the present as one of being crucified with Christ. This is why Paul can say I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. At the start of his letter Paul connects Christ’s self-sacrifice with overcoming sin and rescuing believers from the present evil age (1:4). Now Paul connects the sacrifice of Christ with the believers’ conformity with Christ, which involves sharing in Christ’s crucifixion.
The idea of sharing in Christ’s death is a central one that Paul uses to describe the type of religious life he has experienced and seeks to convey. For Paul, belief in Jesus Christ entails identifying with Christ’s death and resurrection. As noted in the Introduction, when Paul refers to the faith of Christ he is speaking of the type of human life Jesus lived and in which believers too may partake. Believers do not dedicate themselves to an example but are incorporated into the archetypal human being. Paul speaks most often of the believer in Christ participating in Christ’s death and resurrection. In Romans and Galatians, in particular, Paul speaks of believers conforming to Jesus’ death (see esp. Rom. 6; 8). For Paul the Christian life is one of conformity to Christ, of being “in Christ,” of “dying with Christ” and so being raised with Christ.
Paul’s connection in verse 20 of the idea of Christ’s death with the idea of being “in Christ” is consonant with his statements elsewhere (e.g., Rom. 3:24–25; 8:1–4). Scholars have often thought of Paul’s “in Christ” language as mystical and seen this as a separate and sometimes antithetical theological approach from his juridical interpretation of the meaning of Christ’s death, in which Christ’s death is thought to atone for humanity’s sin and allow believers to be righteous in God’s sight. Yet here as elsewhere, Paul combines the idea of Christ living in the believer with reference to Christ’s death. This suggests that Paul’s understanding of the meaning of Christ’s death was both a juridical and a mystical one. Paul could write about righteousness, the word that has typically been associated with a juridical understanding of Christ’s death, and in the same breath he could refer to being in Christ. So Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “God made him who had no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” In Galatians 2:16, when Paul speaks of Christ’s death he refers to what has been called its “mystical” result instead of its juridical consequences.
Paul’s understanding of the consequences of Christ’s death cannot then be easily compartmentalized. Even to characterize part of his understanding as mystical requires qualification. Unlike ancient mystical understandings, which regarded the body as a grave for the soul and so looked forward to the separation of body and soul in order that the soul might achieve union with the incorporeal God, Paul speaks of the whole being of believers, including their “body,” as being vitally affected by faith in Christ’s death and resurrection (cf. Rom. 8:11).
Paul maintains a dialectic between the historical fact of the death of Christ, “who loved me and gave himself for me,” and the personal appropriation of that fact (“who loved me and gave himself for me”; also “I have been crucified with Christ”).
Paul typically speaks of the idea of conformity with Christ by speaking of being “in Christ” (e.g., 1:22; 2:4; 3:14, 26, 28; 5:6, 10). It is unusual for him to speak of Christ being “in him.” But in verse 20 he may be saying what he said in 2:16—that faith in Christ results in justification through sharing the faith of Christ (see Introduction). That is, justification is being as Christ is, having the same faith that Christ has, which occurs because Christ lives in the believer.
“By faith” (en pistei) reads literally in Greek “in faith.” This phrase resonates with “in Christ” and also with Paul’s statement in 1:16 that God “revealed his Son in me.” If a subjective genitive reading of 2:16 be accepted, thereby giving the sense of Christ’s faith as that in which believers participate through their faith (see Introduction), then in 2:20 Paul would be saying that his life in the flesh is life lived in the faith of the Son of God. The quality of Paul’s life of faith is that of Jesus Christ—it is Christ’s faith in which Paul lives. The demonstration of that faith is that Christ loved Paul and gave himself for him. These actions are the actions of faith. And in them Paul now lives.
Righteousness translates the same Greek word as “justification” (dikaiosynē). Paul asserts that through the death of Christ God’s righteousness is now available for those who believe, and he will go on to claim that since Christ’s death the law’s role of guiding toward righteousness has ceased. Therefore, the problem is not that Paul is setting aside the grace of God by disregarding the law as a means to righteousness. Rather, the problem is that the rival evangelists do not understand that the grace of God is now manifested in the death of Christ. Faith in Christ allows one to be joined to Christ, to live in Christ, and to have Christ live in oneself—to be as Christ and so to live out of the same faithfulness as Christ. This is righteousness.
The role of Christ’s death is to deal with sin. The role of faith in Christ is to be able to share in Christ’s death and resurrection and furthermore to live with a faith that is similar to Christ’s. It may be significant that in 2:20, when speaking of identification with Christ through faith, Paul refers to Christ as “the Son of God,” exactly the phrase that Paul later uses to describe the identity of those who have believed in Christ Jesus. At 3:26 he writes, “you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.”
The switch Paul made to the first person at verse 18 continues until the end of chapter 2. In the verses in which Paul is most personal (2:18–21) he vividly describes identification with Christ: his co-crucifixion with Christ, and the fact that Christ, not Paul, is living in Paul’s body. The use of the first person makes explicit Paul’s own faith convictions and highlights that for Paul, individual believers become incorporated into Christ. This results in a unity of believers in Christ and so is diametrically opposed to the rival evangelists’ contention that there should be a division between circumcised and uncircumcised. Paul’s adversaries would probably respond that the division need not be there if all believers in Christ were to follow the law. Paul’s vision, however, is of a single community of Gentiles and Jews in which Gentiles can remain as Gentiles. For Paul, law observance for Gentiles is a denial of the efficacy of Christ’s death (2:21). For Paul, the only way for circumcised and uncircumcised believers to live is with the understanding that “in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value” (5:6). Paul’s attitude to unity in Christ requires not that all Jews become Greeks or all Greeks become Jews but only that, whether Jew or Greek, all live in Christ.
Paul’s record of his confrontation with Peter at Antioch speaks directly to the Galatian situation. Paul lets the Galatians know that in front of eminent Jewish Jerusalem Christians, he called even Peter to account. Paul now turns his attention to the Galatians’ own experience of the power of the gospel.
