Download discussion questions: Galatians 2:14-21
Calvary Institute – Fall 2018 Index
Law(s) in our Lives
After ten minutes looking at the passage individually, we began our discussion with the questions, “What law or laws have you seen imposed on Christians, especially on you? What effect did that experience have on you?”
As with last week’s question about awkward or uncomfortable conversations, there was no lack of response about our experiences of law imposed on us. The examples included:
- Moral and cultural expectations
- Observance of Halloween
- Verse-by-verse exposition as the only valid form of preaching
- Necessity of home-schooling children
- Parenting in general, discipline of children
One observation by several participants in our group was that in the law-focused environment, every issue was of equal importance.
Perhaps most significant was the observation about the results, the weight or burden placed on believers who fail to meet the accepted expectations. As one comment summarized, “Law kills. It destroys our relationship with God. It tears apart our relationships with our closest friends.”
Discussion – Faith and Law
In the context of that discussion, we looked at the Galatians 2 passage together. Paul pointed out doctrinal difficulties with dependence on law. Our personal struggles with the effect of law on relationships has a theological base.
Paul repeatedly pointed to faith in Christ as the only source of justification (three times in verse 16, v. 17, 20). He was equally adamant about the insufficiency of works of law to provide justification (again, three times in verse 16, v. 21). In order to make his point crystal clear, he emphasized that “no one will be justified” by the law. That all-inclusive statement covered both groups, Jews and Gentiles.
One problem that can affect discussions among Christians is our spiritual jargon, using familiar words without actually defining them. Fortunately, one person in our group asked the question (always a good idea), “What does justification mean?” Responses included the phrase “being righteous.” When someone else said that doesn’t mean we never sin, the clarification was “being declared righteous.” The result is a right standing with God, as if we had not sinned and broken the relationship with Him. That would be the result of perfect law-keeping, yet Paul says justification is never achieved that way.
Why would anyone attempt to be justified by law and keeping rules? Someone in our group brought up the Pharisees and their meticulous application of a multitude of rules. Another person commented that a legitimate motivation for keeping the law is a genuine desire to know God and to maintain a right standing with Him. The Pharisees originally had seen the uneven history of Israel’s relationship with God. In their sincere desire to avoid the repeated unfaithfulness of their ancestors, they attempted to keep the law rigorously. Somewhere along the line those good intentions became confused. Keeping rules to please God was distorted into simply keeping rules. The pride and expectations that grew from that distortion resulted in the situation Jesus faced in the gospels. Even He made it clear that law was not the problem, but the Pharisees’ use of the law:
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:17-20).
Perhaps the “righteousness that exceeds the scribes and the Pharisees” includes the relational righteousness that had been abandoned in their distorted use of God’s good law. Someone in our group pointed out how Jesus healed many on Sabbath days. He understood that the law includes the relational aspect with God and with our neighbor. Rule keepers, whether first-century Pharisees or modern childrearing critics, often ignore relational righteousness.
Rebuild What I Destroyed
Our group spent considerable time on a couple of Paul’s more puzzling comments. For example, in verse 18 he says, “If I rebuild what I destroyed….” We discussed what he meant, what had he destroyed? Certainly he did not mean he had destroyed the law. One suggestion was that Paul had “destroyed” the system of dependence on the law for justification with God. Another person found a footnote on the passage that said the word translated as “destroyed” (NIV) could also mean “loosed” (kataluō, κατελύω). Maybe Paul meant that he had “loosed” (or “disconnected”) justification from the law, that justification was not firmly connected to law after all. “Rebuilding” would then refer to going back, to “reconnecting” justification to law-keeping. Someone suggested that this might have been a subtle reference indirectly to Peter, who had been eating with Gentiles until fear (v. 12) forced him back to the law. Paul is pointing out that returning to the law is inconsistent as well as unwise. Since no one keeps the law (v. 16), returning to the law simply guarantees we will break it again.
Dying Through the Law To the Law
Another puzzling statement is in verse 19 where Paul said he died “through the law to the law.” This statement seems to confirm what he said in the previous verse about being a “lawbreaker.” It was the law itself that convinced him of the impossibility of keeping the law. Even Paul, “advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers” (Galatians 1:14) could not keep the law. His encounter with the risen Christ (Acts 9:3ff.) enabled him to “disconnect” justification from works, to give up legalism (“I died to the law”) and turn to life in God through faith in Christ.
I No Longer Live, Christ in Me
Paul describes this new life in powerful terms, “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” That contrast sounds like the contrast discussed before between self-obsession and God-obsession. Law-keeping can be an “acceptable” form of self-obsession, increasing our pride in our own righteousness while we impress others with our superficial godliness. Law-keeping as self-obsession is exhibited in the absence of relational righteousness as mentioned above regarding the Pharisees.
For each of us, including Paul, the default mode is self-obsession, protecting myself and my comfort at all costs to anyone else. Christ living in me is God-obsessed. He made that clear during the incarnation, that doing God’s will was His priority at any cost to Himself (even the cross).
If Christ lives in us as believers, His reality in our lives has the potential to replace our self-obsession with His God-obsession.
Because I am a Christian, buried deep inside me is a desire to know God that is stronger than my appetite for anything less. It’s a matter of the highest importance that I become acutely aware of that hidden longing, for this reason: A thirst for God, keenly felt, will sustain me more in my pursuit of God than either blessings from God or the experience of God.
Is that really true? Of course, nothing could more strongly sustain us than a deeply satisfying experience of God’s presence and love. But that experience will never be fully felt until we see Jesus; the incomparable joy of experiencing God is not reliably available now to our still-forming souls. But a thirst for God, a thirst to know Him in all His love and beauty, lies in the soul of every Christian and can be felt by every self-aware Christian. Our thirst stirs us to live in the sure hope of the coming day when we will thirst no more. Until then, our thirst to enjoy life in the next world sustains us with hope as we continue to live in this fallen world.[1]
The continuing thirst to know God better because of Christ living in us awakens an anticipation that enables endurance. Knowing God better now through Bible study, community with other believers, worship, and other means will continually whet that thirst and increase the anticipation that enables endurance.
We had considerable discussion about the idea of the deeply buried appetite. One person in our group questioned the reality of that appetite in discouraged believers who have lost all hope and all desire for God. Time limited our ability to continue the discussion, but if Christ is in us, that desire is there. Christ’s desire for the Father is in us, however deeply buried and covered by crusts of our discouragement and layers of our own sin and failure. Christian community and soul-care relationships are about helping each of us stir that God-obsessed desire for Him in ourselves and in each other.
[1] Larry Crabb, When God’s Ways Make No Sense (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2018), 70-71.