Galatians 2:19 - Printer Friendly

ESV: For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God.

NIV: "For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God.

NASB: For through the Law I died to the Law, so that I might live for God.

CSB: For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live for God.

NLT: For when I tried to keep the law, it condemned me. So I died to the law — I stopped trying to meet all its requirements — so that I might live for God.

KJV: For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.

NKJV: For I through the law died to the law that I might live to God.

Paul is making the case that nobody can be justified before God by following the works of the law. One can only be justified before God by faith in Christ (Galatians 1:8–9; 2:16).

In the middle of that argument, this is a complicated verse to fully understand. What Paul seems to be saying is that the penalty for not keeping the law perfectly was death. Paul, as a former Pharisee who loved the law of Moses, understood that he had not kept it perfectly. The law revealed just how sinful Paul was and condemned him to death. In comparison to a perfect, holy God, nothing less than perfection is owed. If we sin, at all, in any way, then we're unworthy to be in His presence. We cannot be "justified" to a perfectly holy God, because we are not holy!

Christ, though, paid the penalty Paul owed for failing to keep the law. This is what allows God to "declare" us justified, though we ourselves have sinned. Jesus died in Paul's place. Once dead, someone is dead to everything, including the law. So Paul, through Christ, died to the law. That freed him to truly "live to God." As he will say in the following verse, he died with Christ and now lives by faith in Christ.

Galatians 2:15–21 contains Paul's grand statements about the difference between faith in Christ and following the law. Nobody can be justified in God's eyes by the works of the law, but only by faith in Christ. To believe in Christ is to be crucified with Him and to have Him replace your sinful self in you. Paul now lives by faith in the Son of God. More, Jesus gave himself for Paul's sin because He loved him. To say that a person can be made righteous by the law is to say that Jesus died for nothing.

Paul holds a crucial meeting with the other apostles. Do they preach, as he does, that salvation can only be found through faith in Christ and not by following the law? He learns that they do, though ''false brothers'' in their midst are opposed to this gospel of God's grace. After receiving official approval from Peter and the others, Paul later opposes Peter for publicly trying to distance himself from Gentile Christians out of fear of how others might respond. Paul declares that justification comes only through faith in Christ and not by the works of the law.

In Galatians 1, Paul defended himself in order to defend the trustworthiness of his message. He made the case that he was a legitimate apostle. He shows in Galatians 2 that the other apostles stand with him in teaching the gospel of salvation through faith in Christ. He describes a moment in which he rebuked Peter for hypocrisy and then makes the case that only faith in Christ can bring justification for any person in the eyes of God. The works of the law can never make anyone righteous, or Christ would not have had to die.

Galatians is sometimes called “a short Romans” for its similar themes of justification and sanctification through faith. A group of Christians known as “Judaizers” were preaching a gospel of legalism, rather than grace. Paul’s main purpose in writing the letter to the Galatians was to reiterate the true nature of the gospel: we are justified (made righteous) and sanctified (made more Christlike) through our faith in Jesus Christ alone. This letter was probably written shortly before the church elders in Jerusalem issued their official refutation of the Judaizers, commonly called the Jerusalem Council.