Original Meaning

SERIOUS BIBLE STUDENTS have a hard time deciding where Paul’s address to Peter ends and begins to reflect theologically on what took place between the two of them. Some (reflected in the NIV) think that Paul’s conversation with Peter does not end until verse 21 (but, could Peter have possibly followed this kind of argument in speech form?), while others say that verse 14 is the end. I prefer this second view and agree with those who consider verses 15–21 as a “theological reflection” by Paul on what took place at Antioch and as a theological summary of what he told Peter on that occasion. We can be sure that Peter did not have to listen to such a dense argument; but we can also be sure that what Paul says here was presented to Peter in a longer, more digestible, form.1 Put differently, verses 15–21 is a later elaboration by Paul on what took place between Peter and him at Antioch. Knowing Paul as we do, we are forced to imagine him reflecting long and hard on just what was taking place at Antioch under the leadership of Peter. He no doubt spent hours that night praying and reflecting on what he said and how he would have to approach the all-too-common (but growing) problems at Antioch.

The exegesis of verses 15–21 is fraught with difficulties, both in logic and in meaning. The paragraph can be divided into two major sections: (1) The Fact of a Common Conversion Experience (vv. 15–16) and (2) The Implications of a Common Conversion Experience (vv. 17–21). In the first section Paul states (supposedly to Peter) that both of them, though Jewish, had come to the common conviction that Jesus Christ was the agent of salvation in God’s plan and, secondly, that they had come to him in faith for that salvation. Implicit in this coming to Christ was the denial of acceptance with God through the works of the law (vv. 15–16).

The implications of this common conversion experience are then spelled out in sharp, theologically loaded comments. (1) The life of the Christian is not a “lawless” life in the sense of wicked antinomianism (v. 17). Finding our salvation in Christ and not in the law does not mean that Jesus Christ leads people away from the law into sin. While the regulations of the Jews are fine (cf. Rom. 7:12), the guidelines for the Christian are to be found following Christ and living in the Spirit. (2) In converting to Christ, the Christian, especially the Jewish Christian (here “I” in v. 18 refers to Peter), forfeits the opportunity of ever returning to the law as the ground of one’s acceptance with God or the basis of one’s morality and the guide for life. This statement is then restated in v. 19: finding acceptance with God in Christ means dying to the law (as the instrument of that acceptance). (3) In converting to Christ, the Jewish Christian finds spiritual life through death, understood here as being crucified with Christ, to the law, so that the resurrected Christ might grant his new life to the believer (vv. 19–21). And if we (Paul and Peter) have come to Christ for salvation, we have at the same time perceived that God’s grace is not to be found in the law. Coming to Christ, then, is not a denial of God’s grace. In what follows, I shall expound each of these implications.

As can be seen, the whole issue is the place of the law in the life of the Galatian Christian. Put differently and more realistically, it is the place of Jewish distinctives and social regulations that governed Jewish behavior and separated them from the Gentiles and the Galatian converts. We should not at this point separate these two dimensions of the law for first-century Jews; they did not perceive their social distinctives (circumcision, table purity, etc.) as something other than straightforward life under the law of Moses (moral principles). The struggle for Peter (and somewhat earlier for Paul) was how to live as a Christian Jew and how that life was to be governed. Were they to submit to the Jewish law? And, if so, did that mean they were to remain Jews and expect converts to Christ eventually to embrace the whole law (to become proselytes to Judaism)? Regardless of how hard this perception is for us today, this was the central issue for first-century Jewish converts. Were they, in turning to Christ, abandoning their Jewish heritage, fulfilling it, or simply adding to it? Peter’s struggle was similar to that of other Jews: Are we Jews? Jewish Christians? or Christians? Are we reformers of Judaism or are we starting the church?

Here is the nub of the issue for Paul as he looked at Peter’s behavior in Antioch: Peter, in finding acceptance with God in Christ, apparently failed to realize the comprehensiveness and sufficiency of the new covenant in Christ and life in the Spirit. To Paul, Christ’s work was complete and the law was thereby relegated to its proper time in history (see especially the notes at 3:19–25). Paul contends that Christian morality and life before God are not to be found in “observing the law”; rather, they are found in death and resurrection with Christ and in the “fruit of the Spirit.” True life before God, he argues, is through Christ and in the Spirit.

Another issue of general concern to the entire paragraph is the meaning of “I” (vv. 18–21) and “we” (vv. 15, 17). Commentators are divided over whether Paul means (1) to refer to himself alone in an autobiographical sense, (2) to refer to all Christians in a universal sense, (3) or to refer to Paul and Peter as Jews in a representative sense. While I am keenly aware that applications almost always proceed along the line of the autobiographical sense (#1), I am now convinced that this is not what Paul means. Perhaps this is disappointing to readers who, like me, put Galatians 2:20 to memory long ago as a vivid reminder of our stance before God: we must die to self and live unto God through Christ.2 In what follows, I will not deny this (and so our memorization time has not been wasted!). But I will suggest that there is a more nuanced meaning intended by Paul.

Since options #2 and #3 are mutually exclusive, it is best for me here simply to state that Paul’s conversation with Peter begins its reflection with these words: “We who are Jews by birth and not ‘Gentile sinners’….” These words cannot be taken in a universal sense because not all readers are Jews. In what follows, therefore, I will assume that Paul has in mind particularly the common conversion experience of Jewish Christians. He is reflecting on what both he and Peter went through in converting to Christ and, of course, this rings true for every Jew who has converted to Christ (a deconfession of the law). The fact of common conversion experience leads Paul to reflect more deeply on some of its implications, in particular, on the role that the law and Jewish social regulations are to play in the life of the Jewish Christian as he or she relates to Gentile Christians and to the Gentile world at large.

The fact of a common conversion experience (vv. 15–16) In these two verses we find the original condition (v. 15), the recognition of salvation in Christ (v. 16a), and the act of faith in Christ (v. 16b). These are the components Paul mentions as he discusses the common conversion of himself and Peter. They were Jewish by birth but had discerned (by God’s grace) that justification was in God’s Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth; as a result of this discernment, they had turned to Christ in faith and turned away from the works of the law.

The original condition (2:15). As I mentioned above, this clause is important for a full appreciation of Paul’s intention in this paragraph. Paul is dealing here with the perception of Jewish Christians, namely, the assumed perception of Peter and himself. To be a Jew “by birth” was a wonderful privilege because Israel had been given God’s covenant and promises (Rom. 3:1–2; 9:4–5; Eph. 2:12). This privilege was valued on the part of many Jews and led, so it seems, to Gentiles being dubbed “sinners,” because they neither had the law nor obeyed it (cf. Rom. 2:12–16; 9:30–31; 1 Cor. 9:21; Eph. 2:11–12; 4:17).3 We cannot fail to see here a social consciousness in the Jewish perception of sin: Jews were righteous (because, as Jews, they were observant of the law) and Gentiles were sinners (because they neither had the law nor obeyed it). Furthermore, for the more conservative wing of Judaism, like the Pharisees, sinners also was a term for anyone who did not adopt their legal viewpoints on such matters as tithes, sabbaths, corpse impurities, and food laws. And it is particularly these Jewish distinctives that separated Jews from Gentiles: Gentiles were sinful in that they were uncircumcised and ate unclean food with unclean people. But Paul and Peter had the privilege of not being “Gentile sinners.”4

The recognition of salvation in Christ (2:16a). As privileged Jews, Peter and Paul came to the conviction to “know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.” This recognition is far from natural for Jews (cf. Rom. 9:30–33; 10:1–4; 11:7–10; 2 Cor 3:12–18). Paul is not saying that all Jews by nature know that justification is in Christ. Indeed, what Paul is talking about here is a rare experience, one in common only between Jews who believe in Christ. But this rare experience was shared by Paul and Peter. In what follows we need to analyze three crucial terms for understanding this passage (and Galatians as a whole): justification, works, and faith.

Since the Reformation, no doctrine has had more importance in the church than justification by faith. It was Martin Luther’s perception that he could be accepted by God exclusively on the merit of Christ and that if he simply trusted God’s promise in Christ he would find that acceptance. Of course Luther did, and his discovery has changed the church. Justification by faith, consequently, has become a central doctrine in the church. But what does justified mean?5 Broadly speaking, justification is a metaphor of our acceptance with God that is drawn from the world of law and jurisprudence. The dilemma people find themselves in before God is that they are guilty because they have transgressed God’s law and commandments. Their desire and only hope is that God, perceived in this metaphor as Judge, will somehow forgive them, make things right, and eliminate their guilt. But since God as Judge is purely objective and altogether morally righteous, and because he cannot simply overlook sin, humans find themselves in an awful predicament. But God surprisingly forgives; his agent in this forgiveness is Jesus Christ, who legally assumed our guilt and bore the curse of the law in his crucifixion (3:13). The result of Christ’s work is that humans who trust in Christ and surrender themselves to him are declared fit before God.6 As a result of God’s justifying sinners, we have a new status (no longer held accountable for sinfulness), and, through his act of accepting us, God grants us the Spirit so that we have a transformed character; that is, the person who is justified (Gk. dikaioo) also inevitably lives a consistent life of righteousness (Gk. dikaiosyne).

Paul says that he and Peter had come to the conclusion, in their conversion, that “a man is not justified by observing the law.” This “observing the law” is literally translated “on the basis of the works of the law.” What are the works of the law? Are they merit-seeking works done in order to gain favor with God? From our previous discussions it should be obvious that I do not think Paul has in mind a person’s merit-intentions (works done in order to gain favor with God) in this expression. Rather, as we read Galatians, we find that Paul must have in mind two ideas: (1) behavior, or work, that conforms to the law of Moses as an expression of a confession that ultimate acceptance with God is to be found through a commitment to submit to the law of Moses, and (2) behavior that separates Jews from Gentiles, namely, the works of circumcision, table food restrictions, and social regulations governing the behavior of Jews as they relate to Gentiles (cf. 2:11–14).7 These two elements belong together: Paul knew that implicit in conversion to Christ was a confession that a proper standing before God could not be had through a commitment to the law. Christ was the fulfillment of the law and went beyond it in his revelation (Rom. 10:4; Gal. 3:19–25). To do the law after Christ was to deny his sufficient work; it was to step back in salvation-history to a period before Christ. For Paul, this was abominable and denied the very purpose of Christ’s coming. Thus, Paul reasons with Peter that they were agreed that a person is not justified by observing the law; commitment to Christ negates a commitment to the law as the means of being accepted by God. Paul would say, “You cannot serve Christ and the law at the same time.”

On the other hand, Paul is not against “good works.” For him, “works” has three primary ideas.8 (1) There is the principle of works that appears in Rom. 3:27, and here we are close to the idea of merit or doing (see also Gal. 3:12) as the way one finds acceptance with God. This sense of works Paul opposed; the principle of works is never a means of acceptance with God. (2) There is the notion of Mosaic works, or works of the law, as found predominantly in Galatians, that describes the behavior of certain persons who were expressing their conviction that acceptance with God could only be had if one lived according to the law of Moses (e.g., 2:3, 11–14). What these people were doing was perverted by why they were doing it: to express their faith in Moses rather than in Christ alone. There was nothing wrong with living according to the law when it was done properly; after all, Paul circumcised Timothy (Acts 16:3) and later himself took steps to be purified so as to offer sacrifices in the temple (21:26). But when one obeyed the law to express one’s confidence in it as a necessary step for acceptance by God, Paul took serious umbrage. (3) There is the idea of good works as found in Eph. 2:10. What Paul means here is that people are called by God’s grace in order to serve him in good works, a lifestyle that is attractive, moral, and godly. We might say, for Galatians, that the “fruit of the Spirit” (Gal. 5:22–23) is a description of “good works.” This kind of works is the primary thrust of how Paul thinks Christians should live.

Therefore, when we say Paul taught that justification was not by works, we need to clarify which kind of works he had in mind. In Galatians, he is concerned primarily with the second sense and perhaps at times (but perhaps not at all) with the first sense. But Paul is not, or never was, against “good works” as an adequate description of a Christian’s moral life and relations with others. Indeed, Paul says we will be judged by our works (Rom. 2:5–6; 1 Cor 3:10–15; 2 Cor 5:10; 11:15).

Now to our third expression. Justification comes to a person by faith, not by observing the law. Perhaps no term is more misunderstood in modern evangelicalism than “faith.” What is this faith that saves us? What word best describes this term? Assent? trust? surrender? commitment? Once again, we address here an issue that deserves a much lengthier treatment. In Paul’s letters, faith is the necessary response required for the person who wants to live at peace with God (cf. Rom. 1:17; 3:22, 25; 5:1; 10:4), and it is held firmly in contrast to the principle of “works”—works done to secure salvation (Rom. 3:27; 4:5). This faith clearly involves an assent (a mental agreement) to certain facts: the resurrection of Christ (Rom. 4:24; 10:9) and the salvation that comes through Christ (2 Thess. 2:12; 1 Tim. 1:16). While faith for Paul has a beginning (Rom. 10:9–10; 13:11; Eph. 1:13), it is also the continual disposition of a Christian toward all that God has done in Christ (Rom. 1:17).9 We may thus define faith as the initial and continual response of trust in, and obedience to, Christ by a person for the purpose of acceptance with God. William Barclay said it well: “Faith is complete trust and complete surrender to Jesus Christ. It is the total acceptance of all that He said, of all that He offered, and of all that He is.”10 Thus, when Paul uses the term “faith” (as in “justified by faith”), he is describing both the initial act of trust and the continuing disposition of trust and obedience. This is why faith in Christ11 and “works of the law” are opposites: one cannot opt for Christ’s system and Moses’ system at the same time because they are mutually exclusive options for salvation. Either one believes in Christ or one chooses to commit oneself to the law. One cannot live under both systems without destroying one or the other’s integrity.

The act of faith in Christ (2:16b). Paul and Peter were Jews and came to know that people could not find justification by holding to Jewish regulations or by observing the law (the law’s time was now over; see 3:19–25). They had come to the conviction that faith in Christ would justify. So they believed in Jesus Christ. Peter’s conversion story is bumpy and long; Paul’s is sudden and short. Peter’s Christian faith began in Jerusalem (John 1:35–42), was further established in Galilee (Luke 5:1–11), came to a major point in the first confession of Jesus’ Messiahship (Mark 8:27–30), floundered in the passion week (14:66–72), was revived after the resurrection (John 21:15–19; cf. Luke 22:32), and came to maturity at Pentecost (Acts 2). Nonetheless, Peter continued to stumble throughout his life (Acts 10:1–11:18; Gal. 2:11–14). However, the maturity of Peter’s faith is seen marvelously in his two letters. Paul, on the other hand, was suddenly and dramatically converted (Acts 9:1–30). In spite of this diversity in actual conversion experiences, Paul sees their conversions as essentially identical: they had refused the law system and had embraced the Christ system.

The implications of a common conversion experience (vv. 17–21) There are three implications of this common conversion that will be addressed here.

(1) The life of the Christian is not a “lawless” life in the sense of wicked antinomianism (v. 17). Surely this was the biggest fear of any self-respecting and God-fearing Jew: the Christians, with their emphasis on the Holy Spirit as the guide for the moral life, were devaluing the law and, inevitably, would abandon the morality prescribed by the law. They (so they feared) would eventually be no different than either pagans or half-committed Jews (i.e., they would be “sinners”; cf. 2:15). Because Jews, particularly Pharisaic Jews, would have reasoned this way, Paul had to first spell out that the moral implications of converting to Christ. In essence, Paul argues that coming to Christ did not mean that “Christ promotes sin.” It was unimaginable (I suppose) for the Jew to conceive of a moral life that did not take its starting point from the law of Moses.

All of this emerges from Paul’s comment that he and Peter were “justified in Christ.” The act of turning to Jesus Christ in faith was, according to Paul, an act of denying that one must live under the law of Moses to find acceptance with God. And this was especially the case for Jewish Christians, typified here so clearly by Paul and Peter. The act of turning to Christ was a social act on their part: they were turning away from Judaism and turning toward something significantly different, however much it was seen as the fulfillment of Judaism. For the Jew who grew up seeing the law as the center of God’s revelation, it was no small matter to turn away from the law as the means of being accepted by God. And for the Jew who sat idly by and watched other Jews turn to Christ, there was the (realistic) fear that leaving the law meant abandoning God’s moral will. It meant turning to a life of sin because sin was living lawlessly, living a life that was not governed by the law or by one’s interpretation of that law.12

This turning to Christ was an acknowledgment of a person’s sinfulness—in this case, an acknowledgment by Peter and Paul that they, though raised under the covenant of Abraham, were sinners as well and in need of God’s forgiveness. Their turning to Christ was a turning for righteousness (imputed), an act whereby they confessed that their morality was corrupt and insufficient. They went to Christ in order that they might be declared right before God. And so Paul’s question—Does Christ promote sin? Paul’s answer: “Absolutely not!” Christ does not minister sin; rather, he eliminates sin through his sacrificial work. But it is true that the gospel Paul preached was a gospel that dealt face-to-face with sin and its consequences. It seems likely to me that Paul’s focus on forgiveness (and sin) had given the Judaizers pause because their system assumed forgiveness (in the temple rituals) and then focused more on morality and social relations. Paul’s focus on sin and forgiveness, I am suggesting, led to their charge that Christ was one who promoted sin by inviting sinners to come to him.

The implication of Paul’s emphasis here is that life in Christ is not life in sin. Rather, life in Christ, as he will elaborate in chapters 5–6, is life in the Spirit. Instead of promoting sin, Christ promotes purity, holiness, love, and attractive personalities. What was formerly found only in the law for the Jews (namely, God’s will for his people) has now been fulfilled in God’s great gift of the Holy Spirit.

(2) In converting to Christ, the Christian, especially the Jewish Christian, forfeits the opportunity of ever returning to the law as the primary orientation governing all of life (v. 18). As suggested above, I think it is best to take the “I” here as a term representing both Peter and Paul, but especially Peter. It was Peter, after all, who had reneged on his commitment to Christ. Thus, Peter was rebuilding Judaism when he withdrew from open table fellowship, even though he had previously destroyed it when he turned away from Judaism to Christ. Peter became the “lawbreaker” when he returned to Judaism, for in going back he was adopting the law with its condemning force (3:13, 19–25).

(3) In converting to Christ, the Jewish Christian finds spiritual life through death, understood here as being crucified with Christ to the law so that the resurrected Christ might grant his new life to the believer (vv. 19–21). Paul says three things in this section. (a) The “Jewish Ego,” the privilege Jews thought they had—but had only until Christ—died to the law. This took place when Paul (and Peter) converted to Christ. This they did so “I might live for God.” What Paul is describing here is not some mystical (daily) experience. He is describing the common conversion experience of Jews: when they turn to Christ, they die to the law as the means of salvation. And the law helps in that it runs its course until Christ (3:19).

(b) The life Paul now lives for God is the result of dying with Christ (v. 20). But the life Paul lives (“I”) is the life the Jewish Christian finds in Christ. It is a life of the indwelling Christ (cf. 2 Cor. 3:17) and the indwelling Spirit (Gal. 3:1–5; 5:22–23). When the Jewish Christian died to the law by dying with Christ (who absorbed the full wrath of God that came about because of the law’s work), that Jewish Christian was raised a new person: a post-law Jewish Christian. That person was now indwelt by Christ and the Holy Spirit, who would now guide and control.

(c) In opting for the Christ system, these Jewish believers were not setting aside God’s grace. Here we must infer that the accusation against the Jewish Christians was that they were setting aside God’s grace. Surely for them this grace was understood as the law of Moses. Paul counters: “No, it is not we who are setting aside God’s grace when we leave the law. Rather, you (who do not come with us) are missing the great grace of God in Christ.” In fact, Paul argues that everything in their conversion was for naught if a proper standing before God could be achieved by obeying the law. If that could have been done, there would have been no need at all for Christ. But these Judaizers had indeed confessed that Christ was God’s agent for salvation.

To sum up: Galatians 2:15–21 is complex. I have tried to show that it is primarily concerned with the common Jewish experience of conversion. That conversion involved a denial of the sufficiency of the law and an affirmation of the total sufficiency of Christ. This reflection was generated for Paul by Peter’s inability to understand just how sufficient Christ was. Peter’s social behavior had denied his conversion experience, and Paul sternly reminded him of this very inconsistency. In Christ, Paul is saying, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, and any attempt to force Gentiles to adopt Jewish distinctives is a glaring contradiction to the heart of the gospel.

Bridging Contexts

THE FIRST ISSUE deserving discussion is the matter of how we apply a text to (a now largely) Gentile Christian movement when the original text was for Jewish Christians. Can we simply skip over this passage in our haste to find something practical for our Gentile world? Absolutely not! First, we must appreciate the Jewish experience, and then we can generalize because, even though we come at the same experience from different angles and worlds, the content of the conversion is the same.

Let us try to appreciate the experience of Peter and Paul. Both grew up in Judaism—Peter in Galilee and Paul in either Tarsus or Jerusalem. Both had been trained in spirituality according to the law of Moses and both lived among Jews under such guidelines. In fact, both had been taught to revere the law of Moses with almost unbounded respect and adoration. The law of Moses was everything when it came to religious revelation. Furthermore, both Peter and Paul were apparently faithful to their religious heritage, though we would probably give the prize here to Paul’s devotion. I am of the view that the heritage of both was probably heavily influenced by the Pharisaic-type of piety, though I will not defend this view here.13

Growing up in similar contexts, both of them found it extremely difficult to abandon the law when they converted to Christ. It was the turning to Christ that created a rift with their past and that caused Peter problems. But Jews had to learn, if they wanted to be consistently Christian, what it meant to be a part of the God’s new people: the church of Jesus Christ. We are unfair to both of these men, especially to Peter, if we do not appreciate the difficulty of applying the gospel and letting it have full control of all of life, especially in those areas where one’s social identity was at stake.

Peter was completely comfortable with the hassles and struggles he had when he was evangelizing and pastoring Jewish Christians, but it was the stress of working out the gospel among Gentiles that forced him to back away from the implications of the gospel. What Peter (and Paul) had to learn was this: the gospel is for all, it is enjoyed by faith, Christ is the Savior, and the Spirit guides. Fundamental to all of this was the simple social change: the life of the church is not to be guided by Jewish restrictions but by God’s Spirit and the teachings of Jesus. This was the experience of conversion that was common to all first-century Jewish Christians. It involved death to the law as the center of life, hope, and salvation.

These racial and historical differences between first-century Jewish Christians and us do not, however, prohibit us from finding general similarities. That the gospel is for all can be appreciated most easily by non-Jews, since they have never felt the restricted fellowship of the Jews. The means of justification (faith) was probably not as difficult for them to accept as we have made it out to be. We have come to think that Jews thought only in terms of works for salvation. This is wrong. Jews thought that they were God’s people because they were Jews, and, as a result, God had given them a multitude of privileges. In my opinion, salvation by “faith” was not difficult for Jews to accept. What gave them grief was salvation by faith apart from the law, for they thought obedience to the law was true faith (see Heb. 11). What they had to learn was that the object of their faith had changed from God’s revelation in Moses to God’s revelation in Christ. Christ has replaced Moses as the focus of salvation, just as the Spirit has replaced the laws of Moses as the focus of God’s will.

But even with this difference, the response of humans is the same for Jewish Christians as for Gentile Christians: faith in Christ. We can easily see and apply that salvation is by faith, though we will probably not balk (as first-century Jewish Christians did) at eliminating the law of Moses as the object of our faith. (We Gentiles simply have other things in the way.) And two other features are so similar that it makes application easy: Christ is the Savior and the Spirit is the guide. There is absolutely no difference for Gentiles and Jews here, though each will come at Christ and the Spirit from different worlds.

So while I am the first to admit that this text spoke and still speaks directly to Jews about what takes place in their conversion, the abiding contents of the gospel make applications to Gentiles just as easy. What we need to do is to recognize the Jewish features of this text, sort out the ideas theologically, and then apply what abides to our world. What we have done is to find the features of the gospel that Paul is driving at, examine them in their context, and then rethink how these same features might have relevance to Gentiles.

I do think, however, that “death to the law” is not of paramount significance to a Gentile conversion, especially if we are accurate in our portrayal of the law in Galatians as involving a socially confining body of regulations. In that sense, this feature of the text applies only to Jews or to others from similar religious contexts, who grow up or convert out of a movement that sees the law as a self-defining and boundary-marking instrument. But perhaps this can be applied to those who have grown up in (or who at least were nurtured by) any fundamentalist movement emphasizing certain rules that give that group a well-defined boundary and identity. Perhaps also the principle of “death to the law” refers to anyone who has grown up in a socially defined world, where one’s racial status (be it Greek, Polish, or Irish) is intimately connected to one’s hope before God. In this latter case, the socially defined world is what needs to be broken down by eliminating the connection with race, and, in the former case, the legally defined world needs to be broken down by eliminating the legal boundaries being created. Both examples are addressed by Galatians.

Justification is justification in all ages. Our world is no different from Paul’s when it comes to the agent and means of justification: justification is based in Christ’s sacrificial absorption of our guilt, and we are justified only if we believe in Christ. To apply this we must first get people to sense their guilt, and this is difficult today. The 1960s generation broke down the importance of a great deal of social laws in the Western world, laws that had enabled easier presentations of the gospel, for most people were operating under some form of a Judeo-Christian ethic considered to be true and divine. Existentialism, outright apathy and despair, as well as the growth of pluralism have each made their way into our cultural perceptions of the world. Each of these has made ultimate standards for morality much more difficult to present. Thus, in this last decade of the twentieth century we are facing by and large a mass of people who have no sense of moral ultimates. It is hard for such people to sense their guilt before God because they don’t sense much being right or wrong.

Robert Bellah has addressed our modern predicament and situation with penetrating insight. “In the absence,” he says after addressing moral foundations in our society, “of any objectifiable criteria of right and wrong, good or evil, the self and its feelings become our only moral guide.”14 He is fundamentally right here. He goes on and I quote him here at length:

If the individual self must be its own source of moral guidance, then each individual must always know what he wants and desires or intuit what he feels. He must act so as to produce the greatest satisfaction of his wants or to express the fullest range of his impulses…. Utility replaces duty; self-expression unseats authority. “Being good” becomes “feeling good.” “I’ve always loved that thing that Mark Twain said about something moral is something you feel good after,” Ted Oster [a California lawyer mentioned in the context] remarks, “and something immoral is something you feel bad after. Which implies that you got [sic] to try everything at least once. I guess I’m pretty result-oriented, and whatever produces a good result must be right, and whatever produces a bad result must be wrong.” Acts, then, are not right or wrong in themselves, but only because of the results they produce, the good feelings they engender or express.15

What is the solution? There are several avenues to explore in our world. First, we need to pray for God’s grace to break through in another revival. Such a revival will set free the Spirit of God to create in people a divine arrangement of what is right and what is wrong. Second, after our prayers (and during them) we need to preach and teach the truth of God’s Word and God’s ethical standards. Third, we need to dialogue with others about morality, and do so both at the intellectual level and in popular discourse. An issue facing our generation is, How do we make intelligent and abiding moral decisions? Is the answer to be found in majority opinion? in personal opinion? in social conventions? in the Declaration of Independence? Or is the final answer to be found only when God breaks through in revealing himself and his will, as in the Bible? It is my contention that until our society awakens morally, it will be difficult to apply the doctrine of justification. But, as any evangelist will tell you, there are many today who are searching for answers to moral questions and to a consciousness of personal sin. To these people Paul’s message is a flash of glorious light.

It is probably the case for the majority of Westerners that the “legal metaphor” of justification is not as evocative and directly relevant as other metaphors (e.g., a relational one, like “reconciliation”). Accordingly, it is fundamentally important for our perception of the meaning of justification to examine its meaning in the ancient world. To do this, we must become historians, or at least listen to historians of Roman and Jewish justice and those who are keenly aware of the first-century meanings. As discussed above, justification denotes the process of being moved from a state of guilt to a state of acceptance with God through the sacrificial acceptance by Christ of our guilt. This situation needs to be described before applications can be made. And it needs to be adjusted and presented in such a way that it makes sense to our society. It strikes me that “acceptance by God” is a useful expression for our world, though there are certainly others, and we need to be creative about finding meaningful images for our world.

To apply the notion of works and faith, we need once again to understand what they meant in Paul’s world. The biggest problem for us today is the same for each: each of these terms has been seriously colored by our definitions of “works” and “faith” that derive (naturally enough) from our social and church contexts. For instance, for far too many people “works” is a bad word, or at least a word describing a negative religious quality. “Works,” it is sometimes said, is something people who do not believe in Christ do; “works” is a characteristic of those people who think they can earn their salvation by accumulating merit before God. The sadness of this assertion needs to be understood: too many have equated all works with the “works” Paul set in contrast to “faith.” To be sure, Paul is against any kind of disposition toward God that suggests that we can find acceptance with him apart from Christ and faith. But in our concern to be “full of grace,” we have misunderstood Paul’s own teachings. Neither Paul nor anyone in the Bible was against “good works.” So, for us to understand how to apply what Paul says about works, we need first to understand that there were some good kinds of works and some bad kinds. Our language and perceptions will need to change as we investigate this matter.

The same goes for “faith.” Once again we have many well-intended, God-fearing preachers and teachers of the Bible who contend that “faith” is little more than credence. For these the matter to be defended is “salvation by grace.” It is argued that if salvation is by grace (and not by human works) and if faith is trust, then our obedience (understood to be something after our trust is expressed) has nothing whatsoever to do with our justification and final salvation. Is this how Paul understood “faith”? I argued above that it is not at all the way Paul understood faith. A simple examination of the term believe or faith in Paul’s letters will convince the reader that Paul saw faith as more than credence. He saw faith and obedience tied into one another, and he saw faith as both an initial and a continuing response of the human to God’s promises. Thus, before we can apply the passage to our world, we need to be serious Bible students, checking the uses of the terms faith and believe throughout Paul’s letters and the New Testament, bracketing off our presuppositions (and perhaps hopes!), and arriving at solid exegetical conclusions. This process of checking our views against the Bible and revising when we are wrong or inaccurate is the only means of understanding and progress in Bible study.

Contemporary Significance

FIRST, IT IS good for us once again to reflect on our own conversions and to observe how we, like Peter and Paul, were moved from a state of guilt to a status of acceptance with God, completely through the merit of Christ’s death. To do this it is good for us to contemplate our pre-conversion disposition toward God, his Word and will, and his people (the church). It is healthy for us here to think about our sinful habits and patterns and to deplore them as disgusting in God’s eyes. It is even good for us to pause and contemplate once again the inevitable end of such a life (God’s wrath). After pondering such thoughts, we need to think clearly about what Christ has done for us in his sacrifice. We need to contemplate him on the Cross, absorbing our guilt and sin and taking on himself the curse of God so that we might find forgiveness. After deliberating over such things, we can then turn to the joy we find in forgiveness and offer our deepest thanks to God for his grace in our life.

But we dare not stop here. We need to examine if we are letting the gospel of God’s grace have its full implications in our life. Are we shunting off the gospel racially? Are we preventing other racial groups from enjoying God’s grace? Are we discriminating against other cultures or other social groups? Are we building walls between the sexes? Or are we allowing the full message of the gospel to have its complete force?

Second, we need to apply justification by faith through Christ to our world by evangelizing and letting the message of justification for all (through Christ, not the law, by faith) penetrate our deepest chambers and our innermost social constructions. To do this we need to be willing, with Paul, to see all people as sinners. Ours is a conscientious and sensitive world. Consequently, we are afraid to let the world know that there is sin and that all people are sinners. Thus, the sweet work of Christ that forgives, reconciles, justifies, and redeems can have no impact because we refuse to take the first step: admit that we are all sinners.

In addition, we need to show people that God has been in the courtroom as Judge and has handed down the verdict regarding our status: we are guilty. But, he says, if we will simply look to Christ, we will be forgiven, set free, and be acceptable to him. So we need to present Christ to our world as the one who saves us from our guilty verdict.

Third, we need to spend more time in our churches, especially in adult and youth Bible studies, exploring the biblical meaning of faith. It is my contention that this doctrine has been seriously misunderstood in the last thirty or forty years, and, as a result, some have made shipwreck of their faith and others have ruined the vitality of churches. Let me explain. It is common today to hear that the only requirement for salvation is to “believe that Jesus Christ saves.” This is true—if properly defined. However, the term believe has been frequently misdefined in this preaching, and the statement consequently becomes untrue. In fact, we get back to Galatians 1:8–9: the gospel is transformed through this misdefinition and the result is a heresy. So what is the misdefinition? Simply put, it is the reduction of the meaning of faith to “mere credence.” That is, faith is defined as “believing that Jesus is Savior” and no more. Jesus is indeed Savior; but in order for him to become the Savior for a given person, that person must surrender himself or herself in trust and obedience for true faith to be expressed.

How can we correct this situation? I believe it can come about only through a total revolution of our thinking about what God expects of us for acceptance and for Christian living. We delude ourselves if we think because we have made some decision we are done with it and forever secure in God’s eyes. We delude ourselves if we think we can live immoral lives, shack up with partners who are not our spouses, defraud others of their money, take no action to alleviate social ills in our world, and live in constant tension with our children and family members—we delude ourselves, I say, if we think we can live like this and pretend that we are at peace with God and enjoy his Son’s justifying work. Those who have been justified, live justly; those who have been made holy in Christ, live holy lives; those who have experienced God’s love, love others; those who have experienced God’s forgiveness, forgive others; those who have been called from the world, no longer live in the world and call others to be “out with them”; those who have died to the flesh, live in the Spirit.

This principle is usually referred to in theological textbooks as the interplay of the indicative (what we are) and the imperative (what we should be). Whatever we call it, the Bible (and especially Paul!) teaches that God’s people are those who have been transformed by his grace and are those who now live unto God. We are simply deluding ourselves, and the judgment of God will surely prove this, if we think this is not the way God operates.

This revolution of our thinking needs to impact our evangelistic strategies and our discipling ministries. Both deserve explanation. As for evangelism, while I feel that I may be taking on the world, I do believe that our typical evangelistic tracts are potentially dangerous here. The typical tract teaches that anyone can be saved who simply believes that Jesus Christ has come for that person’s salvation. But that same tract rarely defines just what faith means and just what it implies. What is all too often assumed is that faith means little more than mental agreement. But this is not what faith means and it is not how the apostle Paul defines it. Check the concordance once again. It means total surrender in trust and obedience. Obedience is not something just subsequent to faith; obedience is the expression of faith, and faith without obedience is dead. Do we believe James 2:14–26 or not? Our evangelistic tracts, then, need to be nuanced with definitions of faith. We need to present the gospel in such a way that the commitment required is clear. Jesus Christ has come for your salvation, and you need to surrender your hope and your very self to him.

The same revolution will make an impact on our discipling ministries. (I use the term discipling here to describe post-conversion instruction and development, though I am not happy with the way we often use this term.) Discipling should not be the coaxing ministry of getting infantile Christians active, nor should it be the attempt by mature Christians to get “credence believers” to become “obedience believers.” This approach simply sets the stamp of approval on false definitions of faith. Rather, discipling ministries should assume that Christians are consistently obedient and then move on to specific applications of God’s will for an individual’s life. Christians who do not obey will then be seen as “weird anomalies” and not as “typical underachievers”! Put differently, our discipling ministries should be given less to persuasions to holiness and more to guidance in holiness—and I say this because if we present the gospel properly from the beginning, we will not have people in our discipling classes who are not yet fully committed.

Finally, we need to explore the significance of Paul’s criticism of the “works of the law.” I am assuming here that there are three kinds of “works” for Paul (the principle of works, Mosaic works, and good works) and that Paul’s protest here is with the second one. And let us assume here that Mosaic works were specific actions done by those under the covenant of Abraham (including some proselytes) who were, in performing these actions, demonstrating both their faith in God’s system in Moses and their social solidarity with others who lived in the same way. Finally, let us assume that Paul criticizes the Judaizers for attempting to nationalize Gentile Christians into Judaism by instructing them in the way of Moses. How can we apply something like this?

First, we need to recall that Paul is more against the purpose of these actions than against the actions themselves. That is, he was thoroughly against the Judaizer who tried to get Gentiles to be circumcised if that Judaizer was contending that such had to be done in order to be accepted with God. If that is the case, we can proceed to the next point: we can apply Paul’s protest to any performance that is demanded in order to find or maintain acceptance with God. Any such performance nullifies the sufficiency of Christ and blunts the freedom of the Holy Spirit. I will apply this to denominationalism.

I believe that it is virtually impossible for us today not to be a member of some denomination. There is no such thing as “generic, orthodox Christianity” that can advertise itself as absent of all party lines. Such a church lives in a dream world because reality (as we live it) is too particular, too finite, and too demanding for us not to have some drawing of lines. But there is a difference between being a member of a denomination and being a denominationalist. The latter defines one’s church as God’s best church, demands others to come to his or her church to find God’s best, and criticizes other churches for their non-agreements. This is denominationalism and it is wrong. Paul would be against (and so must we) those who attempted to make people join a specific group in order to be acceptable to God.

Before I go on, I want to add that I do not, in defining myself in this way, want to say that all churches are the same. I believe that some churches are more biblical, more orthodox, more lively, more healthy, and more useful than others. But I do not think that this can be anchored into any one denomination, even if I am a member of the Evangelical Free Church of America.

How then should we live? We need to respect the doctrinal stances that divide us, especially when those doctrinal stances have been prayed over, worked at, and defined biblically, and when those doctrinal stances are taken seriously by diverse bodies. More importantly, we need to remember that we are all part of God’s church and that we are together trying to reach the world with God’s love and to strengthen God’s people. We are united by a common life. If we will simply reflect for a moment on our sinfulness and our limitations, we should be able to admit that maybe it is we who are wrong or slightly inaccurate over the things that divides us. But we also need to oppose elements of our church and other churches that are inconsistent with the Bible. These kinds of dialogues are healthy for local communities as we seek to hold one another in line with the truth of the gospel. We also learn quickly what is important and what is not.

I end this section with a confession. When I was younger, I used to drive by different denominations and utter either imprecatory prayers about that denomination or think that it was too bad that so many people were being led astray by that church’s thinking. Time has a way of making us mellow. The most shaping experiences of my life have been encounters with other churches and denominations, always leaving me with the following chain of thoughts: I wish I were in that denomination; but that denomination surely has its problems, too; no, I like where I am; I wish we could all agree. What has happened to me is probably typical. Encountering Christians of other denominations broadens us all and challenges us to think about the church in new ways.

The encounter with Christians from other denominations and persuasions makes me appreciate the wideness of God’s revelation in the Bible and the fallibility of our attempts to construct the fullness of that revelation in our differing theologies. It also strengthens my confidence because I see just how big God’s church actually is. Most importantly, it drives me to my knees in thankfulness to God for the greatness of his saving activity throughout the world. My church, after all, is one small piece of God’s grand work of bringing people to himself. How can I but be thankful to God and tolerant of how he is working elsewhere? How could we ever demand that someone join our denomination in order to be acceptable to God?