Proof Text #4
"For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God." (Gal. 2: 19)
"Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not! For if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law." (Gal. 3: 21)
These verses show that justification and imputation of righteousness precede obtaining spiritual life (via regeneration or rebirth). Being "dead to the law" is a reference to justification. Being given life is a reference to regeneration (rebirth or quickening). Further, in Romans, to be "dead to the law" is to be "dead to sin" also.
There are two things that could not come from the law, namely "righteousness" (justification), and "life." But, it is precisely those two things that come from Christ. As unrighteousness (condemnation) and "death" come from Adam the first, so righteousness, justification, and life come from Adam the second or last. The reason why death comes from the law is because it condemns us. The reason why life comes from Christ is because he justifies us. Spiritual death presupposes condemnation so too does spiritual life presuppose justification.
Notice how Paul relates "life" with "righteousness." One is first dead to the law in justification before he is alive unto God in regeneration. Death and degeneration come from unrighteousness and condemnation being imputed to Adam's descendants. On the other hand life and regeneration come from righteousness of Christ being imputed, or from justification.
The law cannot give life because it cannot give righteousness, cannot justify, and not vise versa. The law can only condemn and bring death because it cannot give the righteousness it requires. Had it given righteousness, had it justified, then life would have resulted. With Paul the outcome of how one seeks justification is a matter of life and death. What Paul affirms here in this text is what we saw in the preceding affirmative texts from Romans. “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness" (Rom. 10: 4) and he is also the end of the law "for life."
Wrote Martin Luther in his commentary:
"On first sight Paul seems to be advancing a strange and ugly heresy. He says, "I am dead to the law, that I might live unto God." The false apostles said the very opposite. They said, "If you do not live to the law, you are dead unto God."
"The doctrine of our opponents is similar to that of the false apostles in Paul’s day. Our opponents teach, "If you want to live unto God, you must live after the Law, for it is written, Do this and thou shalt live." Paul, on the other hand, teaches, "We cannot live unto God unless we are dead unto the Law." If we are dead unto the Law, the Law can have no power over us."
"To be dead to the Law means to be free of the Law." (or to be justified)
Clearly Luther believed that justification preceded being alive to God. He also wrote:
"We have two propositions: To live unto the Law, is to die unto God. To die unto the Law, is to live unto God. These two propositions go against reason. No law-worker can ever understand them. But see to it that you understand them. The Law can never justify and save a sinner. The Law can only accuse, terrify, and kill him. Therefore to live unto the Law is to die unto God. Vice versa, to die unto the Law is to live unto God. If you want to live unto God, bury the Law, and find life through faith in Christ Jesus."
Again, Luther understands Paul to mean that "life" results from having "died to the law" and being dead to the law is the essence of justification. Notice also how Luther puts "life" after faith, saying "life through faith." Both justification and regeneration (sanctification too) are by or through faith. The reason for this is because faith is the medium of union between Christ and the believer. It is not "faith through life."
The NIV Application commentary says (See here):
"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)."
I agree. Paul clearly sees justification as logically (not chronologically) preceding spiritual life. The commentary says further:
"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."
James Haldane, brother to Robert Haldane (who I have previously cited from his Roman commentary), wrote a commentary on Galatians. In his comments upon Galatians 2: 19 he wrote:
"Some explain this passage as meaning, that the law, by
discovering our sinfulness, leads us to despair of justification by
our obedience. The knowledge of the spirituality of the law, and of
our shortcoming of its requirements, may certainly drive us to
despair of deliverance by our own exertions; but no discovery of
sin—nothing but death, can dissolve the connexion between the
law and the sinner, which is what the Apostle has in view when he
affirms that he through the law is dead to the law. Although we
cannot be justified by the law, we are subject to its penalty, which
is death. This passage is a summary of the doctrine taught in the
sixth and seventh chapters of the epistle to the Romans, where the
Apostle shows that believers are justified by having died and risen
again, in their great Head and Surety. Rom. vii. 4, is exactly parallel
to the words under consideration: “Wherefore, my brethren, ye
also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye
should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the
dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.”
He wrote further:
"Here we are
taught that believers are delivered from the law by the body of
Christ; in other words, by the obedience which, in our nature, he
rendered to the law, in its precept and its penalty—by His life and
by His death. So that, in virtue of our having died in Christ, we are
set free from the law, as a woman by death is loosed from the law
of her husband.
So far is this doctrine from leading to licentiousness, that it is
essential to our living unto God. Gospel life flows from legal death.
“I live,” says the Apostle, “yet not I,” —he was dead—”1 but Christ liveth in me.” Christ dwells by faith in the hearts of his people, and
His almighty power is pledged for their deliverance from sin;1 and
they are commanded to hold fast their confidence, and the rejoicing
of the hope firm unto the end. He has undertaken to subdue their
iniquities; they are, therefore, not without law to God, but under
the law to Christ; and the love of Christ constrains them to live, not
to themselves, but to God. They are delivered from the law, “that
being dead,”—or being dead to that— “wherein we were held;
that we should serve in newness of Spirit, and not in the oldness of
the letter.”2
"Gospel life flows from legal death." Justification brings regeneration and sanctification and all follows the production of faith.
He wrote further:
"In this passage the Apostle teaches us that, in order to live a
life of holiness, and to enjoy communion with God, we must have
done with the law, —be completely freed from its dominion. It is
no wonder that the wisdom of this world should denounce the
Gospel as affording encouragement to sin; it appears to them to
remove every restraint, and to license every species of wickedness."
Again, he puts justification before spiritual life (quickening or regeneration), and understands, as I do, that this is the logical order that the apostle gives.
He wrote further:
"That the believer is sanctified as well as justified in Christ, and
not by his own works, is a mystery which human wisdom is unable
to fathom. Even the people of God are slow to apprehend this truth.
Were the question asked, What reason have you to expect that sin
shall not have dominion over you, and that you shall live a holy
life? how few could unhesitatingly reply, —Because I am not under
the law, but under grace; my connexion with the law, like the
married relation, is dissolved, by my having died in Christ!"
The believer is both justified and sanctified but justification must logically precede regeneration and sanctification.
"The law, then, as to its power of condemning those that are
Christ’s, is abrogated. They have, in Him, given it full satisfaction,
—they have endured the curse, —they have paid all which it demanded, and received a full discharge. Thus we see how
believers are reinstated in the Divine favour, and, at the same time,
their sanctification secured, by their indissoluble union with Christ
the fountain head of holiness. Thus the believer is dead to the law,
that he may live unto God. In the matter of justification, he has no
more confidence in the best work which he ever performed, than
in the greatest sin he ever committed."
He wrote further:
"that I might live unto God - not, that I might live in sin or carelessness. The Gospel which provides a perfect righteousness in Christ, which is justification, provides also a life of holiness by the Spirit, a life unto God, which is sanctification. These are distinct, but inseparable—nay, the latter is the end and the result of the former." (Cambridge)
Notice how Haldane holds firm to the priority of justification over sanctification. Greek scholar Marvin Vincent wrote: "With death to the law a new principle of life entered. For the phrase, see Romans 6:10, Romans 6:11."
Life (regeneration) comes from justification as death comes from condemnation (degeneration). That is the Pauline order.
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