The death of legal hope the life of evangelical obedience.
Paul proceeds in the exposition of Peter's mistake to show that it is only when through the Law we die to all legal hope, we can live unto God. When legal hope has died within us, Christ has room to live and be the source of our spiritual energy.
I. CONSIDER THE DEATH OF LEGALISM. (Galatians 2:19, Galatians 2:20.) The idea of self-righteousness or Pharisaism was and is that we can live through the Law. But the more careful analysis of sin leads us to see that the Law can only condemn and slay us. The same experience became our Lord's when he became our Representative. Though obeying the Law in every particular, he found that, in consequence of our sin, for which he had made himself responsible, the Law demanded his death in addition to his obedience, or rather "his obedience even unto death." Not until he was crucified had he satisfied the demands of Law. In his crucifixion, therefore, he died to the Law. It had after that no more claim upon him. When he said on the cross, "It is finished," he died to the Law. Now, it is only when we enter into this purpose of the crucifixion, and die to all hope from the Law, that we are in a position to live unto God. "The death of legal hope" is "the life of evangelical obedience." The legalism must die within us before we get into the large place of new obedience. Among the many purposes of our Lord's death upon the cross, this was a prime one, viz. to wean us away from all idea of winning life by law-keeping, that we may gratefully receive it as the gift of free grace.
II. CONSIDER THE LIFE UNTO GOD. (Galatians 2:19, Galatians 2:20.) Though legal hope has died, so that Paul is "dead to the Law" like Christ in Joseph's tomb, he is at the same time enabled to "live unto God." In truth it is then that the life unto God begins. For life by the Law is life for self; whereas when we die to all legal hope, we are delivered from the self-life, and enabled to live the life of consecration to God. And when does this life of consecration to God come? By inspiration Christ comes and lives literally within us by his Spirit, so that we become in a real sense inspired persons. Consequently, Paul declares that it is not he himself who lives the consecrated life, but "Christ liveth in me." He abandoned himself to the Spirit of Christ, and thus made way for the life of consecration. Nothing is more important, then, than this self-abandonment to the Spirit of Christ, who is the Spirit of consecration. This is the holocaust of the Christian life, the abandonment of every faculty and power to the Divine fire, that all may rise in sublimity to heaven.
III. CONSIDER THE LAW OF THE NEW LIFE. (Galatians 2:20.) Paul has abandoned himself to the Spirit of Christ. His life becomes in consequence one of simple dependence upon the Son of God: or, as it is here put, "The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God;" or, as the Revised Version has it, "And that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God." The self-abandoned life is the life of constant dependence upon the Son of God. But this being so, the law of Christ's life necessarily becomes the law of the life of consecration. What, then, is the law of Christ's life? It is the law of love leading to self-sacrifice; for of the Son of God it is here said by Paul, "Who loved me, and gave himself for me." Christ, in consecrating himself to God, dedicated himself to our salvation. He became the voluntary victim; he died that we might be redeemed. Hence self-sacrifice is the law of the new life. Now, no other system but Christianity secures such self-abandonment and self-abnegation. The Hindu self-abandonment to Brahma, for example, is abandonment to a desireless condition. "He remains," it has been said, "stupidly still (immobile), his arms in air. Brahma is his death, and not his life." Again, Mohammedan self-abandonment is crude fanaticism. "It is true," says the same writer, "that Allah does not kill all the faculties of the soul as Brahma does; but he renders them fatalistic, fanatic, and sanguinary. He is for his adorers the fire which consumes them, and not their life." The Jesuit, again, has a self-abandonment to the chief of his order at Rome; but in renouncing judgment, affections, will, and conscience to his superior, he allows his true life to be killed, and his obedience is only the galvanism of spiritual death.£ It thus turns out that all other self-abandonments but that to Christ are counterfeits, and his only stands the test of experience. He rouses us to action, to intelligent self-sacrifice. He teaches us to "live not unto ourselves, but unto him who died for Us, and rose again" (2 Corinthians 5:15).
IV. IN THIS ARRANGEMENT THERE IS NO FRUSTRATION, BUT A MAGNIFYING OF THE GRACE OF GOD. (Galatians 2:21.) If righteousness came by ceremonialism, if ceremony were the secret of salvation, then assuredly the grace of God would be frustrated, and Christ have died in vain. If legal hopes are still legitimate, then the crucifixion of Christ was a mere martyrdom by mistake. On the other hand, when we have seen clearly, as Paul did, that the Law cannot save us, but must be given up as a ground of hope, then we gather round the cross of Christ, and we adore the devotion which thereby secured our salvation, and we magnify the grace of God. Legalism is the antithesis and frustration of Divine grace; whereas the life of consecration, which the death of all legalism secures, is the tree exaltation of God's grace manifested in a crucified Saviour. Let us make sure, then, of the crucifixion of the legal spirit within us, and then the consecrated life which the contemplation of Christ crucified inspires shall be found to be the true way of magnifying the grace of God.—R.M.E.
HOMILIES BY R. FINLAYSON