Galatians 2:18

(18) But Christ is not a minister of sin. The thought is not to be tolerated. For, on the contrary, the sin is seen, not in leaving the Law for Christ, but in going back from Christ to the Law. The sin is seen doubly: for on one theory—the theory that the Law is valid—it was wrong to give it up; while on the other theory, that Christianity has taken its place, it is still more wrong to restore the fabric that has once been broken down.

For.—The connection is with the words immediately preceding: “God forbid that Christ should be the minister of sin.” The idea is absurd as well as profane. For, instead of the Pauline Christian (who follows Christianity to its logical results) being the sinner, it is really the Judaising Christian who stands self-condemned—i.e., in returning to what he has forsaken.

If I build again.—The first person is used out of delicate consideration for his opponents. The Apostle is going to put a supposed case, which really represents what they were doing; but in order to soften the directness of the reference he takes it, as it were, upon himself.

St. Paul is fond of metaphors taken from building. Comp. Romans 15:20 (building upon another man’s foundation), 1 Corinthians 3:10-14 (Christ the foundation), Ephesians 2:20-22 (the Church built on the foundation of Apostles and prophets), and the words “edify” and “edification” wherever they occur. The idea of “pulling down” or “destroying” is also frequently met with. So in Romans 14:20 (“for meat destroy not the work of God,” the same word as here used, in opposition to “edify,” immediately before); 2 Corinthians 5:1 (“if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved”—pulled down or destroyed); 2 Corinthians 10:4 (“mighty to the pulling down of strongholds”)—a different word in the Greek, but similar in meaning.

We may compare with the whole verse the well-known saying, “Burn what you have adored, and adore what you have burned.”

The things which I destroyed—i.e., the Mosaic law, the binding obligation of which had been done away in Christ.

Make myself.—Show, or prove myself to be: the same word as that translated “commend” in Romans 3:5; Romans 5:8.

A transgressor.—Hitherto the Apostle had kept up a sort of studied ambiguity in his use of the words “sin,” “sinner.” The Jews called the Gentiles “sinners,” simply from the fact of their being Gentiles. The Pauline Christian placed himself on the same footing with the Gentiles, so far as the Law was concerned, and therefore he, too, in the same phraseology, was a sinner. But now the Apostle uses a word that could not be mistaken. A sinner the Christian might be, in the Judaising sense of the word, but the Judaiser himself was the real sinner: it was he who offended against the immutable principles of right and wrong.