Galatians 2:19Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

The Law commands that everything written in it be fulfilled, and punishes the one who does not fulfill it. Therefore we all died to the Law, since no one fulfilled it.

See with what caution he rises against the Law even here. He did not say, "The Law died to me," but, "I died to the Law."

These words have this meaning: "Just as it is impossible for one without life, a dead man, to obey the commandments of the Law, so it is for me, who have died from the curse of the Law.

"For I died through what it says. Consequently it should no longer demand obedience from a dead man, whom it itself put to death. It did this not only by bodily death, but also by spiritual death, through which it subjected him to bodily death."

That this is precisely what he means he clearly showed by what follows. "That I might live to God," he says, "I have been crucified with Christ."

Since he said, "I died," lest someone say to him, "How then do you live?" he set forth the cause of life.

He showed that although the Law killed him while he was alive, Christ, receiving him dead, gave him life through His own death. By this he shows a double wonder.

First, Christ gave life to the dead. Second, He granted life through death. By death here he means life, because this is what his words show: "That I might live to God, I have been crucified with Christ."

"But how," someone will say, "was he crucified with Him, when he was alive and breathing? That Christ was crucified is clear. But how were you both crucified and alive?"

See how he explains this also, saying:

I am dead spiritually because I sinned, being unable to fulfill the works of the Law. I am dead bodily insofar as this depended on the condemnation of the Law.

After this, how shall I still cling to that which put me to death? "That I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ."

So that no one might say, "How then do you live, when you have died?" he says that although the Law killed him while he was alive, Christ found him dead and made him alive.

He was crucified with Him in mind and died with Him through baptism. A twofold wonder: He gave life to the dead, and He gave life through death.

Her husband is the Old Law. She entered this union in order to bear fruit for God. Therefore it is also said to her in the prophet Hosea, "From Me your fruit has been found" (Hos 14:9).

To her also belongs the well-known mystical saying: "Who is wise and will understand this, and prudent and will know it?" Therefore the one who through the spiritual Law dies to the Law of the letter lives for God.

He is not without the Law of God, but lives in the Law of Christ. But the one who dies to the Law because of sins is already truly dead.

Of him it can no longer be said, "That I might live to God." That besides the Law of the letter there is also a spiritual Law, the Apostle teaches elsewhere, saying, "Therefore the Law is indeed holy, and the commandment holy and just and good" (Rom 7:12).

Ezekiel also speaks in God's person: "I brought them," that is, the Jewish people, "out of the land of Egypt and led them into the wilderness. I gave them My commandments and showed them My judgments. If a man does them, he shall live" (Ezek 20:10).

But concerning that Law which produces wrath, to which the Apostle also died, he later says, "And I gave them commandments that were not good and judgments in which they would not live" (Ezek 20:25).

The same thing is signified in the Psalter: "Because I have not known learning, I will enter into the power of God" (Ps 70:15).

"I am nailed to the cross with Christ." Since he said that through the Law he died to the Law, he shows how he died. "I have been nailed to the cross together with Christ."

That is, he took up the cross and followed Christ, offering himself as a sacrifice in the very Passion: "Remember me when Thou comest in Thy Kingdom" (Lk 23:42-43).

Immediately afterward he heard the words, "Today you will be with Me in Paradise." If anyone, having put to death his members on earth and died to the world, is conformed to Christ's death, he is nailed with Jesus.

He nails the trophy, tropaeum, of his death to the tree of the Lord's sufferings.

"That is, I am dead to the Law that was formerly understood according to the flesh. Since this is so, and since I now understand the Law spiritually, I am dead to the fleshly Law, for I live to God."

For everyone lives to God who understands the commandments set forth in the Law not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. Namely, he understands what true circumcision is and what the true Sabbath is.

Therefore: Gal 2:19-20. "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."

"That I might live to God: I have been crucified with Christ." Death to the Law came about because I was crucified with Christ and died with Him in baptism (Rom 6:6).

Yet in baptism I also came to life, though not by the flesh and not for the Law, but by the spirit for God. In other words, Christ is now in me, having made me alive and poured out His grace upon me.

"I do not reject the grace of God," the Apostle adds reproachfully to this. If, with certain double-minded persons unsure of the sufficient power of New Testament grace, one still supposes some means of justification in the Law, what follows?

It will turn out that Christ died in vain. "If righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died in vain."

It was shown still more in the many sufferings he endured for this from the Judaizers throughout the whole time of his evangelizing.

Saint Chrysostom, explaining the Apostle's words, "Through the Law I died to the Law," says: "Paul shows by this that through this very Law he died to the Law.

"That is, the Law itself persuaded him not to follow the Law. How? Moses, foretelling Christ, says, 'The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet from among your brethren, like me. Him you shall hear' (Deut 18:15).

"It is evident from this that those who do not obey Christ transgress the Law. These words may also be understood otherwise.

"If the Law commands that everything written in it be fulfilled, and punishes nonfulfillment with death, then we all died by it, because no one fulfilled it.

"But just as it is not proper for one without life and dead to obey the commandments of the Law, so it is with me, who died by the Law.

"Since he said, 'I died,' lest they say to him, 'How then do you live?' he also presented the cause of life.

"He showed that the Law killed him while he was alive, but Christ raised the dead man and made him alive through His death."

By saying, "It is no longer I who live," he indicated the life that follows the prohibition, by which the members are put to death.

What does "Christ lives in me" mean? It means, he says, that I do nothing that is displeasing to Christ. For it is impossible to live for God otherwise than by dying to sin.

Now, if you remain dead to sin, you will be alive and will live to God. But if you rise again for sin, you will lose life again.

Paul is not such. Through his whole life he remained dead to sin. Although he gave himself entirely to Christ, renounced everything temporal, and did everything according to His will, he did not say, "Therefore I live for Christ."

He said what is much higher: "Christ lives in me." For when sin gains dominion over a man, it then lives in him and governs his soul according to its will.

So also, when after its mortification a man does what is pleasing to Christ, his life is not the life of the man, but of Christ living in him. That is, Christ acts in him and governs him.

"If Christ died, it is evident that He died because the Law is not able to justify us. But if the Law justifies, then Christ died in vain."

"But Christ did not die in vain. Consequently righteousness is not by the Law," says blessed Jerome.

As much as he had formerly been devoted to it and had hoped in it, so, after believing in the Lord, he became distant from it and counted it as nothing. He expresses this relation to the law in the words, "I died to the law." I ceased to exist for it, and it for me.

As a dead man becomes free from all obligations to the living, so, by my death to the law, all obligations to it have ceased for me. "To the law," he says, "I died, so as to be no longer under the law" (blessed Augustine). For "whoever is freed from the law dies to the law" (Ambrosiaster).

He presents himself as dead to the law through the law itself: "Through the law I died to the law." The law itself put me to death for itself. It pushed me away from itself, led me away from itself, and brought me to Christ.

This can be understood in two ways. Either the law itself, by failing to satisfy my search for righteousness, compelled me to abandon it and turn to another true source of righteousness. Or the law itself pointed me beforehand to Christ, the goal and end of the law.

The law itself speaks of the coming of Christ the Savior and of the necessity of listening to Him in order to be saved. Following this prompting of the law, I turned to Christ and abandoned the law.

Both thoughts are contained in the single thought that the law was a tutor unto Christ. The ancient interpreters dwell chiefly on this. Thus blessed Augustine says: "Through the law, he says, I died to the law, since he was a Jew and had the law as a tutor unto Christ, as he explains later (see Gal 3:24). The tutor himself brings it about that afterward he is no longer needed, just as an infant is fed by the breasts so as later to have no need of them."

So also St. Chrysostom says: "By this he shows that through this very law he died to the law. That is, the law itself persuaded me not to follow the law. If after this I follow it, then by this very fact I transgress it. How and in what way? Moses, foretelling Christ, says, 'The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from among your brethren, like me. Him you shall hear' (cf. Deut 18:15). From this it is evident that those who do not obey Christ transgress the law."

So Theodoret says: "Persuaded by the law itself, says the Apostle, I made myself dead to the law, because the law pointed Christ out to me beforehand. Persuaded by the law, I came to Christ, and for the law I am dead, because I am no longer governed by it in life, but follow the ordinances of Christ."

Besides this principal understanding, they also find shades of other thoughts in the Apostle’s words. Thus they say that by the law through which St. Paul died to the law, one may understand the evangelical law. It is as if he said: a new law came from God, and, obeying it, I left the old law.

Or it may be understood thus: I was bound to the old law as a wife to her husband, and I could not leave it. But the new law came and put that old law to death. Becoming free through its death, I was joined to the new law, which the law itself permits.

Thus St. Chrysostom says: "It is possible that he is speaking here of the law of grace, because he also usually calls grace a law, as when he says, 'The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free' (cf. Rom 8:2)."

Thus blessed Jerome says: "Whoever dies to the law once lived to it, observing Sabbaths, new moons, feast days, and sacrifices. But when Christ came, and the old law died through the evangelical law, the soul which, according to what is written, is called an adulteress if, while her husband is alive, she belongs to another man. Becomes free after the death of the husband, that is, of the old law, to be joined to another husband, to the spiritual law of faith in Christ, that it may bear fruit to God (cf. Rom 7:3-4)."

St. Chrysostom also finds it possible to see in the Apostle this thought: the law put me to death, and I became dead to it. But Christ gave life to me when I was dead, and I live to Him.

"We may," he says, "understand the words 'Through the law I died to the law' in another way. If the law commands that everything written in it be fulfilled, and punishes nonfulfillment with death, then we have all died through it, because no one fulfilled it.

"But as it is not proper for a soulless and dead man to obey the commandments of the law, so neither is it proper for me, who died through the law, because I died by the power of its word. Therefore it must no longer demand obedience from a dead man whom it itself put to death.

"And it put him to death not only by bodily death, but by the death of the soul, through which it also subjected him to bodily death. Since he said, 'I died,' lest they say to him, 'How then do you live?' he also set forth the cause of life.

"He showed that the law put him to death while he was alive, but Christ received him dead and gave him life through His own death. In this he shows a twofold wonder: that Christ gave life to him when dead, and that He gave life through death."

"That I might live to God," that is, in order to live for God. The man who lives for God consecrates all his thoughts, desires, feelings, words, deeds, and every labor to God, for His glory, to please Him, and according to His holy will.

Those under the law also lived for God, but only outwardly. Their inward man did not serve Him. Yet for all that they were considered righteous, as having fulfilled the outward conditions of justification.

Now, he says, being reborn by the grace of God in the Lord, I direct myself to God both inwardly and outwardly, with my whole being. I live truly to Him, "that is, with an immortal and unaging life" (Oecumenius).

Or thus: before the coming of the Lord, whoever wished to live to God had to live according to the law of Moses, for such was the will of God. Now it is otherwise. In the Lord Jesus Christ, God established a new, better, and more effective manner of life according to God.

Therefore, whoever now wishes to live to God, that is, fully according to His will and truly pleasing to Him, must abandon the law and believe in the Lord. For such is now the will of God: to live to God only in Christ and through Christ.

If I had left the law and nothing more, merely so as not to be constrained by the law, this would have been worse than being under the law. But I left one law in order to receive another, a better one.

I still move within the same realm in which the will of God reigns. I left the law in order to live to God, just as formerly, in servitude to the law, I thought I was living to God. But then there was no true life in me. Now I perceive it in me and live by it, with certainty that, living so, I live to God.

Where did St. Paul receive this new life? In being crucified with Christ. He says, "I have been crucified with Christ." By these words he shows how, having left the law, he began to live to God.

He seems to say: do not think that leaving the law was easy for me. No. It was the same as crucifixion. Why was Christ crucified? To fulfill the will of the heavenly Father, Who so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life (cf. Jn 3:16).

I too understood this will and, to follow it, offered everything in sacrifice, everything so dear to my heart: our religious convictions and the love of my people. Was it easy for me to leave what I had been accustomed to from childhood, what I valued so highly and cherished so deeply?

But when I understood that this was the will of God, I tore my heart away from it. Did I not see that by leaving the law I would draw upon myself the hatred of my people, whom I love, and whose glory and well-being I count as my own?

But I gave myself over to every suffering from those whom I love, so as not to sin against the will of our heavenly Father, so clearly revealed to me in the Lord Jesus Christ. My change was painful, like death.

It was painful to depart from the law. It was fearful to awaken dangers on every side and to place myself in a state of expecting death at every hour. But I gave myself over to pain and death, cleaving to Christ by faith and placing all hope of my salvation on Him alone.

I was, and am, in the state of one crucified, in co-crucifixion with Christ. But this is not yet all. Co-crucifixion with Christ is visible here, but how did the new life according to God flow from it?

For a new life to begin, the moral change just indicated was not enough. This change is only preparation for the new life. Life itself is formed by birth from above, which takes place in baptism.

St. Chrysostom says: "But how, someone will say, was he crucified with Christ when he was alive and breathing? That Christ was crucified is clear. But how were you crucified and do you live? By the words, 'I have been crucified with Christ,' he pointed to baptism."

"I was crucified with Christ, for I was buried with Him through baptism" (blessed Theodoret). "Spiritually I was crucified with Him and died with Him through baptism" (blessed Theophylact).

The Apostle depicts at length in the Epistle to the Romans how the one baptized is immersed into the death of Christ and comes forth from the font in newness of life (see Rom 6:1-13).

At this moment of new birth, the soul feels, and from this moment continually begins to feel, that it already possesses in perfection everything it expected and could have expected from the law. Therefore the law proves unnecessary.

It also feels that the new life which has begun is so blessed that, compared with it, all sacrifices are nothing. Thus what, during the turning to Christ the Lord, caused mortal pain and threatened deaths has now disappeared. What was deathly has been swallowed up by life in Christ Jesus the Lord.