‘I have been crucified together with His Anointed, but I am alive - no longer I [ego] - but His Anointed alive within me. And at this present time, what I am living within flesh, I am living this within faith, the Son of God having loved me and having surrendered himself above and beyond me. 21 I am absolutely not setting aside the free gift of God, because if judicial approval and right wise-ness [is] by means of law, then His Anointed died without cause’, (Galatians 2 v 20 – 21).
In verse 19 Paul made the general statement that –
‘I, [ego], by means of law, died to law, in order that I live to God’
Now Paul begins explain what he means and how this relates to the error of Peter, Barnabas and the other Christian Jews who were turning back to observing Sinai Covenant law. He says, ‘I have been crucified together with His Anointed, but I am alive’. In effect he begins to talk about his ‘old humanity’ and his ‘new humanity’ or new formation. He makes a similar statement in his letter to the Romans, ‘Knowing this, that our old human appearance is crucified together with [Jesus], in order that the body of self-forfeiture and loss is rendered down to being idle and inactive. We are no longer devotedly enslaved to the self-forfeiture and loss’, (Romans 6 v 6). In being brought forth by God, what he was, his natural, earthy fleshly constitution, has been crucified together with the Messiah. His old human appearance was tied and enslaved to energies, impulses and raw passions inherent within the fabric of his flesh. But when God brought him forth his old appearance changed. He died and yet he is alive. He has been brought forth as a new form, a ‘new self’.
He says that he is no longer ‘I’ [ego]. What does he mean? ‘I’ is the locus of self-governance – ‘I’ choose, ‘I’ desire, ‘I’ think and feel. He means that he is no longer governing and regulating his speech and behaviour based on tied enslavement to the impulses and energies inherent within his fleshly constitution. Rather, by means of the Breath of God, the Messiah is alive within him and he has been set free from enslavement to self-forfeiture, in order to serve the Lord. The Lord is governing his speech and behaviour by means of the Breath within. Paul is no longer dead within fleshly unresponsiveness and insensitivity to God, but roused up from out of the dead towards responsiveness to God and Life in His Messiah by means of the Breath.
Paul had not physically died, he was still living within his ‘vessel of clay’ or ‘earthly tent’. He was still existing within flesh, but now he was alive to God and living within entrustment and persuasion, a bond-slave of the Messiah, the anointed one of God ‘having loved me and having surrendered himself above and beyond me’.
So how does this new ‘self’ relate to the behaviour of Peter and the other Hebrew Christians who were turning back to observing the written codes of Covenant law? Paul says, ‘I am absolutely not setting aside the free gift of God’. God brought Paul forth when he was in a helpless state. Paul did not have the ability to deliver himself from divine condemnation. His deliverance, his ‘bringing forth’ and ‘making alive’ is a free gift away from God, and away from His only-begotten Son ‘having loved me and having surrendered himself above and beyond me’ – above and beyond Paul’s ability. Paul says that he is not going to set aside this free gift. He is not going to dismiss it, which is what he would do of he went back to seeking to attain and maintain divine judicial approval by means of investing his labour and energy into observing the injunctions of the written codes of Covenant law.
The bottom line is this – ‘if judicial approval and right wise-ness [is] by means of law, then His Anointed died without cause’.
If the means of attaining and maintaining divine approval is by means of observing Covenant law, by labouring to put into practice its written codes,
Then, if such a thing were possible, that is what God would have put in place.
But such a task is beyond the ability of anyone. More than this, if the means of deliverance and the maintenance of cleanliness was through obedience to the written codes of Covenant law, it would mean that the Messiah had died without purpose. His death would not have been necessary, it would have been superfluous, because this other method of deliverance and maintenance of cleanliness was already in place.
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