“Is Christ then a servant of sin?”
There was a major public disagreement in the church in Antioch in Galatians 2. Peter, who had previously eaten meals with the Christian Gentiles in the church, withdrew because of the opinions of a part of the Jewish church community. Paul confronted him publicly about this because it was splitting the church and not showing the unity of the gospel.
As part of his following explanation, Paul says something quite unusual. He is dealing with a possible objection to his stance that could be made by his opponents:
17 But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! 18 For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. 19 For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God.
(Galatians 2:17-21 ESV)
Peter and Paul grew up Jewish, observing the law, keeping the clean eating rules, all of that. And now they live like Gentiles, not observing those things, in order to be united with those who are not Jewish. Jewish people looking on might think that this new belief in Jesus has made people like Peter and Paul into sinners. After all, they kept the law before, and now they don’t seem to. They used to keep the food laws God himself gave, and now they do not. Does that make Jesus a servant of sin, as the ESV puts it? Or as the NIV more helpfully puts it, “Doesn’t that mean that Christ promotes sin?” See, based on the evidence, they might say that Jewish Christians seem to follow God less than Jews who don’t trust in Jesus!
Paul’s answer is very harsh and direct: “certainly not!” By no means! There is no stronger way of saying “no” in Greek than this phrase. He will go on to explain how Christians still live well following God a few verses later on. But he first turns the argument back on those raising it in v18.
Paul says that they are looking at this wrongly; there is a better way to see it. The law, the boundaries of the law that separated Jew and Gentile, have been brought down. The language is that of building, like tearing down a wall. The result is unity and not division. Yet Peter, by his separation from the Gentiles, is rebuilding that wall once more. By his actions, he is saying that he is choosing to be bound by the law again instead of only trusting in Jesus. And this condemns him. If no-one is saved through works of the law, and you go back to the law, you know you are guilty. You are a sinner under God’s judgement, and not a free person trusting in Jesus. Going back to the law is the disaster. It doesn’t mean you are taking following God more seriously; it only means you are again trying to be right with God by what you do or do not do.
We are saved by grace. If this is true, we must not add rules to this; it ruins everything. If we say that you are saved by faith in Jesus, but you also need to be baptised and read your Bible and dress neatly and come to church every Sunday to be really OK with God, we’ve missed the point. None of those things, however good they are, make us right with God. They are building walls between Christians, not uniting us in Jesus.
The danger of judging other people by their outward actions is that it is not accurate. We might force people to conform to look a certain way on the outside, but what matters is their faith on the inside. A life that flows from trust in Jesus will lead to increased unity, not increased division. It will lead to joy and happy service, not dutiful action with an eye to make sure we don’t offend someone else.
Trusting Jesus leads to unity and freedom and godliness in a way that comparison and rule-keeping never can.