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.

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!

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