The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: the Epistle to the Galatians
The first of these three interpretations is the best, as being the least forced. The others have to supply a clause; the second supplies “ are called sinners,” the third, “ because they give way to their lusts.” The first two agree better with the context. The Apostle is trying to prove that faith and not the law justifies. If, then, they who trust to faith in Christ are none the less found sinners, then Christ is found a deceiver in promising righteousness , and in not keeping His promise. Hence He becomes the servant of sin, not its conqueror, especially since He has abrogated the law, which, they say, was our justifier against sin.
The Apostle uses a common Hebraism. His question implies a negative reply, and refutes the Judaising error by a reductio ad absurdum. Cf. Rom. iii. 5 ; S. John viii. 53 ; Jer. xviii. 20.
Ver. 18. — For if I build again — if I attribute justifying faith to the law — the things which I destroyed— i.e., the law, as justifying —I make myself a transgressor. Like a Proteus, I change my faith at every wind. This is a fresh argument. If I do what the Jews falsely allege against me, I shall be a hypocrite, a destroyer in public of what I build again in private. But a hypocrite no one has charged me with being.
Ver. 19. — For I through the law am dead to the law . The law was the forerunner of Christ, and died when He appeared. The Ceremonial died absolutely, the Moral only so far as it was a tutor, and a judge of sin. By the law itself I died to law, because itself bade me die to it and live unto Christ. This is a second reason, following on that given in ver. 17, why we are justified by Christ and not by the law. Since the law itself sent me to Christ, why do you, O Jews, go against its own declarations, and seek to galvanise it into fresh life? It does not, however, follow from this that the binding force of the Decalogue ceased when Christ came, for the law in this respect was not Mosaic, but natural and immutable. Cf. notes on Rom. vii. 1.
Accordingly, Luther’s remarks here and again on chapter iv. of this Epistle are impious. “ To die to the law,” he says, “ is nothing but to be free from obeying it , whether it be ceremonial or moral, for it is obvious that the law was given to the Jews, and not to us.” He says the same in his treatise de Libertate Christiana : “ The Christian needs neither law nor works , for by faith he is free from all law.” Again, in the Wittenberg Edition of his works (pp. 189, 190), he says : “ The human heart must hate above all things the law of God, and so far God Himself.” Listen to these words, all ye who have been miserably deceived by him and his colleagues, and shudder at the words not of a man but of Satan. For what more blasphemous and abominable words could Satan, the sworn foe of God and man, utter against God, or what words more dangerous to man?
The sentiments of Calvin (Instit., lib. 3, cap. 19, § 2, 4, 7) : “ When conscience says , ‘ Thou hast sinned ,’ reply , ‘ Yes, I have sinned .’ — ‘ God will, therefore , condemn and punish you.’ — ‘ No, for it is the law that threatens that ; but I have nothing to do with the law.’ — ‘ Why ?’ — ‘ Because I am free .’ ” Is this the pure Gospel ? Did Paul teach this ? “ Do we then make void the law through faith ? God forbid. Yea , we establish the law” (Rom. iii. 31). “ Who,” says S. Augustine ( contra Ep . Pelag. lib. iii. c. 4), “ is so impious as to say that he does not keep the commandments , because a Christian is not under the law but under grace f” Who can believe that Luther and Calvin were sent by God to be reformers of the Church, when they abrogate all law, human and Divine ?
Ver. 20. — I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live ; yet not /, but Christ liveth in me. By baptism I am crucified with Christ, and dead to sin and the law; I am cut off from the old tree, and graffed as a new branch into the new tree of the Cross of Christ, from which I draw a new life, so that it is not so much I that live but Christ who lives in me. It is not the law, not nature, not concupiscence, not my own will that now drives me into action; but Christ’s grace is now, as it were, my soul, and the cause of all virtuous living, and the wellspring of humility, fortitude, wisdom, joy, peace, and all virtues. So Jerome, Chrysostom, Anselm. Gregory (Horn. 32 in Evan.) says: “ We leave ourselves , we deny ourselves when we change what we were in the old man , and strive for what we are called in the new. Think how Paul denied himself when he said , ‘ It is not I that live.’ The cruel persecutor was dead, the pious preacher had begun to live ; for if he were himself he would not be pious. But if he asserts that it is not he that lives , let him tell us whence it is that he preaches holiness in his teaching of the truth. He adds: ‘ Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’ It is as if he said plainly : ‘ As far as I am concerned, I am dead, for I do not live after the flesh ; but yet I am not really dead, for I live spiritually in Christ.’ ” So too Chrysostom writes : “ See and admire an exact explanation of life. Since he had given himself wholly to Christ and His Cross, and did everything at His command, he did not say, ‘ I live to Christ ,’ but, what is much more , ‘ Christ liveth in me.’ ” So too S. Jerome : “He who once lived as a persecutor and under the law, lives no longer. But Christ liveth in him as wisdom, fortitude, peace, joy, and all virtues. He who has not these cannot say, ‘ Christ liveth in me.’ ”
S. Bernard (Serm. 7 in Quad.) says : These words of Paul are as if he should say : ‘ To all other things I am dead ; I do not feel them.
I pay them no attention , I care not for them . Whatever , however, is Christ’s finds me alive and ready . For if I can do nothing else, at all events I can feel. Whatever makes for his honour pleases me, what against it displeases. Yea, it is not I that live, it is Christ that
It is Christ, then, that teaches, preaches, prays, works, suffers in me, says S. Paul, so much so that I seem to be changed into Christ and Christ into me. “ Each one," says S. Augustine (in Ep. Joan, tract. 2), “is what he loves . If thou lovest earth, thou wilt be earthly ; if thou lovest God, thou wilt be God.” Or, as S. Dionysius puts it, “ Love changes the lover into what he loves.” Cf. Hosea ix. 10 : “ Their abominations were according as they loved.”
The metaphor of the old tree and the new, the old life and the new, used here by S. Paul, is paralleled by that used in Rom. vi., where he speaks of our being planted, buried, crucified, dead, and risen together with Christ. So S. Ignatius wrote to the Romans, “My love was crucified” — my love, my life, my soul, my whole being was crucified when Christ suffered.
Notice here four properties of love. (1.) According to Dionysius (de Divin. Nomin. c. 4), “love is a unifying force.” This the Apostle touches in the words : “I am crucified with Christ ; ” I am united to, and am as it were one with Christ crucified. (2.) The second property of love is mutual inherence, which links God and man in the bonds of mutual love, and causes each to will what the other wills, and to say with the Bride in Cant. vi. 3 : “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.” This too S. Paul alludes to when he says that “he is in Christ, and Christ in him.” (3.) The third property is to turn the thoughts always in the same direction. For love, as a bond between minds, necessarily governs the thoughts of the mind. This S. Paul touches in the words, “I live,” and “ Christ liveth,” i.e., the same life of memory, understanding, and will. (4.) The fourth is ecstasy. “ Divine love,” says Dionysius (ubi supra), “ causes ecstasy ; it takes lovers out of themselves, so that they are no longer their own masters, but pass under the yoke of what they love. Hence the exclamation of Paul, when on fire with love and dominated by it: ‘ I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me .’ Like a true lover , he was beside himself. We may even venture to say that a lover passes the bounds of self and can do everything for the greatness of his love , because it makes him reach out in every direction and lay hold of everything .” Nay, ecstatic love laid hold on God Himself, and made Him communicate Himself to His creatures, and still more strongly, when it led Him to ally the Person of the Word to human nature in the Incarnation (Phil. ii. 7). It was ecstasy, therefore, which made the Word flesh, crucified It, and gave It the likeness of sin, because we were sinners and condemned to death ; for it was out of His great, nay, His ecstatic love that Christ took all that we are, sin only excepted.