[56] See Grimm's _Lexicon_, or Trench's _N. T. Synonyms_, on this word. Comp. ch. iii. 19; Rom. ii. 23-27; iv. 15; v. 14.
[57] The _I_ of this sentence is quite indefinite. On the other hand ver. 19, with its emphatic ἐγώ γάρ, brings us into a new vein of thought.
[58] Comp. ch. iii. 10-12, 19; Rom. iii. 20; iv. 15.
[59] This verb has, as Schott suggests, a tinge of irony.
IV. The conviction of Peter is now complete. From the sad bondage to which the Jewish Apostle, by his compliance with the Judaizers, was preparing to submit himself, _the Apostle turns to his own joyous sense of deliverance_ (vv. 19-21). Those who resort to legalism, he has said, ensure their own condemnation. It is, on the other hand, by an entire surrender to Christ, by realizing the import of His death, that we learn to "live unto God." So Paul had proved it. At this moment he is conscious of a union with the crucified and living Saviour, which lifts him above the curse of the law, above the power of sin. To revert to the Judaistic state, to dream any more of earning righteousness by legal conformity, is a thing for him inconceivable. It would be to make void the cross of Christ!
And it was the Law itself that first impelled Paul along this path. "Through law" he "died to law." The Law drove him from itself to seek salvation in Jesus Christ. Its accusations allowed him no shelter, left him no secure spot on which to build the edifice of his self-righteousness. It said to him unceasingly, Thou art a transgressor.[60] He who seeks justification by its means contradicts the Law, while he frustrates the grace of God.
[60] Rom. vii. 7-viii. 1.