Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. (Galatians 2:16)
This was true of Peter as well as of Paul, and Peter already knew that observance of the law could not justify anyone. It was for this reason that they had turned to Christ for salvation from sin. This very profession, Paul intimates, is an acknowledgment that their former observances were in and of themselves worthless and void.
Works have no part in this transaction. On God’s part it is a gift made possible through Jesus Christ. On man’s part it requires complete faith and trust in God that He is able and willing to justify a sinner. Faith is the means by which man receives justification.
The works of the law.
Literally, “works of law” (see on Rom. 2:12). Paul here refers not so much to the ritual observances of the ceremonial law alone as to the Jewish concept that a man could save himself by meticulously keeping (see on 2 Cor. 3:3-9) “the law,” which consisted of moral, ceremonial, and civil precepts (see pp. 933, 934). In his Epistle to the Galatians, Paul is concerned only with the moral and ceremonial codes. The civil code apparently did not enter directly into the problem under discussion. The Jews erred in:
(1) considering that salvation could be attained by one’s own efforts, through compliance with the requirements of “the law,” and by virtue of a meritorious life in which a surplus of good deeds would cancel out evil deeds,
(2) adding to the law, as given by God, a mass of man-made requirements, commonly called “tradition” (see Vol. V, p. 96; see on Mark 7:3), and
(3) extending, and attempting to enforce, certain features of the ritual and ceremonial provisions of “the law” beyond the cross, when they expired by limitation. All of this was no doubt in Paul’s mind as he wrote. As already stated, the word “law,” as used by Paul in the book of Galatians, includes both the moral law, or Decalogue, and the ceremonial law (see EGW Supplementary Material on Gal. 3:24). But Paul is not concerned so much with either of these, as such, as he is with the Jewish legal system of righteousness by works, which was based upon them.