Galatians 2:21
21 I do [atheteo] not [ou] frustrate [atheteo] the
grace [charis] of God: [theos] for [gar] if [ei] righteousness [dikaiosune]
come by [dia] the law, [nomos] then [ara] Christ [Christos] is dead [apothnesko] in
vain. [dorean] KJV-Interlinear
21 "I do not nullify the
grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died
needlessly." NASB
Frustrate, ‘atheteo,’ means to abrogate, abolish, void,
nullify.
The phrase, grace of God, refers to the favor of
God as it applies within the plan of God in salvation and as it applies to life
beyond or after salvation.
Righteousness refers to the justification in
salvation, and justification in ones spiritual growth.
And so, if a person can be justified and/or saved
by means of the law, then he can be saved by means of his own efforts.
If a person can advance in their spiritual life by
means of the law, then they can advance by means of their own efforts.
If those two things are possible, then God is not
needed and man can define and design his own path to holiness. That all makes Christs work on the cross and
His deaths (both deaths, the first being his spiritual death and the second
death being His physical death) useless and of no importance or value.
If man can do nearly anything, and that is exactly what
happened to the Levitical code, when the Priests over several centuries, made
up rule after rule, regulation after regulation. They made things complicated and then made
exceptions for things that were too complicated, and then made more rules until
the Law was held not within the content of the first five books but were
contained within volumes and volumes and volumes of books of regulations.
And then it eventually excluded nearly everyone
except the chosen Jewish few as determined by the priests. The Law became biased and prejudiced to the
maximum.
When man makes up the rules, then favoritism,
exceptions and bias inevitably enter into the rules and fairness fades into
non-existence.
Man cannot justify himself. Man cannot pay the high price for his evil. Man cannot take his own rottenness and purify
it. Man cannot rise to the level of God
(someone else wanted to be like the most high), and become an equal with God.
Man cannot control his own birth, or life span, or
the number of beats of his own heart or the weather for that matter.
If man could accomplish all of these things, then
there would be no need for God.
Therefore, since man has virtually no control over
almost everything, except his own thoughts perhaps, then man needs God, a
perfect and all powerful entity, to help him out. And if such a God exists, then He would have
a plan, and make Himself and His plan known to all of humanity from the
beginning to the end. And that is
exactly what the Bible and Christ, is.
