Galatians 2:19 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Through the law— By the tenor of the law itself. See ch. Galatians 3:24-25 Galatians 4:21, &c. Romans 3:21; Romans 11:14 comp. with Romans 7:4. What St. Paul says here seems to imply, that living under the law was to live not acceptably to God;—a strange doctrine certainly to the Jews! and yet it was true now under the gospel: for God the Father having put his kingdom in this world wholly under his Son, in a peculiar sense, when he raised him from the dead, all who, after that, would be his people in his kingdom, were to live by no other law but the gospel, which was now the law of his kingdom; and we see that God cast off the Jews, because, cleaving to their own constitution, they would not have this man to reign over them. So that what St. Paul says here is, in effect, this: "By believing in Christ, I am discharged from the Mosaical law, that I may wholly conform myself to the rule of the gospel, which is now the law to be owned and observed by all those who, as God's people, would live acceptably to him." This appears visibly to be the Apostle's meaning,though the accustoming himself to antithesis may possibly be the reason why, after having said, I am dead to the law, he expresses his putting himself under the gospel by living to God.