For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.
Greek, 'For if what things I overthrow (by the faith of Christ), these things I build again (namely, legal righteousness, by subjecting myself to the law), I constitute (literally, I commend) myself a transgressor' (answering to 'we were found sinners'). Instead of commending yourself as you sought (Galatians 2:12, end), you merely commend yourself as a transgressor. The "I" is intended for Peter to take to himself, as it is his case, not Paul's own that is described. A "transgressor" is another word for "sinner" (Galatians 2:17), for "sin is the transgression of the law." You, Peter, by asserting the law to be obligatory, are proving yourself a "sinner" in having set it aside by living as the Gentiles, and with them. Thus you are debarred by transgression from justification by the law, and you debar yourself from justification by Christ, since by your theory He becomes a minister of sin. Ellicott takes it, 'I demonstrate myself a transgressor of the law's deeper principles in reconstructing what I ought from the law itself to perceive is only temporary and preparatory. The Judaizers insisted that whoever keeps not the law is a transgressor; Paul shows, on the contrary, that he who keeps to the law is a transgressor of the, law itself, as intended to lead to faith in Christ.' The "for I," etc. (Galatians 2:19), thus is to confirm this assertion. But the correspondence of "I make myself a transgressor" (Galatians 2:18) to "we are found sinners" (Galatians 2:17), fixes the former explanation; also the absence of "the law" (Galatians 2:18), or of any definite equivalent, is against Ellicott.