Ver. 18 throws back the charge of promoting sin upon the Legalist. It is the counterpart, not of ver. 19, but rather of ver. 17. The "transgressor" is the sinner in a heightened and more specific sense, one who breaks known and admitted law.[56] This word bears, in Paul's vocabulary, a precise and strongly marked signification which is not satisfied by the common interpretation. It is not that Peter in setting up the Law which he had in principle overthrown, _puts himself in the wrong_; nor that Peter in re-establishing the Law, _contradicts the purpose of the Law itself_ (Chrysostom, Lightfoot, Beet). This is to anticipate the next verse. In Paul's view and according to the experience common to Peter with himself, law and transgression are concomitant, every man "under law" is _ipso facto_ a transgressor. He who sets up the first, constitutes himself the second. And this is what Peter is now doing; although Paul courteously veils the fact by putting it hypothetically, in the first person.[57] After dissolving, so far as in him lay, the validity of legal righteousness and breaking down the edifice of justification by works, Peter is now building it up again, and thereby constructing a prison-house for himself. _Returning to legal allegiance, he returns to legal condemnation_;[58] with his own hands he puts on his neck the burden of the Law's curse, which through faith in Christ he had cast off. By this act of timid conformity he seeks to commend himself to Jewish opinion; but it only serves, in the light of the Gospel, to "prove him a transgressor," to "commend"[59] him in that unhappy character. This is Paul's retort to the imputation of the Judaist. It carries the war into the enemies' camp. "No," says Paul, "_Christ_ is no patron of sin, in bidding men renounce legal righteousness. But those promote sin--in themselves first of all--who after knowing His righteousness, turn back again to legalism." [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.