Preserving the Truth of the Gospel - Galatians 2:1-10

But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” 2 And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question. 3 So, being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers. 4 When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them. 5 But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.” (Acts 15:1-5 ESV)

Galatians 2, verses 1-10.

Verse 1 - See ESV note regarding when this 14 year period started.  Paul is not clear.

Here he mentions Barnabas as a travelling companion.  The church in Jerusalem is very familiar with him because he was one who sold some of his property and gave the proceeds to the apostles to be distributed amongst the believers in Acts 4:32-37.

In that text, we also read that Barnabas was a Levite.  It would be hard to find two guys less likely to spend time around uncircumcised Gentiles than a Pharisee (Paul) and a Levite (Barnabas).  But both Barnabas and Paul are in the company of Titus, a Greek.

It is curious that Paul mentions specifically that Titus was "with me" twice: here and in v. 3.  Paul is probably saying this simply to emphasize to the Galatians that the entire circumcision issue had already been dealt with by means of Titus.  "He was there.  He was with me.  The other apostles who seemed influential saw him."

Had I been Titus, I might have had some reservations about accompanying Paul and Barnabas on this trip.  The issue at hand is whether circumcision is necessary for salvation, which really sounds bizarre to us, but it was the most serious theological issue the church faced at that time.  Must a person become a Jew in order to enjoy the blessings of the God of Israel?  Or, is Jesus really Lord of all, as Peter stated to Cornelius' household in Acts 10:36?  Are the Jews the only chosen people of God, or are Gentiles, as Gentiles, elected to salvation as well?

In other words, the question at this point in the history of the Church is not, "Can Gentiles be saved?"  Peter, Paul, and others have witnessed the miraculous phenomena that have taken place amongst the Gentiles at their conversion.  The question is, "Must they also be proselytes into Judaism and keep the Law of Moses?"  The Pharisees insist the answer is yes.  Paul and Barnabas and Titus in particular vote "no".

Verse 2 - I went up because of a revelation - This was what motivated Paul to go to Jerusalem with this issue, and we're glad he did.  God spoke to Paul in some fashion-the nature of the revelation is not mentioned-and thus he was compelled to go.  In keeping with Paul's humble demeanor, he does not explain what this revelation consisted of.  Was it a voice, or a vision, or a dream, or an angelic visitation?  Is this the occasion he speaks of in 2Cor. 12:2 where a man went up to heaven?  Even there, he speaks reluctantly of the surpassing greatness of the revelations.

and set before them . . . the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles - "Here's what I've been preaching to the uncircumcised."  Before at least two witnesses, Barnabas and Titus, he explains his gospel message.  They can corroborate his presentation.  They have heard him preach.  Titus is evidence of the power and authenticity of Paul's gospel.  All of this is part of Paul's defense of his gospel preaching to the apostles, but . . .

(though privately before those who seemed influential) - Initially, this was not a presentation to the entire church but to the leadership only.  It is reasonable to think that this included several of the apostles, but possibly not all of them.  The most influential would have been Peter, James, and John who had always been in the forefront of the Jerusalem church who are mentioned by name in v 9.

in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain - Paul is doing this for the sake of validation by the other apostles.  Paul is not the "Lone Ranger" that the Judaizers have made him to be in the eyes of the Galatian churches.  Even Paul does not have the right to preach whatever he chooses, independently of the other apostles.  And certainly not contrary to what the apostles have been preaching.

There are those today who claim to have apostolic authority in their churches.  They say God has made them apostles in the same sense as Paul was an apostle.  Typically, they claim this in order to cause those who listen to them to obey them without question.  They are not satisfied with being shepherds of God’s flock, but want to be dictators with absolute authority and who answer to no one.  But even Paul submitted himself to the judgment of this church council in Jerusalem.

This is proof of Paul's conscientious proclamation of a biblically correct Gospel, one that is in accordance with the Scriptures and in agreement with the gospel that Peter and the other apostles preach (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).  They all preach the same thing.  That is the purpose of this meeting: To establish the validity of Paul's gospel by the apostolic church in Jerusalem.  If his gospel is faulty in any way, then he has indeed labored in vain among the Gentiles by preaching a gospel that cannot save.

Verse 3 -But even Titus who was with me - Standing there with Paul was one of his Gentile "converts".  Undoubtedly, all three men, Paul, Barnabas, and Titus, were convinced of Titus' conversion and salvation.  If that was not the case, then now would be the time for the apostles to speak up and require Titus to complete his salvation experience by conversion to Judaism.

was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek - Or, to state it another way, all were in agreement that circumcision is unnecessary for salvation.  That is the issue and the apostles have had the final say in this matter.  And all of them are Jewish.  This is a definitive moment in the life of the church.  The apostles on this occasion, once and for all, confirm the gospel of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, for all who believe, and not by works of the Law.  Period.

Verse 4 -Yet because of false brothers - With this statement, Paul condemns the Judaizers.  These are false brethren.  Are they fellow Jews?  Yes.  Are they fellow Christians?  No.  They are pretenders who are more concerned with Israel and Judaism and the Law of Moses than they are with salvation.  They are more concerned with ethnicity than with truth.  They have confused national identity for identity with Christ.

Many churches today are more concerned with gathering more and more church members while neglecting to determine if their church members are members of the body of Christ.  Most churches today lack the discernment needed to determine the difference between true and false brethren.  For Paul and the apostles, anyone whose faith was placed in anything other than Christ alone, was not a true brother.  The same is true today.  Salvation is not by faith and, but by faith alone.

secretly brought in - Not only are they false brothers, but they are dishonest, sneaking in amongst the believers and posing as the real thing.

who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus - This is ecclesiastical espionage.  Secret agents covertly admitted into the meeting to spy on Paul and the apostles.

What is this freedom in Christ that Paul speaks of?  Freedom from a salvation by works of the law.  Freedom from the yoke of self-righteousness of the Pharisees.  (See Matthew 23:1-16.)  Freedom from the condemnation of the Law of Moses that is impossible to keep.  We sometimes try to express this freedom by saying God accepts people just the way they are.  There is an element of truth in that, but it is also confusing.  The favorite hymn of the Gentile believers was “Just As I Am”.  (Not really.)  But while God saves us all as we are, He doesn’t leave us as we are.  We come to Christ through repentance and faith.  Freedom from the Law which Paul is speaking here simply means freedom from the demands of the Law in order to secure my salvation.  No one has ever been saved that way.

so that they might bring us into slavery - In chapter 5 Paul will expound on this concept of freedom in Christ vs slavery to the Judaizers and the Law.  We have a new covenant in the obedience of Christ and the blood of Christ, the perfectly sinless sacrifice.  He has accomplished for us everything we were required to do and yet could not.  Therefore we have been set free from an impossible requirement to save ourselves.

But the Judaizers prefer works to grace.  They prefer Moses to the Messiah.  They prefer do-it-yourself salvation to the substitutionary sacrifice of the Son of God for all who believe.  They prefer slavery to freedom.

Verse 5 - to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment - We were not willing to enslave ourselves once again to their mastery over us at all.  And Paul should know about this slavery - he himself was a Pharisee.  He understands what it means to rely upon one's own efforts to be pleasing to God.  That was what motivated him to persecute the church.  He does not use the term slavery lightly.  Pharisaism and Judaism is slavery.  It is oppressive religion that produces proud, self-righteous, false brethren who want to make the Gentiles twice the sons of hell that they themselves are.

Yielding to these men would be like allowing the camel to get his nose into the tent.  Soon, the whole camel is in the tent.  The Judaizers would not be content simply with circumcising the Gentiles.  Soon, they would forbid the Gentiles to eat unclean foods, or walk too far on the Sabbath, etc.  Where does it stop?  How much of the law must be obeyed in order to be sufficient to secure and keep one's salvation and to satisfy the Judaizers?  This is why Paul and the others did not yield to the Judaizers even for a moment.  To do so would mean to risk slavery to an obsolete religious system that cannot save, but which only condemns.

so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you - It is necessary that we preserve the truth of the gospel.  Ever since the earliest days of the church it has been under attack, even until this very hour.  What the Judaizers were not able to accomplish in spite of Paul, the Roman Catholic Church was quite victorious in spreading all over the world.  Being the self-proclaimed defenders of the one true faith, they have made Catholicism the sole means of salvation, along with church laws that produce the exact same slavery the Judaizers sought to burden new believers with.

The Judaizers actually believed in Christ.  They believed He was the promised Messiah.  They believed in His sacrificial death, his burial for three days, and God's resurrection of Him from the dead.

But they didn't think that was enough.  Faith in Christ had to be supplemented by obedience to the Law.  That was the only issue that stood between Christian orthodoxy and heresy.  They were that close to the truth, but that was enough to make them false brethren preaching a false gospel and producing a false salvation.  What could be worse?  If we lose the gospel, if we fail to preserve it from error, we lose salvation itself.  How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? (Hebrews 2:3a)

Roman Catholicism gives us the Gentile version of the Judaizers.  James explains the problem of Judaism and Roman Catholicism in one verse: "For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it." (James 2:10).  If you ever start down the road of salvation by works, you are now a slave to those works, as well as to those who impose those works upon you.  The list of things you must do to secure eternal life is infinite.  The Law is never satisfied because we can't satisfy it.

The Catholic Church is never satisfied with the works of its members.  Never do they say, "You've done enough to earn your salvation.  You can stop now."  Rather, you must continue to earn merit by your good works, if not for yourself, for the sake of others.  And if you're capable of earning saving merit for others, wouldn't it be a sin not to do so?

In this event that Paul describes for us here in just a few words, the true gospel for the entire world was at stake.  Neither Jew nor Gentile is saved except by the grace of God alone.  Had these false brethren been successful in their spying, and had they been persuasive in arguing for the necessity of circumcision, who knows what kind of damage would have been done.

This event is a major turning point for the gospel enterprise in the world.  This trip to Jerusalem to set his gospel before the apostles for their approval is arguably the single most important event in the entire life and ministry of Paul.

Verse 6 - And . . . those . . . who seemed to be influential added nothing to me - Paul sets his gospel message before the apostles Peter, James, and John (At least. See v 9), and they are satisfied with it.  They do not insist on revising it, they don't add anything to it or take away anything from it.  Paul's gospel meets with apostolic approval because what he preaches is the same thing they preach.

This only makes sense.  Why would Peter, preaching to the Jews, insist upon circumcision and obeying the Law of Moses for salvation?  That has never entered into his thinking!  It is a non-issue among the Jews because they are ALL circumcised already.  And the very reason why the gospel is such good news is because the Jews have already proven they cannot keep the Law of Moses.  That much should be clear!

Now that Paul lays before them his gospel message which contains nothing about circumcision and nothing about keeping the Law for salvation, the apostles see no reason for him to change his message.  "Keep on preaching what you've been preaching!"  The gospel plus nothing!

Verse 7 - when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised There are only a few, thankfully, (i.e. Ultra-Dispensationalists) who think this verse teaches the preaching of two gospels: One for Jews and another for Gentiles. It should be obvious this is not the case.  Peter and Paul preach the same gospel to two different groups of people.  They have both been entrusted in the same manner with the gospel.  Paul has just finished stating in chapter one (vs 6-9) that anyone who preaches any gospel other than the one he preaches is accursed.  That includes Peter.  Because there is only one gospel, and both Peter and Paul have been entrusted with it by God.

But now it is evident to all that God has chosen to send Paul to minister among the Gentiles and Peter to the Jews.  It seems both men are missionaries to their own people groups, the only two people groups in the world from a Jewish perspective: Jews and everybody else.  Peter will go to the Jews, Paul to all the others.  But they both go preaching THE gospel.

God gives different people different ministries.  Notice that it does not say Peter and all the other apostles were called by God and entrusted with the gospel to the Jews.  Of course, they all ministered to the Jewish community.  Of course all the apostles preached the gospel.  But Peter is singled out as having received a peculiar calling from God as a missionary/evangelist to the Jewish nation.  The first 12 chapters of Acts bear that out because much of what is in those chapters focuses on him and his ministry.  He is mentioned by name 54 times in the book of Acts, but only once after chapter 12, and not at all in chapters 6 and 7 which tell the account of the martyrdom of Stephen.  But that seems to be the evidence of having been called of the Lord Jesus to ”feed My lambs”, ”tend My sheep” “feed My sheep”.

Verse 8 - (for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles) - The same Spirit that worked in the apostle Peter worked in Paul.  That is the whole point Paul is trying to make to the Galatians: Peter and I are in agreement, we preach the same thing, we were called to our ministries by the same Spirit, we were entrusted to preach the same gospel message.  My apostleship is no different than, and not inferior to Peter's or the other apostles' in any way.

Verse 9 - and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars - Paul has presented his case for salvation by grace alone to a gathering of people whom he refers to twice as those who seemed influential.  But within that group are the apostles James, Peter, and John.  So as not to exalt these men in the eyes of the Galatians or to give them occasion to become proud, Paul simply says they seemed to be pillars within that gathering of influential people.

This is his first mention of anyone at that council by name although it is no surprise that these three men should be there.  And for Paul to say they seemed to be pillars seems to be an attempt to intentionally downplay their importance specifically because these men are the very men with whom Paul is being compared and contrasted by the Judaizers.

. . . perceived the grace that was given to me -  How do we perceive in a person that God has granted grace to believe and understand the true gospel?  By their own testimony and by the testimony of others.  Paul presented what he preached, and Barnabas and Titus were character witnesses to the genuineness of Paul's life.  He not only talked the talk, but he walked the walk.

The saving grace of God is perceptible in a man.  Not infallibly.  But it is hard to fake the real thing for very long.  Paul had been preaching and living among the Gentiles for 14 years.  Over the course of time, as they listened to his words and watched his life, they saw in him a genuine work of grace.

Also notice he says grace that was given to me.  It was grace granted, not grace earned.  How does a persecutor of the Lord Jesus earn the grace of God?  He doesn’t.  Neither does anyone else.  On the contrary, God chose to grant this grace to him in spite of the miserable person he was.  And God’s grace was abundant toward him.  It was perceptible in his life.

they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me - The ESV Study Bible says, “Significantly, these “pillars” had given the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and Paul, signifying that they approved the message of the gospel as preached by Paul as well as his ministry to the Gentiles.  Thus they validated Paul's apostleship by putting him on an equal footing with these other apostles in Jerusalem.  This is significant, because it shows that neither Paul nor the Jerusalem apostles had to change their gospel message, but they were fully in agreement, and this “right hand of fellowship” gave clear expression to that agreement.

that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised - This is the agreement between the church in Jerusalem and the church in Antioch, sealed with a handshake.  They have agreed to work together for the gospel, and they are in complete agreement as to what that gospel is.  It does not include works of the law.  The gospel that all the apostles, including Paul, had been preaching and would continue to preach is that salvation is by grace, not works.  And the Judaizers lose this theological fight big time.

Then he ends with this simple statement in verse 10: Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. This former murderer of Christians now is eager to assist the poor, yet another sign of the grace of God in his life.

After going over these fundamental truths with you yet again, I need to ask a question of you: Are you able to explain the gospel?  Do you understand all of this well enough to defend it?  Because it is my job as your pastor/teacher, according to Ephesians, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ. (Ephesians 4:12 ESV).  That is why every week we go verse by verse, line by line through the word of God.  Because it is here that we are outfitted for the task of sharing the gospel with the lost, and we’re trained to teach and admonish and encourage each other.

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.