Tuesday, August 11 –
It’s
Tuesday in our reading thru the New Testament.
We are reading through the book of Galatians and will be done by the
weekend. Today we read Galatians 2:1 –
21. After you’ve finished with the text,
I invite you to come back here to gain some more benefit from your reading.
Paul had plenty of detractors. Even
though the Council in Jerusalem (Acts 15) had ruled that there would be nothing
more added to faith in Christ for the Gentiles, many of the Jewish believers
didn’t like it. They were ready to
receive Christ Jesus as the Messiah, but they were not prepared to be in a
Gentile/Jewish church. Paul had spent a
great deal of time defending the singularity of the Gospel message – that
believing in Jesus Christ is an act of God’s Grace and the gift of Faith he
gives to us. Then he reminds them that
he received the Gospel as a direct revelation from Jesus Christ. Thus, there is no other Gospel. To make sure no one could say he invented it
or received it from someone else, he recounts his conversion, then his call by
God to be an Apostle, and his subsequent years away from Jerusalem. Now in chapter two, he continues to make a
case for how he received the Gospel message and what it meant to him in terms
of dealing with both Jews and Gentiles.
After fourteen
years, and the first missionary journey completed, Paul, Barnabas, and Titus –
who was a Gentile convert – went to Jerusalem to stand in front of a council of
leaders. He had lived for almost ten
years first in Tarsus, his home town, and then in Antioch, where he had gone at
the request of Barnabas to help the young church (Acts 11:25-26). Remember, it was the Apostle Peter who had received
the revelation about the inclusion of the Gentiles into the faith of the Gospel
(Acts 10), and not Paul. Paul witnessed
the Gentile converts for the first time in Antioch. It was a visit by a prophet, and a revelation
by God to Paul, that caused Barnabas and Paul to return to Jerusalem – “Now
at this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them
named Agabus stood up and began to indicate by the Spirit that there would
certainly be a great famine all over the world. And this took place in the
reign of Claudius. And in the proportion that any of the disciples had means,
each of them determined to send a contribution for the relief of the brethren
living in Judea. And this they did, sending it in charge of Barnabas and Saul
to the elders” (Acts 11:27-30).
Paul
uses this as a reference point to continue the narration concerning the source
of the Gospel – “Then after fourteen years, I went up again to Jerusalem
with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. I went up because of a
revelation and set before them (though privately before those who seemed
influential) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make
sure I was not running or had not run in vain. But even Titus, who was
with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek” (2:1-3). Then in 2:4 – 10, Paul confirms that the
leaders in Jerusalem fully supported both the work they were doing and the
message they were proclaiming. They “gave
the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles...”
(2:9b). Yet he also makes it clear, certain
people were “false brothers...who spied on Paul and the Gentiles, that they
might bring them into slavery – to them, we did not yield in submission even
for a moment so that the truth of the Gospel might be preserved for you” (2:4-5). These “false brothers” knew the decision
of the Council in Jerusalem, but they didn’t accept it, and therefore, sought
to undermine it. Grace is the means by which
a person comes to faith in Jesus Christ.
They wanted to add layers of works, chiefly in circumcision, but also concerning
dietary laws and festivals. If they had
succeeded, the Gospel would be reduced to a re-worked version of the Old
Covenant and not a New Covenant.
Paul
recalls Peter’s visit to Antioch, and how Peter had hypocritically first eaten
with Gentiles, and then later, when other Jewish leaders arrived, separated
himself – “fearing the circumcision party” (2:13). It was peer pressure,
pure and simple, that caused Peter to withdraw. He didn’t want to get into an argument with
these so-called brothers, and he didn’t want to defend the need to embrace the
Gentiles as part of the church. This
incident that followed created no small problem, for it had to do with whether the
Gospel was to be understood as truth for the entire church, or only a small
sect of it. Paul rebuked Peter for acting differently from
the faith he had affirmed in Jerusalem.
Peter may be a church leader – an Apostle no less – but neither he, nor
even a supposed angel (1:8), may change the message of the Gospel. It is not Paul’s Gospel, and it is not Peter’s
Gospel, and it is not Jerusalem’s Gospel – it is God’s Gospel.
No one
likes looking in at family disputes, but this encounter and rebuke of Peter is
a foundational issue of what happens when a person comes to faith in
Christ. Peter’s actions were directly
counter to the truth of the doctrine. The
principle is – for me – very significant.
As a Pastor, who is charged with preaching the Gospel, and proclaiming
the word of God, there is no compromise with any other teaching. The Gospel is right for every person, for all
cultures, and all ages. If Paul had not
acted, publicly no less, the church would have divided and split in two – a Jewish
Christian church and a Gentile Christian church, and we can be sure, neither
side would have accepted the other. Paul’s
response is startling, given Peter’s status, but his opposition to Peter was
both “to his face” (2:11) and, “before them all” (2:14). It had to be, and sadly, it is not done in
our churches today. John Stott put it
this way:
“It was one thing for the Jerusalem leaders to give their approval to the
conversion of the Gentiles, but could they approve of … commitment to the
Messiah without inclusion in Judaism? Was their vision big enough to see the
gospel of Christ not as a reform movement within Judaism but as good news for
the whole world, and the church of Christ … as the international family of
God?”
Paul,
now, draws a line in the sand. From 2:15
– 21, he sets for the theological (God ordered) propositions of the Gospel
message. What is the Gospel message? “... we know that a person is not
justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also
have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and
not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified”
(2:16). If we do not have this down,
we are in serious trouble. I say that
because a recent report of evangelicals in America demonstrates that over 50%
of Christians say they believe their good works are necessary and contribute
to their salvation![1] Paul is consistent in 2:16, with what he was
to write in Romans 3:21 – 28. Those who
oppose the Gospel of Grace through Faith in Jesus Christ have devised “other
gospels” down through the centuries. It
was a gospel of works that lead Martin Luther to issue 95 Theses to challenge
the Catholic Church, and it eventually led to the Reformation. There are no “other gospels” – “...we know that a person is not justified
by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have
believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not
by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified” (2:16).
Reading verses 2:17 – 19 can make us turn our head and go “huh”? Paul is answering a charge that the Gospel he
preaches leads people to embrace a sinful lifestyle. Eugene Peterson’s translation of these verses
is helpful for understanding – “Have some of you noticed that we are not yet
perfect? (No great surprise, right?) And are you ready to make the accusation
that since people like me, who go through Christ in order to get things right
with God, aren't perfectly virtuous, Christ must therefore be an accessory to
sin? The accusation is frivolous. If I was ‘trying to be good,’ I would
be rebuilding the same old barn that I tore down. I would be acting as a
charlatan. What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and
working my head off to please God, and it didn't work. So I quit being a ‘law-man’
so that I could be God’s man” (2:17-19).
Does Grace permit us to disobey God?
Never. Yet, the solution is not
in trying to obey the Law to earn Grace – that is reversing the order. We receive Grace to deal with our inherent sinfulness,
and then in receiving Christ’s righteousness, and the gift of the Holy Spirit,
we have the ability to obey, and do so, to demonstrate our love for God.
What
follows is the “Exchanged Life” – “For through the law, I died to the law so
that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ, and I no
longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by
faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not
set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the
law, Christ died for nothing!” (2:19-21). At age twenty, I confessed my Sinfulness
to Christ Jesus, asking him to forgive me of my sins, and asked him to be my
Savior and Lord. I was crucified with
Christ, but I’m not dead; instead, I’m very much alive because Christ Jesus
lives in me, and the life I discovered is lived by faith in Christ – day by
day. Jesus loved me, died for me, gave
his life for me, and it was all due to God’s Grace. If it is any other way...works, earning,
being good, then Christ died for nothing!
We all
experience doubts when it comes to grace, faith, living for Christ. Peter did too. Our hypocritical actions are embarrassing to
ourselves, and often expose our weaknesses of the flesh. Living in the Grace of the Gospel is freeing
when we realize Jesus died for my Sin – why in the world would I try to hide it
inside? Hypocrisy makes cowards of us,
and the truth of the Gospel at work in us humbles us and reminds us, there is
only one way to God, and that is through Jesus Christ. Our greatest need – because we all are sinners
– is Justification before God. That
cannot happen by works but only happens through faith in Christ Jesus’ finished
work on the cross. Martin Luther said it
like this – “I must hearken to the Gospel, which teacheth me, not what I
ought to do (for that is the proper office of the Law), but what Jesus Christ
the Son of God hath done for me: to wit, that he suffered and died to deliver
me from sin and death.”[2]
The greatest gift is mine, not because I deserve it, but because God gave
it to me through His Son.
[1]
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/survey-a-majority-of-american-christians-dont-believe-the-gospel/
[2]
Martin Luther, Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, page 101. Lectures he delivered in 1531 (James Clarke,
1953)
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