Galatians 2

Galatians 2:1-21

Subdivision 2. (Galatians 2:1-21.)Confirmation, spite of opposition. The apostle goes on now to the history of his after-communications with those who were apostles before him, and to show that while they added nothing to him in the matter of testimony, they themselves did in the fullest way confirm the reality of that apostleship which he independently received.

1. He did not go up again to Jerusalem till fourteen years had elapsed, during which much work had been done amongst the Gentiles, and Titus accompanying himself and Barnabas was the fruit of that work. The time at which he went up was that when there had been raised at Antioch itself a question of the character of this new gospel to the Gentiles. We have had the history of it already in the fifteenth of Acts. Paul and Barnabas, as we find there, were sent with the full concurrence of the brethren at Antioch, to settle once for all this matter which was agitating them; but, as he tells us here, even in this case, he did not go up as yielding merely to the solicitation of others, but by express revelation from God. The time had come, in fact, when if there was not to be an open breach, there must be the manifestation of an agreement between those who were the leaders at Jerusalem, the central place for Judaism, and those who were preaching the new gospel.

He went up accordingly and communicated to them the gospel that he was preaching; first of all, (on account of the height to which the opposition ran,) “privately to those who were of reputation,” lest the outbreak of the legalism which was carrying the multitude should work disaster among those who had been gathered out among; the Gentiles. This is what he means evidently by saying that he did this, “lest he should run or had run in vain:” There was no yielding to the opposition in the slightest degree.

Titus was with him, a Greek, yet in fullest Christian fellowship, and without being circumcised. Already he speaks of false brethren who had been unawares brought in, who were seeking to bring into bondage Christ’s free men. Christianity, in fact, at Jerusalem was at present so little more than a Jewish sect that we can readily understand how open would be the door for men of this class to flock into it. The apostle withstands them, not giving place, as he says “for an hour.” It might seem to others to be a small matter, that for which he was contending. With him it involved the whole truth of the gospel. The success was manifest.

In conference he found that “those who seemed to be somewhat” had nothing to communicate to him but, on the other hand, recognized that to him God had, in fact, committed the gospel of the uncircumcision just as truly as to Peter he had given that of the circumcision. The same mighty power in signs and wonders accompanied his work amongst the Gentiles as that which had manifested itself in Peter among the circumcision; and those who seemed to be pillars, (whom he now names, as James, Cephas and John,) perceived the grace that was given to him.

They gave then to him and to Barnabas “the right hand of fellowship”; not simply as Christian brethren, but that they should go to the Gentiles, as they themselves remained as ministers to the circumcision. They only stipulate that the poor should be remembered; a testimony, as it seems, as to the character of those who were being reached by the gospel in Israel; and we find, accordingly, Paul zealous afterwards to bring to these the offerings of the Gentiles. 2. Such then had been the confirmation given him; but he now goes further and shows that upon an after occasion at Antioch, he had had to withstand Peter himself and that as blameworthy. He had been with them in the unrestricted liberty of Christianity, eating with the Gentiles. A change was induced by the coming of some from James. We see how firmly the Judaizing character still remained with many of these. And when they were come, Peter withdrew and separated himself, not from any conviction of error on his part, but simply as giving way, as Paul had not given way, to the opposition which he feared. Such an example in such a place soon worked disastrously. The other Jews, apparently the mass of those there, dissembled likewise with him.

It was not, as we see again, conviction, but retrograde movement in spite of their convictions; and this went so far that Barnabas, the companion of Paul himself; was carried away with this dissimulation. The power of God to resist this movement was found with Paul alone. He saw that they “walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel;” and singling out Peter, not now for private conference, but in the presence of them all, (for Peter needed not to be convinced but convicted,) he said to him: “If thou being a Jew livest after the manner of Gentiles,” as he had been doing, “and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou now the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?” Necessarily they were doing that if they were making circumcision a necessity for the Jews to have fellowship with them. He appeals to the character of Judaism in itself in opposition to this. What had they themselves who were Jews by nature done with regard to this? They were not sinners of the Gentiles, yet -he could speak for himself fully, as we know, as the most zealous of law-keepers, -yet they knew that a man was not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ.

They had given up, therefore, the one for the other. They had believed in Christ to be justified by the faith of Christ; because by the works of the law could no flesh be justified.

Judaism had thus been given up: for men could not take up the law as they pleased, as a rule of life, as people say sometimes, but not as a rule of judgment. They had to take it for that for which God gave it, and a rule of judgment it necessarily was if it was to answer the purpose for which He gave it. If then they had renounced the law in order to be justified by Christ, and had found justification in this way, could it at the same time be sin to renounce it; and had Christ become the minister of sin in this matter of their justification? To build again the things destroyed was to make themselves transgressors in having destroyed them. The law either existed for them or it did not exist. We see that he goes much further than applying it or not to Gentiles; and carries to its full result the principle of the decision at Jerusalem, which went beyond the decision itself.

He himself through the law had become dead to the law, and that be might live to God. The whole Christian life, therefore, was involved in this.

The epistle to the Romans has made us fully acquainted with the argument here. The law itself, through Christ bearing its penalty for them, had, as it were, affirmed their death to it. He was crucified with Christ, with Him who, as he says afterwards, had borne the curse of the law, its extremest penalty, beyond which it had no claim at all. Thus he was free. Dead with Christ, it was to live, and he lived; yet not, so to speak, himself. The Christ who had been upon the cross for him, who was now in heaven, had won him for Himself, that Christ who henceforth in the glorious reality of what he saw Him to be, lived in him.

It was more than Christ being his life: Christ was his true self, the aim and object of his life from henceforth; for the life which he lived in the flesh, he lived now in the faith of the Son of God who, in the wonder of His perfect grace, had loved and given Himself for him. Would they put Christ under the law also?

Alas, some would and do even today. For the apostle, it was far otherwise. The law, if it remained now for him, would be simply the destruction of all the value of Christ’s death for him. If righteousness came by the law, that death of Christ was null and void. Thus it is plain that the question of the law as a possible rule of life for the Christian is settled by the apostle’s words here. God never made it that. It is manifest that even as a rule, if it were, -nay, just because it was -the perfect rule for the Jew, if the Christian be anything different, anything higher than a Jew, the Jew’s rule could not give to his walk its Christian character. Instead of being too high for Christian attainment as a standard, it is all too low.

In fact, there is nothing of the heavenly side of Christianity expressed in the law at all. It is the man in the flesh over whom the law has dominion; and, as we have seen elsewhere, the sphere of law is thus altogether this side of death, and not beyond it. The Christian is, through grace, beyond it. Death and judgment are behind him, not before him. He belongs to another sphere; and though upon earth, he is, nevertheless, the man in Christ, to live and walk as that. It is plain that Peter, in pursuing the course he did, had no thought whatever to be in conflict with the truth of justification before God.

He simply adopted the law for the moment as a rule of life, but the apostle makes it a question of the whole gospel. He has no thought of the possibility of its being a mere rule of conduct.

God meant it to raise the question of righteousness before Him. “The man that doeth these things shall live by them” was, in regard to it, the whole matter.