NT Doctrine — Galatians 2

Paul continues the narrative of his dealings with the original Hebrew Apostles and the community they led in Jerusalem. After some 14 years of working without them in Syrian Antioch, the Lord commanded him to return visit Jerusalem again. We can be sure the Lord foresaw the conflict about to arise, and wanted Paul to be certain in his own mind that it was bogus. He took with him Barnabas (the Cyprian Jew who came to Christ) and Titus (a Gentile convert).

Paul conferred in a private meeting with the church leadership. They were all satisfied that what Paul had been teaching all along was consistent with how they remembered the message of Jesus. While there, no one pressured Titus to hide his Gentile background. They recognized Titus as a fellow follower of Christ just as he was.

Paul comes back to the current dispute behind this letter. Near as we can tell, the Judaizers who came up from Jerusalem to Syrian Antioch were mostly genuine Christian converts. Their emphasis was that Jesus was the Messiah of Israel. The bunch who spread out across Galatia were dominated by fake converts seeking to restore not just Moses, but the Talmud. They had piggybacked with the real converts who were already causing enough trouble. Paul describes this latter group as seeking to enslave both Hebrew and Gentile coverts under Jewish civil law, not Moses. This was a form of espionage, a purely political operation that aimed to expand the Jewish tax base, among other things.

In other words, Paul claims these agents knew they were lying about what Jesus had taught. And as soon as Paul spotted them, he made a very public denunciation that the rest of the community in Antioch supported. Keep in mind that Jesus treated the Talmud as valid Jewish civil law, but not a valid expression of Moses. Paul noted the same distinction in how he dealt with Jewish persecution.

Backing up again to that private meeting in Jerusalem, Paul noted that it didn’t matter who was who. This was all about the gospel message, not persons claiming leadership. As it was, they could not add anything because Paul had left out nothing essential. They recognized Paul as having been with Jesus on different terms. They clearly understood that Paul had been commissioned by the Lord to take the gospel to Gentiles, equal to Peter’s commission to the Hebrews. Paul notes that this conference included James (Jesus’ brother), as well as Peter and John (Jesus’ cousins). When they mentioned how important it was to engage in charity among the poor, that was nothing new to Paul.

Thus, Paul was their equal in their own eyes. And he did not hesitate to call them out when they were wrong. Later on, when Peter came to visit a while in Syrian Antioch, the Hebrew Apostle that had been first to visit in a Gentile home and share the gospel some years before, he naturally ate with Gentiles, too. Such mixing was forbidden by the Talmud, but that was a misreading of Moses. Still, it was ingrained in Jews as a mental reflex. When a delegation from James came up to get a feel for the ministry there in Antioch, Peter seemed to be taken with a false guilt about mixing with Gentiles, and began to withdraw socially, and pressured others, to the point even Barnabas was sucked into it.

I’m willing to bet Paul used humor with Peter in pointing out the hypocrisy. Here was Peter, who for some years had obeyed the Covenant of Christ and neglected the Talmud, to the point he almost lived like a Gentile himself, and he’s going to be aloof from Gentiles because they didn’t adhere to Jewish civil law?

For the Galatian churches, Paul recounted his reasoning on the matter. Jews were born under the Covenant of Moses. Even the rabbinical traditions recognized that merely fulfilling the external obligations of Moses did not bring peace with God. They recited daily about the necessity of personal feudal submission to God. Thus, Jews should be the first to recognize that the sacrifice of their Messiah was necessary to wash away their sins; He was the only one who had standing to claim a pure life. So, having once claimed Him as their Messiah and King, how can they renege on their allegiance to His Law by go back to the Law that died on the Cross with Him?

The national identity of Israel as God’s people ended at the Cross. That identity was translated into a spiritual kingdom, whose King is Jesus. To follow Jesus meant renouncing that old national identity. How could Paul go back to building up the failed nation of Israel, as if to take it all back from the Messiah’s hands? It is tantamount to rejecting the Father’s policy in His Son of reaching the whole world without dragging Gentiles under the Law of Moses.

As a Jew, Paul followed Christ through the completion of the Law. There was nothing left for the Covenant of Moses to accomplish. Jesus paid the ultimate price to finish it. His new identity was in the Messiah, so that means following Him to the Cross, and burying his old Jewish identity. But he was also resurrected with Christ to a new identity. Now he lives by personal commitment to Jesus as Lord, allowing Him to use his body and manifest Himself anew. Christians are His body now; He shows Himself in their lives, having bought them by His own blood.

The key is ditching one’s human identity, whether Jew or Gentile. The Kingdom of Heaven is a wholly different kind of identity that transcends all of that. Paul’s Jewish birthright did not include divine grace; it simply opened the door for it. Having gone through that door into God’s grace, it would be sheer folly to back out now. It would mean Christ died for nothing. Trying to reassert the Jewish identity was backing out of God’s grace available only in His Son.

The Judaizers among the Galatian churches were trying to drag everyone back into a Jewish national identity, out of divine grace.