EPISODE 73 GALATIANS CHAPTER 2 "A Time For Boldness"

In Galatians 2, the fireworks continue as we focus on the understanding that in the doctrine of justification by faith alone, we are made right with God only through faith in Jesus. This is front and center, and when even the apostle Peter wavers on this for a moment, Paul calls him out on it. Let's listen. Galatians chapter 2: A Time for Boldness. Last lesson, we were discussing a group of false teachers that were a problem in early Christianity. They're often called the Judaizers.

These men decided it was their job to change up Christianity to fit their comfort zone, I guess you could say. They'd gone to Galatia after Paul and Barnabas' time there, intentionally to try and change what the apostles had taught about the gospel. They told the young Galatian believers that what Paul and Barnabas had shared with them was only part of the message they should hear. What it means to be a Christian was more than that, so they wanted to tell them the rest of the story. Hearing about that, Paul fired off this letter we call Galatians, and as we saw in chapter 1, he called what they spread around in the Galatian churches no gospel at all. They took the good news out of God's grace, out of the gospel, and made it into something people must earn by trying to obey laws.

Paul said such false teachers should be judged and sent to hell, as far as he was concerned. Anyone messing with the content of the gospel message, that it's a free gift offered to all who will believe into Jesus and what he's done for us on the cross, anyone changing that up in any way, Paul was going to go after hard. I remember when I was a kid, my dad, who was a pastor, hired his first assistant because our church was growing. And that summer, when we took our two-week family vacation, he left this young man in charge, meaning, among other things, he spoke at all the regular services during that span. Believe it or not, he took the opportunity to tell something of a different story to the congregation, like, Pastor Nitz has told you some of the truth, but let me tell you what I have learned that is essential for you to believe beyond that.

And he preached a different gospel of sorts, urging people in our church to adopt his views. Can you imagine the audacity it would take for someone in his position to do that? And can you imagine my dad's reaction when we got home from vacation and he learned that had been going on, that some people in our church were very confused by it? He was astonished. He was shocked. The same exact reaction the Apostle Paul had when he learned that this had happened in Galatia.

He was stunned, and he was angry. And this letter we call Galatians was written from exactly that mindset. Here in chapter 2, he goes into some detail about why the Judaizers were dead wrong. He tells these early Gentile Christians that the ideas the false apostles from Jerusalem had tried to impress on them had already been discussed and already been settled among the real apostles of Jesus. He mentioned that Titus, whom we can assume was a believer from Galatia, had actually been along with him and Barnabas at that meeting that we talked about from Acts chapter 15. We discussed that important get-together called the Jerusalem Council.

Paul said he was impressed by God that he should request that meeting of the minds because he, in his words, wanted to be sure he was not running or had run in vain. That's his terminology here. It's a metaphor. He often compared his calling to carry the gospel to the Gentiles, his whole ministry as a missionary and church planter, to a race, like a marathon. That's the way he must have personally thought about it. It was that kind of emotional and spiritual and even physical challenge.

It was grueling. It was nothing like a short sprint. For him, it was a lifetime commitment. So he writes here that they went up to Jerusalem to be sure those who were apostles before him were going to back up what he and Barnabas had been out preaching and teaching among the Gentiles. What happened at that meeting was that people in the early church in Jerusalem, who held the same view as the Judaizers, possibly some of the very same people who had gone to Galatia, made their case trying to persuade the apostles that Christianity needed to develop as more or less a new and improved form of Judaism. They insisted that believers in Jesus among the Gentiles still needed to keep the Old Testament laws.

But Paul's vigorous defense of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus, apart from law keeping, won the day. The other leaders there, and he names Peter, James, who was Jesus' half-brother, and John, who he calls the pillars, all agreed that the Judaizers' view and message was wrong. Paul says at the end of that meeting, the leading apostles in Jerusalem gave to Barnabas and he the right hand of fellowship. More than a we got a deal handshake, it meant, We recognize you as our equals and as authority in the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ, and we affirm that what you have been teaching is the true gospel of Christ. Now you'd think that that would have settled the matter, right? But no.

The Judaizers obviously did not take that for a final answer, and so here we are. The next thing Paul writes about here in chapter 2 might surprise you, but it shows just how serious a problem this kind of thinking started to be in the early church, that Christianity was sort of a new and improved Judaism rather than something new that God was doing. Confession: I'm by nature a pretty non-confrontational person. I don't like tension at all, and I never create it unless I feel I absolutely have to. It takes a lot of courage to confront other people and a willingness to deal with the tension and fallout that may follow, especially if it's someone regarded as more important than you, like, say, confronting a boss at work over something you feel they need called out for, or an officer with a higher rank than you in the military.

Sometimes egregious situations go on and on, even in the national level in my country, when politicians are so afraid of someone's clout and influence, they will not call them out even over the most glaring problems in their actions or character. It's unusual to find a person who feels confident enough to call out someone who is perceived by others as over them or higher than them, more important than them. I remember once when I was a young pastor, I did something I guess questionable, just not the right thing for somebody in my job to do, and a guy who was a young believer in our church, older than me but a young Christian, someone who had recently come to faith, pulled me aside and said, Hey, I think you're making a mistake here. I think you need to change course on this. I remember my first thought was, Wow, I'm surprised this guy would question me like that.

But my second thought was, He's right. I was wrong. I should not have done that or said that. A lot of unfortunate stuff goes on, in many cases actually sometimes very important things, and they're not confronted because the authority figure seems above us, too far above us, and we can't challenge them, so they go unchallenged with serious consequences. But don't count the apostle Paul among the timid when it comes to something important. Starting at verse 11, he recalls a situation for the Galatian believers, an earlier time when he had to confront the very same issue they were being confused by.

Some years before, back at his home church in Antioch, Syria, that rapidly growing congregation where he, along with Barnabas and a few others, were leaders, he says the apostle Peter himself came up from Jerusalem to see all that was going on there. Remember, this was the first church where Gentiles and Jewish believers worshipped side by side in equality, in unity. By the way, he calls him Cephas here. That's a nickname that Jesus had given to Peter. But make no mistake, Paul is writing about the apostle Peter, who not only was one of Jesus' original disciples, but often seen as the leader of them. So the apostle Peter arrived in Antioch to see for himself if what he'd heard about the amazing progress of the gospel in that Gentile city was really true.

And apparently, Peter was enthralled by the freedom and equality expressed among the believers there. Although having always himself lived as a strict Jew in a very strict environment back in Israel, he sensed that this new freedom in Christ being experienced among the growing church family in Antioch was a good thing, was a God thing. It was the fulfillment of what Jesus envisioned when he told his apostles to take the gospel to the whole world. Until, until, Paul says, a group of Jews from Jerusalem arrived after him, men of the same mindset as those who had gone to Galatia. And they were like, Peter, what in the world are you doing? You're not keeping the laws and the customs.

This is not like you at all. Have you forgotten who you are and where you come from? And Peter was cowed by them. He didn't want their disapproval. He didn't want them taking questions about him back to Jerusalem, telling everyone there that he was not living like a good Jew. And he started, Paul says, withdrawing from the things he'd been participating in with the Gentile believers.

Then, following Peter's lead, so did other Jews in that church because of his bad example. Oh man, why did this problem need to come up when things were going so well? Honestly, the answer is because Satan is always trying to stymie the progress of the gospel, especially when it's going well. Constant spiritual warfare is always being waged in the spiritual realm that we can't see. The same evil spirits that prompted those guys to go up to Antioch and wrongly influence Peter there are the same evil influencers that had prompted the Judaizers to go up to Galatia and influence people there. Paul knew this, and that's why he is bringing this instance up as an example.

He even says that Peter and the others' wrong attitudes in Antioch were starting to get to his ministry partner, Barnabas. Man, a lot was at stake at this point in those early days of Christianity's development, and Paul clearly sensed that. Amazingly, he was just bold enough to call Peter out in a public setting. This man who had been with Jesus, who was revered by everyone, Paul had the courage to confront him. Wait a minute, you're acting hypocritically here, Peter. Before these people arrived from Jerusalem, you were all about equality and unity.

You worshipped and ate with and fellowshipped with the Gentile believers here. But now that these guys show up, you're going to withdraw? You're going to act differently? You're going to act superior? You know that's wrong. You're creating a division in the body of Christ and misleading others, and it needs to stop.

Wow, Paul was very bold, but Peter was very wrong. There was a critical question at stake, the same question Paul is writing to the Galatians about that has now arisen in their church. That is, is salvation by grace through faith in Jesus, or must Christians also try and keep the laws and so save themselves by their own obedience? Peter knew the answer to that, yet he acted wrongly so as not to be accepted by those Judaizers from Jerusalem. He knew good and well there should be no division between Jew and Gentile in this new thing God was building called the church. He knew good and well that salvation was on the basis of grace.

Remember the vision of the sheet of unclean animals coming down from heaven? Remember what he'd experienced at Cornelius's house when God gave them the Holy Spirit, those Gentiles there, just as he had to the Jews before them. Paul was not going to allow Peter's bad example to stand. This was a very dangerous moment for the early Christian church, considering who Peter was. Although it doesn't say here in our chapter that Peter got down and said, Oh, I've been so wrong, and humbled himself, he knew that Paul was right. And we know that he knew that again from Acts chapter 15, which happened shortly after this, when that whole question of Jewish and Gentile equality came to the fore.

Because on that occasion, Peter admitted that Paul was right. All the leading apostles there concurred that Paul had been right. Gentiles do not have to live under Old Testament Jewish laws to be right with God, and Jews are not superior in any way in the body of Christ. We are one body with one faith and one Lord. In the rest of this chapter, which is a closely reasoned argument by the Apostle Paul, he is driving home the truth that when it comes to the all-important question of what causes a person to be saved, what causes God to justify us in His sight, nothing can be added to faith in Christ as Savior and Lord. In the immediate context here, because of the Judaizers' prominence during the early stage of Christianity's development, the specific question in focus was, Is the Old Testament law something we must keep to add to Jesus' work on the cross for us?

Or was Jesus' work on the cross for us enough? And Paul, writing under the influence of the Holy Spirit, answers that question emphatically. For them and for all of us who are going to read Galatians in the centuries to follow, starting at verse 16, he says, A person is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ, since by the works of the law no one can be justified. For if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died needlessly. He couldn't be any clearer. No one could ever be made right with God by keeping laws, even by keeping God's laws laid down for the nation of Israel in the Old Testament.

If they could have been, then Jesus suffered and died needlessly. Let that sink in. If people could have ever been saved by their performance, through their efforts at being obedient to God's laws, if we could ever be good enough, then Jesus died needlessly. The truth is, he came and died to become our Savior precisely because no one is good enough before God in their own efforts. No one, even not the best of us, keep God's laws perfectly enough to be righteous before a holy God. This is not just an issue that needed cleared up in 50 A.D.

As we mentioned last lesson, there have always been and still are false teachers coming along who tell whoever will listen to them that things that they choose will be necessary to add on to the gospel, telling their followers they must observe or adhere to this or that if they want to have the hope of God's approval and be saved. Then those things, wrongly, become the earmarks of their movement or their denomination. But when they do this, they are every bit as wrong as these Judaizers who Paul is calling out here in Galatians. To be sure we're clear on this critically important point, I wanted you to listen to an excerpt from an article I found in The History of Christian Theology. From 1510 to 1520, Martin Luther, the Roman Catholic monk at the time, lectured on the Psalms, the Book of Hebrews, Romans, and Galatians at a university in Wittenberg, Germany.

As he studied these same portions of the Bible that we're looking at now, he came to view the use of terms such as penance and righteousness differently than he'd been taught them. He became convinced that the Roman Catholic Church, which he was a part of, was not only corrupt in their practices, but had lost sight of what he saw as central truths in the Christian faith, the most important of which, the doctrine of justification, that is, on what basis does God accept sinners. Luther came to understand from Scripture 500 years ago what we are reading in Galatians now, that justification is by faith in Christ alone. And he began to teach that salvation is a gift of God's grace, attainable only through faith in Jesus as the Messiah. This one firm rock, he wrote, which we call the doctrine of justification, is the chief article of Christian faith.

Against the teaching of his day, when the righteous acts of believers were performed, they believed, in cooperation with God, Luther realized that Christians receive righteousness entirely from outside of themselves. Believers' righteousness comes from Christ because we actually receive His righteousness when we accept Him as our Savior. The biblical word for this is imputed. Christ's righteousness is imputed to us, not because we have earned anything, but because of His perfections. That is why faith alone, Luther wrote, makes someone just and fulfills God's law. He further explained his understanding of justification, that is, again, how a person is made right with God, in articles that he wrote in 1537.

Here's an excerpt. The first and chief article is this: Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, died for our sins and was raised again for our justification. He alone is the Lamb of God who can take away the sins of the world. And God laid on Him the iniquity of all of us, for all of us have sinned and are justified freely, without our works and merits, by His grace through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ. Those are quotations, by the way, all of them quotations from the Bible. Luther went on, This is necessary to believe.

Salvation cannot be otherwise acquired or grasped by any work, law, or merit. Therefore, it is clear and certain that faith in Christ alone justifies us. Nothing of this article can be yielded or surrendered, even though heaven and earth and everything else falls. Realize this man, Martin Luther, when he wrote these things, was challenging the teachings of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the Middle Ages of Europe. That was the era of the Inquisition. Talk about boldness.

Luther's clear and vocal reaction against Romanism in the middle of the 16th century, after studying Galatians, was in the same spirit and just as necessary as what the Apostle Paul did in the middle of the first century. They each had the boldness to stand against anyone who would add anything to the simple gospel message that being acceptable to God was only on the basis of believing into Jesus as Lord and Savior. I'm sure Martin Luther, as he studied Paul's writings, including these here in chapter 2 of Galatians, heard the Apostle of Christ through inspired Scripture challenging him to be just as bold as he had been to stand up against the enemies of the cross of Christ, institutional religion of his day, because it was well off track on this most critical point. It was misleading people.

It was confusing people about the most important question in the world: How can a person be made right with Almighty God? Luther, like Paul before him, realized that the doctrine of justification by faith alone, that we are made right with God only through faith in Jesus, is too critical to allow anyone, anyone, to distort or confuse it. You know, I will be honest. I marvel at the boldness and courage of what great Christians like the Apostle Paul and Martin Luther were willing to do. But we shouldn't just marvel at them.

We should be inspired by them, motivated by them, these heroes of the Christian faith in the past, and we should boldly follow their example to defend the gospel of Christ against any false teachers that preach a different version, against anyone who dares add religious laws and sacraments or anything else to the simple and true message of salvation on the basis of God's grace through faith in Christ. Never forget what Paul wrote to the Galatians in chapter 2 here. If righteousness could result from our keeping laws, then Christ died needlessly. This is Paul for Share the Word. Thank you, Paul, for all of your passion and your love for sharing God's Word. If this is your first podcast, let me make a suggestion.

Go back to Galatians 1 and start again from there. And then you may want to go through the book of Acts. No matter where you started, check out the entire archives at ShareTheWord.org. So much insight, so much truth. And here at ShareTheWord.org, we believe that there's no better way to learn the big ideas of the New Testament than chapter by chapter. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.