Galatians 2:6

  • David Fairchild
  • Jun 4, 2006
  • Series: Galatians

Galatians 2:6-14 “And from those who seemed to be influential (what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)--those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me. 7 On the contrary, 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 8 (for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles), 9 and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. 10 Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. 11 But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12 For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. 13 And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. 14 But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, ‘If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?’” 

INTRODUCTION 

This morning we are going to continue looking at the gospel that Paul is clarifying for the churches in Galatia. 

Paul is giving us a very rich and profound theological exposition regarding the gospel, but he’s doing it a narrative form.  He’s telling a story about two visits.  In the beginning of chapter two we are told of Paul’s trip to Jerusalem and in verse 11 we are told of Peter coming to visit Paul in Antioch.  This is significant because Antioch, at this time, would have been the hub of conversion activity to the Gentile world, and of course we know that Jerusalem was the hub of conversion activity to the Jewish world.  It is a sort of tale of two cities, or a tale of two churches—one primarily Jewish and the other primarily Gentile, and how both Paul and Peter were entrusted with the gospel to both groups.   

This passage is filled with important truths about the gospel, and much can be gleaned from what he says about these two visits. 

The first visit: 

Last week we read about Paul taking Barnabas and Titus to Jerusalem to meet the pillars of the church—James, Peter, and John.  The Judaizers were attacking Paul’s gospel, which he received directly from Jesus’ own lips, and Paul’s character.  Paul, wanting nothing to slow the progress of the gospel, goes to Jerusalem to lay the gospel he was preaching to the Gentiles before the leaders of the church so that they might hear it and agree that he was not preaching a false or perverted gospel.  The significance of taking Barnabas and Titus can’t be overstated.  Barnabas was a circumcised Jew who was loved by Paul and a fellow laborer for the gospel to the Gentiles even though he was Jewish.  Titus, was uncircumcised and believed in the same gospel and ministered side by side with Barnabas for the sake of the spread of the gospel.  Titus, being uncircumcised, would have infuriated the circumcision party who were adding to the gospel by claiming that you must trust in Jesus by faith plus keep the ceremonial laws.  By bringing Titus to Jerusalem, Paul was in effect countering the false gospel by showing someone who was an example of the fruit of the gospel that he preached, which was faith in the work Christ plus nothing.  Paul says that the Judaizers wanted to bring those who trusted in the “good news” of the cross and empty tomb into slavery again by laying upon them the burden of keeping laws in order to be accepted by God.   

This meeting between Paul, Peter, James, and John was significant.  We know that Luke was Paul’s companion and author of Luke and Acts (and some say Hebrews).  Luke acted as a secretary of sorts to pen and get out Paul’s message.  Also, we believe that Mark was a companion of Peter, and so in some sense the Gospel according to Mark is an explanation of Peter’s eye witness view of the life of Christ.  This would mean that the gathering of Paul, Peter, James and John was essentially the gathering of the entire New Testament, except for Matthew.  As it relates to doctrine and the important foundations of our faith, you can’t have a more important gathering of Apostles to discuss what we today have come to believe as the gospel.  This is a powerful meeting that would essentially decide what we believe about Christ, grace, and the gospel.   

Acts 15:5 tells us what the conflict was over regarding the gospel and Mosaic law:  “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.’” 

This group assumed that in order to get right with God, one must simply add Christ to all the laws that were being kept by the Jews.  This didn’t end with circumcision, it was also the dietary laws, the clothing laws, and the ceremonial laws so that one could make themselves ceremonially and ritually clean.  It was important that one kept these laws so that they could be clean to worship God.  If you defiled yourself by not keeping these laws, you were considered ritually unclean and would not be allowed to worship God in the Temple or have fellowship with others who were clean.   

You can see why this was so important to the circumcision party.  They saw God as pure and holy, man as sinful and wicked, defiled by nature and action, and in need of cleansing in order to come to God and have community with God’s people.  They strongly fought to ensure that all their labor be “clean” before God and was not diminished, and that they wouldn’t be defiled by others who were not clean.  The message of the gospel Paul was preaching defied their assumptions, and he dared to say that you did not and could not keep these rules and regulations in order to have fellowship with God. 

This has troubled many who have given the Scriptures a cursory reading.  Even for those in the church, it is at times confusing that God would pronounce all these rules and regulations, all these laws and ways to dress, eat, live, work, and have relationships if they aren’t kept today.  In other words, “what’s the point of God going through all the trouble to spell these things out if we don’t have to keep them today?”  These things are in the bible.  It isn’t as if we are talking about some outside opinion commenting on how to come to God; we are talking about Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.  This is God’s word!  Is Paul saying, “we have to keep some parts of the Bible, but not all parts”?   

This is also confusing for those outside of the church.  We know this every time we mention that the Bible has this to say about marriage, sex, or money, and the unbeliever says, “Sure the bible says that, but it also says you can’t mix flax and wool, you can’t eat certain foods, you can’t go to worship if you’ve been menstruating, etc.  Do we keep those rules too?”  There is quite a bit of confusion about these rules inside and outside the church. 

But we need to see the point of Galatians and the point of the New Testament is not to dishonor the ceremonial or moral laws by telling people to ignore them outright.  Paul is not simply ignoring God’s word by telling the Gentiles that they don’t have to be circumcised in order to worship and have fellowship with God.  In fact, the message of the New Testament is the only way we can truly honor these laws because all of these laws point to and are fulfilled in Jesus Christ.   

These laws were never intended to ultimately make us clean.  They were given so that we see we need a Savior in order to be made clean.  The entirety of the Old Testament is one big arrow pointing towards the coming of the Messiah who will keep these laws perfectly and live a life that we could not and earn a perfect righteousness that we could not, in order that by trusting in Jesus’ fulfillment of these laws, we are made clean before God and given cleanliness of Christ, the beauty of Christ, the moral perfections of Christ so that the Father sees us as clean as He sees Jesus, as beautiful as He sees Jesus, and as ceremonially and morally perfect as He sees Jesus, because when He sees us, He sees the righteousness of Jesus upon us and therefore He sees Jesus and is fully pleased.  Galatians 3:24: “Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.” 

The intent of the law is to show us our need.  To show us that we are defiled.  To show us that we are unclean before God.  The show us that our only hope is not to wash ourselves, but that we need to be washed by the only one that truly cleans us inside—Jesus.   

The law is a mirror upon a wall that shows us our filth.  We look at our reflection and see our many imperfections.  Only a fool would see his dirt and take the mirror off of the wall to scrub off the dirt.  No, when we see our dirt, we come to the faucet to be cleansed.  The problem in our culture is that many of us assume we are already clean and don’t need Christ, or at best we see only that we need Christ to fulfill some spiritual longing we have, not to wash away our sin before a perfect and holy God.  It’s like a sheep that looks beautiful and white upon the green grass.  His wool seems so bright and clean when contrasted to that which is darker than him.  But if you were to see this sheep in a field when it began to snow, slowly the dirt and imperfections when contrasted to the brilliant white of the snow would show.  The perfection and purity of the Father, and of the law, which flows from His character, is such that by it we are made aware of our wretchedness and filth.  He is the perfect and brilliant white that causes us to see ourselves in truth and cry out, “Have mercy on me, a sinner!” 

It is one thing for us to see our cultural norms and regulations as something that we participate in and enjoy, it is another to assume they have some religious merit to them.  When we take our cultural rules and make them rules by which we commend ourselves to God or compare ourselves to others, we are dishonoring the very laws of God we assume we are upholding.  When we look to the rules and regulations in Scripture to give us our comfort when we keep them and our insecurity when we don’t, we are not honoring those laws, but rather dishonoring them in the most heinous form.  Why?  Because none of these laws were intended to stand on their own as our ethical and moral norms to win us or to secure our favor with God.  To assume these laws are intended for us to keep so that God will accept us is to totally miss the point of the multitude and variety of them.  The reason they vary and are so many in number is to show us that every area of our life must be in keeping with the perfect character of God.  God will only accept perfection before Him.  The law then is there to show us that we can not keep it to perfection, and even if we began today to do so, it would not cover the sin of our transgressions in time past.  The whole law points to Christ.  The whole of the Old Testament points to Christ.  The whole of redemptive history points to Jesus and finds its fulfillment only in Him.   

The only way to truly honor the ceremonial law is to see its purpose.  The only way to truly honor the moral law is to see its purpose.  Its purpose is to show you your need.  It shows us that we can’t simply waltz in any way we want before God.  It isn’t a “come as your are” party.  In other words, it shows us that we need a righteousness that we don’t possess.  It shows us that we need to be clean, and we are not.  How can a sinful human being enter the presence of a holy God?  This is what the laws were showing us.  They showed us that we can’t just go in any old way.  You have to be holy to come into his presence.  You have to have the robes of righteousness to enter his presence.  All that the law showed, no matter how clean a worshipper was all week long, demonstrated that even when keeping the laws to the best of human ability throughout the week, a blood sacrifice was still needed to be truly clean before God in worship when you went in.  You still needed a sacrifice, an atonement, when you entered into His presence.  If you are complying with the laws and regulations for the reason of commending yourself to God, you are dishonoring the laws you assume you keep.  I could say this ten more times and it wouldn’t be enough.  We have to beat this into our heads.  Christ is the fulfillment and is our righteousness!  Let’s look at what Christ did according to the scriptures: 

All the Scriptures bear witness to Christ. Moses wrote about Christ.

John 5:39, 46: You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me. . . . If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. 

2. All the Scriptures are about Jesus Christ.   All the Scriptures are satisfied only when Christ has come and done his work. The meaning of all the Scriptures is unlocked by the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Luke 24:27: “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” 

3. Jesus came to fulfill all that was written in the Law and the Prophets. All of it was pointing to him even where it is not explicitly prophetic. He accomplishes what the Law required.

Matthew 5:17-18: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” 

4. All the promises of God in the Old Testament are fulfilled in Jesus Christ. 

2 Corinthians 1:20: “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.” 

5. The law was kept perfectly by Christ. And all its penalties against God’s sinful people were poured out on Christ. Therefore, the law is now not the path to true righteousness, Christ is. The ultimate goal of the law is that we would look to Christ, not law-keeping, for our righteousness.

Romans 10:4: “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” 

Therefore with the coming of Christ virtually everything has changed: 

  1. The blood sacrifices ceased because Christ fulfilled all that they were pointing toward. He was the final, unrepeatable sacrifice for sins.

Hebrews 9:12: “He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.”  

  1. The priesthood that stood between worshipper and God has ceased. 

Hebrews 7:23-24: “The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever.”  

  1. The physical temple has ceased to be the geographic center of worship. Now Christ himself is the center of worship. He is the “place,” the “tent,” and the “temple” where we meet God. Therefore Christianity has no geographic center, no Mecca, no Jerusalem.

John 4:21-23: “Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. . . . But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.’”  

John 2:19-21: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. . . . He was speaking about the temple of his body.”  

Matthew 18:20: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”  

  1. The food laws that set Israel apart from the nations have been fulfilled and ended in Christ.

Mark 7:18-19: “[Jesus] said to them, ‘Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him . . . (He declared all foods clean).’”  

  1. The establishment of civil law on the basis of an ethnically rooted people, who are ruled directly by God, has ceased. The people of God are no longer a unified political body or an ethnic group or a nation-state, but are exiles and sojourners among all ethnic groups and all states.

Romans 13:1, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.”  

If you see that their purpose is to show you your need of a Savior, if you see that the whole purpose of the law is fulfilled in Jesus—that He is your cleanliness and in Him you are holy, spotless and without blemish, and God sees you today as absolutely beautiful to Him, then, and only then, are you honoring the law. 

This is why Paul is not saying for you to discard all of the laws and regulations of the Scriptures, but that you must see them as being finally fulfilled since Christ has come.  To see them as religiously valuable in any other way, is to completely dishonor the laws and the Maker of the laws who also designed their purposes to be fulfilled in His Son.  

If James, Peter, John, and Paul were not in agreement over this Gospel, our faith would have been torn in two.  We would have two ways of salvation, if the Apostles really were Apostles and had been with Jesus.  Also, Jesus would have been very confused in his articulation of this gospel to his Apostles.  The way we exercise our faith today would look totally different than how it does.  Did they agree?  Look at verse 9 and 6. 
 

STUDY 

Not only did they accept Paul, Barnabas, and Titus, they gave them the right hand of fellowship, which means they were in one accord in their message.   

Clarifying the Gospel 

Verses 6-7- “And from those who seemed to be influential (what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)--those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me. 7 On the contrary, 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” 

Verse 6 shows us what the gospel is, by telling us in a very simple, yet direct way— they “added nothing to me.”  Why didn’t he say “they subtracted nothing from my message?”  Why didn’t he say “they revised my message?”  He could have said that, but he didn’t.  Why?  Because the issue is not ultimately circumcision.  Paul’s point is not simply to say that, “Jesus Christ is enough without circumcision,” but we might have to add baptism or some other good work.  Paul’s entire point is that Jesus Christ plus nothing is the entire gospel!!!  His whole point is to say, “they added nothing.”  You and I must see the gospel in the same way—adding nothing to it.  Adding nothing to Paul’s message.  How dare we add to the message of Paul that which James, Peter, and John did not! 

Is this hard?  Yes!  Think about it.  Paul, James, Peter, and John—all Apostles who personally met, knew, and were instructed by Jesus, are 14-17 years into the gospel movement and their still wrestling with this.  If you don’t think that it takes time to apply the truths that you know and proclaim, you haven’t really looked at the implications.   

How many people have said: “I want to be a Christian, but I just can’t believe enough,” or, “I want to be a Christian, but I don’t love Jesus enough,” or, “I want to become a Christian but I know my motives are wrong?”  How about: “I want to become a Christian but I don’t think I can stop ____?”  What are they saying?  They are saying Jesus Christ plus: enough faith, enough love, pure motives, and a pure life, will save me.  What they are saying is that Jesus can save from most things, but I have to save myself from impure motives, a lack of enough faith and love, etc.   

Don’t we see that Jesus is here to save you from even your impure motives and lack of moral standing or enough faith?  What is enough faith?  How much do we weigh out on the scale?  100%, 90%, 50%?  What is enough faith?  Let me ask this question: If you fell down a cliff and were clinging by your finger tips and about to slip and you saw a branch next to you, how sure would you need to be that the branch could save you?  If you saw yourself as slipping and about to plunge to your death, how much faith would it take to grab hold of the branch?  90%, 50%, how about 10%?  You might say that you’re 20% sure and 80% unsure that the branch would save you, yet you reached out your hand and grabbed it anyway.  Did the percentage of your faith save you?  NO!  The branch saved you!!!! 

No one comes to Christ with completely pure motives, no one comes with a stellar life, no one comes with zero doubt, no one comes with enough love.  That’s the point!  This should demonstrate our need to come to him more quickly instead of our excuse to wait longer.   

Do you see how hard this is?  We are told to add nothing!  The ceremonial law said that you were not beautiful enough—yet.  You have to clean yourself up, you have to dress yourself in the right garments and then go to God and ask to be joined to Him.  But if we believe that we have exchanged ashes for beauty, then we are already made beautiful by Christ.  When God refers to us as the bride and Christ as the Groom, he is telling us that we are already made beautiful, ready, attractive, clean, prepared, and spotless for the Groom.  And, the Groom is the very one who has made us beautiful.  The Father picked out the bride for His Son and the Son has done everything necessary so that she is stunning and attractive.  Jesus Christ’s beauty is put upon us and makes us beautiful before the eyes of the Father.  Jesus is your beauty, plus nothing!!!  

How much joy do you think the Groom has in His bride?  How beautiful do you think He thinks she is?  How pleased do you think the Father is who chose this bride for His Son?  Do you think the Father is pleased that His Son is pleased?

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