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The Letter to the Galatians

Martin Taylor

{24Oct2021 Harlington BC}

Good morning and welcome to Harlington Baptist Church.

Last week, we looked at Galatians 1:13-24. The summary then was, the whole thrust of Paul’s arguments to this point are ‘I received my commission first hand, direct from Jesus himself – and that is patently obvious because I had no worthwhile opportunity to learn it all at the feet of the Apostles. I just wasn’t with them long enough at the right sort of time. Therefore, my ministry is independent of these other apostles. I managed to preach the gospel of Jesus without them for a long time.’

Paul knows that the letter is going to be read aloud. It is reasonable to expect therefore, that he would deploy his experience and skill in speaking to persuade each of his audiences along his chosen lines of thought. It is likely that the courier would be one or more of his team – who would know what he usually preached and would understand the nuances and scripture references that Paul had used. They would be able to answer questions raised by anyone in the receiving church. They would likely be able to teach generally about the faith. See 1 Tim 5:7, 2 Tim 3:10.

Knowing the letters were going to be read aloud, and knowing who, in the first instance, would be the readers, is likely to have encouraged Paul to engage all his rhetorical skills in writing the letter.

Once again, I draw your attention to the structural connectors ‘Immediately’ (1:16); ‘then’ (1:18); ‘then’ (1:21); ‘then’ (2:1) which taken together give the feeling of the passage of time, and rather ask for resolution against the related passages in Acts.

So let us now turn to chapter 2 verse 1.

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Galatians 2:1

‘Then’, again to Jerusalem
14 years
With Barnabas and Titus

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Timeline

BC AD

-20

~17BC Herod starts to rebuild Temple

~5BC Jesus born

Herod dies ~4BC

Jesus begins ministry (John 2:20) ~29AD

Note: Herod started assembling materials for the temple in late 20BC, but did not dismantle the old building / start the re-build until about 2 years later ~17BC

Caveat: Dating 1^st century events is notoriously inaccurate for numerous reasons including Different calendars in use; [in/ex]-clusive counting; Leap year issues etc.

~33AD Jesus crucified / resurrected

Saul ‘Road to Damascus’ experience ~35AD

Nero burns Rome and blames Christians ~64AD

Temple destroyed ~70AD

Claudius is emperor ~41-54AD

Famines

~44AD Herod Agrippa dies

~40AD Aretas IV dies

I have put together a timeline showing a number of 1^st century events.

Let me enlarge it on the Zoom picture so that some of the detail will be less pixelated.

Again, there needs to be much caution and caveating due to multitudes of uncertainties.

There is some agreement that Herod the Great died in 4BC and thus Jesus was born just before that – possibly late 5BC.

Herod started preparations to rebuild the Temple in 20BC, but construction didn’t actually start till later – say early 17BC. Tying that in to John 2:20, Jesus starts His public ministry around 29AD and was crucified and resurrected in 33AD (though there are some who prefer 30AD). This puts Saul’s Damascus Road experience at around 35AD.

There is some agreement that Aretas IV (who we came across last week) died around 40AD and Herod Agrippa (step-father of Salome) died around 44AD.

There is a lot of agreement about Claudius being emperor between 41-54AD and also the destruction of the Temple in 70AD.

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Galatians 2:2-3

Revelation <- apokalupsin
Agabus? Acts 11:28-30
Meet the leaders, privately

It now gets tricky to match the Galatians timeline to the Acts timeline.

Gal 2:2 I went in response to a revelation and, meeting privately with those esteemed as leaders, I set before them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. I wanted to be sure I was not running and had not been running my race in vain.

Gal 2:3 Yet not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek.

Some people latch on to the word ‘revelation’ (apocalypse) and link it to the prophecy by Agabus in Acts 11:28-30 and thus tie Gal 2:2 to Acts 11:30

There were multiple famines during the reign of Claudius at 41/2AD (Rome), 45AD (Judea) 50AD (Greece) and 52AD (Rome again). Some of these lasted more than one year. General uncertainties mean the dates could be a year or so out on either side.

So we could accept the Judean famine at approx. AD45 as the one most likely to have been predicted by Agabus,

If the ‘famine’ is meant to cover the whole of Claudius reign, then Agabus’ prophecy would have occurred 40 or 41AD with the collection and trip to Judea (probably including Jerusalem) occurring during the months after that.

A date of AD45 or worse AD40 for the Gal 2:1 ’14 year’ seems unlikely as it would only have been about 10 years since Paul’s conversion – or you have to shift the date of Pauls conversion to at least 31AD if not 28AD which mean other things also have to move.

Thus it seems the Acts 11:30 Judea (Jerusalem) visit was ignored by Paul in Galatians.

There is some debate as to whether in Acts 12:25, the text should read from or to Jerusalem. Either way, it appears that it is ignored by Paul in Galatians.

The primary alternate then is to associate Galatians 2:1ff with Acts 15 which is sometime called the Jerusalem Council. In this alignment, the First Missionary Journey to Cyprus, Pamphylia and then South Galatia (Acts 13-15) would have taken place before AD54-ish (usual caveats on dating) and maybe before AD49. The letter itself would then have been written a little while later.

Now, all that was linked to the word ‘revelation’ is verse 2. Time to move on just a little.

Paul says he and Barnabas met privately with the ‘esteemed’, the ones with ‘reputation’. It is reasonable to transliterate this as leaders. At the start of Acts 4 there were about 5000 Christians in Jerusalem. Despite the persecution and scattering caused by Saul in his early zeal, it seems likely that the Church overall, approximately 20 years later would need to be able to manage at least that number of people, implying at least 50 senior leaders, possibly more. However, Paul’ words were probably targeting a more select, inner circle because he re-uses the same word in verse 6, but, shall we say, in a less friendly way.

Paul emphasises that he wanted to double-check his message. To ensure that what he had been saying for the last 14 or more years was actually correct. How does he announce the response of the ‘esteemed’? “Well, they didn’t demand that my best mate Titus – him bein’ a Greek an all – be circumcised on the spot, so I must have got something right!”

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Galatians 2:3-4

False believers say

You must be circumcised
You must follow the Law of Moses

Paul says

Salvation by faith in Jesus alone

Gal 2:4 This matter arose because some false believers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves.

If we stick with Galatian 2 being parallel to Acts 15, then the false believers of this statement links to the ‘certain people’ of Acts 15:1. Acts 15:1 talks about ‘unless you are circumcised … you cannot be saved’. This is like red rag to a bull for Paul. It goes against everything he holds to be true. It is not a case of ‘these are our traditions and you will find them helpful’ or ‘circumcision is about health and safety’. It is a bald statement – ‘you cannot be a Christian unless you are circumcised!’ No wonder that Paul is upset. No wonder he sees it as forcing people to be slaves to the Law.

No wonder he fought so hard against it.

Gal 2:5 We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you.

We did not let these false believers get away it because the truth of the gospel is ‘salvation comes through faith in Jesus alone! You do not need anything else.

This is important to all Christians. It is particularly important to Baptists because we say we follow what is written in the Word.

Now some of you might think – surely if you say you are Baptists, don’t you make baptism essential for being a Christian. And the answer to that is ‘No’. For us, baptism is very, very important. Jesus commanded us to ‘repent and be baptised’. He didn’t say baptism gets you into heaven. That is why we do not baptise infants, and why we do not normally baptise children. Baptism is for adults – for people who are old enough to understand the full implications of what they are doing. If you baptise an infant, and subsequently they never commit their lives to Jesus, of what value is the baptism? If you baptise someone as a youth but they then go to university and don’t follow Jesus, of what value was their baptism?

No, salvation comes through faith in Jesus alone – and baptism follows that, - it is a demonstration of that faith.

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Galatians 2:6-10

The important people …
Agreed with Paul!
Everyone is happy.
James’ summary? -> Gal 5 & 6

In the Greek, verses six to nine are essentially a single, very long, sentence. I am going to break it into parts just to be able to work with it.

Gal 2:6 As for those who were held in high esteem—whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not show favouritism—they added nothing to my message.

‘These important people’, says Paul. He has in mind the likes of Peter, James and John – as we will see in verse 9, but he is not going to be in awe of them. Their importance is not something that sways him. He wants his audience to know that he, Paul, stood his ground then and will do so again if needs be.

‘These important people’ says Paul, ‘added nothing to my message’. Basically, they agreed with me, is what Paul says.

Gal 2:7 On the contrary, they saw that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the Uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised.

Gal 2:8 For God, who was at work in Peter as an apostle to the Circumcised, was also at work in me as an apostle to the Gentiles.

There was a mutual recognition of God’s anointing on them, and a recognition that they had different focuses. Someone needed to take the gospel to the Uncircumcised and that task seemed to have been given to Paul.

Note here, even though some translations substitute the more general Gentiles / Jews, the Greek is very specific. Given that the whole argument is about the importance (or not) of circumcision, the direct us of the word here seems more appropriate. The ’Gentiles’ in v 8 is there in the Greek rather than a repeat of ‘uncircumcised’.

Gal 2:9 James, Cephas and John, those esteemed as pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the Jews.

So there was agreement all round. Particularly from the most important people, the ‘pillars’, James, Peter and John

Gal 2:10 All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.

All is hunky dory. We even agreed to look after the poor, says Paul.

Now, it is sensible to ask the question – hang on a minute, doesn’t Acts 15:13-29 have a summary of the event by James which gets encapsulated into a letter to be taken back to Antioch? To which the answer is yes. So why doesn’t Paul mention the letter or its requirements? To answer that, a further question needs to be asked. Does the content of the letter relate directly to the fundamental issue of salvation is through faith versus salvation through circumcision? The answer to that is ‘not really’. Paul does cover the content of that letter in Gal 5 and 6, so the message detail is not ignored, rather it is expanded.

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Galatians 2:11-14

Then Peter…

Afraid of …
Drew back / separated

Others followed

Including Barnabas

=> public confrontation

Just when you think it is all over, and everything has gone quietly back to normal, things get disturbed again. So, for Paul! We read:

Gal 2:11 When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.

Paul thought there had been agreement. The ‘pillars’, James, Cephas and John, had said so. Circumcision was clearly recognised as not essential for salvation. By implication, Jewish and Gentiles Christians could have fellowship together – and eat together even though that was against the Law of Moses. Now, Cephas was acting against what he had agreed – and Paul felt he had to challenge him publicly about it – it was that important.

What was Peter doing?

Gal 2:12 For before certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.

It wasn’t that Peter had started preaching ‘circumcision is essential for salvation’. Just that he had been compromised.

How many times, in our Christian lives, do we find that our actions end up compromising what we claim to believe? Whether it is watching too much television, till it takes away our time with God, or focusing on what we don’t have instead of focussing on giving to God first and looking after ourselves second, or focussing on other things and not being wholly committed to God? Taking what man says as being more important than what God says. Taking the view that the Bible is not reliable because lots of people – including influential Christians – say it is not reliable?

Here, Peter is influenced to focus on religious rules and forgets to love his brothers. And because he, as a leader, goes astray, many others are influenced by him.

Gal 2:13 The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.

Other Antioch Jews followed his example.

Who looks at you and follows your example? We are all human. Few of us like to stand out. Few of us like being different.

It can so easily lead to even strong Christians being led astray – because everyone around is doing the same.

Eventually, Paul decides it has got out of hand. Someone had to say something. Someone had to do something – and it was going to have to be Paul.

Gal 2:14 When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, "You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?

Embarrassing someone in public is not recommended. Embarrassing a Church Leader in public is not usually a sensible course of action. You won’t win friends by doing so. But for Paul, the stakes were too high. He could see the true Gospel of faith in Jesus being abandoned. So he went for it.

But for the detail of what was said …

You will have to come back next week!

Same time; same place.

Now back to the worship team.