Welcome to this third episode in Series 1 of the book of Galatians. What an amazing story this is!

Recap and Background

The story behind everything that we are studying is Paul and Barnabas’ first missionary journey in a place called Galatia, where they planted about six churches as recorded in Acts 13 and 14. These are the churches that Paul is writing to, and I have explained more about the background of those churches and that trip in previous episodes.

Paul is writing, maybe one or two years, after his visit and after setting up those churches in that area. It was a remarkable and miraculous missionary journey. This is the first time that Paul had set out to plant new churches and go into new areas with the gospel. Some great miracles took place. I described one in the last episode that took place on the island of Cyprus, which was the first place they stopped off as they went on that journey. But if we look closely, we will see that there are miracles in all sorts of different places that happened during that journey. For example, in Acts 13, when they were in a place called Pisidian Antioch, Paul and Barnabas went into the synagogue first of all and preached the gospel there. They gave a clear message and explained a lot of things about the Old Testament. In Acts 13: 42, it says that when they had finished speaking on one particular Sabbath day, they were invited to come back a week later to the next service and to explain the Christian message again and talk more about Jesus as the Messiah. But a lot had happened during that time. So, when they came back a week later, it says: ‘On the next Sabbath almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord.’ When they came back a week later, they weren’t just talking to the synagogue congregation of maybe 50, 100 or 200 people, but thousands of people had gathered at the synagogue in order to hear them. The whole city had gathered. Something extraordinary was going on in Paul and Barnabas’ ministry. During that week they probably went from house to house, shared their faith and prayed for the sick. Within a week, a crowd of people from all over the city and different ethnic groups had gathered to hear them. Later on, it says that many of these became believers.

That is the sort of amazing thing that Paul had experienced when he was planting these churches. But, as we have explained, after he had been there, people came from Jerusalem, who believed in Jesus but also believed that the Jewish law needed to be obeyed by all the new Gentile converts. They discredited Paul’s gospel, saying it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t accurate, and Paul did not have the authority to preach about Jesus to them. So, that is the background that we have to the letter of Galatians.

And, as I explained in the first episode, Paul writes this letter with great emotion, anger, and frustration, and a great desire to communicate quickly with these people. He has a sense of urgency that he wants to stop them going back into obeying Jewish laws and losing their focus on the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In this episode, as we come to chapter 2, we see Paul describing again how he related to the Apostles in Jerusalem. This is very central to our understanding of the book of Galatians because the people who came from Jerusalem to the Galatian churches, believed that the twelve Apostles, led by Peter, who were based in Jerusalem, were the true authority in the Church and they were uncertain about Paul. They felt he wasn’t a true Apostle; he became an Apostle later, on the Damascus road. He hadn’t been in Jerusalem; he hadn’t known Jesus during his ministry time.

So, Paul is trying to explain to them, first of all, that he had a unique call to Apostleship on the Damascus road and secondly, that he had a good relationship with Peter and the other Apostles in Jerusalem. They were actually preaching the same message. He wanted to defend his authority as the Apostle who preached to the Galatians.

In the previous episode, he described how three years after his conversion he went up to Jerusalem and spent fifteen days staying at Peter’s house, talking to him and also meeting James, the half-brother of Jesus, who was also an Apostle. In the last episode, it looks as though Peter and Paul got on well, and they affirmed each other’s ministry. They realised that Peter would be working amongst the Jews primarily, and Paul would be traveling widely in the Roman Empire reaching Gentile communities.

The Church Spread Northwards

But time passes, and other things take place and Paul now describes, in this episode, another meeting with Peter that took place a little later which was also very significant.

‘Then after fourteen years, I went up again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along also. I went in response to a revelation and, meeting privately with those esteemed as leaders, I presented to 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. Yet not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek. 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. We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.’

Galatians 2:1-5, NIV

What had happened, that Paul is describing here, is roughly this: after Paul had seen Peter the first time in Jerusalem for fifteen days, he had gone back to his home city of Tarsus in southern Turkey, the Roman province of Cilicia. He had waited there to see when God would lead him to start his evangelistic and apostolic work. In the meantime, the church in Judea and Jerusalem had been spreading out and believers were travelling north. They went to the district immediately north of Judea called Samaria, then to the next district called Phoenicia on the coast, roughly where modern day Lebanon is. They then went further up the East Mediterranean coast and reached a city called Antioch, now in southern Turkey.

The Birth of the Antioch Church

In Antioch, as described in the book of Acts, there was a remarkable move of the Holy Spirit. Something quite similar to what had happened in the Day of Pentecost in Jerusalem. Believers arrived in this city, having been forced to travel away from Jerusalem because of persecution. They came to the city of Antioch, which is roughly 700 kilometres north of Jerusalem - a long way away from the Jewish heartland and from the ‘mother church’. As they shared their faith, through the work of the Holy Spirit many people quickly believed; it was a remarkable rate of conversion and this was mostly among non-Jews. So, in Antioch we have the first major Gentile church of the New Testament developing. Hundreds and hundreds of people were coming to faith.

When the church in Jerusalem, the mother church, heard this story, they sent one of their leading Apostles to Antioch in order to help them, teach them, and organise the church. He was Barnabas. Barnabas travelled the 700 kilometres up to Antioch, and stayed there. He tried to organise, support, encourage, teach and shape this emerging church, with literally hundreds and hundreds of people, newly converted, but with no leaders and no teachers. Something needed to be done quickly, and the Apostles sent Barnabas with a sense of urgency. Barnabas had an interesting idea. Having been there for a short period of time, he decided to go to Tarsus to ask Paul to come to Antioch. Tarsus was not far away.

Paul was very surprised to find Barnabas, who he had met before, knocking on his door saying, “Paul, you are waiting for God’s call. This is the time. Come to Antioch. We need your help. There are so many people here and you are called to the Gentiles… we have got lots of Gentile converts here. It is the first time it has ever happened in such large numbers. We need to organise them.” Paul and Barnabas worked together in Antioch for a whole year, teaching the church. Many people became believers. So, it was a very exciting situation.

Paul’s Gospel

Paul would have taught them the gospel that Jesus revealed to him on the Damascus road, which he had already discussed with Peter when he spent fifteen days with him, and which they had agreed upon. To the Gentiles he said, “You don’t need to follow the Jewish law in order to be saved. What you need to do is to believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus as your substitute, as a sacrifice of atonement. You need to turn away from your sins - your idolatries and your sexual immorality and all the other things. Put your trust in him and receive the Holy Spirit.”

They would be probably laying hands on people to receive the Holy Spirit. They had had a tangible experience of the presence of God. They had known him as Father and they had been born into the Kingdom. That was Paul’s methodology.

A Challenge from the Jerusalem Church

So, in Antioch, this work was going on very successfully. But, as Paul indicates here in verse 4,

‘This matter arose because some false believers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and make us slaves. We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.’

Galatians 2:4, NIV

This is a reference to the fact that, while Paul and Barnabas were in Antioch, some people associated with the church in Jerusalem, but not authorised by Peter and the Apostles, who were Jews and still believed that you had to go under the Jewish law in order to become a Christian, did not like what they heard was happening in Antioch. They went up to Antioch and started challenging Paul and Barnabas in this big church saying, ‘You are not preaching the right message to these Gentile converts. We come from the ‘mother church’ so we ought to know.’ This created a crisis in Antioch.

Paul asked the Lord what he should do, and he received a revelation, verse 2: to go Jerusalem again, and meet with the Apostles again because this matter had got to be settled once and for all. Otherwise, there would be a division in the church from the very beginning. There would be a Jewish church and a Gentile church and they would be separated. This was not the vision of the church that Paul had. He saw a vision, which he described in Ephesians 2, as the Jew and the Gentile coming together as one man in Christ, one new humanity, with no dividing wall of hostility between them. That was what he was trying to build in Antioch.

Paul’s Second Visit to Jerusalem

So he felt the Holy Spirit say to him, “Go back to Jerusalem.” Much time had passed. He hadn’t seen Peter for many years. He took Titus and Barnabas with him

‘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. On the contrary, they recognised that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised,’ (the Gentiles) ‘just as Peter had been to the circumcised.’ (the Jews) ‘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. James, Cephas’ (or Peter) ‘and John, those esteemed as pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognised the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised.’

Galatians 2:6-9, NIV

There are six people mentioned who met together: Paul, of course; Barnabas, his colleague in Antioch who was a great help to him at this stage. He had been in Jerusalem in the time of the early church, and was acknowledged as an Apostle alongside The Twelve. Later, he travelled with Paul on his first missionary trip. Paul also took along a man called Titus who was a Greek, or Gentile. He must have been a convert in Antioch, the city they have been working in, and obviously a gifted leader. We find later on, that Paul refers to Titus in his letters, and gives him responsibilities towards the end of Paul’s ministry. It is noticeable here that he, as part of Paul’s leadership team, is not asked to be circumcised by the Apostles. In other words, they are not asking this Gentile to follow the Jewish law. Then we have James the half-brother of Jesus, who had a miraculous conversion, probably around the time of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. In 1 Corinthians 15: 7, Paul mentions that there was a resurrection appearance of Jesus just to James. It appears that he became a prominent leader in the Jerusalem church, and became the pastor of the church during this period. Peter and John are also there. John was a member of Jesus’ ‘inner circle’ - Peter, James and John. John and James were brothers and by now James had been killed. He was the first Apostle to be martyred for the faith, as recorded in the book of Acts. Peter and John were very close to Jesus and with them is James, Jesus’ half-brother; this is a very senior team.

They met Paul, Barnabas and Titus and encouraged them saying, “You are preaching the same gospel as us. The Gentiles do not need to come under the Jewish law. We’re not going to introduce legalism into the foundation of the Church.” They agreed that the gospel was free of Jewish law. It was a very important agreement that they made.

Remember the Poor

‘All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing that I’d been eager to do all along,’

Galatians 2:10, NIV

This verse is a real surprise; it doesn’t seem to fit with the theme of everything that Paul has been talking about. So why did Peter and the others ask this of Paul “Are you concerned about and are you helping the poor in the communities where you are planting the churches, like in Antioch and elsewhere that you will go in the future?”

Amongst the Jewish churches, from Jerusalem onwards, one of the key distinctions of the churches was that they were reaching out to poor people, both within the church and in the local community. There are many different indicators of that in the book of Acts. Most noticeably we see, in Acts 6: 1 - 7, the Apostles were so busy with preaching that they were in danger of neglecting the daily distribution of food to the poor widows in the Jerusalem church, and they appointed seven men as those who were responsible for distributing food and providing economic support to the widows within the church community. That is an example of the sort of thing that Peter had in mind. It came naturally to Jews to be concerned about the poor; there was a big concern for the poor in the Law of Moses; and they had the example of Jesus and how he had lived amongst them, which many of them remembered. They had an understanding of the Jewish God being compassionate to the poor and a strong understanding of community life and caring for people in your community.

Peter was worried that in the Gentile communities, where Paul was going, there were different values. The Gentile converts had no knowledge of the Old Testament. They had not seen Jesus’ ministry in the flesh. They had no culture of charity in Roman and Greek society. The state, the government, didn’t help poor people, as some modern governments do in our world in the 21st century. Peter was worried that Paul’s gospel would not show God’s mercy to the poor in the Gentile communities, because Paul might neglect to focus on that and the Gentiles wouldn’t necessarily think that Christian faith actually meant you should be caring for the poor people, because of their cultural background. That is why he emphasised this point because he considered it a key element of authentic New Testament church life.

Paul was able to reassure Peter because Paul had been considering this very significantly in Antioch. Indeed, we see in the description of the church in Antioch, that some prophets came from Jerusalem into the church just before this time and warned that there would be a famine in the entire Roman world, and that it would probably affect Judea and Jerusalem pretty significantly. Paul and Barnabas actually arranged a collection of money to send to Jerusalem. So, in Paul’s heart there was the same concern for the poor in the local communities where he was planting churches; the same concern that Peter had.

This was a remarkable meeting. The second significant meeting between Paul and Peter. In the next episode, we are going to see another meeting between Paul and Peter, which becomes very tense and difficult because there are still some unresolved issues around the Law of Moses and legalism, and bringing regulations into the gospel of salvation.

Reflections

What can we learn in reflection from this episode? We learn a lot about the importance of teamwork. Paul made a big effort to try and be in the same team as the other Apostles. In fact he made a very long journey to go from Antioch to Jerusalem, not knowing what the outcome of this conversation would be. Peter also was trying to be in the same team as Paul. They realised that they were building churches in different cultures, but they still wanted to be united together in relationship, and find ways of supporting one another. This is a very interesting lesson for the modern Church. How do our churches unite with others in mission and evangelism, in our community, in other countries, in other tribes and in other areas?

Behind this episode, and the whole book of Galatians, lies the ever present threat of legalism. What we mean by legalism in this context is that we need to make some contribution to our justification and salvation. It is the natural view of humans faced with a divine power or God who is just and powerful, to feel that in order to be good enough for him we have to make a contribution. It is the natural way we think. Yet the gospel cuts against that, time and again, and says you cannot make a contribution. The only thing that is required of you is true faith, true repentance, and true openness to the Holy Spirit. That is a challenge in every society and it was such a big challenge here that Paul had to come back to this issue time and time again, as the early church was being established.

A final reflection would be this: Galatians 2: 10 is a very important verse for churches in all generations. It is a New Testament apostolic mandate for caring for the poor within the communities where our churches are set – primarily those who come into our churches who are in great need, and those we can reach in our immediate communities. It is undoubtedly true that Jesus Christ wanted this compassion and mercy for the poor to be at the heart of every church, and it is our responsibility to follow that command, and God will bless us as we do so.

Thanks for listening.