Galatians 2:1–10
2 Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. 2 I went up because of a revelation and set before them (though privately before those who seemed influential) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain. 3 But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. 4 Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in—who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery— 5 to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. 6 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.
Section Overview: A Strategy Meeting in Jerusalem
Paul continues his chronological narration of the contact he has had with the influential apostles since God called him to evangelize among the Gentiles. Throughout this part of his argument (Gal. 1:13–2:14), Paul distances himself from any substantial involvement with the Jerusalem apostles. After three years’ work in Arabia and Damascus (1:17–18a), a brief visit with James and Cephas in Jerusalem (1:18b), and fourteen more years in Syria and Cilicia (1:21; 2:1), Paul finally had a significant, strategic meeting with James, Cephas, and John in Jerusalem. Even this meeting, however, was not a product of these apostles’ authority over Paul but a meeting of peers that God himself prompted Paul to initiate. Paul wanted to be sure he and they understood each other and to strategize about the most effective way to take the gospel God had called them to proclaim to both Jews and Gentiles.
In this section Paul begins to warm to the theme that will dominate much of the rest of the letter (2:15–6:10): the theological defense of the grace-centered gospel that he preaches. Although Paul initiated the Jerusalem meeting because of a divine revelation (2:2), the problem that precipitated it was the attempt of some “false brothers” to impose the Jewish custom of male circumcision on non-Jewish believers, such as Titus, who “was a Greek” (2:3–4). Paul understood this effort as an attempt to take away Christian freedom and replace it with enslavement (2:4), and this made it a serious perversion of “the truth of the gospel” (2:5). He will explain later exactly what he means by freedom and slavery (3:13; 4:1–11; 4:21–5:1, 13), but he introduces these themes here.
For now, he is content to emphasize that whether the influential apostles recognized it or not, this is the gospel, and he has no intention of succumbing to pressure to compromise it. He also wants to stress, however, that in fact the Jerusalem pillars recognized this to be the gospel and were in full agreement with him about what the gospel actually is.
Section Outline
II.B. Paul Explains His Thesis (1:13–2:14) . . .
3. A Strategy Meeting in Jerusalem (2:1–10)
Response
This passage highlights the importance of knowing precisely what the gospel is at all times, but especially when doing cross-cultural ministry. Sometimes it is precisely when we attempt to take the gospel from our own culture to another that our own misunderstanding of the gospel is exposed. The “false brothers” that apparently insisted on Titus’s circumcision (2:3–4) had probably only added to faith in Christ Jesus the further requirement that Christian converts observe the basic Jewish customs distinguishing Jews from Gentiles, especially the most visible and permanent Jewish boundary marker, circumcision. They wanted Titus, who was Greek, to become Jewish. The influential apostles, on one side, and Paul and Barnabas, on the other, shook hands, however, on their agreement that the gospel was for everyone, not simply for the circumcised.
It is important for all Christian groups to examine whether the way in which they communicate the gospel to outsiders implies that both faith in Christ and also possession of particular socioeconomic, ethnic, linguistic, national, or political characteristics are necessary for full fellowship with the group. At least in evangelical Christian circles, this is almost never something that happens explicitly, because everyone has read Galatians. It is most often something that happens implicitly and subtly, perhaps so subtly that we do not even know we are participating in it. It is easy to neglect an unkempt, obviously needy person or a person who belongs to a minority ethnic group who visits our church simply by forgetting to give him or her a warm greeting or assuming that someone else, perhaps a deacon, will see to that person’s needs. A prospective member? The thought never even occurs.
Paul shows in this passage that placing such additional strictures, however subtly expressed, around Christian fellowship is actually a denial of the truth of the gospel. Our efforts to limit the outreach of the gospel and the fellowship of believers to people like us and people with whom we are comfortable may show that we do not actually understand the gospel. Like the “false brothers” who showed up in Antioch, we may have failed to grasp the radical, freedom-giving nature of God’s grace, which assures everyone who accepts and lives by it that membership in God’s people and full reconciliation with God is available to all who trust Christ for forgiveness and freedom from sin.
2:1 As in 1:18 and 21, Paul here uses “then” (Gk. epeita) to signal the next step in a chronological sequence. “After fourteen years” could mean fourteen years after his conversion (cf. 1:18a), fourteen years after his short visit with Cephas (1:18b), or fourteen years after his work in Syria and Cilicia (1:21). “Then” indicates sequencing, however, and Paul’s emphasis throughout this larger section (1:13–2:14) is on his independence from the influential apostles, so it seems likely that “after fourteen years” implies fourteen years of ministry in Syria and Cilicia. These fourteen years would have included his first missionary journey (Acts 13:1–14:25) and his proclamation of the gospel in the southern part of the Roman province of Galatia (Acts 14:1–23; cf. Gal. 2:5b). Barnabas was with Paul on this journey and must have been well known to the Galatians (Acts 14:12, 14, 20). Titus never appears in Acts but shows up elsewhere in Paul’s letters as a trusted, high-value coworker (2 Cor. 2:13; 7:6, 13–15; 8:6, 16, 23; 12:18; Titus 1:4).
2:2 No one from Jerusalem “summoned” Paul to appear there. Rather, he went because the same God who revealed (Gk. apokalyptō) his Son in him (1:16; cf. 1:12) told him to go to Jerusalem in “a revelation” (apokalypsis). The emphasis falls on the authority of God in Paul’s life rather than on the authority of the influential apostles.
Many commentators believe that this visit to Jerusalem corresponds with Paul’s next visit to Jerusalem in Luke’s narrative, the so-called “famine relief” visit of Acts 11:27–30 (cf. Acts 12:25). Elements of that visit, however, do not correspond well with Paul’s description here of this visit. The famine relief visit occurred at the prompting of prophets from Jerusalem, one of whom exercised his Spirit-inspired gift in Antioch to predict a famine in Judea. In response, the church at Antioch sent Barnabas with relief aid “to the elders” (Acts 11:30).
Paul, however, gives the impression that the revelation (apokalypsis) he received to go to Jerusalem on this visit came not to someone else but to him personally, in a way analogous to the divine revelation (apokalypsai) that resulted in his conversion (Gal. 1:16). The revelation could have come to Paul through others, such as the prophets who “came down from Jerusalem to Antioch” in Acts 11:27, but since Paul did not specify this, it seems simpler to understand his statement as referring to a direct divine revelation to him.
Out of Luke’s eight references to the elders in Jerusalem, moreover, Acts 11:30 is the only place where the elders do not appear with “the apostles,” or, as in Acts 21:18, the apostle James. This probably means that Barnabas and Saul did not meet with any apostles when they delivered this aid for the churches in Judea, which explains why Paul does not mention this visit in his sequential account. He is recounting meetings with the influential apostles rather than trips to Jerusalem.
The meeting Paul describes here, then, is probably the visit Luke describes in Acts 15:1–21, the famous Jerusalem council. Paul’s focus is not on the larger meeting Luke describes with “the church and the apostles and the elders” (Acts 15:4), where the focus was on the effect of the gospel’s proclamation among the Gentiles—“what signs and wonders God had done through” him and Barnabas (Acts 15:12). Instead, Paul focuses here on a private meeting with the inner circle of the Jerusalem leadership, James, Cephas, and John (cf. Gal. 2:9), that took place within the larger council meeting. This was a meeting within a meeting focused on the precise content of the gospel Paul proclaimed to the Gentiles, an event Luke does not record.
Paul’s reference to running in vain does not mean that he needed these apostles to check over the gospel he had preached for the last seventeen years (or so) and sign off on its orthodoxy. Rather, he wanted James, Cephas, and John to see that his gospel was orthodox in order to prevent misunderstanding and to forestall the sort of interference in his missionary efforts that made the letter to the Galatians necessary.
2:3–5 Those who pressured Paul and Barnabas to have Titus circumcised were not the Pharisees that piped up at the Jerusalem council to claim it was necessary for Gentiles to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses (Acts 15:5). Luke makes clear with his perfect-tense participle that those misguided Pharisaic Christians were believers (Gk. pepisteukotes).
Rather, the infiltrators and false brothers Paul describes (Gal. 2:4) probably correspond to the “men [who] came down from Judea” to Antioch and insisted, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved” (Acts 15:1). This was a slightly different message from the concerns of the Pharisaic Christians in Jerusalem, since it focused explicitly on the necessity of doing the law in order to “be saved.” The Jerusalem council arose out of this confrontation in Antioch, and Titus may have been the focus of criticism from the “men . . . from Judea.”
The Gentile believers in southern Galatia had become part of God’s people apart from works of the law only shortly before these false brothers appeared in Antioch. Paul argues that caving in to their insistence that Titus receive circumcision would imply that the Galatian churches were not part of God’s people at all, and thus when Paul remained steadfast on this critical point he was preserving the truth of the gospel not merely for Titus but for the Galatians also.
To enforce circumcision for Gentile believers, Paul says, is to take away “our” freedom and to enslave “us.” Since Paul was a circumcised Jew (Phil. 3:5), there is something more at issue here than the simple imposition of Jewish ethnic customs on someone not belonging to the group. Paul already belonged to the group, but if circumcision were a requirement for belonging to the people of God, then he too is enslaved. Exactly where the problem lies for every believer when that law is imposed on Gentiles will quickly become clear (Gal. 2:15–21). Paul will explain later in the letter why he uses the language of enslavement to describe the problem (3:13; 4:1–11; 4:21–5:1; 5:13).
2:6 Paul now shifts from Antioch to Jerusalem and in verses 6–10 recounts the happy outcome of his meeting with the “influential” apostles there. His account highlights not only the agreement between Paul and the influential apostles, however, but also Paul’s independence of them as concerns his authority and the origins of his gospel. This element of independence is the focus of verse 6. Paul recognizes that the influential apostles are highly regarded, but the description “those who seemed to be influential” and the comment “what they were makes no difference to me” hints that it is possible to regard them too highly. The gospel that they preach is infallible, but as verses 11–14 show, the apostles themselves are still fallible, sinful human beings.
Paul’s main point comes at the end of the sentence. As always in his previous contacts with the influential apostles, they “added nothing” to Paul’s authority and gospel. That was God’s province, not theirs.
2:7–9 Rather than adding anything to Paul at the Jerusalem council, the influential apostles treated him as a peer and simply agreed on a strategy for the most effective use of the gifts God had given them all. James, Cephas (Peter), and John would focus on “the circumcised” and Paul on the uncircumcised. Paul uses the name Peter in verses 7–8 and Cephas in verse 9, but he is referring to the same person (cf. John 1:42) and probably varies the name only for stylistic purposes.
Paul describes these three as those who “seemed to be pillars,” using an architectural term to indicate that others thought their apostolic witness was foundational for establishing the truths about the Lord Jesus Christ on which the church was built (cf. 1 Tim. 3:15). Paul agreed with this assessment (Eph. 2:20) but would include more than these three apostles in such a group and would put the entire group on the same level. This is an important part of his argument in these verses and explains why he qualifies the term “pillars” with the adjectival expression “seemed to be.”
Male circumcision was the primary social marker of Judaism in the first century (cf. Gal. 2:3), and from both a Jewish and a Gentile perspective its practice distinguished Jews from everyone else (cf. Gen. 17:1–14; Eph. 2:11–12). Since at least the time of the Syrian king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who violently persecuted Jews for observing their ancestral practices, many Jews had seen circumcision as an especially critical element of Jewish identity (e.g., 1 Macc. 1:15, 48, 50, 60).
2:10 The Scriptures are replete with admonitions to treat the poor justly (e.g., Ex. 22:25; 23:6), to take care of them (e.g., Ex. 23:11; Lev. 19:10; 23:22; Deut. 15:9, 11; 24:12, 15; Isa. 58:7, 10), and to be understanding of their condition (e.g., Lev. 14:21). The mid-first century was a time of widespread famine in the eastern Roman Empire, and the numbers of poor, particularly in Judea, would have been great (Acts 11:28). The pillar apostles wanted to be sure that Paul and the Gentile churches he founded would pay careful attention to the teaching of the Scriptures on compassion for the poor, and Paul assured them that he was enthusiastically committed to this biblical concern.