#6 The Minister Defends The Gospel, 2:1-1

Galatians: The Gospel of God’s Grace

#6 The Minister Defends The Gospel, 2:1-10

“This will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.”

So wrote veteran news analyst Elmer Davis in his book But We Were Born Free, and his convictions would certainly be echoed by the Apostle Paul. To Paul, his spiritual liberty in Christ was worth far more than popularity or even security. He was willing to fight for that liberty.

Paul’s first fight for Christian liberty was at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:1-35; Gal. 2:1-10); his second was at a private meeting with Peter (Gal. 2:11-21). Had Paul been unwilling to wage this spiritual warfare, the church in the first century might have become only a Jewish sect, preaching a mixture of Law and grace. But because of Paul’s courage, the Gospel was kept free from legalism, and it was carried to the Gentiles with great blessing.

Before we look at the three acts in the first drama, the Council at Jerusalem, we must get acquainted with the participants. Paul, of course, we know as the great apostle to the Gentiles.

Barnabas was one of Paul’s closest friends. In fact, when Paul tried to get into the fellowship of the Jerusalem church, it was Barnabas who opened the way for him (Acts 9:26-28).

The name Barnabas means “son of encouragement,” and you will always find Barnabas encouraging somebody. When the Gospel came to the Gentiles in Antioch, it was Barnabas who was sent to encourage them in their faith (Acts 11:19-24).

Thus, from the earliest days, Barnabas was associated with the Gentile believers. It was Barnabas who enlisted Paul to help minister at the church in Antioch (Acts 11:25-26), and the two of them worked together, not only in teaching, but also in helping the poor (Acts 11:27-30).

Barnabas accompanied Paul on the first missionary trip (Acts 13:1-14:28) and had seen God’s blessings on the Gospel that they preached. It is worth noting that it was Barnabas who encouraged young John Mark after he had “dropped out” of the ministry and incurred the displeasure of Paul (Acts 13:13; 15:36-41). In later years, Paul was able to commend Mark and benefit from his friendship (Col. 4:10; 2 Tim. 4:11).

Titus was a Gentile believer who worked with Paul and apparently was won to Christ through the apostle’s ministry (Titus 1:4). He was a “product” of the apostle’s ministry among the Gentiles, and was taken to the Jerusalem conference as “exhibit A” from the Gentile churches. In later years, Titus assisted Paul by going to some of the most difficult churches to help them solve their problems (2 Cor. 7; Titus 1:5).

Three men were the “pillars” of the church in Jerusalem: Peter, John, and James, the brother of the Lord (who must not be confused with the Apostle James, who was killed by Herod, Acts 12:1-2). Peter we know from his prominent part in the accounts in the Gospels as well as in the first half of the Book of Acts. It was to Peter that Jesus gave “the keys,” so that it was he who was involved in opening the door of faith to the Jews (Acts 2), the Samaritans (Acts 8), and the Gentiles (Acts 10). John we also know from the Gospel records as one of Christ’s “inner three” apostles, associated with Peter in the ministry of the Word (Acts 3:1ff).

It is James who perhaps needs more introduction. The Gospel record indicates that Mary and Joseph had other children, and James was among them (Matt. 13:55; Mark 6:3). (Of course, Jesus was born by the power of the Spirit, and not through natural generation; Matt. 1:18-25; Luke 1:26-38.) Our Lord’s brothers and sisters did not believe in Him during His earthly ministry (John 7:1-5). Yet we find “His brethren” associated with the believers in the early church (Acts 1:13-14). Paul informs us that the risen Christ appeared to James, and this was the turning point in his life (1 Cor. 15:5-7). James was the leader of the early church in Jerusalem (Acts 15; see also 21:18). He was also the writer of the Epistle of James; and that letter, plus Acts 21:18, would suggest that he was very Jewish in his thinking.

Along with these men, and the “Apostles and elders” (Acts 15:4, 6), were a group of “false brethren” who infiltrated the meetings and tried to rob the believers of their liberty in Christ (Gal. 2:4). Undoubtedly these were some of the Judaizers who had followed Paul in church after church and had tried to capture his converts. The fact that Paul calls them “false brethren” indicates that they were not true Christians, but were only masquerading as such so they could capture the conference for themselves.

This, then, is the cast of characters. Acts 15 should be read along with Galatians 2:1-10 to get the full story of the event.

As Jesus made clear in the parable of the wheat and tares (Matt. 13:24-30), wherever and whenever the good seed of God’s truth is sown Satan will be there to sow his seed of falsehood. It was therefore inevitable that, as Paul faithfully and powerfully planted the truth of the gospel, Satan’s false teachers would be on the apostle’s heels planting lies.

Paul warned the Ephesian elders to “be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:28-30). He warned Timothy, “But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron” (1 Tim. 4:1-2).

Throughout his long and widespread ministry Paul fought against the emissaries of Satan who always seek to discredit both the truth and its representatives. In Galatians 2:1-10 he continues defending himself against their accusation that he was a self-appointed apostle proclaiming a self-devised message that was different from that of Peter and the other apostles at Jerusalem. He devastatingly argues that, although he received his message independently of the other apostles, he preached a message identical to theirs, a fact they wholeheartedly acknowledged. His gospel was independent in terms of revelation but identical in terms of content.

Recounting his most significant trip to Jerusalem after his conversion, Paul shows by his coming, his companion, his commission, and his commendation that he was of one truth and one spirit with the other twelve apostles.

Paul was under attack by some false teachers and critics in the Galatian churches. They were charging him with being a self-proclaimed minister and with preaching a false gospel. Paul was defending himself and the gospel which he preached. In the present passage he defended the gospel which he preached in no uncertain terms, and he showed how he defended it before the recognized leaders of the church, the apostles themselves.

1. Paul’s second Jerusalem trip (v.1).

2. He defended the work of the gospel (v.2).

3. He defended the gospel before false believers (v.3-5).

4. He defended the gospel before any and all persons (v.6).

5. He defended the special call given each man to proclaim the gospel (v.7-10).

In the preceding passage Paul has proved the independence of his gospel; here he is concerned to prove that this independence is not anarchy and that his gospel is not something schismatic and sectarian, but no other than the faith delivered to the Church.

After fourteen year's work he went up to Jerusalem, taking with him Titus, a young friend and henchman, who was a Greek. That visit was by no means easy. Even as he wrote there was agitation in Paul's mind. There is a disorder in the Greek which it is not possible fully to reproduce in English translation. Paul's problem was that he could not say too little or he might seem to be abandoning his principles; and he could not say too much, or it might seem that he was at open variance with the leaders of the Church. The result was that his sentences are broken and disjointed, reflecting his anxiety.

From the beginning the real leaders of the Church accepted his position; but there were others who were out to tame this fiery spirit. There were those, who, as we have seen, accepted Christianity but believed that God never gave any privilege to a man who was not a Jew; and that, therefore, before a man could become a Christian, he must be circumcised and take the whole law upon him. These Judaizers, as they are called, seized on Titus as a test case. There is a battle behind this passage; and it seems likely that the leaders of the Church urged Paul, for the sake of peace, to give in, in the case of Titus. But he stood like a rock. He knew that to yield would be to accept the slavery of the law and to turn his back on the freedom which is in Christ. In the end Paul's determination won the day. In principle it was accepted that his work lay in the non-Jewish world, and the work of Peter and James among the Jews. It is to be carefully noted that it is not a question of two different gospels being preached; it is a question of the same gospel being brought to two different spheres by different people specially qualified to do so.

From this picture certain characteristics of Paul emerge clearly.

(i) He was a man who gave authority its due respect. He did not go his own way. He went and talked with the leaders of the Church however much he might differ from them. It is a great and neglected law of life that however right we happen to be there is nothing to be gained by rudeness. There is never any reason why courtesy and determination should not go hand in hand.

(ii) He was a man who refused to be overawed. Repeatedly he mentions the reputation which the leaders and pillars of the Church enjoyed. He respected them and treated them with courtesy; but he remained inflexible. There is such a thing as respect; and there is such a thing as the grovelling, prudential bowing to those whom the world or the Church labels great. Paul was always certain that he was seeking the approval not of men but of God.

(iii) He was a man conscious of a special task. He was convinced that God had given him a task to do and he would let neither opposition from without nor discouragement from within stop him doing it. The man who knows he has a God-given task will always find that he has a God-given strength to carry it out.

Act 1—The Private Consultation (Gal. 2:1-2)

Paul and Barnabas had returned to Antioch from their first missionary journey, excited about the way God had “opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles” (Acts 14:27). But the Jewish legalists in Jerusalem were upset with their report; so they came to Antioch and taught, in effect, that a Gentile had to become a Jew before he could become a Christian (Acts 15:1).

Circumcision, which they demanded of the Gentiles, was an important Jewish rite, handed down from the days of Abraham (Gen. 17). Submitting to circumcision meant accepting and obeying the whole Jewish Law. Actually, the Jewish people had forgotten the inner, spiritual meaning of the rite (Deut. 10:16; Jer. 4:1-4; Rom. 2:25-29), just as some churches today have lost the spiritual meaning of baptism and have turned it into an external ritual. The true Christian has experienced an inner circumcision of the heart (Col. 2:10-11) and does not need to submit to any physical operation (Phil. 3:1-3).

When Paul and Barnabas confronted these men with the truth of the Gospel, the result was a heated argument (Acts 15:2). It was decided that the best place to settle the question was before the church leaders in Jerusalem. We should not think that this “Jerusalem Conference” was a representative meeting from all the churches, such as a denominational conference; it was not. Paul, Barnabas, Titus, and certain other men from Antioch represented the Gentile Christians who had been saved totally apart from Jewish Law; but there were no representatives from the churches Paul had established in Gentile territory.

When the deputation arrived in Jerusalem, they met privately with the church leaders. Paul did not go to Jerusalem because the church sent him; he “went up by revelation” —that is, the Lord sent him (compare Gal. 2:1 and 1:12). And the Lord gave him the wisdom to meet with the leaders first so that they would be able to present a united front at the public meetings.

“Lest by any means I should run, or had run, in vain” (Gal. 2:2) does not mean that Paul was unsure either of his message or his ministry. His conduct on the way to the conference indicates that he had no doubts (Acts 15:3). What he was concerned about was the future of the Gospel among the Gentiles, because this was his specific ministry from Christ. If the “pillars” sided with the Judaizers, or tried to compromise, then Paul’s ministry would be in jeopardy. He wanted to get their approval before he faced the whole assembly; otherwise a three-way division could result.

What was the result of this private consultation? The Apostles and elders approved Paul’s Gospel. They added nothing to it (Gal. 2:6b) and thereby declared the Judaizers to be wrong. But this private meeting was only the beginning.

(2:1) Paul, Journey: Paul clearly said this was his second trip to Jerusalem. It must be remembered that Paul was being very careful and going to extra pains to list his contacts with the Jerusalem church. He had to show that his call and gospel had come from Christ and not from men, not even from the leaders in Jerusalem. This was absolutely necessary, for the basic qualification for being an apostle was having been called by Christ Himself. Christ had appeared to him on the Damascus road; Christ had saved and called Paul to preach the gospel. Therefore, Paul met the basic qualification of being an apostle: he had seen the Lord Jesus face to face. Christ had confronted him and personally called him to be an apostle.

What Paul was doing in this particular verse was answering his critics: he did not visit Jerusalem to discuss his call and gospel until fourteen years after his first trip to see Peter, whom he had visited for fifteen days (cp. Galatians 1:18-20). He had been serving the Lord Jesus as a minister and preaching the gospel for years before he visited the church leaders at Jerusalem. His call and message had been proven by years of service. His ministry for Christ was set; it could not legitimately be questioned and denied—not by an honest person. The critics were terribly wrong to be questioning his call and message.

(2:2) Gospel—Missions: the minister defended the work of the gospel. God led Paul to go to Jerusalem. The trip was not a man-planned journey; it was a God-called journey. God wanted Paul to go to Jerusalem and protect the world-wide mission work of the gospel. There were those in the church who were pressing the necessity of ritual and rules for salvation, in particular the necessity of being circumcised and of subjecting oneself to keep the law of Moses.

Paul knew something: if men were allowed to add ritual and rules to the gospel, he and his ministry would have been in vain (fruitless). Every person who had trusted in Jesus Christ and every person who would trust in Jesus Christ for salvation would have to undergo the ritual of circumcision. He would have to focus his life upon the law instead of Jesus Christ.

This was the reason God led Paul to Jerusalem: to save the message and work of the true gospel.

Þ Just imagine the thousands of Gentile believers who had been led to the Lord, and all the churches that had already been established by Paul and others throughout the world.

Þ Just imagine the catastrophic devastation upon the believers and the churches if they had to return to their conversion experience and add a ritual and other rules to their lives.

Note the method used by Paul to defend his case: private discussions with the leaders, in particular with the apostles.

The minister must not run in vain. He must preach the gospel and only the gospel, and he must build his ministry upon the gospel and only the gospel. He must not allow ritual or rule, ceremony or law to be added to the gospel. People are saved and people grow only by the gospel, only by the good news of God’s love for the world—a love that was demonstrated in the supreme gift of His Son to die for us.

Paul had already established that his contact with the other apostles was almost nil during the first years after his conversion. He did not see any of them until three years after his Damascus Road encounter with the Lord, and then only briefly. He had stayed with Peter for fifteen days in Jerusalem and had met James, Jesus’ half-brother (1:18-19; cf. Acts 9:26-28). He later went to Jerusalem a second time for probably an even briefer period, which he does not refer to in this text since it had no direct bearing on the issue of apostleship. During that
brief second visit he helped Barnabas take the collection to Jerusalem from the church at Antioch for relief of famine-stricken believers in Judea (Acts 11:27-30; 12:24-25).

Then after an interval of fourteen years from the first visit when he met Peter and James, he went up again to Jerusalem. During the previous seventeen years he had preached the gospel without any human instruction, his message having been given to him entirely by God’s direct revelation (Gal. 1:11-12,16-17).

Paul and Barnabas had completed their first missionary tour (Acts 13:1-14:28) and returned to Antioch to report the miracles of Gentile conversion by grace through faith. Jewish legalists in Judea were upset when they heard the report and went to Antioch to teach that a Gentile had to become a Jew before becoming a Christian.

It seems probable, as many scholars believe, that this trip of Paul’s again to Jerusalem was for the council (Acts 15) called to resolve the issue, and that again does not linguistically denote a second visit. (For a thorough treatment of the viability of that view of Acts 15 compared with the view that this text refers to Paul’s second visit to Jerusalem for famine relief recorded in Acts 11:27-30; 12:24-25, see William Hendricksen’s New Testament Commentary: Exposition of Galatians [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1971], pp. 69-77.)

According to Acts 15, those professing Jewish Christians from Judea went to Antioch, where Paul and Barnabas were ministering, “and began teaching the brethren, ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.’ And when Paul and Barnabas had great dissension and debate with them, the brethren determined that Paul and Barnabas and certain others of them should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders concerning this issue” (Acts 15:1-2). The whole debate was to be resolved in Jerusalem.

In addition to the leader Paul and his intimate Jewish friend and companion Barnabas, … Titus, a spiritual child of Paul and his co-worker (Titus 1:4-5), went along also, being among the “certain others” mentioned by Luke. Titus, as an uncircumcised Gentile and a product of the very ministry the Judaizers were attacking, was a fitting attendee to take along to the council. Consistent with their deceitful, self-serving methods of operation, the Judaizers likely claimed they sent the delegation from Antioch to Jerusalem to have Paul’s and Barnabas’s
doctrine corrected. But both Luke and Paul make clear that such was not the case. Luke states that they were “sent on their way by the church” at Antioch (v. 3). Though there may have been some reluctance on the part of Paul in accepting the assignment to go to Jerusalem, a direct revelation by God affirmed his obligation. Paul says more specifically that it was because of a revelation that I went up. It is possible that the Holy Spirit spoke to the leaders of the Antioch church, along with Paul, just as He had done when Paul and Barnabas were commissioned for their first missionary venture (Acts 13:2). In any case, the matter was resolved when Paul, divinely commanded to go to Jerusalem, was obedient, and the Antioch church affirmed that command by giving their blessing.

When Paul reached Jerusalem, he simply submitted (from anatitheômi, to lay something before someone for consideration) to them the gospel which he had always preached among the Gentiles, the gospel of salvation by God’s sovereign grace through man’s penitent faith—a gospel utterly contrary to the works-righteous belief of the Judaizers that “unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved” (Acts 15:1). Them refers first of all to the local church apostles and elders, including chiefly Peter, John, and James, our Lord’s half-brother; and then to the whole assembled church at Jerusalem, composed of all the apostles and elders as well as other church members and possibly other visiting believers besides those sent by the Antioch church (Acts 15:4). Paul and Barnabas gave that group a general report on “all that God had done with them,” after which “certain ones of the sect of the Pharisees who had believed, stood up, saying, ‘It is necessary to circumcise them [Gentiles], and to direct them to observe the Law of Moses’” (vv. 4-5).

At that point the “apostles and elders came together to look into this matter” more thoroughly. After much debate, Peter addressed the group, declaring that God makes no distinction between Jews and Gentiles, saving them both by faith and granting them both the gift of His indwelling Spirit. Concerning the supposed necessity of being circumcised and of following all the Mosaic law in order to be saved, he said, “Why do you put God to the test by placing upon the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they also are” (vv. 10-11).

It seems reasonable to assume that this private meeting occurred first because Paul wanted to be sure of the theology of the Jerusalem leaders before he spoke publicly. Therefore before any council appearance, Paul and Barnabas related in private to those who were of reputation “what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles” (Acts 15:12). In complete accord with what Peter was to say, Paul and Barnabas declared, first privately and then publicly, that God had saved Gentiles wherever they had proclaimed the gospel
and that their message and those conversions were attested by God himself through means of miraculous “signs and wonders.” That evidence was conclusive, because God does not confirm falsehood. When the Lord attested
preaching and conversion with signs and wonders, there was no greater proof that the preaching was according to divine truth and the conversions were by the power of His Spirit.

That the Jerusalem church, and probably most of the church at large, had not been seriously devastated by the heretical teaching of the Judaizers is seen in the fact that the matter was quickly and decisively resolved at the Jerusalem Council. The entire body “kept silent” when Peter finished his address, and immediately after Paul and Barnabas spoke, James summarized their messages and proposed that the substance of what they said be sent as a directive to all the churches. After Peter, Paul, and Barnabas spoke there was no more debate (cf. v. 7). James’s proposal “seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church,” and a letter stating their decision was sent to “the brethren in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia who are from the Gentiles” (vv. 12-22). The believers at Antioch, having been thoroughly grounded in the true gospel by Paul and Barnabas, “rejoiced because of its encouragement” when the council’s letter was read to them (vv. 30-31).

Paul’s referring to the apostles with whom he spoke in private as those who were of reputation reflected the general attitude of the church toward those Christ-appointed leaders. The phrase describing them is used of authorities and implies a position of honor. But the fact that he refers to them in this way four times in eight verses (Gal. 2:2-9) suggests a tinge of sarcasm. It is not, however, directed at the apostles but at the Judaizers who had been claiming apostolic approval of their legalistic perversions of the gospel. In the letter sent out by the
council the deceitful Judaizers are described as “some of our number to whom we gave no instruction” who had been disturbing the churches and “unsettling [their] souls” (Acts 15:24).

Although the Judaizers did not proclaim the same gospel taught by the Twelve, they knew they needed apostolic confirmation in order to be taken seriously. They therefore fabricated the lie that their message was approved by the apostles in Jerusalem and that they were among its acknowledged representatives. But that claim was absolutely denied by the apostles and elders at the council in Jerusalem.

The fact that Paul probably wrote Galatians some years after the Jerusalem Council shows that the decision and proclamation of that council had not stopped the Judaizers either from preaching their false doctrines or from claiming approval by the apostles, those who were of reputation. Paul was obviously not of any reputation, they told the Galatian believers, because his gospel conflicted with theirs and the apostles’.

But when Paul took Titus to Jerusalem and presented his gospel before these men of reputation, he was vindicated and the Judaizers were denounced. He had not sought vindication because he doubted the validity of his preaching. He had just declared emphatically that his message was by direct revelation from God and that it did not have and did not need any human clarification or confirmation (Gal. 1:11-19). He went to Jerusalem to prove that the gospel he preached was identical to that preached by the other apostles, having been revealed to him directly, though separately, by the Lord Jesus Himself. Paul did not go to confirm the apostolicity of his message in his own mind but in the minds of Galatian believers who were being confused and deceived by the Judaizers.

The Judaistic teachings were not simply misinterpretations or misapplications of the true gospel but the very antithesis of it. It was for fear that they might compromise with the teaching of the Judaizers and their perverse gospel that Paul sought in private to be certain that the teachers in Jerusalem agreed with his revelation of the gospel and would not be soft on legalism. Otherwise he might discover he was like an athlete who was running, or had run, in vain by seeing that all the spiritual effort in his ministry past and present was in conflict with
them and was futile. The apostles affirmed Paul’s gospel and added nothing to it (Gal. 2:6). That private confirmation set the stage for the decision in the public council that followed. It was of the greatest importance that believers in Galatia, and everywhere else, understand that his gospel of grace was identical to that of the other apostles and that it was the Satanic message of the Judaizers that was the aberration of God’s saving truth.

Act 2—The Public Convocation (Gal. 2:3-5)

The historical account of the Council of Jerusalem is recorded by Luke (Acts 15:6-21). Several witnesses presented the case for the Gospel of the grace of God, beginning with Peter (Acts 15:7-11). It was he who had been chosen by God to take the Gospel to the Gentiles originally (Acts 10); and he reminds the assembly that God gave the Holy Spirit to the believing Gentiles just as He did to the Jews, so that there was “no difference.”

This had been a difficult lesson for the early Christians to learn, because for centuries there had been a difference between Jews and Gentiles (Lev. 11:43-47; 20:22-27). In His death on the cross, Jesus had broken down the barriers between Jews and Gentiles (Eph. 2:11-22), so that in Christ there are no racial differences (Gal. 3:28). In his speech to the conference, Peter makes it clear that there is but one way of salvation: faith in Jesus Christ.

Then Paul and Barnabas told the assembly what God had done among the Gentiles (Acts 15:12), and what a “missionary report” that must have been! The “false brethren” who were there must have debated with Paul and Barnabas, but the two soldiers of the Cross would not yield. Paul wanted the “truth of the Gospel” to continue among the Gentiles (Gal. 2:5).

It seems that Titus became a “test case” at this point. He was a Gentile Christian who had never submitted to circumcision. Yet it was clear to all that he was genuinely saved. Now, if the Judaizers were right (“Except you be circumcised after the manner of Moses, you cannot be saved,” Acts 15:1), then Titus was not a saved man. But he was a saved man, and gave evidence of having the Holy Spirit; therefore, the Judaizers were wrong.

At this point, it might be helpful if we considered another associate of Paul—Timothy (see Acts 16:1-3). Was Paul being inconsistent by refusing to circumcise Titus, yet agreeing to circumcise Timothy? No, because two different issues were involved. In the case of Timothy, Paul was not submitting to Jewish Law in order to win him to Christ. Timothy was part Jew, part Gentile, and his lack of circumcision would have hindered his ministry among the people of Israel. Titus was a full Gentile, and for him to have submitted would have indicated that he was missing something in his Christian experience. To have circumcised Titus would have been cowardice and compromise; not to have circumcised Timothy would have been to create unnecessary problems in his ministry.

James, the leader of the church, gave the summation of the arguments and the conclusion of the matter (Acts 15:13-21). As Jewish as he was, he made it clear that a Gentile does not have to become a Jew in order to become a Christian. God’s program for this day is to “take out of the Gentiles a people for His name.” Jews and Gentiles are saved the same way: through faith in Jesus Christ. James then asked that the assembly counsel the Gentiles to do nothing that would offend unbelieving Jews, lest they hinder them from being saved. Paul won the battle.

His view prevailed in the private meeting when the leaders approved his Gospel and in the public meeting when the group agreed with Paul and opposed the Judaizers.

Echoes of the Jerusalem Conference are heard repeatedly in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. Paul mentions the “yoke of bondage” (Gal. 5:1), reminding us of Peter’s similar warning (Acts 15:10). The themes of liberty and bondage are repeated often (Gal. 2:4; 4:3, 9, 21-31; 5:1), as is the idea of circumcision (Gal. 2:3; 5:3-4; 6:12-13).

Centuries later, today’s Christians need to appreciate afresh the courageous stand Paul and his associates took for the liberty of the Gospel. Paul’s concern was “the truth of the Gospel” (Gal. 2:5, 14), not the “peace of the church.” The wisdom that God sends from above is “first pure, then peaceable” (James 3:17). “Peace at any price” was not Paul’s philosophy of ministry, nor should it be ours.

Ever since Paul’s time, the enemies of grace have been trying to add something to the simple Gospel of the grace of God. They tell us that a man is saved by faith in Christ plus something—good works, the Ten Commandments, baptism, church membership, religious ritual—and Paul makes it clear that these teachers are wrong. In fact, Paul pronounces a curse on any person (man or angel) who preaches any other gospel than the Gospel of the grace of God, centered in Jesus Christ (Gal. 1:6-9; see 1 Cor. 15:1-7 for a definition of the Gospel). It is a serious thing to tamper with the Gospel.

(2:3-5) Paul—Teachers, False—Judaizers: the minister defended the gospel before false believers. A brief look at what lies behind these verses will greatly help the reader. Paul was preaching the gospel of grace and of grace alone and this aroused some of the Jewish believers. Remember that most of the believers at Jerusalem were Jews. They had been circumcised when eight days old and had been steeped in the law of Moses since childhood. When they accepted Christ, some just refused to forsake their Judaistic religion. They saw Christianity only as an extension of Judaism. In their minds Christ had only added new teachings to their existing law and religion. Therefore, if a person wished to accept Christ, he had to become a Jew first...

· to undergo the ritual of circumcision.

· to commit himself to the law of Moses.

· to observe all the ceremonies and rituals of Jewish religion.

Once a person had done these things, that is, become a Jew, then and only then could he receive Christ and be baptized. Only then could he be accepted into the church.

Paul, of course, had gone against these beliefs and practices. He had...

· allowed people to receive Christ by grace through faith alone without undergoing the ritual of circumcision.

· allowed people to follow and focus upon Christ instead of the law of Moses.

This shocked those who were still loyal to their Judaistic religion, and they began to form an alliance and oppose Paul vehemently. They felt he was out to destroy their religion and its form and rituals. Therefore, they set out to discredit and destroy him...

· by questioning his salvation and call.

· by denying that his apostleship and ministry were of God.

· by planting their own teachers in the churches where Paul had ministered and by indoctrinating the churches with their own false teaching.

· by sending their own emissaries to follow and hound Paul by stirring up the people against him—stirring them to question his message and call.

These men were called Judaizers, men who mixed ritual and law with the gospel of Christ. Paul’s argument was that this teaching was the very opposite of the true gospel. A man is not saved by fleshly signs nor by ritual nor by his own ability to keep the law and regulations and rules. A man just cannot earn, win, or do anything to save himself. Salvation is by faith in Jesus Christ alone (Galatians 2:16). A man can only accept salvation, and then in thankfulness for God’s gift, he must depend upon the power of the Holy Spirit to live for God.

Now to the point of the present verses. When Paul went to Jerusalem, he took Barnabas and Titus, two co-workers, with him. Barnabas was a Jew who had been converted in Jerusalem. He was well known by most believers, for he was one of the very first missionaries, and he had experienced great movements of God wherever he had carried the gospel.

Titus, however, was a different matter. He was a heathen (Gentile) convert. He was not a Jew, which meant he had never undergone the ritual of circumcision, nor had he committed himself to keep the law of Moses and the rituals of religion. Titus was a perfect example of salvation by grace alone, for he had been saved and called by Christ to preach without ever having been circumcised and without submitting to the law of Moses. Apparently, it was Paul’s intention to present him as a prime example of God saving people by grace through faith alone—without any religion, ritual, or rule whatsoever.

However, when the Judaizers heard about Titus, they planted several of their followers in the church who reacted and demanded that Titus undergo the ritual of circumcision and make the law of Moses the focus of his life. Note that they entered the church hypocritically; they were not true believers. Paul calls them “brothers,” but “false brothers.”

Note that Paul refused to subject to the false teachers. He would not tell Titus he had to undergo a ritual and focus upon the law in order to be saved. Paul fought to preserve the pure gospel in all its truth.

Judaizers—Legalists: these were Jews who professed Christ but still hung on to their Judaistic religion, in particular to the rite of circumcision and to the law of Moses (cp. Acts 5:1-35, esp. Acts 5:1, 24-29). They believed a man became a Christian...

· by first becoming a Jew. The man was to embrace Judaism with all its rituals and ceremonies and be circumcised, and begin to obey the laws of Moses,

· then the man could accept Christ as his Savior.

In the mind of the circumcised, Christianity was a mixture of Judaism and the teachings of Christ. The law was just as important as Christ and Christ was no more important than the law. They failed to grasp...

· that Christ was the fulfillment of the law.

· that Christ had kept the law perfectly, thereby becoming the Ideal Man, the Perfect Pattern of what every man should be.

· that Christ was not only the embodiment of the law, but so much more—the very embodiment of God Himself, the Ideal Man, the Perfect Pattern to whom all men were to look for their salvation and standard.

· that Christ, as the Son of God and as the Ideal Man and the Perfect Pattern, was the One to whom all men were now to look and obey.

Some Jews were impressed with Christ and professed Him, but they were never able to understand or else were unwilling to accept Christ as the fulfillment of the law and as the Savior of all men. Therefore, they never turned to Christ alone, never broke away...

· from their legalistic religion.

· from requiring men (Gentiles) to become Jews before they could become Christians.

This was the great battle the church had to fight in its beginning. It was the great problem that faced God: how to break the church away from its Judaistic roots and away from excluding and shutting out the other people of the world (Gentiles). This had always been the problem of the Jews—the problem of keeping the Gentiles away from God and the glorious salvation He had planned for all men. Now, since Christ had come, God had to lead the early church away from the Judaistic approach, away from making a man become a Jew before he could accept Christ. This just was not the will of God, for God had sent Christ into the world to save all men, not just the Jews. The message had to be carried to all. He had to break the early Jewish believers away from their legalism, away from their...

· making distinctions between themselves and others.

· making others become religionists before accepting Christ.

· discriminating against others.

· building barriers and walls for others to cross (legalistic rules).

· being separatists and being divisive.

· being a people of prejudice and bigotry.

However, note this: all through the history of the church, extending from the early church up to the present time, there have been some who have refused to follow Christ alone. They have laid the burden of the law and ritual and ceremony (legalism, becoming a religionist, a Jew) upon people. In the past such people were known as the circumcision or the Judaizers; in modern times they are known as religionists or legalists .

Although the Greek text of these verses may have been perfectly intelligible to the Galatians, it is almost impossible for modern scholars to translate. The noted biblical scholar J. B. Lightfoot called the passage “a shipwreck of Greek grammar.” Perhaps Paul became so emotional while defending the very heart of the gospel and was so afraid that his beloved flocks would be corrupted by the Judaistic heresy that he used complex grammar and failed to complete his sentences.

But Paul’s meaning is obvious, and there is no difficulty in understanding precisely what he is saying. As specific evidence in a test case showing that the Jerusalem apostles were in complete accord with him, Paul states that not even Titus who was with me, though he was a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised while at Jerusalem (cf. Acts 15:10, 19). Titus, a true Christian, was living and incontrovertible proof that circumcision and Mosaic regulations are not necessary for salvation. The Jerusalem Council refused to accede to the demands of the Judaizers to have Titus and all other Gentile believers circumcised, determining that they would “not trouble those who are turning to God from among the Gentiles” by compelling them to be circumcised (Acts 15:19, cf. v. 28).

It should be noted that some years after that occasion Paul circumcised Timothy “because of the Jews who were in those parts” (the region of Galatia), but he did so because Timothy was half Jewish (Acts 16:1-3). He was not making a concession to the Judaizers, but rather was giving Timothy closer identity with Jews to whom they might witness. Timothy was circumcised as a Jew not as a Christian. His circumcision had no relationship to his salvation but simply gave him entrance to Jewish synagogues, from which he would otherwise have been excluded.

Titus, however, was a full Gentile, and to have had him circumcised would have undercut the gospel of grace and made him a monument of victory for the Judaizers. Paul may have intentionally brought Titus to Jerusalem to confound the Judaizing false brethren who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, in order to bring us into bondage. Paul was perfectly confident in the outcome of the Jerusalem Council and knew that afterward he would have a companion who would be personal proof that his gospel of grace apart from law was valid. He was confident that Titus would be allowed to leave Jerusalem uncircumcised, just as he had entered, with the full blessing of the apostles and elders. And if Gentile believers were not compelled to be
circumcised in Jerusalem, which was still home base for most of the apostles, how could they be required to be circumcised in their home countries? Henceforth Titus was a living verification that the Judaizers taught a spurious gospel that was rejected by the rest of the church.

The Judaizers were marked as false brethren (pseudadelphos), a phrase that has also been translated “sham Christians” (NEB) and “pseudo-Christians” (Phillips). Those professing Jewish believers had developed a hybrid faith that was true neither to traditional Judaism (because it claimed allegiance to Christ) nor to apostolic Christianity (because it demanded circumcision and obedience to the Mosaic law for salvation).

It is impossible to be a legalist and a Christian. “If you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you,” Paul declares later in the letter. “Every man who receives circumcision … is under obligation to keep the whole Law. You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace” (Gal. 5:2-4). To do a single thing to earn salvation is to vitiate grace.

Some of the Judaizers no doubt sincerely believed their legalistic gospel was correct and that they were the only genuine Christians. But Paul refers to those who had sneaked in to spy out the liberty of true believers in terms that suggest enemies entering a camp by stealth with the objective of sabotage. Those men may not even have been honest Judaizers. Some scholars believe they were planted in the churches by Pharisees or priests in order to corrupt this threat to traditional Judaism. In any case, Satan, as always, was the primary instigator of
the subterfuge. The Judaizers were first of all the devil’s agents, whatever their human associations and loyalties.

Their specific purpose was to undermine the liberty which true believers have in Christ Jesus, in order to bring them into the bondage of legalism. The verb (katadoulooô) is a compound and conveys the strong slavery of a works system. The Judaizers could not tolerate a gospel that was not tied to Mosaic ritual and law because their view of salvation was centered in what they could self-righteously perform to earn favor from God rather than in what God could do for them.

In Christ Jesus believers have liberty from the law as the way of salvation and liberty from its external ceremonies and regulations as the way of living. Because Christ has borne that curse (3:13), they also have liberty from the curse for disobedience of the law which God requires all men to obey but which no
man is able to perfectly keep. Christians are under an entirely different kind of law, “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus [that sets them] free from the law of sin and of death” (Rom. 8:2).

Freedom is a much-repeated theme of the New Testament. In Christ believers “have been released from the Law having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter” (Rom. 7:6), because “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Cor. 3:17). “If therefore the Son shall make you free,” Jesus said, “you shall be free indeed” (John 8:36).

Christian freedom is not license. When we become free in Christ we lose our freedom to sin, of which we were once a slave. In Christ, “having been freed from sin, [we] become slaves of righteousness” (Rom. 6:18). “For you were called to freedom, brethren,” Paul explains; “only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh” (Gal. 5:13). Peter expresses the same truth in these words: “Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God” (1 Pet. 2:16).

Paul did not yield in subjection to the legalistic bondage of the Judaizers for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you Galatian believers (and all others), untainted and unadulterated. Remain is from diamenoô and emphasizes a permanent state. In regard to methods of ministry and issues of no spiritual importance, Paul became “all things to all men, that [he might] by all means save some (1 Cor. 9:22). But in doctrinal matters, especially those relating to the heart of the gospel, he was intransigent. He would make
considerable concessions in order to accommodate weak Christians, but he would not yield an inch of truth to accommodate false Christians. And the leaders of the church at Jerusalem were wholeheartedly in agreement with Paul’s gospel, as their declarations in the council indicated (Acts 15:13-21).

Act 3—The Personal Confirmation (Gal. 2:6-10)

The Judaizers had hoped to get the leaders of the Jerusalem church to disagree with Paul. By contrast, Paul makes it clear that he himself was not impressed either by the persons or the positions of the church leaders. He respected them, of course. Otherwise he would not have consulted with them privately. But he did not fear them or seek to buy their influence. All he wanted them to do was recognize “the grace of God” at work in his life and ministry (Gal. 2:9), and this they did.

Not only did the assembly approve Paul’s Gospel, and oppose Paul’s enemies, but they encouraged Paul’s ministry and recognized publicly that God had committed the Gentile aspect of His work into Paul’s hands. They could add nothing to Paul’s message or ministry, and they dared not take anything away. There was agreement and unity: one Gospel would be preached to Jews and to Gentiles.

However, the leaders recognized that God had assigned different areas of ministry to different men. Apart from his visit to the household of Cornelius (Acts 10) and to the Samaritans (Acts 8), Peter had centered his ministry primarily among the Jews. Paul had been called as God’s special ambassador to the Gentiles. So, it was agreed that each man would minister in the sphere assigned to him by God.

“The Gospel of the circumcision” and “the Gospel of the uncircumcision” are not two different messages; it had already been agreed that there is only one Gospel. Rather, we have here two different spheres of ministry, one to the Jews and the other to the Gentiles. Peter and Paul would both preach the same Gospel, and the same Lord would be at work in and through them (Gal. 2:8), but they would minister to different peoples.

This does not mean that Paul would never seek to win the Jews. To the contrary, he had a great burden on his heart for his people (Rom. 9:1-3). In fact, when Paul came to a city, he would first go to the Jewish synagogue, if there was one, and start his work among his own people. Nor was Peter excluded from ministering to the Gentiles. But each man would concentrate his work in his own sphere assigned to him by the Holy Spirit. James, Peter, and John would go to the Jews; Paul would go to the Gentiles (Gal. 2:9b, where the word heathen means “Gentile nations”).

The Jerusalem Conference began with a great possibility for division and dissension; yet it ended with cooperation and agreement. “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity” (Ps. 133:1). Perhaps we need to practice some of this same cooperation today.

We need to recognize the fact that God calls people to different ministries in different places; yet we all preach the same Gospel and are seeking to work together to build His church. Among those who know and love Christ, there can be no such thing as “competition.” Peter was a great man, and perhaps the leading apostle; yet he gladly yielded to Paul—a newcomer—and permitted him to carry on his ministry as the Lord led him. Previously, Paul explained his independence from the Apostles (Gal. 1); now in Galatians 2 he points out his interdependence with the Apostles. He was free, and yet he was willingly in fellowship with them in the ministry of the Gospel.

We move next from the theological to the practical—helping the poor (Gal. 2:10). Certainly these things go together. Correct doctrine is never a substitute for Christian duty (James 2:14-26). Too often our church meetings discuss problems, but they fail to result in practical help for the needy world. Paul had always been interested in helping the poor (Acts 11:27-30), so he was glad to follow the leaders’ suggestion.

Even though the conference ended with Paul and the leaders in agreement, it did not permanently solve the problem. The Judaizers did not give up, but persisted in interfering with Paul’s work and invading the churches he founded. Paul carried the good news of the council’s decision to the churches in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia (Acts 15:23) and in the other areas where he had ministered (Acts 16:4). But the Judaizers followed at his heels (like yelping dogs—see Phil. 3:1-3), starting at Antioch where they even swayed Peter to their cause (see Gal. 2:11ff).

There is little question that the Judaizers went to the churches of Galatia to sow their seeds of discord, and for this reason Paul had to write the letter we are now studying. It may have been written from Antioch shortly after the Council of Jerusalem, though some scholars date it later and have Paul writing from either Ephesus or Corinth. These historical details are important, but they are not vital to an understanding of the letter itself. Suffice it to say that this is probably Paul’s earliest letter, and in it we find every major doctrine that Paul believed, preached, and wrote about in his subsequent ministry.

The curtain falls on this drama, but it will go up to reveal another. Once again God’s “freedom fighter” will have to defend the truth of the Gospel, this time before Peter.

(2:6) Gospel—Partiality: the minister defended the gospel before any and all persons. The false brothers were saying that Paul should not be followed, for he was not a true minister. His call was not equal to the apostles of Christ: he had never been an associate of Jesus Christ nor of the other leaders of the church. How then could he be a true minister of God? He did not have the right credentials or education and he was not an associate of the right leaders.

Bluntly, Paul declared the piercing truth:

Þ God accepts no man’s person; God shows no partiality.

Þ No man, not even a man of reputation, can add anything to another man’s call or to the gospel. God is the creator of the gospel and the One who calls men to the ministry. Men have not developed the gospel, not the real gospel, and men do not call other men to the ministry, not to the real ministry.

All believers, especially ministers, need to search their hearts with such questions as:

Þ How many of us seek the approval of leaders over the approval of God?

Þ How many of us seek the call of churches or leaders over the call of God?

Þ How many of us seek the favor and help of men over the favor and help of God?

Þ How many of us seek to add to our reputation by associating with leaders instead of seeking God and His place of service?

Þ And, of extreme danger, how many of us add and teach our own ideas, rituals, and rules instead of the pure gospel?

God treats all men alike. He has no favorites and shows no partiality. Every person is saved by the same gospel, and every true minister is called by the same Lord.

(2:7-10) Gospel—Call: the minister defended the special call given each man to proclaim the gospel. Note the word “contrariwise” (tounantion): the leaders of the church did not agree with the Judaizers as the Judaizers had hoped; on the contrary they stood with and championed the call and gospel of Christ. They saw that God had called Paul to preach to the Gentiles (the uncircumcision) just as he had called Peter to preach to the Jews (the circumcision). They championed the truth that God gives to every man a particular task.

Note who the leaders were in Jerusalem: James, the Lord’s brother who was pastor of the great Jerusalem church, and Peter and John. The point to note is that the great pillars of the church were now standing together proclaiming...

· that salvation by grace through faith alone was the true gospel.

· that God was the Person who called Paul and all other ministers to preach the gospel.

· that Paul and all other ministers should remember and minister to the poor, not just to the middle classes and wealthy.

Again Paul refers to the other apostles as those who were of high reputation, apparently a favorite phrase of the Judaizers. In going on to say, what they were makes no difference to me, he was not depreciating those
godly men. He respected them or he would not have sought a private audience with them, nor would he have sought their public confirmation so that people would know he was not running in vain. He rather was defending himself against the depreciation of the Judaizers, who accused him of not comparing with the Jerusalem apostles and of being a false, self-appointed, and inferior apostle. His point here was that, although those twelve men were personally appointed apostles by Jesus Christ, so was he. He did not need their approval for his own confidence, nor did he need to seek their confirmation to convince himself and in that regard who or what they were made no difference to him and his ministry. He had no doubts about his calling and revelations.

It may be that the Judaizers put Paul down by reminding him that the Twelve had been with Jesus for the entire course of His earthly ministry, whereas he had not (cf. 1:19). The twelve were also leaders in the Jerusalem church, which understandably was held in high regard by Christians as the first and leading congregation. But, Paul goes on to say, God shows no partiality, as Peter had learned with some difficulty (Acts 10:9-48). The unique privileges of the twelve therefore did not make their apostleship more legitimate or authoritative than
Paul’s.

Paul was not being proud or boastful but was simply stating a truth. He knew that all he was and had was entirely by God’s grace (Gal. 2:9). He acknowledged himself as the foremost of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15) and “the least of the apostles, who [was] not fit to be called an apostle, because [he had] persecuted the church of God” (1 Cor. 15:9). But under God’s grace he was equal to all other believers, and in his calling he was equal to all the other apostles. In 2 Corinthians 11:5 he affirmed, “I consider myself not in the least inferior to the most eminent
apostles.”

The Twelve had contributed nothing to Paul’s knowledge or understanding of the gospel or to his authority to preach it. For seventeen years he had preached the gospel without their having had the least part in it. When he finally went to Jerusalem to testify to what he preached, it was not for approval or correction but simply for recognition—and that not for his own sake but for the sake of those who had been deceived by the false accusations against him being spread by the Judaizers.

But on the contrary, seeing that Paul had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised, the apostles in Jerusalem recognized he was entrusted with preaching the true gospel. At that point the Judaizers’ contention that Paul was preaching a deviant message was refuted once and for all. As Luke explains, not only did the Jerusalem Council vindicate Paul’s message of grace apart from law, but they entrusted him with the primary responsibility of reporting their decision to the churches in Antioch,
Syria, and Cilicia—areas where his work had been severely criticized by the Judaizers (Acts 15:22-24).

Because some versions, such as the King James, have translated “the gospel of the uncircumcised” and “of the circumcised,” many liberal interpreters have suggested (for this and other reasons) that Peter and Paul preached different messages. But that idea is disproved by Galatians 1:6-9, by the decision of the Jerusalem Council, and by Greek grammar. The Greek article (teôs) is here an objective genitive and does not indicate definition (“of”) but direction (to), as in our text and most modern translations.

For He who effectually worked for Peter in his apostleship to the circumcised, Paul continues, effectually worked for me also to the Gentiles. The same Holy Spirit (He) who energized (worked, from energeoô, to be at work, to produce results) and empowered Peter energized and empowered Paul, and the Spirit has but one gospel. When Paul returned to Jerusalem several years later, “the brethren received [him and those with him] gladly,” and when he “began to relate one by one the things which God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry,” James and the other elders “began glorifying God” (Acts 21:17-20). After the Jerusalem Council there was never a question about Paul’s message or apostleship. In his second letter Peter highly commended Paul as a wise and beloved brother and ranked Paul’s letters with “the rest of the Scriptures” (2 Pet. 3:15-16).

Recognizing the grace that had been given to Paul, the other apostles and the church at large could only conclude that this man was a divinely commissioned and blessed instrument of God. Only God’s grace—His free,
sovereign, and undeserved blessing—could account for the mighty spreading of the gospel and building up of the church that the Lord had accomplished through this mortal.

Still again Paul refers to the reputation of James and Cephas (Peter) and John—those who were reputed to be pillars (a Jewish term used to refer to great teachers). As already mentioned, the somewhat sarcastic reference does not reflect against these men but against the Judaizers. Because those false teachers apparently used the term pillars (emphasizing their role in establishing and supporting the church) when referring to the three Jerusalem leaders, Paul throws the term back in their faces. He demonstrates to them and to the Galatian believers they were trying to turn against him that he was in perfect doctrinal harmony with those three pillars and with all the other apostles and elders at Jerusalem.

He not only was in doctrinal harmony with them but in personal harmony with them as well. There is only one gospel, and those five men (who wrote 21 of the 27 New Testament books) demonstrate that truth. They gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, Paul says as he continues to confound the false claims of the Judaizers. In the Near East, to clasp the right hand of a person was to make a solemn vow of friendship and was a mark of fellowship, or partnership. The “pillars” at Jerusalem recognized Paul not only as a true preacher and teacher of the gospel but also as a beloved partner with them in Christ’s service. They had different fields of service—Paul and Barnabas ministered primarily to the Gentiles and the Jerusalem leaders primarily to the circumcised—but they proclaimed the same gospel and served the same Lord in the power of His Spirit. That act of affirmation both of Paul and of his message was a devastating blow to the Judaizers. In fact, Paul’s apostolate to the Gentiles was recognized as the equal of Peter’s apostolate to the Jews.

The only request made of Paul and Barnabas at Jerusalem was that they remember the poor. The request was not doctrinal but practical, a reminder about the special needs of believers in Judea, especially Jerusalem. Even before the widespread famine (see Acts 11:28) for which Paul was called to bring relief, the Jerusalem church faced a serious problem of feeding and caring for its members. Its ranks were swelled by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of believers who had been converted while visiting the city and who then decided to stay there rather than return home. Many had little money, and they soon discovered that, because they were Christians, it was sometimes difficult to find employment. In the early days of the church those who had money and other possessions generously shared what they had “with all, as anyone might have need” (Acts 2:45). But those resources were rapidly depleted as the number of converts grew. For many years, therefore, the church at Jerusalem had been economically pressed.

To take care of the poor is not only a practical but a spiritual responsibility, because to forsake that responsibility is to disobey God’s Word. “Whoever has this world’s goods,” John declares, “and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?” (1 John 3:17). James says that it is a sham believer who says to “a brother or sister … without clothing and in need of daily food, … ‘Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,’ and yet [does] not give them what is necessary for their body” (James 2:15-16; cf. Ex. 23:10-11; 30:15; Lev. 19:10; Deut. 15:7-11; Jer. 22:16; Amos 2:6-7; Luke 6:36, 38; 2 Cor. 8-9).

Paul was therefore eager to do all he could to fulfill the request of James, Peter, and John, as his numerous and constant collections for the poverty-stricken saints in Judea attested. His command that “if anyone will not work, neither let him eat” (2 Thess. 3:10) pertained to the lazy, not the helpless and needy. He continually encouraged believers who were more prosperous to give financial aid to fellow believers who were in need; and he heartily commended those who were generous (Acts 11:29-30; 24:17; Rom. 15:25-26; 1 Cor. 16:1-4; 2 Cor. 8:1-6; 9:1-5,12). “For if the Gentiles have shared in their [the Jerusalem saints’] spiritual things,” Paul explained to the Roman church, “they are indebted to minister to them also in material things” (Rom. 15:27).