After a big event like a political campaign, leaders are called to justify their actions. They are asked why they choose to ignore certain polling advice, why they choose certain policies while ignoring others and choose the talking points as they did. For some they saw the majority victory that they wanted slip from their grasp. For others, it probably means their job.
The Apostle Paul called the actions of certain Christians to account in Galatia. Their deviation from the Gospel occurred when their actions proclaimed a message different from their words.
The actions of Peter, Barnabas, and the other Jewish believers in Antioch were not simply a matter of personal hypocrisy. Their capitulation to the Judaizers, by example if not by doctrine, was fracturing the church. The fact that Peter and Barnabas were spiritual leaders made the matter immeasurably worse For years they had taught justification by faith alone, and they had exemplified that teaching in their lives. The Antioch church had become a model of Jewish-Gentile fellowship and harmony, and almost overnight it had become the opposite.
When you ask most people how they expect to become right with God their answers are usually based on works. They try to justify their actions before God. For those who trust their works and are not justified by faith in Christ alone, the result is eternal death. For Christians, who phrase their standing before God by a work they did, like saying “I am right with God because I accepted Jesus into my heart”, the message they give is that we become right with God based on something we do. Understanding the concept of Justification by faith alone is a matter of life and death.
Chapter two of Galatians has been Paul’s biographical defense of his Apostolic authority and Gospel. After he defended the truth of the Gospel against Peter’s hypocritical actions countering justification by faith alone we see 1) HIS REACTION (Galatians 2:14–15) 2) HIS STATEMENT (Galatians 2:15–16) AND 3) HIS DEFENCE (Galatians 2:17–21)
1) HIS REACTION (Galatians 2:14)
Galatians 2:14-15 [14]But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, "If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?"
As we saw, the withdrawal of the Jewish believers from the Gentiles was likely gradual; but as soon as Paul realized what was happening he immediately reacted against it. When [he] saw that their conduct was not in step/not straightforward with the truth of the gospel, he sharply rebuked Peter (Cephas).
As an apostle Peter was the most accountable, and it was his wrong example that had drawn the others into the destructive hypocrisy.
The phrase of Peter not being in step/straightforward is from orthopodeô, a compound of orthos (straight) and pous (foot) that means to walk straight, or uprightly. One scholar translates verse 14a as, “They were not walking on the straight path towards the truth of the gospel.” In withdrawing from their Gentile brethren, Peter and the others were not living parallel to God’s Word, not walking a straight spiritual course.
Because Peter’s offense was public, Paul rebuked him before them all/in the presence of all, unmasking his hypocrisy before the whole congregation.
• Every believer in Antioch, and doubtlessly many unbelievers as well, knew that Peter was no longer associating with Gentiles as he had once done so freely and openly
• In order to avoid jumping to conclusions or base actions on second-hand reports, we saw the requirement of several witnesses that a charge against an eider is true, Paul told Timothy, the elder should be rebuked “in the presence of all, so that the rest also may be fearful of sinning” (1 Tim. 5:20).
Why would Paul rebuke Peter publicly? Unless the public sin of a believer is dealt with publicly, people will think the church does not take sin seriously and therefore gives tacit approval of it. A church that does not discipline sinning members (including the most prominent members) loses its credibility, because it does not take seriously its own doctrines and standards.
• We can see this implication in everyday life: A child who is not disciplined when he does wrong soon concludes that his parent’s standards are not really very important, because they are not enforced.
Paul rebuked Peter when he said:
"If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?"
In contrast to Peter’s hypocrisy, Paul’s indictment was straightforward. He simply pointed out the obvious inconsistency of Peter’s behavior in Antioch. He reminded him that when he first arrived there, Peter had freely fellowshipped with Gentile believers and regularly ate with them (v. 12). He had openly visited in their homes and joined them in love feasts and Communion, showing no evidence of legalism or prejudice. He had lived like a Gentile and not like a Jew, who were known throughout the world for their separatism.
• Previously we considered how under the Old Covenant God had established certain dietary laws and other restrictions for the purpose of keeping His chosen people from intermingling and intermarrying with pagan Gentiles and being corrupted by their idolatry and immorality.
• But during and after the time of the Exile, rabbinic tradition had made countless additions and amendments to the biblical regulations,
o For example, Jews were allowed to buy meat from a Gentile market only if the animal had been slaughtered by a Jew and had not been used in a pagan religious ceremony.
After his vision of the unclean animals in Acts 11 and his experience with Cornelius, Peter had no longer lived like a Jew, having finally come to realize that even the God-given ceremonial separation taught in the Old Testament was no longer valid. But under the influence of the Judaizers in Antioch he faltered and slipped back into the old ways.
Paul had no desire to lord it over Peter or to build up his own reputation at the expense of a fellow apostle. His motive was not to humiliate Peter but to correct him in a serious error that had caused many other believers to stumble with him.
What does Paul’s actions say about the need to confront sin within the congregation?
He could tolerate nothing that threatened the integrity of the gospel, especially if that threat came from a prominent and influential leader such as Peter.
• Whenever we become engulfed by sin, it not only speaks to the issue of our integrity it also speaks to the character of God and the message of the gospel.
We have seen 1) HIS REACTION AND NOW:
2) HIS STATEMENT (Galatians 2:15–16)
Galatians 2:15-16[15]We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; [16]yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified. (ESV)
The essence of the human spiritual dilemma is that all are incapable of overcoming the total sinfulness that separates everyone from the holy God.
Paul’s rebuke of Peter culminated in one of the most forceful statements in the New Testament on the doctrine of justification-the very doctrine that Peter and the others were in effect renouncing by their hypocritical separation from Gentile believers. In effect, Paul was saying, “Peter, I am rebuking you because you are violating the cardinal truth of Christianity. By your behavior you are condoning works-righteousness, a system of legalism that is contrary even to the covenant given by Moses, not to mention the New Covenant given by our Lord Jesus Christ.”
In setting forth the true doctrine of justification Paul first states what it is (vv. 15–16) and then gives a defense of it (vv. 17–21). Because of Paul’s intense and emotional concern for the integrity of the gospel and the spiritual welfare of the Galatian believers, his grammar in this epistle is sometimes difficult to reconstruct and his logic difficult to follow, though his meaning is always clear.
We is used four times in verses 15–17 and refers to Paul, Peter, and all other Jewish Christians. The first part of his argument here is that, even we who are Jews by birth/nature … have believed in Christ Jesus. “As Jews,” he was indicating, “we of all people know what it is to live by the system of law. We know the law as a way of life, what it is to function continually under the demands of religious rituals and regulations. Yet even we were saved by believing in Christ Jesus, not by the law. And if we, as Jews, cannot be saved by the law, how can we expect Gentile sinners to be?”
In referring to the Gentiles as sinners, Paul was not using the term in the behavioral sense of public immorality (as it is often used in the gospels), but in the legal sense in which it was frequently used by Jews. In the minds of most Jews, Gentiles were sinners by nature because they had no law to guide them in right living and in pleasing God. But with or without the law, Paul was saying, no person is saved who has not believed in Christ Jesus.
As we have seen in the previous weeks, at the Jerusalem Council Peter declared that same truth in response to the Judaizers.
Acts 15:10-11 [10]Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? [11]But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will." (ESV)
Martin Luther said that if the article of justification by faith is lost, all Christian doctrine is lost. In this last section of chapter 2 Paul was inspired to introduce this most essential doctrine in the epistle, a doctrine he had preached and explained to the Galatians on many occasions. He uses the verb form of justification (dikaioô) four times in verses 16–17 and the noun form (dikaiosunç) once in verse 21, where it is rendered “righteousness.” In the New Testament these and other forms of the same Greek term are variously translated by such English words as justify, justification, righteousness, just, righteous, and justified.
The basic term was originally used forensically of a judge’s declaring an accused person not guilty and right before the law. It was the opposite of being declared guilty and condemned.
• Throughout Scripture justification refers to God’s declaring a sinner to be guiltless on the basis of faith in Him.
• Definition: It is the free and gracious act by which God declares a sinner right with Himself-forgiving, pardoning, restoring, and accepting him on the basis of nothing but trust in the Person and work of His Son, Jesus Christ.
Paul Continues in Galatians 2:16
Galatians 2:16 [16]yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified. (ESV)
No amount of law-keeping can make a person righteous, because the root of sinfulness is in the fallenness of man’s heart, not in actions.
• We are not sinners because we sin, we sin because we are sinners.
Please turn to Matthew 5
As Rico Tice said in the Christianity Explored series at the Pypkers, Humanity’s basic problem is not the economy, global warming or the environment. It is sin. Sinful acts are but the outward expression of a depraved nature that contains sinful thoughts.
People tend to think that God just holds people accountable on their actions. Christ clarified:
Matthew 5:22-28 [22]But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ’You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. [23]So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, [24]leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. [25]Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. [26]Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. [27]"You have heard that it was said, ’You shall not commit adultery.’ [28]But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (ESV)
Please turn to Romans 3
No amount of works of the Law can save a person, because even the best of human works cannot change the nature of the person doing them.
• If you ask most people how they expect to go to heaven they quote some action that they do.
• Unfortunately if you ask most Christians they say the same thing: The most common response: “Because I have accepted Jesus into my heart”. Not only is that a phrase that is not in Scripture, it is confused and misleading. It gives people the impression that Christ accepts people on the basis of a work that they do: “accepting Him into their heart”. Right standing with God is described as a work, a work of the Law.
Romans 3:19-20 [19]Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. [20]For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. (ESV)
The law is important as a mirror to show us our sinfulness; but it can only reveal sin, not remove it.
Romans 3:21-24; 28 [21]But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it-- [22]the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: [23]for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, [24]and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, [28]For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. (ESV)
There is a neat example of how law works in our lives.
Illustration: Many people are physiologically sensitive to chocolate. Certain of the larger benzene compounds present in chocolate are resisted by their bodies through an allergic reaction. Depending on the individual, this reaction may range from very mild, producing a minor skin rash, to very severe, producing medical shock and death. Chocolate is fatal for some persons not because chocolate is poisonous in and of itself but because of the biochemical makeup of their bodies.
In a similar way, the power of sin in human beings reacts to the law and brings death. As Paul says in Romans 7:7-12, this happens not because the law is evil but because of sin within us. (Green, M. P. (1989). Illustrations for Biblical Preaching : Over 1500 sermon illustrations arranged by topic and indexed exhaustively (Revised edition of: The expositor’s illustration file). Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.)
The law points out our falling short of God’s standard. God gives the gift of faith as the means by which He makes us right with him. Therefore, in Galatians 2:16 we see the description of faith in Christ Jesus. Faith in Christ is not mere intellectual assent to the fact that Jesus died and rose for man’s sin but is personal trust in His death to remove and forgive one’s own sins. It is total commitment to submit to Him as Lord (cf. James 4:7).
All claims that salvation is through belief in Jesus Christ plus something else are blasphemous, satanic lies. There can be no effective or acceptable human addition to Christ’s work. This passage is as forceful and unequivocal a statement of the doctrine of salvation by faith alone as can be found in Scripture. First Paul establishes it on the basis of his apostolic authority. Second, he establishes it on the basis of his own experience. And third, he establishes it on the basis of God’s Word in the Old Testament.
We have seen 1) HIS REACTION 2) HIS STATEMENT AND FINALLY:
3) HIS DEFENSE (Galatians 2:17–21)
Galatians 2:17-21 [17]But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! [18]For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. [19]For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. [20]I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. [21]I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. (ESV)
By their behavior, Peter and the other Jewish Christians at Antioch had given approval to the Judaizers’ idea that it was necessary for a Gentile to keep the Jewish rituals before he could become a Christian. Paul’s defense of justification by faith in verses 17–21 continues his contradiction of this Judaistic legalism to which Peter and the others had succumbed.
It is crucial to understand that, as in the previous two verses, we refers to Jewish Christians. But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, as Jewish Christians, were found to be sinners, Paul asks rhetorically, is Christ then a servant of sin?
His first point was to show that, if the Judaizers were correct in their doctrine that believers are saved in part by keeping the ceremonial law of Moses and continue to be bound by that law to maintain their salvation, then, even before the Judaizers arrived in Antioch, Peter, Barnabas, and all the other Jewish believers, including Paul, had fallen back into the category of sinners by having freely eaten and fellowshipped with Gentile Christians.
Paul’s second point was even more devastating. “If you became sinners because of felowshiping with your Gentile brothers,” he implies, “then Christ Himself became a servant of sin, did he not?” How? Jesus had clearly taught that no food can spiritually contaminate a person, because food cannot affect the heart (Mark 7:19). Through the vision of the unclean animals and the dramatic conversion and anointing of Cornelius, the Lord had given Peter direct evidence that Gentile believers are in every way equal to Jewish believers (Acts 10).
But if the Judaizers were right, Paul pointed out, Jesus was wrong; if they taught the truth, He had taught falsehood and was thereby a servant of sin!
Such an accusation must have shaken Peter to his bones. To be called a hypocrite stung enough, but to be called a sinner was unthinkable, and to be accused of making Jesus a servant of sin was shocking and repulsive. Yet the logic of Paul’s argument was inescapable. By his actions, Peter had in effect condemned Jesus Christ. He therefore had to forsake his Judaistic sympathies or continue to make His Lord a liar.
To his own question Paul immediately responded, Certainly not! It must have been painful to Paul to suggest even hypothetically that Christ could participate, much less promote, sin. But the drastic danger of Judaistic legalism demanded such drastic logic. He knew of no other way to bring Peter and the others to their senses.
• The question then for each of us is this: how far will we go to rid ourselves of sin. What will we stop doing, stop watching or stop going to remove the temptation.
o What will we fill the vacuume with to promote holiness?
Even as an apostle, Paul saw the danger of sin even for himself. By using the term we in the previous verses, Paul had graciously identified himself with the compromisers to a certain extent. Now he even more graciously and lovingly softens the blow to his friends by using himself as a hypothetical example in verse 18
Galatians 2:18 [18]For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. (ESV)
In other words, if anyone, including himself, tries to rebuild a system of legalism after it has been torn down/destroyed by believing and preaching the gospel of God’s powerful grace and man’s sinful helplessness, he proves himself, not Christ, to be a transgressor. He proves himself to be a hypocrite and a sinner by abandoning grace for law.
• One of the most common attacks against Christianity is that they are all just hypocrites. There are some basic problems with this. The most physically obvious is how the accuser came up with this information? Did he personally observe a few billion individuals? Secondly, for the sake of argument, that Christians are indeed hypocritical, does that nullify the standard? Because the standard is not met, does this destroy the standard? The work and standard of Christ is not removed by our failures. Our actions can reflect poorly on Christ, but they do not contradict what Christ has done.
After Paul admits his own guilt he describes his relationship between actions and the law:
Galatians 2:19 [19]For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. (ESV)
Please turn to Romans 7
Paul says that the idea of legalism clashes with God’s clearest truth and his own deepest convictions. Now that he accepted grace and died to the Law, he could never go back to its system of rituals and ordinances. Otherwise he could not live to God.” The law is not the believer’s master; God is. It is not the relation to the law that saves, but the relationship to God.
Paul explained this in Romans:
Romans 7:1-6 [7:1]Or do you not know, brothers--for I am speaking to those who know the law--that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? [2]For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. [3]Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. [4]Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. [5]For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. [6]But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. (ESV)
If a man is convicted of a capital crime and is put to death, the law obviously has no more claim on him. He has paid his debt to society. The analogy is also to marriage with is only binding in this lifetime.
• I recently talked with an individual who was married for over fifty years who is suffering the unexpected death of his wife. For understandable reasons he still feels like he is married. The tragedy as I tried to comfort him in the recent death of his wife is the ultimate reality that faces the one who has not put their faith in Christ.
With the analogy of civil law and marriage in Romans 7, the picture is revealed as to the believer who dies in Christ to rise in new life. He is free forever from any claim of the law on him. He paid the law’s demand when he died in Christ. His physical death is no punishment, only a release to glory provided in his union with Christ.
Legalism’s most destructive effect is that it cancels the effect of the cross. Paul explains this in Galatians 2:20
Galatians 2:20 [20]I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (ESV)
To go back under the law would be to cancel one’s union with Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and therefore to go back under sin.
At the end of verse 19 when Paul explained that I died to the Law, because he was crucified with Christ, It is no longer I who live. The old man, the old shell is dead, crucified with Christ, and the new man lives (cf. Col. 3:9–10).
Colossians 3:9-10 [9]Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices [10]and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. (ESV)
• There are different expressions for it, but I believe, contrary to how it is explained in the NIV, we receive a new nature upon regeneration. Although we still struggle with fleshly desires as they are called, we have a new inclination and power within us, from the Holy Spirit, described as a new nature, that we did not have under the old nature.
Paul explains the new reality in Galatians 2:20. Now I … live to God, because Christ lives in me (cf. Rom. 8:9). The life I received by faith I now also live by faith. The Greek verb behind live is in the perfect tense, indicating a past completed action that has continuing results. When a believer trusts in Christ for salvation he spiritually participates with the Lord in His crucifixion and in His victory over sin and death.
That is why, the apostle continues, the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God. The true Christian life is not so much a believer’s living for Christ as Christ’s living through the believer. Because in Christ “all the fulness of Deity dwells in bodily form” (Col. 2:9), the fulness of God also dwells in every believer, as “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4).
Illustration: Identification with Christ
The story has been told of a girl who was the daughter of one of the royal families of Europe, but had a big nose that in her eyes destroyed her beauty and resulted in her seeing herself as an ugly person. Finally her family hired a famous plastic surgeon to change the contour of the girl’s nose. He did his work, and there came the moment when they took the bandages off and the girl could see the results. The doctor saw that the operation had been a total success. All the ugly contours were gone. Her nose was different. When the incisions healed and the redness disappeared, she would be a beautiful girl. He held up a mirror for the girl to see, but so deeply embedded was the girl’s image of herself that when she saw herself in the mirror, she couldn’t see any change. She broke into tears and cried out, “Oh, I knew it wouldn’t work!”
It took six months before the girl would accept the fact that she was indeed an attractive person, and it wasn’t until she had accepted this fact that her self-image and behavior began to change accordingly. So it is with those who are “in Christ.” We must accept our new identity before we will change. (Michael P. Green. (2000). 1500 illustrations for biblical preaching. Includes indexes. (201). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.)
Why do we have this privilege? Was it because we figured out something, born in this country, such good people or did something so great? No, the reason why we have a new nature and the Holy Spirit residing inside of us is because Christ loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.
• Christ did not just die to make salvation possible for whoever could figure it out. He showed His love by dying on a cross to redeem a specific people He would call unto Himself.
The surpassing motive, therefore, for all spiritual devotion and obedience is gratitude to the sovereign, gracious Lord. The statement who loved me refers to the motive behind God’s saving grace. The New Testament is replete with teaching on this great truth (see, e.g., John 3:16; Rom. 5:8; Eph. 2:5). Christ’s life was not taken from Him involuntarily, but He gave/delivered Himself up for me, says the apostle. This is reminiscent of our Lord’s words in John 10:17–18:
John 10:17-18 [17]For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. [18]No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father." (ESV)
All of this saving work is the gift of God’s sovereign grace. Consequently, Paul concludes:
Galatians 2:21 [21]I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. (ESV)
In effect he was saying to Peter, “By withdrawing from fellowship with your Gentile brothers you take your stand with the Judaizers and against Christ. You nullify the grace of God by denying the need for Christ’s death, just as you did when you rebuked the Lord for declaring it was necessary for Him to suffer, be killed, and raised on the third day (see Matt. 16:21–22).
The two pillars of the gospel are the grace of God and the death of Christ, and those are the two pillars that, by its very nature, legalism attempts to destroy. The person who insists that he can earn salvation by his own efforts undermines the very foundation of Christianity and nullifies the precious death of Christ on his behalf.
Quote: W. M. Clow, The Cross in the Christian Experience, p. 114.
“The deepest heresy of all, which corrupts churches, leavens creeds with folly, and swells our human hearts with pride, is salvation by works. “I believe,” writes John Ruskin, “that the root of every schism and heresy from which the Christian Church has suffered, has been the effort to earn salvation rather than to receive it; and that one reason why preaching is so ineffective is that it calls on men oftener to work for God than to behold God working for them.”
(Format note: Outline and some base commentary from MacArthur, J. (1996, c1987). Galatians. Includes indexes. (53). Chicago: Moody Press.)
