The Triumph of Grace
“No Strings Attached”
May 28, 2000
This Morning’s Text – Galatians 2:1-10
“Then after an interval of fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along also. It was because of a revelation that I went up; and I submitted to them the gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but I did so in private to those who were of reputation, for fear that I might be running, or had run, in vain. But not even Titus, who was with me, though he was a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised. But it was because of the false brethren secretly brought in, who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, in order to bring us into bondage. But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. But from those who were of high reputation (what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality--well, those who were of reputation contributed nothing to me. But on the contrary, seeing that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised (for He who effectually worked for Peter in his apostleship tot he circumcised effectually worked for me also to the Gentiles), and recognizing the grace that had been given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, so that we might go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. They only asked us to remember the poor—the very thing I also was eager to do.”
It is hard to muster sympathy for false teachers—and Paul does anything but that! And while I don’t want to encourage that either, I will have to confess that, humanly, I can understand at least a little bit of what must have been going on in their minds. Talk about a sea change; the coming of Christ and the gospel of grace that Paul preached involved such a radical departure from the way they had been accustomed to thinking that we can at least understand why they didn’t rush so quickly to embrace it. All of their lives they had (in some ways rightly; in some ways mistakenly) seen the truth through Jewish eyes; now to be asked to understand and accept such a change in one’s obligations to God was a hard pill to swallow. Think you’d have responded differently? Don’t be too quick to answer; don’t be too sure of your answer! We’ll get to that in detail when we talk in a few moments about the significance of circumcision to the Jewish faith. Right now, let’s look at the
Background - :1-2
Timing of Paul’s trip to Jerusalem – “after 14 years”
Not certain whether this refers to 14 years following conversion, or to 14 years following his first trip to Jerusalem (ca. 17 years following conversion). A debate continues among faithful scholars as to whether this visit is the one described (briefly) in Acts 11, or whether this meeting with the apostles corresponds to the meeting of the Jerusalem Council described in Acts 15; there are good arguments on either side of this debate, and thus it is difficult to answer this question definitively.
Instead of making an assumption one way or the other, and then trying to read that assumption into this text, I am going to take the events depicted here and read them at face value without adding in the events of either Acts 11 or Acts 15.
Personnel who make the trip
Paul – the apostle
Barnabas – Paul’s co-laborer in the gospel (went with Paul on first missionary journey); “Son of Encouragement”; one who had had previous contact with the Jerusalem apostles
Titus – a Gentile convert; a fruit of Paul’s labor; a “test case”, so to speak
I suggest that Titus was likely a “test case” because he was a man whose life had clearly been changed by the gospel of God—and who had not submitted to the rite of circumcision.
Reason for the trip – “because of a revelation”
If one takes the approach that this trip is identical to the one described in Acts 11, then the “revelation” spoken of here would likely correspond to the prophecy of Agabus mentioned there.
But again, it is certainly unclear whether or not this is the case.
Action taken on the trip – “I submitted to them the gospel which I preach”
Paul gave to the apostles in Jerusalem due respect. While he argues in Chapter 1 that his gospel is independent of human authorities—that he wasn’t taught it, nor did he get it from man—he nonetheless has gracious consideration for others in ministry leadership. Remember the 3 clear points of Paul’s gospel which we laid out last week?
“sola fide”
“sola Christos”
Inclusion of the Gentiles as Gentiles
Paul in Chapter 2 is breaking some new ground:
New subject: Not so much the source of the gospel, but the nature of it.
New relationship to the apostles: Not independence, but cooperation
New conclusion will be reached (which we’ll see): the apostles and Paul are together
He did this “privately”; there are some things which ought not to be aired before the entire church. “For fear…” is a difficult phrase to understand; Paul is certainly not afraid that he has been preaching the wrong gospel; that interpretation would run counter to other things Paul has said. I take this to mean that he has a legitimate fear that any harm come in any way to the work that he had already done or that he would do in the future.
He now proceeds with his
Arguments for the Gospel of Grace
The Jerusalem Apostles
I. Accepted Titus - :3
Here is a massive argument: Titus, his “test case” Gentile convert, is not required by the leaders in Jerusalem to be circumcised! For this to make sense to us today, we need to understand
The Significance of Circumcision
God instituted the rite of circumcision as the initial sign of covenant-keeping (Genesis 17), instructing Abraham that every male born into Hebrew households would be circumcised on the eighth day after birth. Servants would likewise have to undergo this rite. Anyone unwilling to follow this command was to be cut off from the people of Israel. The essential nature of this practice is repeated on many occasions (ex. Exodus 4, Joshua 5). The external rite ought to be the sign of an internal change effected by God (Deuteronomy 10:16; 30:6). The uncircumcised and the unclean are barred from the holy city of God (Isaiah 52:1; Ezekiel 44:7,9).
Now here is where I am talking about the certain level of understanding which we might have for these men Paul labels as false teachers. For all of their lives, their understanding has been that to be right with God, one had to be circumcised. It was part and parcel of a right relationship with God. Gentiles could be brought into Judaism—but they would willingly undergo the rite of circumcision for all the males in their family. God had commanded, in no uncertain terms, the rite of circumcision for all who would keep His covenant. To try to help us understand, we might think of this parallel: think of something which we may rightly associate with being a Christian, such as the regular attendance at the house of God. Is this not a clear command of Scripture? Does the Word of God not continually point to this requirement of being in fellowship with God? Certainly. But even this is not an exact parallel, for we understand that church attendance is not something upon which our salvation hangs, whereas to the Jew, circumcision was such an issue. Now imagine someone coming to our church and preaching, “From now on, there is never any need to attend church. It just doesn’t matter at all to your walk with God. It makes no difference. If you want to, that’s fine; but if you don’t want to, that is equally as fine—and God just doesn’t care!” Tough pill to swallow, huh? If you can think about how you might feel under those circumstances, you have caught at least a little glimpse of what the Judaizers must have felt and thought when they heard that Paul was preaching that circumcision, for all of these centuries an integral part of covenant-keeping, was now merely an option! This must have struck them as not only preposterous, but even quite blasphemous. They really thought that Paul was eliminating an essential part of the message of God—and of course, their understanding was heavily flavored by their own nationalistic pride and favoritism.
On the other hand, what you gonna do with Titus? Here was a man who had lived with no relationship with God—and now his life has been radically transformed by the simple gospel of grace! Yet, he was uncircumcised and, assumedly, had not gotten involved in other aspects of Jewish religion as well. And Paul marches him right into the heartland of the circumcised—Circumcision Central—and says, “What about Titus? What shall we make of him? What shall we do with him?” I believe that Paul was confident as he went there that the Jerusalem elders would accept him as a brother in Christ without requiring of him circumcision—and that is exactly what they ultimately did! And frankly, case closed! But it wasn’t necessarily quite that easy, as we see in verses 4-5, when he mentions the “false brethren”:
A Parenthesis – The Entrance of the “False Brethren” - :4-5
Apparently, these were individuals who, having “infiltrated the camp”, were taking complaints back to Jerusalem apostles regarding the “lawless” gospel Paul was preaching to the Gentiles.
It is also possible that some of these were right there in the room as P, B, &T met with the apostles, or that at the very least had spoken with the apostles in advance of the coming of the 3.
It is likely that these exerted pressure on the apostles to try to get them to make Paul change his message and add the law into the gospel. It is also apparent from the context that they met with a level of initial success!
What would have motivated the apostles to even give an ear to these guys? Human nature! I think that there are a couple of reasons why even those stalwarts of the faith might have been a bit torn:
Most people don’t like confrontation; “go along to get along” is a common human impulse. I can see the Jerusalem apostles, maybe not having thought as clearly through the ramifications as Paul, listening sympathetically to the Judaizers and then, with an attitude of conciliation, beginning to go down this path of reasoning, “Well, it isn’t that big a deal to require these Gentiles to do this thing; after all, Gentiles have been doing it for centuries when they wanted to come into the camp of Judaism. Let’s not ruffle the feathers of ‘our people’ (Jews who might be offended by allowing the ‘uncircumcised’ full access)!” Sometimes the squeaky wheel does get the grease, and the Judaizers were squeaking up a storm!
Plus, there is that whole issue mentioned earlier: for centuries, this was the expectation. Just because these men had followed Christ intimately for 3 years, and just because they had witnessed the resurrected Christ and His ascension didn’t mean that they were infallible people. They were men who had to think things through as well, and it no doubt had to have seemed odd to them as well that circumcision was no longer an issue in one’s relationship to God!
Paul says that they were there to “spy out the liberty” that we have in Christ. Their desire was to bring people, Paul says, back into bondage. This we can define as attempting to insist upon, for the Gentiles, strict adherence to the law of Moses alongside grace in Christ, and without the freedom in the Spirit that Paul preaches and so cherishes.
Truth is the Judaizers were in a no-man’s land; they were unacceptable either to traditional Judaism because of their acceptance of Christ, or to apostolic Christianity, because of their rejection of the simple gospel of God’s grace. Now, it’s important to say a couple of things here about Paul as well: one, he wasn’t just being hard-nosed—for he was not always this way. Two, he wasn’t against circumcision, even for Gentile Christians, so long as it was not understood to be essential to one’s salvation. In fact, in Acts 16, we see Paul actually circumcising Timothy, a half-Jew, half-Gentile! Why? For the purpose of witness in the company of those who were Jewish. It was a pragmatic decision, not an essential one! Leon Morris writes,
“There is a vast difference between living a life with Jewish rules, but with faith in Christ Jesus as controlling everything, and a life that majors in keeping all the commandments in the law of Moses.”
Notice the chart on your note sheet. The Judaizers were accusing Paul of emphasizing freedom in the Spirit to the point of license; Paul’s contention was that these guys were missing true liberty in the Spirit (which is not license, as Paul later argues) for the sake of a legalistic understanding of salvation. People today err on either side of this equation! I fear that we have Christians in American society who come down in one extreme camp or the other.
Liberty
Legalism License
We get whiffs of legalism today, not so much from people who would preach salvation by the keeping of the law of Moses, but who then look down their pious noses at people who don’t dot all the “I’s” or cross all the “T’s” the way that “good Christians” do. Hear me now: last week I spoke about how the issue in Paul’s life—and in ours—is not the “experience” so much as it ought to be the “change”. That is true! But here is the balance: when I say that change is the standard, it means that a person who has come to true faith in Christ will change in accordance with God’s standards—it doesn’t mean that he/she is obligated to come into line with all of your standards in order to personally mollify you! We Americans can be especially bad about this. Some of us have this idea that, when a person comes to faith in Christ, he ought to start looking and acting and thinking and talking like…us! And thus many missionaries have gone to primitive tribes to bring Christ to them, but in the process have also taken 1930’s Southern American cultural preferences, right down to the singing of hymns to our music (when, frankly, the instrument of choice in Swahili culture isn’t generally considered to be the pipe organ!). And, on the flip side of the coin, we had better guard against a Pharisaism which looks down its nose at the legalists! And at the same time, we ought not assume that we are exercising freedom in the Spirit at all times, when in fact we may well be in some instances justifying license and ungodly living by an appeal to “freedom in Christ”. May I remind you that freedom in Christ entails not only a liberty from the demands of the law of Moses, but it certainly also entails a freedom from the pull of the sinful culture all around us! We are free not to pollute our minds with the garbage of society as well! Frankly, I think that today we are far, far more likely to fall prey to licentious living than to life-stifling legalism! It’s a shame what some Christians are willing to try to justify today!
Okay, back to Paul’s main point: Titus was not compelled to be circumcised, but rather uncircumcised was accepted as a brother in Christ.
II. Added Nothing to Paul’s Message - :6
Literally, they contributed nothing to me! They didn’t change anything about me or about my message. He hadn’t gone to Jerusalem to seek their approval, but he did want to convince them of the rightness of his stance on the issue, and when they heard him out, and understood the issue at hand, they said, “You’ve got it right, Paul!”
Now, it can be fairly surmised that some of the Jerusalem leaders might still have had social objections to the way the gospel was playing itself out in Gentile territories. Some of the freedom of the Gentile converts might have made these Jerusalem apostles personally uncomfortable, but they could raise no theological or moral objections, and they were willing to trust God with the results, believing in the power of the gospel to change people as they really needed to be changed before God, whether or not it met with their preferences.
I shared a meal once with a group of European Christians, all of them leaders in significant evangelical ministries, such as Child Evangelism Fellowship. Now, understand that I was raised Baptist, and to this day it is deeply ingrained in me, as it is in all good Baptists, that there are certain things we don’t do—drink, dance, etc. But here were these Christians who were enjoying a glass of wine with their meal! Did I join them in their Chardonnay? No! I’d have felt quite uncomfortable doing that—personally, not to mention the fact that I’m sure that Mom would have found out some way, and boy, would I have been in trouble! But can I make a hard-and-fast case that what they were doing was wrong, so long as it stopped short of drunkenness (which of course it did)? No!
Another example: I’ve had conversations in the past (not here, but when I pastored in North Carolina) with people regarding the issue of mixed marriage. I spoke with a group of people in my church there who were “concerned” about a couple of mixed races who started to attend our church. I spoke with a pastor friend who said that he would never consent to marry a mixed race couple. During these conversations, it became clear that no one could make anything approaching a good Scriptural argument against such marriages (as I knew they couldn’t); they either tried to make arguments which they should have been embarrassed to make, or they just admitted that they felt “uncomfortable” about the whole thing. To which I basically responded, with all of the grace I could muster, “So what?” It just doesn’t matter if something makes you uncomfortable, as long as Scripture doesn’t call it “sin”. One of the best things that could happen in a lot of churches and to a lot of Christians is for them to get a lot less comfortable!
The elders at Jerusalem might not have been personally “comfortable” with this whole thing; it might have cut against their own personal ways of expressing their Christian commitment. But when it came down to it, they added nothing to Paul or his message. Instead, they
III. Affirmed Paul’s Ministry - :7-10
Extended to Paul and Barney and Titus the “right hand of fellowship”. This is more than a handshake; it is a covenant between equal parties united in the same cause.
A. Understood Paul’s different mission
Acts 22:17-21 describes Paul’s mission, and the Jerusalem leaders accepted this mission as being from God. Implicit in an acceptance of Christ’s gospel is an acceptance of His mission to reach the world for the glory of His name! And what you do and where you go and who you speak to and even to some degree how you speak may be different from me—but that we accept our places in the mission of God is essential. Rick Warren has rightly said, “It takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people”. Here in Mercer a new church started a few months ago. The pastor has become a friend of mine, and he has asked for my help and advice on a few things. The lectern behind which he will preach this morning is one I rescued from the dungeon. I told him that we weren’t in competition, but rather in cooperation! We have already agreed that we would love to be in competition, though; we’d love to fight over the right to lead Mercer’s final sinner to faith in Christ. I told him that if we ever get to that point, I’ll let him have the honors! The first two letters of the word “gospel” are G-O! Peter had one mission, Paul another, but the Jerusalem leaders
B. Recognized Paul’s same grace and same gospel
Same grace of God saved and sent Paul and themselves as well. Same gospel message changes Jews and Gentiles, though the way we may live out our commitment to Christ might differ significantly from culture to culture (and by the way, who do we Americans think we are to assume that the ways we both live out and limit our liberty in Christ are the “right ways”?).
C. Exhorted Paul to remember the poor
The helping of the poor, in this case many right there in Jerusalem, was something viewed not as an add-on, but as an essential part of Christian living, by those in the Jerusalem leadership. And Paul made this an integral theme in his work with the Gentile churches. And we too have a responsibility for other brothers and sisters in the body of Christ who do not belong to our church—a natural application of this principle for us is the plight of the persecuted church. We support Voice of the Martyrs ministry to the persecuted church, and you can get more information in our lobby. Our brothers and sisters are suffering around the planet, bearing up under unimaginable tortures and sufferings, for the name of Christ.
Something I do very rarely is get political in the pulpit, but allow me for a moment. I think it is downright shameful what our President and House of Representatives (led for the most part by Republicans, by the way) did Wednesday in passing the Permanent Normal Trade Relations bill which normalizes trade relations with China. I’m disappointed in our own Congressman English, and I’ve told him so, not only before the vote, but since. The government of China is cracking down harder on Christians, and most observers believe that we need to hold this trade card over the heads of the ruthless Chinese thugs in power. Some things are more important than money—it’d be nice if some people in leadership of our government believed that.
Last, let’s look at some take-away points from this morning’s message:
Paul’s 4 Accomplishments
(James Montgomery Boice)
1. He recognizes the position and authority of the Jerusalem elders without diminishing his own.
2. He indicates that these leaders, despite their “exalted position”, are fallible men and thus capable of error.
3. He decisively separates the gospel and policies of the Jerusalem elders (for all their weaknesses) from the false “gospel” of the Judaizing legalists.
4. He takes note of the fact that he, and not the Judaizers, stood together with the Jerusalem elders.
Points for Living
It is vital to be in unity around the core issues of truth. Paul goes to great lengths to stand for the truth of the gospel and to achieve consensus with the Jerusalem church.
Conciliation is often a noble goal, but it cannot ever be at the expense of truth.
We must allow for diversity of the expression of the gospel not only among different cultures, but within the same cultural context as well.
The unity of the gospel binds us together not only with those we can see and personally have fellowship with, but also with brothers and sisters in other (often more dire) circumstances around the world.
