Galatians 2:1-10: The Pursuit of Unity

Galatians 2:1-10: The Pursuit of Unity

We’ve been working our way passage by passage through Paul’s letter to the Galatians, and today the next passage we come to is Galatians 2:1-10. It says,

1 Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. 2 I went up because of a revelation and set before them (though privately before those who seemed influential) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain. 3 But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. 4 Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in—who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery— 5 to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. 6 And from those who seemed to be influential (what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)—those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me. 7 On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised 8 (for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles), 9 and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. 10 Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. 

May God bless the reading of his Word.

Let’s pray: Father, we understand from Hebrews 4 that your Word is living and active. So may it be living and active in our lives today. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.John 17 records Jesus praying to God the Father. And although he prays for several different things, there’s one concern that rises above everything else in his prayer. In fact, this concern is so heavy on his heart that Jesus mentions it not just once and not just twice but three times. 

In John 17:11, Jesus prays for his followers in the following way: “Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.” Jesus then prays again in verses 20-21, 20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you…. And then Jesus asks the Father for this very same thing yet again in verses 22-23. He states, 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one…. 

So, obviously, the unity of the church matters to Jesus. It matters a lot. And because it matters to Jesus, it should also matter to us. Because that’s part of what it means to love someone. If you genuinely love someone in a deep and meaningful way, what’s important to them becomes important to you as well. 

For example, if you’re married and your spouse cares deeply about a certain cause, such as, let’s say, putting a stop to human trafficking, then I’d imagine you’d probably become more concerned about putting a stop to human trafficking as well. Not only is it obviously something that God would have us do anyway, it’s also something that your spouse is particularly passionate about. So, since it’s particularly important to your spouse, it’s very natural and appropriate for the need to stop human trafficking to weigh heavily on your heart as well. 

And that’s likewise the way it should work in our relationship with Jesus. What’s important to him should be important to us as well. Our hearts should be in the process of becoming ever more aligned with his heart. So, when we see Christians at odds with one another and experiencing division and disunity, it should bother us even to the point of breaking our hearts—just as it breaks Christ’s heart. And it should lead us to pray for unity and pursue unity and seek to restore unity among Christians to whatever degree we can. That should be our desire. 

However, in our quest for unity, one thing that the Bible simply doesn’t allow us to do is to compromise on issues about which God has clearly spoken. If God’s clearly told us in the Bible that something’s true, I’m just not sure how it would even be possible to have any kind of Christian unity with those who deny that truth. Similarly, if God’s clearly told us in the Bible that we should live in a certain way, I’m not sure how it would be possible to have Christian unity with those who deny that it’s necessary for us to live in that way and instead say that it’s perfectly fine for us to live another way. So, even as our hearts should long for Christians to be unified and even as we should pursue unity, it’s just as important for us to reject any kind of comprise with those who have viewpoints that are blatantly contrary to the Bible. 

Likewise, that’s very much the mentality the Apostle Paul demonstrates in our main passage of Scripture today of Galatians 2:1-10. Paul pursues unity yet rejects compromise. That’s the main idea of this passage. Paul pursues unity yet rejects compromise. And we’ll see how exactly he does that as we work our way through this passage. And who knows? We might even be able to glean some helpful principles for pursuing unity and rejecting compromise in our own day as well. 

But before we dig into the passage itself, let me first remind you of some background information that’s important for us to be aware of if we’re going to rightly understand this passage. Paul had started a number of churches in the region of Galatia. Yet after he left, some false teachers known as “Judaizers” came in. And the reason they’re called Judaizers is because they were basically telling these Gentile—or non-Jewish—Christians that they had to first embrace Judaism in order for their Christian faith to be valid. In other words, if these Gentile Christians wanted to be saved from their sins and go to heaven, they had to observe the Old Testament Law, including things like the food laws that God gave to Moses as well as the religious ritual of circumcision. 

As strange as it might sound to us today, circumcision was something that was incredibly important to Jews because it marked them off as God’s chosen people. It was a ritual that was absolutely central to both their ethnic and their religious identity. So, these Judaizers were telling the non-Jewish Christians of the Galatian churches that they had to be circumcised in order to be saved. 

And of course, in order for these Judaizers to spread their teaching effectively, they had to introduce doubts into the minds of the Galatian Christians about the legitimacy of Paul’s apostleship and the accuracy of his teaching. So, that’s what they sought to do. Today, I guess we’d say they engaged in a massive disinformation campaign with the goal of discrediting Paul as an apostle and undermining what Paul had taught the Galatian Christians about the gospel. So, for example—reading between the lines of Galatians a little bit—it seems the Judaizers were claiming that Paul was nothing more than a self-appointed apostle who altered the gospel by removing the requirement of law-keeping in order to make the gospel easier for Gentiles to accept. They also claimed that Paul’s message was fundamentally at odds with the message of the real apostles in Jerusalem. 

So, Paul writes what he does to the Galatians in order to refute the false claims of these Judaizers. He first argues in chapter 1 that his gospel message was one that was from God rather than from any man—since, after all, he had received it directly from Jesus himself on the road to Damascus.

And here in Galatians 2, Paul continues his account of his ministry, particularly as it intersects with the other apostles at Jerusalem. Beginning in verses 1-2, he writes, 1 Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. 2 I went up because of a revelation and set before them (though privately before those who seemed influential) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain. 

So, Paul says that he had a “revelation” from the Lord that led him to return to Jerusalem after spending numerous years engaged in missionary activity in various other places throughout the Roman Empire. And when he arrived in Jerusalem, he arranged a meeting with the leaders of the Jerusalem church in order to “set before them…the gospel [he was proclaiming] among the Gentiles.” He then says he did this “in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain.”

So, Paul compares himself here to an athlete competing in a race and wanting to make sure, as he approached the finish line, that he hadn’t been running in vain. Imagine someone running in a marathon only to discover, just before the finish line, that they had somehow been disqualified from the race. Maybe they had accidentally deviated from the course they were supposed to run or maybe there was some sort of mix-up with paperwork that resulted in them being disqualified. If that were to happen, all of the effort and energy they expended in the race would be in vain. And that’s similar to what Paul’s concerned about. He wants to make sure that his efforts to spread the gospel haven’t been in vain. 

Now, just to clarify, I don’t think Paul was in any way doubting his understanding of the gospel or looking to the leaders of the Jerusalem church for confirmation that his understanding of the gospel was correct. As we saw last week in Galatians 1, Paul was already absolutely convinced that his understanding of the gospel was correct since he had received it directly from Jesus himself. 

Instead, the purpose of Paul’s trip to Jerusalem was to make sure that all of the church leaders there were on the same page about what the gospel was and that they were all willing to take a stand for the gospel rather than tolerate the false teaching of the Judaizers. That’s what Paul was concerned about. Because if the leaders of the Jerusalem church had a different understanding of the gospel—or if they were willing to tolerate a different understanding of the gospel—it would be so catastrophic for the advance of the true gospel that all of Paul’s missionary efforts would have essentially been “in vain.” He would have been running the race in vain.

So, Paul goes to Jerusalem in order to confirm that he and the other apostles and the other influential church leaders do indeed have a unity in the gospel. You might compare it to someone inspecting the foundation of their house just to make sure there isn’t a huge crack right down the middle of the foundation. Because if there were such a crack, it would be bad news for everything that was built on that fractured foundation. 

And one thing Paul does in this situation that’s quite ingenious is to bring along Titus with him. Paul mentions in verse 1 how he brought Titus along. And he reveals in verse 3 why having Titus present was so helpful. He states, “But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek.” So, Titus was something of a test case that was designed to reveal whether the leaders of the Jerusalem church would take a stand for the true gospel or cave to the pressure of the Judaizers. As Paul notes, Titus was a “Greek,” meaning that he was a Gentile and therefore not circumcised. So, the question was, would the leaders of Jerusalem church require Titus to be circumcised before they’d be willing to accept him as a Christian? And thankfully, as Paul tells us in verse 3, they didn’t him to be circumcised. 

Paul then continues in verses 4-5, 4 Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in—who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery— 5 to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. 

So, these “false brothers” Paul mentions in verse 4 are indeed the same group of false teachers we’ve been referring to as Judaizers. And Paul states that they’ve been “secretly brought in.” We might say that they’ve been smuggled into the church under the pretense of being faithful Christian teachers. And that raises the question of who’s responsible for bringing them in. Who’s the mastermind behind that operation? Well, Paul doesn’t specifically tell us in this passage, but I think there’s sufficient data in the Bible to conclude that the mastermind is Satan. 

For example, in Matthew 13, Jesus shares a parable often known as the parable of the weeds. He states in Matthew 13:24-25, 24 …The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, 25 but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. Jesus then identifies this enemy as none other than Satan. So, whenever the seed of good biblical teaching is sown, we should expect Satan to try to undermine the fruitfulness of that seed in any way he can. This often involves him sending false teachers into the church to counteract the seed of good biblical teaching with the seed of false teaching. 

And the thing to understand about Satan is that he’s very skilled at the art of counterfeiting. In fact, scholars tell us that the Greek word translated as “weeds” in Jesus’s parable is most likely a reference to a specific kind of weed known as darnel that looks almost exactly like wheat in the early stages of its growth. So, in the early stages, it’s almost impossible to distinguish the wheat from the darnel. 

Likewise, the false teaching that Satan secretly introduces into the church is designed to sound a lot like biblical teaching. The false teachers Satan sends love to quote Bible verses and talk in lofty and eloquent terms about God and grace and salvation and say a lot of things that sound really good. The problem, though, is that their teachings are laced with poison and will eventually cause catastrophic harm to Christians who embrace them and to churches that tolerate them. So, back in our main passage, that’ the reality Paul has in mind when he speaks of “false brothers” who have been “secretly brought in” to the church. 

Paul then says that they’ve “slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery.” This theme of the freedom found in the gospel is going to come up a lot more later on in Galatians, so we’ll have opportunity to explore that theme much more thoroughly then, when we get to those passages. But for now, just understand that approaching the Old Testament Law as a means to salvation and requiring that people obey the Law in order to be saved is, in reality, a form of slavery. Because it places a burden on people that they’re utterly unable to bear. It requires something of them they have no ability to actually do. 

Imagine a dream in which you’re desperately running toward something as if you’re life depended on it. But no matter how much you run toward it, you never seem to get any closer. The ground beneath you is basically a treadmill that keeps you from actually getting anywhere. That’s the situation of those who seek to earn God’s favor through their own moral and religious accomplishments. They’re engaged in an utterly futile endeavor.

Even the Old Testament itself makes this clear in places like Isaiah 64:6, which states that “all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.” Even the most righteous things we do are nothing but a “polluted garment” in God’s eyes. That’s because everything we do on the outside is tainted by who we are on the inside. We have sinful hearts that result in everything we do being tainted by sin and therefore absolutely unacceptable in the eyes of a holy God. 

Not only that, we end up being enslaved by the desires of our sinful hearts. And the Old Testament Law does absolutely nothing to help us overcome those desires. It gives us an external standard of righteousness but no inward ability to rise to that standard. As a result, we’re left enslaved by the sinful desires that dominate our lives. So, that’s why Paul says that the teachings of the Judaizers result in “slavery.” They place a legalistic burden on people that they’re utterly unable to bear and also leave people enslaved by their own sinful desires. 

However, as Paul reminds us, there’s a wonderful and glorious “freedom” to be found “in Christ Jesus.” Jesus was fully God yet came to this earth as one of us—a real human being—in order to rescue us from our sin. Now, because Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin, he had no sinful nature. His heart was entirely free from sin. And throughout his life, he never committed a single sin but instead kept God’s Law perfectly. 

Jesus then voluntarily allowed himself to be crucified in order to pay not for any sins he had committed but for our sins. As Jesus died on the cross, he was suffering not only the physical agony of crucifixion but the wrath of Almighty God against sin. That wrath should have been poured out on you and me, but it was poured out on Jesus instead. He loved us so much that he suffered that wrath so we wouldn’t have to. 

Then, three days later, Jesus was triumphantly raised from the dead and thereby conquered sin and death. As a result, he now stands ready to rescue everyone who will turn away from their sin and put their trust exclusively in him for that rescue. That means recognizing that there’s nothing we can do to earn God’s favor through our own moral efforts or religious observances and instead placing our confidence in Jesus alone as the only way we as sinful people can be made right with a holy God. And not only does Jesus forgive our sins, he also changes our hearts and fills us with the Holy Spirit so that we’re actually able to overcome the sinful inclinations that would otherwise dominate our lives. 

So, that’s why Paul says the gospel message of Jesus is a message of “freedom.” It’s in the gospel alone that we find freedom from both the penalty of sin and the power of sin. Apart from Jesus, we’re in bondage. But through him, we’re free. 

And that’s why Paul’s so determined to oppose the message of the Judaizers—because he knows they’re essentially trying to enslave people. Therefore, continuing on into verse 5, Paul states, “to them [the Judaizers] we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.”

Now, remember that Paul was in Jerusalem because he wanted to confirm and hopefully strengthen the unity of the church. He undoubtedly desired unity and recognized the importance of unity to such an extent that—as we saw back in verse 2—he would have regarded his entire ministry as running “in vain” if there wasn’t unity between him and the other apostles and church leaders. 

However, Paul understood that true unity has to be built on something more than vague sentiments about unity. It has to be built on the foundation of biblical truths—especially the truth of the gospel. This is why, even as Paul longed to see unity in the church, he refused to give even an inch to the Judaizers. Paul states here in verse 5 that he “did not yield in submission even for a moment” to them because he recognized that their teaching undermined the gospel. So, Paul pursued unity but rejected any comprise with blatantly unbiblical teaching. 

So, when you think about it, there are two errors that we need to avoid—two ditches on either side of the road. One error is to be unconcerned about unity in the church. Christians fall into this error whenever they focus more on the peripheral issues that divide them rather than on the central issues that should bring them together. As we’ve seen, that lack of concern for unity is simply incompatible with genuine love for the Lord. Since unity is important to Jesus, it should be important to us as well—to the extent that it should break our hearts to see Christians not walking in unity with one another.

Yet, at the same time, it's also critical that we avoid the opposite error of trying to base Christian unity on nothing more than vague sentiments about unity rather than on any kind of actual foundation. This error commonly involves downplaying any and all differences that professing Christians might have with each other—no matter how significant those differences might be—in the pursuit of supposed unity. Yet true unity doesn't just exist in a vacuum. In order for a group of people to be united in any meaningful way, they have to be united around something. True unity is more than just the absence of conflict or external division. In order to be truly unified, there has to be something we’re unified around—something that brings us together.

For example, think about a group of people standing together in an elevator. Are those people unified? Well, they may be occupying the same general space and not be fighting with each other or have any animosity toward each other, but I’m not sure we’d call them unified. It’s probably only by coincidence they’re even around each other. They just happen to be crossing paths. Some of them may even be thinking about how awkward it is to be standing in such close proximity with complete strangers. So even though there’s no conflict or division among them, it doesn’t seem appropriate to refer to them as unified—because, in order to have unity, there has to be something you’re unified around. 

And the thing that unites those of us who are Christians is the gospel. It’s only to the extent that we have a unified understanding of the gospel and of other key doctrinal issues that undergird the gospel that any truly Christian unity is possible. Our unity begins with the truth and is a unity that’s based on truth. And pursuing unity in the truth means rejecting any compromise of the truth. 

I appreciate the way Paul describes the church in 1 Timothy 3:15. He refers to it as “the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.” Another translation renders it, “the pillar and foundation of the truth.” The idea is that supporting and guarding biblical truth is one of the most important jobs Jesus has given us as the church. Because if the church doesn’t guard biblical truth, who else is going to guard it?  

Unfortunately, there are some who seem to think that not taking a stand for biblical truth is an expression of humility. Yet I’d have to disagree with that and say that it’s an expression not of humility but of cowardice. And not only is failing to take a stand not humble, it’s not loving either. Because if you truly love someone, you want what’s best for them. And what’s best for them is, among other things, an understanding of the truth. That’s why the most famous passage in the Bible about love, 1 Corinthians 13, states that love “does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.” So, compromising the truth is neither humble nor loving. 

And by the way, in case you’re wondering about where exactly we draw the line when it comes to Christian unity and what kinds of doctrinal differences we believe are worth dividing over versus the kinds of doctrinal differences we don’t believe are worth diving over, I recommend going back and listening to my sermon from two weeks ago on Galatians 1:1-10—particularly the part about what we call “theological triage.” The most important concept to remember, though, is that the unity we enjoy is a unity that’s based on truth and simply doesn’t exist apart from the truth. 

And in our main passage, Paul recognizes that—which is why he rejects any comprise with the Judaizers and—as we see in the subsequent verses—is so relieved when that unity is confirmed with the other apostles and church leaders. Look at verse 6: “And from those who seemed to be influential (what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)—those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me.” That’s a key statement. The apostles and other church leaders “added nothing” to Paul in the sense that they affirmed that nothing was lacking in Paul’s gospel message. 

Paul then states in verses 7-9, 7 On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised 8 (for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles), 9 and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. 

So, there you have it. Paul was affirmed by no less than James, Cephas, and John. James was the half-brother of Jesus and the key leader of the Jerusalem church, Cephas was another name for the Apostle Peter, and then the Apostle John. Paul states that these three men—who were likely the most esteemed leaders of the Jerusalem church—“gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me,” symbolizing their full agreement with each other. So, at that point, it was basically “case closed.” Contrary to what the Judaizers claimed, there was no difference in the gospel that Paul preached and the gospel that the other apostles and church leaders in Jerusalem preached. Instead, it was the Judaizers themselves who had gone rogue. 

However, let’s not forget the final statement about this encounter between Paul and the other apostles and church leaders that we find in verse 10. Paul writes, “Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.” So, the church leaders in Jerusalem were in complete agreement with the gospel Paul preached, yet they wanted to make absolutely certain that Paul remembered to care for the poor—which, according to Paul, was the very thing he was eager to do. 

What a great reminder that, regardless of what theological beliefs you claim to have or how careful you are about dotting your theological “i’s” and crossing your theological “t’s,” none of that of that really matters if you’re not active in loving the people around you in practical and tangible ways. All the theological ideas you might be able to articulate so eloquently have no real meaning or significance if you’re no living them out by expressing genuine care for those in need. 

You see, there’s more than one way to deny biblical truths. One way is with your lips—which is the way we’ve spent most of our time this morning talking about. Yet the other way is with your life. You can deny biblical truths not only with your lips but also with your life. So, let’s make sure the unity we pursue as a church is a unity that begins with our beliefs and yet is also expressed in our lives.