Transcript
Oh eternal God, thou who art from everlasting to everlasting, we who are creatures of time and of dust, look to thee as the author and finisher, the sustainer and provider of all things. We are grateful to thee that thou hast sought us out and that when we were far from thee, in the person of thy son, our Lord Jesus Christ, thou dost come to seek and save. Grant, we pray, that in this life we may devote
ourselves in the help and assistance of others whom we may be able to help in their life's work. We pray that we may not be critical and censorious. Thou hast had grace and mercy upon us. Grant that we may show pardon and love to others. Help us to do this, we pray, for we acknowledge how often selfishness and sin gets in our way. Help us to do this, we pray, for we know that with Jesus Christ
all things are possible. We pray this in his name and for his sake. Amen. Last week I introduced you to the opening part of the letter of Paul to the Church of Galatia and remarked how central this short letter is in providing us with information about the apostle Paul and more particularly about the center, the substance, the marrow of the Christian religion. The outline of the short letter is easy enough. As I mentioned, the first two
chapters deal with the historical background that provided for the writing of the letter. Chapters three and four set forth the doctrinal substance of the Christian faith, as Paul sees it, and chapters five and six have to do with the application in daily living of the principles of our Christian faith. Now, the situation that led to the writing of this letter was the defection among the congregations in Galatia from the doctrine that Paul had claimed to them
on his earlier missionary journey. People from Jerusalem who were pharisaical in their background and who now as Christians were, you might say, pharisaical Christians, had come there to Galatia in order to undermine the teaching of the apostle Paul. They were saying, the apostle does good work, but he's not on a par with the twelve apostles. He has come in later, and what he teaches is only part of what God wants us to know because he does
not enforce the Old Testament command that circumcision should be performed in a ritualistic way on Jewish people and on proselytes who become Jews. Therefore, whatever gentiles there are who are members of the churches in Galatia, whatever gentiles there are who have not submitted to the ritual act of circumcision, they are second-grade Christian believers. Well, when the apostle Paul heard this, he naturally was very much distressed and began his letter, as we saw last week, in
a white heat of excitement. He's not able to think of anything as he normally does to give thanks for at the place to which he's writing the letter, but he dives right in and says how much exercised he is. I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ. So Paul, in the part that we went over last week, vindicates his apostleship. Let me say in a few words, giving a
summary of what we dealt with in the two hours last week. He vindicates his apostleship in chapters one and part of chapter two by stressing first that his original call to be an apostle was from God, who revealed the living Lord Jesus Christ to Saul the rabbi as he was hot on his way to Damascus to persecute Christian believers. God had mercy on him. He brought him to right relationship with himself through grace, through love, through
pardon, not through Paul having been obedient to the Old Testament precepts. He vindicates his apostleship then first that God called him. Secondly, he vindicates his apostleship by pointing out chronologically how infrequently after his conversion he had gone up to Jerusalem to mingle with the leaders of the church in the mother church in Jerusalem. And that explains why he's so careful to itemize. Now after three years from his conversion, he did go up to Jerusalem, he says,
chapter one, verse eighteen, but stayed there only two weeks, a relatively short time, not time enough to become an understudy of one of the twelve apostles there. And then opening chapter two, fourteen years later, he went up again to Jerusalem. He's very careful now to try to show how infrequently he had been in Jerusalem and therefore he was working quite independently of the churches in Judea. And now finally, when he did go to Jerusalem in order
to coordinate his work with that of the other apostles, and this is in chapter two, he says that they did not add anything to him doctrinally, that when they heard what he had accomplished among Gentiles, they gave him their right hand of fellowship. And so the three prominent leaders, James, the brother of Jesus, Peter, the prince of the apostles, and John, the three of them acknowledged that what he, Paul, was preaching was in accordance with how
they understood Christianity. And they said, it's all right to have a different area of your work, you continue your work among Gentiles, we will continue our work among Jewish people and Jewish Christian believers. So Paul sets forth in this letter to the Galatians, first that his own call was from God. Secondly, that he did not work as an underling of the other apostles, but was independent of them. And thirdly, and this is a clincher, they acknowledged
that what he was doing was genuine, was authentic, was in accordance with their doctrine, and they commended him to continue in this way. They made one stipulation, and here I begin now with a new material for today. Chapter 2, verse 10, after giving Paul and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, saying that we should continue to work among the Gentiles, and they would go among the Jewish people, verse 10. They urged only that we should remember
the poor, which thing we were very ready to do. The expression, the poor, is an expression used here that undoubtedly refers to the poverty stricken Christian believers of the mother church in Jerusalem. There were at various times famines that struck many people in the Mediterranean area. We have information from Greek papyri of a terrible famine that took place in the 40s. We know furthermore that in Jerusalem there were not so many ways in which a Jewish
person, or in this case a Jewish Christian person, could earn his or her livelihood. For one thing, the population of the city, although not a metropolitan population from a modern standpoint, was quite filled up with people. The fact that some Jewish people would now become a Christian would mean that they would be looked down upon by those who still remain Jewish in their background. If there was anybody to be discharged from employment, we can understand that
it would be likely that the people who had thrown their lot in, which to the Jewish synagogue was a heretical group, the Christian group, that they would be let out of employment first. Therefore, the Jewish Christian population of Jerusalem was much more vulnerable in a depression period than other My point is that everybody was, to some extent, hard pressed to make a livelihood in Jerusalem, but that the Jewish Christian people would be still more hard pressed
to make a go of it economically. We are told in the fourth chapter of the Book of Acts that the early Christian church in Jerusalem had a noble experiment of Christian communism. We are told in the fourth chapter of Acts that so great was the bond of Christian love and fellowship among the Christian believers in Jerusalem that they possessed everything in common. The company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, Acts 4:32.
And no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, and with great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses, that's among the Christian believers, Jewish Christian believers, as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at
the apostles' feet, and distribution was made to each as any had need. Well, that tidied things over during the most severe period of economic depression in the 40s. But with the dissipation of real estate, this left the Christian believers in Jerusalem in a precarious economic position for future years. Now, I don't want to say anything against the wonderful spirit of love and companionship that this experiment in Christian communism exhibited. At the same time, the early Christian
church found reason not to continue it. Paul, in writing to the church at Ephesus, says now, let him that stole steal no more, but let him give in accordance with what he has earned. That is to say that the contributions to the church should be given out of earned income. So it looks as though for a generation or two, the church in Jerusalem, Jewish Christian believers, was in a precarious state financially because of the outcome of
this noble Christian experiment in communistic living, which, however, had dissipated the capital, the real estate, and the early church did not continue thereafter. Now, the people Paul was consulting in Jerusalem, James, Peter, and John, said, you go still again to the Gentiles and be an evangelist among those peoples. We will work among Jewish people. The only stipulation was that you, Paul, should remember the poor, meaning the poor people in Jerusalem, the mother church. And Paul said
that very thing I was eager to do. Now, a number of books have been written on the subject of the collection that Paul took up here and there among Gentile churches to give to the people in Jerusalem. You have in the Interpreter's Dictionary, the Bible, the article, Collection for the Saints. That's listed under the letter O, Offering, Offering for the Saints, Volume 3 of the Interpreter's Dictionary, the Bible, page 590 and following. There's a whole book,
not a big book, of course, but nevertheless a whole treatise on the subject, The Collection, meaning this collection that Paul was making in the various churches. The author of this, Keith F. Nickle, N-I-C-K-L-E, K. F. Nickle, The Collection. A number of other things have been written also on this. Now, Paul said he has been and will continue to show an interest in taking up an offering among people in Thessalonica, in Corinth,
in Athens, wherever he goes among predominantly Gentile believers to send back to the Jewish Christian believers in Jerusalem. Now let's see some of the implications, not just sociological, but theological, that grows out of this stipulation that was made by James Peter and John of Paul. Jerusalem continued to be, for some little while, without independent economic resources. Persecution and famine, persecution by the synagogue of Jewish Christian believers in Jerusalem increased the problem. The surrender by individual Christians
and the opening of the apostolic age of their real estate gave only temporary help. Acts 11:27 to 30 tells us that the predominantly Gentile church at Antioch in Syria sent a gift at the time of one of the especially terrible famines. During the 50s now, Paul at various churches would take up a collection. This was a work of mercy, but it also had, as you can well understand, some prudential overtones. Here were the Jewish Christian
Pharisaical group in Jerusalem trying to put pressure on Paul to make Jews out of Gentiles before they became Christians. Now this is not stated in the New Testament, but just reading between lines, I think that Paul had enough sagacity to see that if the Gentile Christian believers were rather liberal with their contribution to assist the poor in the Jewish Christian community in Jerusalem, then that would make it a little difficult. It would be a little difficult
really for these Jewish Christian people in Jerusalem all the time to be breathing out against the Gentile Christian believers that they were not real Christians. Here they're receiving from the Gentile Christians in Asia Minor, in Greece, this largesse, this contribution, this dole. And therefore perhaps Paul sees with a little bit of human sagacity as to how the Gentile Christian believers might be, if not silenced, at least muted, at least put the soft pedal on that sort
of thing. Now I don't say that was the primary reason that Paul had for emphasizing, as he did again and again, the raising of this collection, but I can't help but think that it entered into the proposition that in addition to its being a work of philanthropy, that we must overlook, but it seems to me also he saw that this would bring Jewish and Gentile Christians into closer sympathy with one another. Yes, it was a work
of mercy, but I think also it was a work of what we might call psychology in working together to bring these two wings of the church closer together. That's a possibility, I guess. There are a lot of possibilities. There is this possibility, Carl Holl, H-O-L-L of Berlin, follower of Harnack, thought that just as among the Jews there was the imposition of a head tax each year, those Jews that lived outside of Palestine would
have to pay a shekel or two each year to support the temple. So it was his idea that for Christian believers outside of Palestine, there was imposed a legal levy by the Church of Jerusalem. Hardly anybody has taken that up as a theory. There's no evidence for it, but it's certain that Paul did not understand this to be an obligation because he urged various Gentile churches to be liberal and to do as much as they could
with assisting the people in Jerusalem from a purely voluntary point of view. That's right, in chapter 6 of Galatians, there is what you have been mentioning. Now the passages in Romans, 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians that speak about the taking up of the collection, he writes to these churches ahead of time so that they can lay by money week by week so that they will have a again. Romans 15:25 to 31, 1 Corinthians 16, verses
1 to 4, and two whole chapters are given to this in 2 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 8 and 9. In other words, a good many places in the New Testament there is reference now to the matter of this collection and it surfaces in Galatians 2, verse 10. Now one or two things that are rather curious we ought to look at in chapter 2 before we go forward. I may have alluded to this the other day but did
not have time to develop it. Those of you who have the English Bible before you look at chapter 2, verses 2 and following, he says that he went up to Jerusalem with Barnabas taking Titus along with me. Now in verse 3, Titus is said to be a Greek, that is to say he's a Gentile, and it may be, as I said last week, it may be that this is the first time that the Christian church in
Jerusalem ever saw a Gentile Christian. Well whether that's so or not, it would be an unusual thing whether it's the first time or not. Now this is brought into the context of chapter 2 by way of giving yet another argument that when Paul did go to Jerusalem, no special problem, no special fuss was made in order to get Titus, a Gentile Christian, to submit to the ritual act of Jewish circumcision. He says verse 3, even Titus
who is with me was not compelled to be circumcised though he was a Greek. His argument here is that this shows that he, Paul, and the leaders of Jerusalem were at that time more or less in harmony because they raised no problem, no requirement that Titus become a Jew before he can really become a Christian. Now the point that I want to make now has to do with the curious, the very curious ambiguity in verse 3.
Sounds all right the first time you read it, even Titus who is with me was not compelled to be circumcised though he was a Greek. What really is Paul trying to say here? Is he saying that despite pressure brought upon Paul to have his companion Titus circumcised, Paul didn't yield, he didn't cave in to that pressure. Titus was not circumcised, Paul was not compelled, Paul resisted whatever compulsion was brought upon him to have Titus treated in
that way. Or does this simple sentence mean that Titus was circumcised only it was not the result of compulsion laid on Paul to have this done? That's a possible meaning. Or thirdly, can it mean that the subject of Titus's circumcision didn't even come up? They didn't even mention anything about Titus being circumcised which they ought to have done if indeed their side had any right, any authority at all that they should have brought it up and
compelled Paul to circumcise Titus. It didn't even surface, the subject didn't even come up. It's possible to take that simple sentence in either of these three quite different understandings. I think the third is the least likely as a possibility but the other two show us the ambiguity of this statement. Now the ambiguity not because Paul doesn't know what happened there, he knew what happened, but he's racing along writing this letter at white hot speed and he's
not being all that careful about indicating, dotting every I, crossing every T, and in fact he breaks off his thought at the end of verse four and does not complete that sentence so that verse five starts out on an entirely different track. There is a kind of what the grammarian would call anacoluthon, something that does not follow from what follows before, what goes before. Well that's an interesting feature to look at, verse three. Another thing that
has to do with all of chapter two verses one through ten is to look briefly at the hard nut to crack, the problem, how we are to understand what Paul describes there in chapter two verses one to ten, his interview in Jerusalem with the leaders James and Peter and John, how that squares with the account in Acts chapter 15. Now this has been a subject on which a lot of ink has been and Acts. Now the
book of Acts says that there were five occasions when Paul visited Jerusalem after his conversion. The first of these occasions, Acts 9. In Acts 9:26 you have undoubtedly what is referred to in Galatians 1:18. He went up to Jerusalem three years after his conversion to visit Peter, remained with him a short time. Now the second visit that is mentioned in the book of Acts is Acts 11:27 to 30. I alluded to this a
couple minutes ago when I said on that occasion Paul took an offering, a collection, some money to assist those that were in the famine. But this is certainly not what we have a record of in chapter two. There's nothing mentioned there about a famine visit and at this stage it does not square. Now the third of the visits mentioned in the book of Acts is in chapter 15. I'll return that to that chapter in a moment
after I say what the fourth and fifth visits were. The fourth visit, Acts 18, is I think impossible to square with what we have here in Galatians because on that fourth visit the altercation between Paul and Barnabas had already taken place and they went their separate ways. Whereas Galatians 2 it says Barnabas went with me. So Acts chapter 18, the fourth visit of Paul to Jerusalem took place after the visit mentioned in Galatians 2. And finally
the fifth visit that's mentioned in the book of Acts 21:17. On that occasion Paul did not return to Antioch which he did after this visit, chapter two of Galatians verse 11. I went then to Antioch. So of those five visits mentioned in the book of Acts I think the least unsatisfactory correlation and there are problems connected with each one of these is that the third visit, namely that reported in Acts 15 is to be paralleled
with Galatians 2. Here are the similarities. The question arose as to being circumcised according to the custom of Moses, Acts 15:1. Then Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with these people and then they decided to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles about this question. So being sent on their way by the church they passed through Phoenicia, Samaria. When they came to Jerusalem they were welcomed by the church. They told what God
had done through them. But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up at this council held in Jerusalem and said, it is necessary to circumcise gentiles and to charge them to keep the law of Moses. So then they have a discussion. In this council various people get up and present, point of view. The whole assembly had listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them
among the gentiles. After they finished speaking, James, he is the president of the council at Jerusalem, which was held about the year 50 after Paul's first missionary journey, Acts 13 and 14. Now, Acts 15, at this council, James declares that we ourselves as Jews, born Jews, have been unable to bear the yoke of the Mosaic Law. Why should we lay this which we are not able to bear on the necks of Gentile converts? And so it
was decided that it is not necessary to circumcise Gentile believers before they become Christians. Only, now verse 20, we should write to them, to the Gentiles, to abstain from the pollutions of idols, from unchastity, from what is strangled, and from blood. That is to say, they should offer a program to the Gentiles so that the Gentile Christians would not do those things that for a native Jew, and now a Jewish Christian, was something utterly bad. Gentiles
should not go to the slaughterhouse and buy some blood that had been freshly drawn from a slaughtered cow or a sheep and drink it. Now, you and I are not accustomed to drinking blood, but that was part of the food stuff among Gentiles in antiquity. But for Jews who had an abhorrence of blood, this was atrocious. Secondly, they are to refrain from unchastity. The people at Corinth had, for example, a very bad name. To Corinthian eyes
was the same as to hoop it up in Las Vegas today. They should obtain abstain from pollutions of idols. That is to say, they should beware against compromising the monotheistic view that now Gentiles should assume as well as Jews. So these four prohibitions are laid down by the Jerusalem Council, not with the understanding that when a Gentile follows these, that will make the Gentile a better Christian in the sight of God. But these are prudential recommendations
in order to prevent exacerbation, rubbing Jewish Christian believers the wrong way with these customs that the Gentiles had grown up with, but which were anathema to someone that had been brought up as a Jew. These were prudential steps to bring about a closer sociological harmony between the two branches, Jewish Christian, Gentile Christian community. So according to Acts 15, what was demanded was not the Gentiles submit to the ritual act of circumcision, that they observe the various
kinds of sacrifices mentioned in the Old Testament. The Old Testament law per se is not laid upon the backs of Gentile Christian believers, but these four prudential things are mentioned. Now how does that fit in with Galatians 2? Well, in Galatians 2, verse 2, it says, I went up to Jerusalem by revelation. That's a shorthand way of saying that Paul felt divine compulsion that he now, after over a decade of working separately from the Judean congregations,
he now go up and set before them what he had been doing. He went up by revelation. But in Acts 15, it says that the church sent Paul and Barnabas to go up to Jerusalem. Not God, the church. Well, although some have felt this to be a great disparity, I can't see too much disparity. It seems to me that the sum and substance of Galatians 2 and Acts 15 are close enough, and we can say that
Paul may have felt that through the urging of the elders in the church, he could hear the voice of God giving him a revelation, what he should do. Another difference that has prevented some people from seeing the harmony between Acts 15 and Galatians 2, Galatians 2 speaks about a small group. He did not want to do anything out in the open. He said he spoke privately to those who were of repute. But Acts 15 is a
whole general assembly, you might say, a large number of people get together. Not only the 12 apostles, but also elders and leaders, and they had a council. Well, again, it seems to me it's possible to harmonize Galatians 2 with that in this way. That what Paul is interested to talk about is not to give a report in Galatians of all the things that went on at that council, but to concentrate on the private meeting that he
had with the leaders of the council, because it was ultimately what was decided there that prevailed among the greatest number as a whole. Now there are other difficulties also, you can read about them in Cole's commentary. The greatest difficulty would be this. If Paul was writing to the churches in South Galatia before the year 50, before this council had been held, then you must try to find some parallel between what he says in Galatians 2 and
his two visits to Jerusalem with regard to Acts 9 and Acts 11, both of which we saw a moment ago do not lend themselves to that kind of correlation. So, in conclusion, there are difficulties in trying to correlate Galatians 2 with Acts, with the five visits that are mentioned in Acts of when Paul went to Jerusalem. But I think that there are the fewest number of difficulties. It is the least unsatisfactory theory to say that Galatians
2 correlates with Acts 15. Now there are other ways of taking this as well. A few scholars have said, Acts is so unreliable you can't depend upon what is written in the book of Acts to get in a very clear notion of the apostolic age. And it could be, these people say, that the one visit that is spoken about in Galatians 2 is described by Luke in a confused way and he makes it two visits. He
makes it Acts 11 and Acts 15. Personally, I'm not too much attracted by this theory because I have a higher general opinion of the accuracy of the book of Acts than this would involve. All I can say is that it's necessary, I think, pedagogically to bring this matter to your attention. It is a problem that has exercised many writers on Acts, on Galatians, on apostolic chronology. It may seem far removed from any existential use of this
letter in the churches today, but I think that in addition to telling you how you can use this letter today, I ought also in this course to mention to you something with regard to the intellectual problems that have to do with the critical analysis between Galatians 2 and Acts 15. Now try to shift gears in your minds. We start with chapter 2, verse 10. Shift gears. Up to this time we've been talking about the church at
Jerusalem sending an offering to help the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, Paul going up to Jerusalem to confer. Now a totally different geographical location, 2, verse 11. But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. Cephas is the Aramaic word for rock, just as Petros in Greek is the Greek word for rock. And this prince of the apostles, Peter, was known among Aramaic speaking people as Cephas, and is known among
Greek speaking people as Petros. Two important things that Peter did in scripture had to do with changing his mind under pressure. Why is he called a rock? I think that eventually he might say, grew in his stability, and true enough in the gospels there are many times when Jesus has to rebuke him. One time he calls him Satan. When Peter says, you will not have to do this, Lord, Jesus says to him, get thee behind me,
Satan. And there are other times when Jesus had to rebuke Peter as well. And then his threefold denial. Why is he called a rock even though he is not so rock-like? Well, maybe this is one way in which our Lord had of setting a goal before him. I don't know that he should strive eventually to become rock-like in his commitment. Well, I have to take a little break now. Here is a very shocking thing.
When in a public debate, Peter is rebuked publicly by Paul. There's an altercation. And Paul, thought by some people to be an interloper, comes in and verbally chastises the prince of the apostles. We'll look at that in ten minutes.