Galatians 2 (7)

Opening Prayer: Psalm 116.7-9
Return to your rest, O my soul,
For the LORD has dealt bountifully with you.
For You have delivered my soul from death,
My eyes from tears,
And my feet from falling.
I will walk before the LORD
In the land of the living.

Sing Psalm 116.7-9
(Mit Freuden Zart: All Praise To God Who Reigns Above)
Full well the LORD has dealt with me; my soul from death He delivered.
My weeping eyes, my stumbling feet, He has redeemed forever.
Forever I before His face shall walk with those who know His grace,
and dwell with them forever

Read Galatians 2.1-21; meditate on verses 4, 5, 11-13, 21.

Preparation
1. To what must we never yield?

2. To what must we ever yield?

Meditation
The Galatians, we learned from chapter 1, were beginning to drift from Paul’s teaching to “another gospel” (1.6-9). Galatians 2 provides more information about that “different gospel” (1.6), where we learn that it had to do with the Judaizing insistence that merely believing in Jesus was not enough to be saved. One had to believe and submit to circumcision. Thus, theirs was a gospel of Jesus + circumcision. But any “gospel” that is Jesus + anything else is not the Gospel but a perversion of it (1.7).

So, in chapter 2 Paul insisted on the need to stand firm in the true Gospel and not to yield to any other demands or temptations. In Jerusalem, the Judaizers called for Titus to be circumcised. Paul refused. He “did not yield submission even for an hour” for he knew to do so would be to endorse a Jesus + gospel and deny the true Gospel (vv. 2-5).

To show us this from another angle, Paul related a lapse that Peter had fallen into in Antioch. He yielded to the temptation to look good before the Jewish theologians from Jerusalem by turning his back on the Gentile believers with whom he was having fellowship. Peter’s lapse into sin also caused others to do the same (vv. 11-13). Paul rebuked him publicly, insisting that faith in Christ is the true ground for justification, and we must not yield to temptations that would move us away from this conviction (vv. 15, 16). We must yield only to Jesus, Who lives in us, and live by faith in Him, drawing on the grace of God and the righteousness of Jesus in everything (vv. 19-21).

Guard your heart—your desires, loves, and longings. Make sure that Jesus is the object of all your best and purest affections. Guard your mind. Do not even contemplate yielding to anything or anyone but Jesus. And guard your conscience, so that your values and priorities are the same Kingdom values and priorities Jesus has (Matt. 6.33). If we will thus guard our soul, we will be more likely to yield to what we should and to yield not to what we should not.

Treasure Old and New: Matthew 13.52; Psalm 119.162
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him,
and without Him nothing was made that was made” (Jn. 1.1-3).

“Therefore God has also highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2.9-11).

However, because of all this love and glory and joy and perfection and righteousness,
false brethren were secretly brought in by stealth to spy out the Galatians’ liberty
which they had in Christ Jesus (Gal. 2.4). So bizarre and sad.

The liberty that they had was not a free-for-all from having to keep the Law;
but it was the liberty to rejoice in the fact that they no longer had to keep the Law
to receive the gift of salvation and new life in Christ.

And they were free from laws like circumcision to prove their righteousness.
This law could be compared to the fashion law of: Don’t wear white shoes after Labor Day.
Circumcision, a surgical procedure still in place today, is just like the joys of agreeable seasonal dressing—but the issue of salvation is apropos to neither.

And on a more obvious note: the Old Testament had been speaking (warning?) of the grafting in of the Gentiles for a very long time. The psalmist even wrote a short piece about it:

“Praise the LORD, all you Gentiles! Laud Him, all you peoples!
For His merciful kindness is great toward us, And the truth of the LORD endures forever.
Praise the LORD!” (Ps. 117)

And God, through the prophet Isaiah, spoke of the same phenomenon while writing about Jesus:
“Behold! My Servant whom I uphold, My Elect One in whom My soul delights!
I have put My Spirit upon Him: He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles” (Is. 42.1; Matt. 12.18).

Those verses do not include the words “circumcised Gentiles”; or have multiple footnotes explaining the need for the procedure. So, this fussing about liberty, salvation, and circumcision, and the need to send in spies to catch them in this heresy, was totally bogus.

Circumcision is not the bogus topic du jour; but beware, there are plenty of other things that either trip us up, or false brethren try to use against us. For example, things we are supposed to accept because “God is love” and “full of grace” but are truly anathema to God; although we are supposed to smile and just tolerate it all—sometimes even praise it. But the truth is: “You who love the LORD, hate evil! He preserves the souls of His saints; He delivers them out of the hand of the wicked” (Ps. 97.10).

And anything that smacks of Jesus plus some other behavior for salvation is wrong. And evil. Because if we believe that, or support it in any way, we are saying that “Christ died in vain” (Gal. 2.21). And frankly, I do not want to say that, or do anything to support that horrible notion. Jesus paid a dear price for us.

Jesus paid it all, All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow.
(E.M. Hall, 1865)

Reflection
1. How can you know when you are beginning to yield to something other than Jesus?

2. Do you think that you would have the courage, like Paul, to confront a fellow believer who was beginning to yield to something other than Jesus? Explain.

3. What are the keys to not yielding to something other than Jesus?

Let us remember that it is not enough to retain the name of the gospel, and some kind of summary of its doctrines, if its solid purity[does] not remain untouched. John Calvin (1509-1564), Commentary on Galatians 2.5

Pray Psalm 116.1-3, 10-19.
Rejoice in the Good News of Jesus, that He alone is the way, the truth, and the life. Commit yourself afresh to following only Jesus.

Sing Psalm 116.1-3, 10-19
(Mit Freuden Zart: All Praise to God Who Reigns Above)
I love the LORD because He hears my cries and pleas for mercy.
Because He bends to me His ear, my prayers shall ever thus be.
The snares of death encompassed me; hell’s grip could not unloosened be;
distress and anguish pressed me.

Afflicted, I believe His Word, though lying men would undo me.
What shall I render to the LORD for all His blessings to me?
Salvation’s cup I lift above and call upon the God of love
and pay my vows most truly.

How sweet to Him when saints depart—make me Your servant, Savior!
From sin You loosed my wand’ring heart; I praise Your Name forever!
On You I call, my vows to pay; here in Your Presence I would stay
Your praise to offer ever.

T. M. and Susie Moore

If you have found this meditation helpful, take a moment and give thanks to God. Then share what you learned with a friend. This is how the grace of God spreads (2 Cor. 4.15).

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Except as indicated, all Scriptures are taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. For sources of all quotations, see the weekly PDF of this study. All psalms for singing are from The Ailbe Psalter.