Galatians 2

Paul said that he went to a meeting of church leaders “because of a revelation” (Galatians 2:2). If this was the Jerusalem Council meeting, his description of why he went there isn’t how Acts 15 reports the story. “Some men from Judea showed up and told people in the church, ‘Unless you men get yourselves circumcised, like the custom of Moses says, you can’t get saved.’ Paul and Barnabas got angry like you wouldn’t believe. They argued up and down with those men. Antioch church leaders decided to send Paul and Barnabas and some others to Jerusalem to talk about this problem with the apostles and other top church leaders in the movement. So the church sent them on their way” (Acts 15:1-3). How do you react to that apparent discrepancy?

Curious souls with an eye for detail might notice that just about every time Bible writers talk about going to or from Jerusalem they say they are going “up to Jerusalem” (Galatians 2:1), or they are headed home “down . . . from Jerusalem” (Luke 10:30). It doesn’t matter if the writer is talking about going north, south, east, or west. It’s always “up” to Jerusalem and “down” from Jerusalem. Care to venture a guess why?

Why do you think Paul was so bitterly opposed to fellow Jewish Christians who sincerely believed that Jesus wanted people to continue to honor and obey the Jewish laws that God gave them through Moses? After all, Jesus himself had probably observed them throughout his life.

Do you think Paul sometimes comes across as overly defensive when it comes to comparing himself to other church leaders? Maybe as though he might have felt he needed to justify himself as an apostle, which was the top office in the early church. For example, he referred to people at the Jerusalem meeting as folks “who seemed to be leaders. . . . Whether or not they were actual leaders, I didn’t know and I don’t care. In God’s eyes, we’re all equal” (Galatians 2:6).

Do you see any racial problem in the agreement the leaders made? The agreement was that Paul and Barnabas would continue to focus their ministry on people who were not Jews while just about everyone else, it seems, would focus their ministry on Jews.

The requirement that Paul said the Jewish leaders placed on him was a little different from the requirements reported in Acts. Paul said, “They had just one request: Help the poor” (Galatians 2:10). As the footnote to this verse in the Casual English Bible indicates, the Acts version of the Jerusalem Council’s decision was this: “Here’s what we decided, under the direction of the Holy Spirit. We won’t ask you to do anything more than the following. Stay away from meat sacrificed to idols, blood, animals strangled, and sex sins. If you can do that, you’ll do great” (Acts 15:28-29). How do you think we should handle the apparent discrepancy?

What do you think about Paul giving Peter what for in front of the entire group of Christians? “I publicly condemned him” (Galatians 2:11). Why do you think Paul didn’t politely pull Peter aside and talk with him man-to-man?

Why do you think Peter acted like a hypocrite and ate with the Jewish Christians, while shunning the non-Jewish Christians? After all, he had already taken Paul’s side in the argument that in God’s eyes the non-Jewish people were kosher (Acts 15:14). And even before that, God had given Peter a vision to teach them that non-Jews were kosher. In fact, the first reported non-Jewish convert to the Christian movement was a Roman officer that Peter baptized (Acts 10:48).

“The law worked itself out of a job. It was because of the law that I stopped living for the law. I did it so I could live for God” (Galatians 2:19). What an odd thing to say. Bible experts have different views about how to interpret not only this verse but this section of the chapter. If you had to guess, what do you think Paul meant by this?

LIFE APPLICATION. It’s a pretty abstract thing to say: “I’ve been crucified with the Messiah. I’m not alive anymore—not the old me, anyhow. It’s the Messiah who’s living in me” (Galatians 2:20). How could Christians today possibly relate to that, some 2,000 years after Jesus walked on the planet?