Bible Commentaries
Galatians 2

Verses 1-21

II 1-10— The complicated question of the identification of this visit to Jerusalem with the corresponding visit in Ac has been briefly discussed in § 893c-d. The visit recorded here is therefore taken to be identical with the famine relief visit of Acts 11:29-30; cf. also Chrys. Hom. in Acts 25:2, PG 60, 193.

1. ’After fourteen years’: St Paul is still pursuing the same line of argument as in the latter part of the preceding chapter; he means ’fourteen years’ from his conversion according to Jewish reckoning, cf. § 124g, i.e. anything between say 12 1/4-14 full years after his conversion. The date of this visit could not have been later than the winter of a.d. 46-7, when the famine was at its height; cf.Acts 11:29-30 for further details. According to the view taken here St Paul’s conversion must have occurred between a.d. 31-4; but cf. § 831a for a different view. ’Titus’ was one of St Paul’s early Gentile converts. His name is not mentioned in Ac, but several times in 2 Cor. St Paul wrote to him the Pastoral Epistle of the same name.

2. Paul’s going up to Jerusalem in obedience to ’a revelation’ is quite compatible with his other purpose of taking the famine relief. Indeed, it is not forcing the text to make it mean that he went up in response to the ’revelation’ made to Agabus (Acts 11:18). But if we take it as a special revelation made to himself, then in this revelation he was instructed to compare his teaching with that of the Twelve not for the purpose of reaching an agreement (which already existed), but for mutually confirming their complete doctrinal harmony and in order to forestall future possible sources of disagreement over matters of practical policy. ’Communicated to them . . .’: instructed by his revelation Paul thought it prudent and necessary, not to ask for approbation but privately to compare his teaching with that of the Twelve and to secure recognition of their complete harmony and agreement lest there should be any misunderstanding or threat of rupture between him and Peter, James and John, i.e. lest he had, or should, ’run in vain’; ’but privately before the authorities’; t??? d????s?? is a term of honour, not of depreciation. This action of Paul was therefore taken to safeguard unity, and in view of the storm that arose in Ac 15 it was well to have secured in advance the full trust of, and complete accord with, the Apostles. 3-5 form a parenthesis that interrupts Paul’s account of his private conference with Peter, James and John; what happened at their conference and what resulted from it is told in 6-10.

3. We have seen that on this visit Paul brought with him the Jew Barnabas and the Greek Titus, both his friends and helpers. This verse begins a parenthesis as Paul suddenly introduces a new consideration, viz. that in tacitly approving of his having Titus as a collaborator, uncircumcised Gentile though he was, the Apostles showed that they were already committed in principle to the admission of uncircumcised Gentiles into the Christian fellowship. The question of circumcising Titus never arose at all; the question, St Paul means, was not raised on that occasion, though it would have been, if the Apostles had ever accepted the views of the Judaizers. 4. ’But (your liberty is now in danger) because of false brethren . . .’: the words in brackets, or some clause such as ’I only mention Titus here’, are required to complete the sense, both subject and verb being wanting in the Gk; cf. Orchard, art. cit. supra. These ’false brethren’ are the persons mentioned in Acts 15:1-2. ’into servitude’, viz. by insisting on the necessity of circumcision and the observance of the Mosaic Law by all Gentile converts.

5 sums up the resistance described Acts 15:2 f., and concludes the parenthesis.

6 resumes the description of Paul’s private conference. The authorities, i.e. the three Apostles, imparted no fresh knowledge to him, saw nothing dfective or incorrect in his teaching, but on the contrary heartily recognized his mission as being directly from God. ’But of these who are looked up to as authorities’: St Paul is depreciating not the Twelve themselves, but the extravagant and exclusive claims set up for them by the Judaizers, viz. the fact that the Twelve knew Jesus in the flesh before his Resurrection did not give them any special advantage over him, for God does not judge according to this. Both he and they are Apostles in the fullest sense and God does not regard the difference between him and them in the circumstances of their call. While admitting fully their Apostolic Authority his own is not dependent on their approbation.

7. ’. . . in the same way as to Peter was that of the circumcision’: the revelation made to Paul in Acts 9:3 f. is comparable only with that made to Peter in Matthew 16:16 f.; cf. Chapman, art. cit. supra.

8. ’He who wrought for Peter’, by making his apostolate fruitful among the Jews, ’wrought for me also among the gentiles’. ’The gospel of the uncircumcision’ means ’the uncircumcised Gentiles as the object of the apostolate’ (Lagrange). This mission of Paul to the Gentiles must not be understood in any exclusive or monopolistic sense, but he himself had been called in the designs of God primarily for work among the Gentiles. Peter as the Chief of the Apostles and the centre of unity had the responsibility of welding the Jewish and Gentile elements in the Church into one whole and because of his closer contact with the mother-church of Jerusalem and of his pre-eminence among the Apostles (cf. Roiron, RSR [ 1913] 501-4) he personifies for Paul the principal agent in the conversion of the Jews, at this particular time at any rate. Of course St Paul never renounced, nor did St Peter ever confine himself to, the evangelization of the Jews; cf. Ac 10-11; 1 and 2 Pet passim.9. ’the grace’, i.e. of the Gentile apostolate; cf.Romans 1:5. ’James and Cephas and John’. Lightfoot (in loc.) remarks that when St Paul is speaking of the missionary office of the Church at large, St Peter holds the foremost place, 7, 8: when he refers to a special act of the Church of Jerusalem, St James is mentioned first, as here; cf.Acts 12:17; Acts 15:13; Acts 21:18. On St Paul’s relative use of Cephas and Peter, see Chapman, art. cit. 143. ’Who are regarded as pillars’, a statement without any touch of irony or depreciation. The accord here made between the Three Pillars and Paul on the latter’s second visit to Jerusalem was to be renewed on his third visit to the Holy City, Ac 15 passim. In all probability they agreed on a territorial delimitation of their spheres, the Pillars retaining the evangelization of Palestine, whilst St Paul kept to the westward; cf. also Romans 15:20.

10. ’Only (they would) that we should be mindful of the poor; which was the very thing I had also been careful to do’. The aorist ?sp??dasa can bear here a pluperfect sense. The reference is clearly to the famine relief collection, Acts 11:29-30. St Paul’s constant solicitude for the welfare of the mother-Church in Jerusalem is also seen in 1 Corinthians 16:1-4; 2 Cor 8-9; Romans 15:26-27; Acts 24:17; also § 637a.

11-21 The Incident at Antioch— It would appear that the incident at Antioch took place either immediately before or immediately after the first missionary journey of Paul. 11. Cf. also 14 infra. This statement implies that St Paul both recognized and venerated the authority of St Peter as being superior to his own (Lagrange); there is no ground for the assumption that Paul considered himself superior to Peter. The use of the title K?ø?? and its contrast with II?t???, 7-8, show that he was fully aware of Peter’s position as The Rock; cf. McNabb, New Testament Witness to St Peter, London, 1928, 43-6.

12. St Peter was scandalizing Gentile Christians. It is clear from this verse and from Acts 10:5-10 that Peter now made no distinction between clean and unclean foods. It is also clear from Acts 15:24 that the emissaries from Jerusalem must either have exceeded their powers or abused them. It was presumably for the sake of peace and to avoid serious friction that Peter ’withdrew gradually’ from taking meals with the Gentile converts in Antioch. Peter’s authority led the rest of the Jewish Christians and even Paul’s own lieutenant, Barnabas, to follow his example.

13. Though Peter’s attitude was negative, it was nevertheless ’hypocritical’ in the sense that his action was not in conformity with his convictions, and the truth of the Gospel and the liberty of the Gentiles (not to mention the Jews as well) from the Mosaic Law would very soon have been endangered.

14-21 sum up St Paul’s speech on this occasion to Peter and to the faithful of Antioch. 14a. ’the truth of the Gospel’, i.e. liberty of conscience with respect to the ritualistic prescriptions of the Mosaic Law. Paul reproached Peter not with a doctrinal error, but with not holding firm in the principle which he recognizes, ’conversationis vitium, non praedicationis’ ( Tert., De praescript. 23). ’before them all’, i.e. before a formal gathering of Jewish and Gentile Christians. 14b. Peter is accused of exerting a moral pressure in favour of Judaizing since the Gentile Christians would feel themselves bound to submit in order not to be separated from the chief of the Apostles. N.B.—For the local compromise agreed on for the storm-centre areas of Syria, Cilicia and Galatia, see Acts 15:28-29. No word is said there about Jewish Christians and the Mosaic ritual, but Gentile Christians are to observe four prohibitions, which seem to be identical with those formerly imposed in the OT upon Gentile minorities in Jewish territory, for the sake of peaceful living, cf.Leviticus 17:8, Leviticus 17:10, Leviticus 17:13; Leviticus 18:26.

15. Said perhaps with a slight touch of irony, but the verse emphasizes the special privileges of Israel as a race possessing a rule of conduct vastly superior to anything found among Gentile nations, whom they therefore referred to as sinners.

16 gives the essence of Paul’s position. Cf.Acts 15:11. ’Justification’ in St Paul means an interior purification by which a man’s sins are utterly blotted out and he is made acceptable to God in virtue of faith with charity, and good works, cf. § 894c, and Rom 2-5. The last part of the verse is a free quotation of Ps 142( 143):2; no one under the Old Dispensation was justified, not even by the works of the Law, save by the foreseen merits of Christ, and through faith in God’s promise of Redemption. It would seem that Paul is in fact using this text in an accommodated sense, cf. RB ( 1938) 503-4.

17. A difficult verse, which seems to mean: seeing that in order to be justified in Christ it was necessary to abandon our old ground of legal righteousness and to become ’sinners’ (i.e. to put ourselves in the position of heathen), may it not be argued that Christ is thus made a minister of sin? (Lightfoot). ’Heaven forbid that anyone should teach that justification by faith without the Law makes a man a sinner; for Christ would be responsible’.

18. But to put oneself back again under the Law after having abandoned it would indeed be ’to make oneself a transgressor of it’. This verse seems to hint at the possible consequence of Peter’s action. Renunciation of the Law is then absolutely imperative. If the Jew who abandons it apparently makes himself a ’sinner’, he does it in reality in order to be at once justified in a marvellous participation of the life of Christ. He will have gained infinitely more than he has lost.

19. ’For I died to the Law through (the) law . . .’: he died to the Mosaic Law through a mystic death realized through faith and baptism, by which a Christian puts on Christ and is united to his death; cf.Galatians 3:29; Romans 6:3. ’Through (the) law’ is a difficult phrase, and is easier, perhaps, to understand as ’through the law of faith’, cf. 6:2, than ’through the Law of Moses’, which, in causing as it were the death and Resurrection of Christ, does the same for us in virtue of our solidarity with him. Being freed from the bondage of the Law by this mystic death, the Christian now lives with the life of God and in union with him. ’With Christ I was and am concrucified’: the perfect tense of the Greek verb indicates that the state acquired by a man on the day of his justification by baptism still endures. For further development of the idea of concrucifixion, cf.Galatians 5:24; Galatians 6:14; Romans 6:6.

20. ’And it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me’. These words have inspired a great mystical literature which has attempted to draw out their meaning. ’Walking in the spirit’ (5:25) the Christian is ’another Christ’ in virtue of his mystical union with him. His present physical life since his conversion is a life elevated and animated by faith in Christ. 21. To return to the practice of the Law of Moses would be to spurn this incomparable gift of divine life. If justification could be gained through the Law then the Redemption was unnecessary and a mockery.

We are not told the effect of these words on Peter, but obviously Paul would not have related the incident unless the issue had been favourable to him and Peter had seen his mistake. At the subsequent Council of Jerusalem, Acts 15:6 f., the conditions laid down for the fraternization of Gentile Christians with the rest of the Church (in which Peter concurred) marked a complete victory for St Paul on all the essential points.