Galatians

Paul records a visit to Jerusalem 'after the space of fourteen years' with Barnabas and Titus (2:1), where he set out his gospel privately before the leaders, Titus was not compelled to be circumcised (2:3), and James and Cephas and John 'gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship' (2:9) with one request, 'that we should remember the poor' (2:10). Acts 15 records a public council at Jerusalem on the same subject, ending in a written decision sent to the Gentile churches. The overlap is obvious and the differences are real: Galatians describes a private meeting and mentions no decree, and Paul is arguing in this very letter about circumcision, which the decree would have settled.

The Jerusalem Council→

Paul reports it plainly and does not soften it. 'when Cephas came to Antioch, I resisted him to the face, because he stood condemned' (2:11). Peter had been eating with Gentile believers, and when men came from James he 'drew back and separated himself, fearing them that were of the circumcision' (2:12), and others followed him, 'insomuch that even Barnabas was carried away with their dissimulation' (2:13). Paul's charge is about conduct rather than doctrine: they 'walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel' (2:14). Two things are worth holding steady. Paul says Peter acted out of fear and had already been eating freely, so this is a failure of nerve in a man who knew better. And Paul tells the story because it proves his point about his own standing, which is why the letter carries it at all. Scripture never records how it ended, and Peter's later letter speaks of 'our beloved brother Paul'.

The Antioch Confrontation→

It does not, and the passage says what it is doing before it starts. Paul writes 'Which things contain an allegory: for these women are two covenants' (4:24), so the subject named in the text is two covenants rather than two ethnic groups. One covenant comes 'from mount Sinai, bearing children unto bondage' (4:24) and Paul lines it up with 'the Jerusalem that now is' (4:25), meaning the party in that city demanding circumcision of Gentiles, the same people whose emissaries frightened Peter at Antioch. Over against it stands 'the Jerusalem that is above' (4:26). The line that troubles readers is the quotation at 4:30, 'Cast out the handmaid and her son', taken from Sarah's words in Genesis 21:10, and in the letter it is aimed at the teachers troubling these churches rather than at a nation. The reading has to be held together with Paul's own settled teaching that God has not cast off the people he foreknew, and with the fact that Paul, a Jew, calls Gentile believers children of a promise made to Abraham. Any use of this passage to argue that the church has replaced Israel goes past what Paul wrote and against what he taught elsewhere.

Hagar and Sarah, the Allegory→

The phrase carries the argument of 2:16 and 3:10, and what it covers has been debated hard for fifty years. The older reading takes it as human moral effort of any kind, so that Paul is answering the attempt to earn a verdict from God by good behavior. A newer reading takes it as the boundary markers that separated Jew from Gentile, circumcision above all, then food laws and days, so that Paul is answering an attempt to make Gentiles into Jews before they can be counted in. The letter gives support to both. Circumcision, days, and table fellowship are exactly what is being argued about in Galatians (2:12, 4:10, 5:2). And Paul states the principle in the widest possible terms, 'by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified' (2:16), and says that anyone taking on circumcision 'is a debtor to do the whole law' (5:3), which reaches past any list of markers.

The New Perspective on Paul→

The sentence is stark: 'Ye are severed from Christ, ye who would be justified by the law; ye are fallen away from grace' (5:4). Two features of the verse shape every reading of it. It is addressed to people taking a specific step, seeking to be justified by law, which is the very move the whole letter was written to stop. And the language of severance is the language of a system, since a man who goes to the law for his verdict has by that act left the ground of grace and put himself under the obligation of 5:3. The verse speaks to a course of action, and the wider question of a believer's perseverance is argued from other passages. Honored teachers differ on what it establishes, and this site names the readings and lets each stand in its own words.

Eternal Security→