Verse 1: The Journey back to Jerusalem with Barnabas and Titus was a very significant one. In Acts 15, we see a lot more backstory on this. Some false brethren who were Jews had come into the church and began to propagate the lie that the Gentiles needed to be circumcised before they could serve the Lord. This caused a huge issue, which resulted in Paul and Barnabas going to Jerusalem to meet with Peter and James, who were pillars of that church.
Verse 2: Paul’s humility is highlighted here. He was sent to the Gentiles, so while his message was right, it had differences in that it didn’t include the law or Jewish practices. The Jewish Church still lived like Jews even though they believed in the Lord Jesus. The Jews who came to the Gentiles tried to enforce these same practices on the Gentile Church. Paul presented his message to the apostles and elders in Jerusalem. He had received this message from the Lord Jesus Christ, and he had seen visions, yet he willingly presents the message to others. Paul said: “lest by any means, I might run or have run, in vain”. There is safety in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Verse 3: The Jerusalem church did not push circumcision on Titus like the false brethren did. This must have been encouraging to Paul. It was also daring of Paul to take Titus along on this journey. Titus, unlike Paul and Barnabas, was not a Jew. He was a Gentile; he was uncircumcised. If what the false brethren said was true in any way, Titus would have been in a whole lot of trouble.
Verse 5: This is a powerful statement. Paul and his team did not yield to this false doctrine at all. Remember that false doctrine spreads like cancer (2 Timothy 2:17). The moment you yield to false doctrine, one that is not the gospel, the truth of the gospel which was effective at a time in your life begins to wane. The realities of the gospel are exchanged for another reality.
Verse 6: Paul’s going to Jerusalem must have been like a convention where all the “big guns” are. While we see Paul today as a pillar of the church, he wasn’t seen like so in the early years of his ministry. Paul quickly grounded himself in the fact that God shows no favouritism. He wasn’t going to be pressured or inferior.
Verses 7-8: Paul had the opportunity to present his case, and the church saw that the gospel to the uncircumcised was given to him, just like the gospel to the circumcised was given to Peter. This begs the question. What did this mean?
- Paul was the only Jew preaching to the Gentiles?
- Was Paul’s ministry the biggest or most impactful?
Jesus had spoken to Paul to focus his ministry on the Gentiles (Acts 22:21). Paul struggled with this; he wanted the Jews to receive the gospel (Romans 10:1, Romans 9:3), but they couldn’t receive it from him.
The Jews Rejecting Paul’s Message
- Acts 9:19-30
- Acts 13:42-48
- Acts 14:1-2
- Acts 14:19
- Acts 17:5
- Acts 17:13
- Acts 21:26-36
When you read Paul’s letters to the Corinthians and even this Galatian church, you would see that he continually corrected the church on following false apostles and false doctrine. So even though Paul believed the gospel to the uncircumcised was given to him, his ministry might not have been as loud or impactful to many of them.
Verse 9: Peter, James, John and the pillars of the Jerusalem Church saw the grace given to Paul. They saw that the gospel to the uncircumcised had been given to Paul. How did they see it? Was there a difference between the gospel to the circumcised and the gospel to the uncircumcised? The message was the same, however, when you read Paul’s letters, you see how different the approach was. The Gentiles did not have the context of the law, practices, circumcision and festivals. They had the god of the sun, the god of love, they have philosophers and scientists, they had debauchery and drunk parties.
Verse 10: The Apostles and pillars of the Jerusalem church were concerned about the poor. It is a core of the Christian faith to be concerned about the poor. When you compare with Acts 15, the apostles spelt out certain things the Gentiles should not be involved with:
- Food sacrificed to idols.
- Food that had blood in it
- Meat from strangled animals
- Sexual Immorality
They didn’t want to burden the Gentile church with their laws, but they didn’t shift ground on the above. The Gentiles were under the Scripture going forward and not the Jewish law. After this meeting, the Gentile church would have seen some autonomy. Previously, Peter and John had to travel to baptise in the Holy Spirit the saints in Samaria who had just received the gospel under Philip’s ministration. Going forward, the Gentile church was now under Paul and Barnabas as recognized by the Jerusalem church.
Verses 11-14: These verses prove why the Gospel to the Gentiles was committed to Paul. Paul wasn’t just preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles; he was living the Gospel to the Gentiles. He was eating with them, which was against Jewish law. When the Jews came, Peter stopped eating with the Gentiles. Paul got angry at this hypocrisy and rebuked Peter. However, when you look at this more closely, Peter was to the Jews, while Paul was to the Gentiles. If Peter had continued to eat with the Gentiles, it would have made his ministry to the Jews a lot harder.
Verse 16-17: A man is not justified in the sight of God by the works of the law. You can’t earn justification; it is only by faith in Christ Jesus. The Jewish practice of not eating with Gentiles or any other work of the law has 3 implications:
- It doesn’t justify a man justified in the sight of God.
- The man is thinking he can be justified by that work, which means he is falling from the grace of God. Galatians 5:4
- Those who do these works think that those who aren’t doing them are not justified by Christ or are sinners, concluding that Christ is a minister of sin. Galatians 2:17
Verses 18-19: Paul claimed to have pulled down the demands of the law. Interestingly, he terms building back what he pulled down as living by the law. It’s not just about what he preached; it was about how he lived.
Verse 20-21: Here is the conclusion of the matter:
- Crucified with Christ. We died with Christ on the cross; we died to sin and to the Law.
- We are not living; Christ lives in us.
- If we say we are living, we aren’t living our lives; we live by faith in the Son of God.
- We will not set aside the grace of God, this faith life, this grace life. We will keep speaking it and living it.