by Angus Harley

This is the third article in a series looking at hermeneutics in Galatians. The focus this time is Galatians 2.1 We will continue the two-ages model that was found in Galatians 1.

Paul sets the scene for us. He continues his defense of his divinely given apostleship to the end of upholding his Gospel, the Gospel of the “ages”. In Galatians 1, it was the fact of his rights to make these claims that was Paul’s point; in Galatians 2, he gets into the Gospel itself and its true nature.

Paul was accepted as an apostle to the Gentiles by the council in Jerusalem that comprised an all-Jewish cast, and especially included the apostles, and the great leader, James. No one at that time, in that center of Jewish ‘evangelicalism’, questioned Paul’s apostolic message or mission. Indeed, he and Barnabas were given the “right hand of fellowship,  so that we might go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised” (2:9).

The gospel of the “age”

But then it all changes. At Antioch, Peter the apostle- who had given him the right hand of fellowship to continue his Gentile mission- ignored the Gentiles and sat only with the Jews when it came time to eat. This implies the clean-unclean food distinction of the Old Covenant and the Law, and also that Peter was visibly encouraging a return to Mosaic model of the Gentiles as ‘outside’ and unclean. Cowardice had gripped Peter, a fear of “the party of the circumcision” (2:12), which was to say, a so-called ‘Christian’ party that reinvented the Gospel to be nothing more than the Old Covenant and its religion all over again. Paul calls out Peter’s “hypocrisy”, saying he was not “straightforward about the truth of the gospel” (2:14). I prefer the NIV interpretation of orthopodeo: “they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel”. The KJV is a good reading, too. The point being that Peter was not behaving properly in his actions; it was not the generic idea of being hypocritical, in other words. This is vastly important because the true Gospel is denied not just by word and pen, but by action, too. Peter did not need to say or write a single word in agreement with the Judaizer’s ‘gospel’; all it needed was a form of behavioral capitulation to it.

And what precisely was that form? Sadly, many Evangelical interpretations locate the fault in the supposed Judaizers’ abuse of the Mosaic Law. That reading categorically turns Paul’s logic and argument on its head. It was not an exaggerated, Judaizing interpretation of the Old Covenant and its Law that was the issue; it was, rather, a simple returning to the ways of the Law of Moses. It was to go back to the Jewish, OT, Old Covenant, model of eating only with Jews and keeping Gentiles on the outside. This Judaizing exaggeration and abuse was against the Gospel alone, the real and true Gospel, and not against the Law of Moses.

Very worryingly, these men were sent by James (2:11), Jerusalem’s leader. Some have given James a pass on this issue, saying that the circumcision party were very sneaky in what they did, and did not show their true colors to James (2:4). This is true, at least initially. But it would seem that because Paul is citing that they came from James, he was highlighting a flaw in the ‘system’ there in Jerusalem as led by James. We know that by the time of Acts 15, the circumcision party were openly vocal in the assembly in Jerusalem. The question is, why did it take Paul and Barnabas’s stance against the circumcision party for James, the Jerusalem elders, and the Jewish apostles to pronounce a judgment in favor of the true Gospel?

Specifically, Paul’s argument against Peter cites the Jew-Gentile divide created by Peter’s actions. Peter had been ‘freed’ by the true Gospel to preach to Jews and Gentiles, even to eat what was formerly ‘unclean’ food with the Gentiles (Acts 10-11). Yet, here was Peter now, by his own new standard, breaking his own rules and thereby violating his own version of true Gospel behavior. More to the point, Peter was forcing or compelling those Gentiles that he had discarded to become Jewish and follow the Law of Moses.

This last thought is of crucial importance. Paul does not define this false-gospel behavior as being a ‘Judaizer’s’ false gospel. He does not say that the circumcision party are abusing the Law of Moses, or forcing a false version of it on the Gentile believers. Peter’s actions were tantamount to forcing the Gentiles to become Jews– Paul actually states this, “ how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?” (2:14). The false gospel Paul is therefore opposing is not a distortion of Moses’ Law, but is that which devotes itself to Moses’ Law.

Paul had exposed a fault-line in Jerusalem and all its leaders. The flesh cannot be relied on, even if it is Jewish, based in Jerusalem, is Christian, and named an elder or apostle. Nor is Moses and his Law any better a source for divine righteousness. The lesson learned? Don’t rely on a gospel derived from below!

The Gospel of the “ages”

Many today are not convinced that Jewishness and Law-keeping are so drastically lumped together in Galatians. One counterargument insists that the Mosaic Law was an example of grace from Yahweh to Israel. And another counterargument is that Paul is speaking as a Jew, and he does not embrace the Law anymore.

In response, we must define what salvation is. It is not the deliverance of the Jews to be better Jews; nor is it that one is delivered as a Jew from keeping the Law of Moses to become a Jew who now keeps the Gospel law. Ethnic backgrounds will always be there as long as we are in the flesh. Sexual differentiation and one’s status in society, too. I will never stop being a male Gentile whilst alive. And as long as I live in the flesh I must, in a God-honoring way, behave as a male and as a redeemed Gentile. History will record it so. But I’m not saved to become a super-Gentile or a super-male; rather, I’m a Gentile male that was saved to be a new creation, a new creation whose spirituality belongs to another world that is not at all founded upon male or female, slave or master, Greek or Jew, uncircumcision or circumcision. This explains why Paul does naturally go from being Jewish to keeping the Law of Moses, and then jumps by contrast to the resurrection life and justification by faith:

15 “We are Jews by nature and not sinners from among the Gentiles; 16 nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified.  (2:15-16)

Faith is not rooted in ethnicity, nor is it expressive of it. It is heavenly, belonging to the citizenship from above. Paul was saved as a Jew, not to be a better Jew, but to live as a new creation belonging to the resurrection world. And so he continues:

18 For if I rebuild what I have once destroyed, I prove myself to be a transgressor. 19 For through  the Law I died to the Law, so that I might live to God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. 21 I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.”

One must pay close attention to Paul’s language, here. Paul does not say, “For through the Judaizer’s view of the Law….”, or “For through the works of the Law….” He writes, “For through the Law”. Not its abuse or misinterpretation. Not upon a miscalculation as to its supposed ‘gracious’ character that relied on works. It was the Law itself that was the issue. In the sharpest of contrasts to the Law is not the idea of more and better Jewishness, or some form of ethnicity, but the presence of the risen One, Christ from above, who now, in that resurrection, everlasting form, was the life of Paul, who himself had been crucified with Christ and raised with him unto life. And so Paul closes out that section by concluding, “I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.” Once more, see how “grace” is in Christ and stands in the starkest of contrasts to condemnation by the Law (not the Judaizer’s abuse of it, or the works of it, but the Law itself). The division between Law and Christ is absolute in context.

Some NCT observations

No amount of appeals to the OT and its Old Covenant and the Mosaic Law can remove this explicit teaching by Paul in Galatians 2. The contrast is absolute between the Mosaic Law and the Gospel of grace in Christ Jesus. It was not an abuse of the Law, or merely the works of the Law. It was the Law itself that was the issue.

If we allow Galatians to speak for itself, and don’t force it to comply with a model of Law-grace (in whatever theological form), we should have no problem. The NT trumps the Old interpretively, after all. However, because most of the major Evangelical paradigms look to the Mosaic Law as a form of grace in one way or another, they paint themselves into a corner and must squeeze into their commentaries on Galatians a ‘reminder’ to the reader of the ‘natural’ graciousness of this Mosaic Law.

When all is said and done, the Judaizers were no different in method to the Jews: righteousness was by the Old Covenant and by the Law. I find it rather bewildering that Christians would question the existence of this problem in the nascent assembly of the first century. What more ‘natural’ faux gospel could there be than one based entirely on the old system? Just stick the label ‘Christ’ on it, and you’re good to go! Isn’t that what some modern Evangelicals are doing in certain movement, such as the Hebrew Roots Movement?

1Angus Harley, “Hermeneutics and Galatians: the two gospels’ paradigm”, All Things New Covenant, December 22, 2023, https://allthingsnewcovenant.com/2023/12/22/hermeneutics-and-galatians-the-two-gospels-paradigm/; “Hermeneutics and Galatians 1”, All Things New Covenant, December 26, 2023, https://allthingsnewcovenant.com/2023/12/26/hermeneutics-and-galatians-1/.