The other day I had one of those moments where I found myself – yet again – thankful that I am not the only pastor of Cornerstone Community Church. We were in a place where we had to enter into some negotiations regarding our land, and I was a bit anxious that this meeting had the potential to be a bit tense, and so I went into the meeting with Nathan. And as we went into this meeting, we prayed, talked about what to say, and then I had a word of wisdom or knowledge or something and said to Nathan, right as we entered the door, “I think you should do all the talking,” which I think excited him because he said, “Oh, thanks.” And though some might point out that he said it in a clearly sarcastic tone, I interpreted it as, “Thank you for graciously letting me have the spotlight.”
But in recommending that Nathan do all the speaking, I had made a great decision because as Nathan began to talk in that meeting, I sat there in silence much of the time amazed. And the reason I was amazed is because there was such a tightrope to walk. In a meeting like this, we’d talked about wanting to be gracious and expecting the other side to be the same, yet wanting to be firm if one side was suggesting an injustice. We’d talked about wanting to preserve a relationship and yet not wanting to allow another to try to take advantage of a relationship. We wanted to be generous and yet make sure we received what we were due. The whole time before the meeting, we had conversation about making sure we do this without doing that. It was like a pitching coach telling a pitcher, “Don’t walk this batter but also don’t throw it anywhere near the strike zone.”
I couldn’t even get a picture in my mind of what it looked like. I mean, how do you accomplish two things that appear at first glance to be contradictory? Then I saw it. Nathan was negotiator extraordinaire. He was gracious and firm, friendly and businesslike, generous and fair. And in the end, I think he successfully accomplished all of our goals masterfully.
So, as I came home and told Lili about it, I began to think how much that event mirrored what is going on in the text we’re looking at this week. After all, at first glance, it appears that Paul is doing something in this text that seems contradictory to what he accomplished in the text we looked at last week. If you remember, last week, we walked through a number of reasons Paul gave as evidence of his claim that he had not received the gospel from any man nor had been taught it by any man but had received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. And, one of those reasons to support this claim was that after his conversion, he didn’t even see an apostle for three years, and then when he finally did go up to Jerusalem, he just spent fifteen days there and saw only Peter and James. So, clearly, Paul wanted the Galatians (and us) to know that his gospel wasn’t dependent on the other apostles. Instead, he received it directly from Jesus Christ.
Now, however, as we get to Galatians 2, the text takes a somewhat surprising turn. Paul talks about going up to Jerusalem (now fourteen years later), talking with some of the men who were pillars of the church – Peter, James, and John – and setting before them privately the gospel that he had been proclaiming “to make sure [he] was not running or had not run in vain” (2:2). He notes that they added nothing to his gospel and gave him the right hand of fellowship. So, if in the previous verses Paul was making the point that he needed no one to teach him the gospel because he received it through a revelation of Jesus himself, why is he in these verses making the point that he went to confer with the apostles who confirmed and added nothing to the gospel he was preaching?
I think the answer is that Paul wanted the Galatians to have no reason to believe anything coming from false teachers that were speaking to them and was supplying every reason to trust the gospel Paul was preaching. Paul had one goal, even as Nate had one goal in our negotiations and used multiple tactics to move toward that one goal. You see, most likely, the false teachers were not only challenging Paul’s apostleship (which Paul defends right from the start in this letter) and the gospel he was preaching (claiming that he had altered it), but they were most likely also saying that the gospel he preached did not line up with that of the other apostles. Therefore, in Galatians 1:11-24, Paul shows that he is indeed an apostle, one who saw the resurrected Christ, and one whose gospel came from a revelation of Jesus himself. He defended completely the gospel he was preaching as the gospel that came from our Lord himself. Now, however, he adds to his argument by eliminating another part of the charge, namely, he now shows that there is no truth that the other apostles would disagree with Paul’s preaching.
You see, that would be very damaging if despite believing everything Paul claimed in Galatians 1:11-24 (namely, that he’d received a revelation of Jesus and got the gospel directly from him), you found out that the other apostles were preaching a gospel different for Paul. At very least you’d be confused. You’d be asking, “How could two apostles, both of whom received the gospel from Jesus, be preaching a different gospel? Which one do I believe?” So, just as 1:11-24 is necessary in helping us see that Paul received his gospel directly from Jesus, so it is necessary to see that the gospel he preached lined up completely with the gospel the other apostles were preaching, and that is the main point and major claim of this text. The main point of Galatians 2:1-10 is that all the apostles preached the same gospel, or you may also say, the Bible itself only preaches one gospel.
Paul begins chapter two writing of a time, now fourteen years later, when he went up to Jerusalem and met with some of the pillars of the church – Peter, James, and John. He mentions in verse 2 that he had gone up because of a revelation (which I’ll speak to more in a bit), and he set the gospel that he preached before these men who seemed very influential in the church. And he says that he did it “in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain” (v. 2).
Now, let’s pause here for a second, though, and ask a question. What does Paul mean here? It makes sense to say that he is showing that Galatians that all the apostles agree, again, giving no reason for them to believe any of the claims made by the false teachers. But what does he mean that he wanted to make sure he had not run in vain? After all, if there’s anything last week’s text taught us, it is that Paul knew that the gospel he was preaching came from Jesus himself. He knew he was preaching the right gospel. So, what does he mean here?
I think Paul means this. He recognized that Peter, James, and John were so-called “pillars” in the church, men of great influence, and men of repute. Therefore, if indeed they did disagree with him, it was going to be disastrous. All of the sudden, churches everywhere would have to ask which apostle was right and which was wrong. They’d have to wonder if there was any truth to Christianity at all. After all, how could Jesus tell two apostles a different message of good news? It would be disastrous so that no matter how true and accurate Paul’s message was, it would have dealt a serious blow to the churches he’d planted and encouraged along the way if he found out that the claims of the false teachers were true and that the other apostles really were preaching a different gospel.
So, I don’t think Paul was going to Jerusalem to make sure he was preaching the true gospel. He knew he was. I think he was going there to see whether or not he needed to confront the other apostles and correct them in their understanding of the gospel or not. He was ready to pronounce them condemned if they preached a different gospel and refused to change. He was ready to correct them if they’d simply been led astray for a time. But what he found was great news and no doubt what Paul ultimately trusted he would find – the other apostles all agreed with Paul as to what the gospel is.
Paul gives us multiple notes to show that they agreed on the gospel. He says that when he went, he took Titus with him, a Gentile who was a follower of Jesus and had not been circumcised. And he notes in verse 3, “But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek.”
Now, this is a huge statement. These false teachers who were telling the Galatians that the gospel declares that one must be circumcised in order to be justified before God were dealt a fatal blow with this point. I mean, imagine the scene. Paul comes into a room with Peter, James, and John. So, you have men in the same room who believe so earnestly in preaching the gospel as man’s only hope for justification before God that they’re willing to die for it. And Paul brings someone named Titus, who’d never been circumcised, and tells them, “Here is someone who has trusted in the gospel and is a follower of Christ, and he’s not been circumcised.”
If circumcision was a requirement and part of the gospel, then it’d be like me marching someone up in front of everyone and presenting him for membership saying something like, “Jimmy is a Christian who doesn’t believe that Jesus truly rose from the dead.” You’d all vote him down for membership, make sure Jimmy knows that he must believe that Jesus was raised to be saved, and you’d quickly and publicly correct my thinking. So, when Paul says that these men did not require Titus to be circumcised, he was making a clear proclamation that the apostles did not think that circumcision was necessary for one to be justified before God. That is the first point to show that all the apostles were preaching the same gospel.
Second, Paul notes in verse 6 that these men “who seemed to be influential” – Peter, James, and John – “added nothing to me.” That is, Paul said to them, “Here is what the gospel is,” and they did not respond by saying, “Yes, and …” They responded, “That’s right. That’s completely and wholly the gospel we preach.” They had nothing to add to the gospel Paul proclaimed. Therefore, if the false teachers were claiming that Paul had altered the gospel preached by the other apostles by removing the requirement of circumcision or the requirement of other obedience to the law, Paul says, “Nope. They added nothing to the gospel I proclaimed to you, that I proclaim now, and that I will continue to proclaim.”
Third, Paul says that instead of correctly Paul, the other apostles saw that he had been commissioned by Christ to preach the gospel to the Gentiles the same way that Peter had been commissioned by Christ to preach the gospel to the Jews, they “gave the right hand of fellowship” (v. 9).
In that moment, as they heard what Paul had been doing, they recognized that the Lord was working in Paul in a very similar way to how he was working through Peter. The only difference was the arena in which Paul was ministering was mainly to Gentiles while Peter was ministering mainly to Jews. And they shook their hands in order to make sure that they were partners in the exact same work – the advancement of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
You see, when we planted a church of our own members in Martin and ordained pastors to oversee them and lead them, that wasn’t some light thing. There was a reason we questioned both privately and publicly Chad, Steven, and Philip (who serve as elders there now) about the gospel and other doctrinal matters. We wanted to make sure that they were proclaiming the same truths we were proclaiming. And when we planted that church and went through charges to the pastors and the church as a whole it was because we knew that what we were doing was nothing light. We were planting a church that we would be able to point to and say, “They are about the same work and purpose that we are about. They’re just doing the work in Martin, TN while we’re laboring in Jackson, TN.” We wanted to make sure that we could truly say we were about the same thing, that we were partners. We wanted to be able to declare that we truly have fellowship in laboring to the same end.
That’s what Paul means by these men extending to him the right hand of fellowship. They were saying, “We are preaching the same gospel. We are partners in the same mission. We are truly about the same purpose. We are simply doing it in different primary arenas.” Now, again, that’s a big claim. Therefore, we may say clearly that all the apostles agreed on the gospel. Paul, Peter, James, John, and the others all preached that man in justified by faith alone in the crucified and risen Christ. Therefore, any distortion of that is a distortion of the gospel on which all the apostles agree.
But we no longer have these men around. Instead, they have preserved the teachings in which the Spirit led them by writing the Scriptures. But that leaves us in a very similar position to the Galatians to whom this letter was written. Just as they could know that all the apostles agreed together and bore a consistent witness as to what the gospel is, so we can now that that all of their writings – the Scriptures – bear a consistent witness as to what the gospel is. We don’t have to read James fearing that he’s going to contradict the gospel Paul is proclaiming in Galatians. Paul already tells us in Galatians 2:1-10 that they agree. Therefore, we may read all of Scripture, knowing that there is one gospel proclaimed throughout all of Scripture, the good news that we are justified by faith alone in Jesus who died to pay for our sins and who was raised on the third day.
But why is it so important for us to know that the Scripture presents one message – one gospel? I want to take the rest of our time to show you four answers to this question. The first one is that the Lord has made clear that he wants us to know there is one gospel.
Now, we could say that simply on the basis of these ten verses. Why did the Holy Spirit inspire Paul to write Galatians 2:1-10, showing that all the apostles agree on what the gospel is? The answer: the Lord wanted us to know that they agree and that there’s one gospel. And that is true and would be sufficient. But I want to press back even behind that observation a bit.
Note what Paul says brought about this meeting between Paul, Titus, Peter, James, and John. Paul says in verse 2, “I went up because of a revelation and set before them . . . the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain.” Paul went up because of a revelation. We don’t know what form this revelation took. We don’t know if the Spirit quietly communicated this to Paul or Jesus appeared to him in the sky again or if the Lord communicated to him through someone. We simply don’t know. What we do know is that Paul went and had this meeting with the other apostles because the Lord had directed him to go.
That is, this meeting was one the Lord wanted to take place. But why? The only answer we have is what flowed out of that meeting, namely, a clear vision to all the church that Paul and all the other apostles agree on what the gospel is.
My youngest son has started asking me if he can eat candy or do something else along those lines after Lili has already told him, “No.” And because he’s only two, he hasn’t figured out that he shouldn’t do this where both of us can hear. So, there have been occasions, for example where he will ask Lili, she’ll say “No” and then he’ll walk over ten feet and ask me, not thinking that I had just heard Lili. So, in those moments I’ll tell him that Lili and I agree and if one of us tells him “No,” that’s the equivalent of both of us telling him no. And we’ll discipline him as this is repeated because we want him to know that not only is it disobedient but it is dishonoring to think that momma and daddy might be against each other on our desires for our children.
Similarly, the Lord does not want us to think that there is any validity to the charges that Paul and Peter and James and John preach a different gospel. He wants us to know that there’s no use wasting our time trying to support theories that they’re preaching something different. That’s why he orchestrated this meeting in Jerusalem and inspired Paul to write it down. The Lord wants us to know that the apostles and therefore the Scripture bear consistent witness that there is one gospel.
But again, we could ask more deeply, “Why?” Why is it important to know there’s only one gospel? This text reminds us that we need to remember that there is only one gospel – the gospel proclaimed right here in this book we’re studying – because many who proclaim to be Christians will challenge the gospel
Paul tells us why this issue of circumcision had even cropped up. He says in verses 4-5, “Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in – who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery – to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the gospel might be preserved for you.” The reason it’s important for us to remember that the gospel we’re hearing proclaimed out of Galatians is the one and only gospel proclaimed in all the Scripture is because there will be many in our lives who claim to be Christians who will want to proclaim something else as the gospel.
I think the reason Paul calls them “false brothers” is because they claimed to be brothers but weren’t truly believers. They were simply preaching and believing in a different gospel than the true gospel. And by pointing this out, Paul is showing the Galatians that the false brothers in their midst weren’t some new phenomenon. These kind of men were present when Paul went to Jerusalem. Indeed, such men have been in churches throughout all of church history. There will be many who seem to be great guys, who seem to be driven by good motives, and who will seem to have good reasons why you and I should believe what they’re teaching that is contrary to the gospel by faith in the crucified and risen Christ alone. There will be some who will tell us, for example, that men do not have to believe in Jesus specifically but can trust in another God with great sincerity and that that will be sufficient for them to be justified before God. And we must say, “No,” remembering that there is only one gospel proclaimed in all of Scripture and that those telling us something different are right in line with these false brothers who were in Galatia and who had been in Jerusalem.
But yet again, we could ask, “Why?” Why it is so important that other messages presented as the gospel are seen as false and that the true gospel is seen as the one and only gospel? The answer is that only one gospel frees us from condemnation because of our sin before God.
Paul says specifically that these false brothers wanted to “spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus so that they might bring us into slavery” (v. 4).
There is only one gospel that truly brings forgiveness of sins and truly frees us from the condemnation that comes from trusting in something else. For example, if you trust in a gospel that says you need to do good works in order to be justified, then you will always live a life struggling to free yourself from condemnation. You will put yourself under a system or method of justification that you can never live up to. You will make yourself a slave in chains from which you cannot escape. That’s why some Christians who tend to forget the beauty of the gospel and are distracted from it and gravitate towards legalism live their whole lives under a sense of condemnation. They put themselves under a law that can only enslave them in condemnation, not free them from it.
We’ll be talking about this more in the coming weeks. But for now, let it suffice to recognize that there is only one message that truly frees us from condemnation and allows us to be justified before our God. And that gospel is the good news that Christ died for our sins and was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. That good news is the good news that faith in that Jesus and his work alone is what justifies sinners like you and me before God.
So, there is only one gospel. This gospel is presented consistently by all of the apostles and therefore in all of Scripture. The Lord wants us to be clear on this because false brothers will always fight against the gospel and because there is only one gospel that truly leads us to be freed from condemnation before God.
Yet, there is one other element I want us to see this morning on why it is important for us to know there is only one gospel. It is this, we need to know there is only one gospel so that we might partner with and support others in the work of the gospel.
You see, knowing the gospel isn’t necessary simply so that we might thwart off the efforts of false teachers. It is also important so that we might know with whom we should partner and support in the work Christ has given us.
We see this in the text in two ways. One we mentioned earlier, namely, that the apostles extended the right hand of fellowship to their fellow apostle, Paul, meaning they were partnering with him in the work of Christ. But there is another place we see this as well.
In verse 10, Paul notes something Peter, James, and John did ask of him. Now, we remember, they added nothing to the gospel he presented and saw that God’s grace had led him and commissioned him as one to take the gospel to the Gentiles even as Peter was taking the gospel to the Jews. However, this did not mean in their minds that Paul should ignore the work going on in Jerusalem. Instead, he tells us in verse 10, “Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.”
Many commentators agree that “the poor” here refers to those saints in Jerusalem. They were under distress and financially in need probably. In fact, we read of other times when there was support sent to the church in Jerusalem. Therefore, what Peter, James, and John are saying to Paul in verse 10 is, “Even though your primary work will be to those outside Jerusalem, don’t forget to remember those saints here.” And Paul adds that he was very eager to do this.
Therefore, it’s a reminder to us that though we are focusing primarily on work done in Jackson, TN, we must not forget our other brothers and sisters who are laboring in other parts of the world. We need to remember them and support them in various ways. So, while we planted a church in Martin, TN, for example, we do not now say, “Well, now they’re on their own. We sure hope they make it.” No, we respect them as a local church separate from us while simultaneously remembering that they are partners with us in the gospel and supporting them in various ways, even as they do the same for us. This is why, for example, we spend time praying here at Cornerstone for other local churches, even as just a few weeks ago we prayed for Pleasant Plains Baptist Church here in town. It’s because we want to remember them and support them as our partners in the work of promoting the gospel. And this is another reason we need to know the gospel, so that we might recognize those with whom we need to partner and whom we need to support – those who proclaim the gospel given by Jesus, presented by Peter, James, John, and Paul, and the gospel that is communicated consistently throughout the Scriptures. May we now remember and celebrate that gospel as we come to the table. Amen.