Circumcision (for the 50th time) - Galatians 2:1-13

2:1-2 - Maybe it’s because I’ve been out of Acts for so long now that I don’t remember everything that happened there, but now as Paul continues telling the Galatians about his conference in Jerusalem with the other apostles, I’m realizing just how much I have forgotten or just never really understood in the first place. So Paul met with Peter and James, Jesus’ brother, in Jerusalem 3 years after he was first “called” to the work, meaning when the Savior appeared to him. After that initial meeting, Paul went back out teaching the gospel for “fourteen years,” before he made another trip back to Jerusalem. That’s a really long time, especially because there was such limited communication between people back then. The article on this chapter from gospeldoctrine.com says, “Paul had been preaching the gospel for fourteen years without meeting with any other apostles. For fourteen years, there were no general conferences, no telephone calls, and no e-mail messages. The only communication may have been a few letters from Jerusalem. Yet, without as much as a general handbook of instructions, Paul had been preaching the gospel as he knew it. He had been setting up branches of the church, ordaining all the officers and teachers. He may have wondered if he was doing everything as the First Presidency had wanted. Therefore, when he came to Jerusalem, he had a private conference with the apostles to make sure he had done things right. The result was that ‘the leading apostles gave Paul the right hands of fellowship,’ meaning specifically that they agreed with his procedure on his gentile missions.” It must have been nerve wracking for Paul to go before the other apostles after all that time, hoping he had done it right. But he did bring Titus with him, and interestingly, the article quotes Robert J. Matthews as saying, “Paul apparently saw in Titus living evidence that an uncircumcised Greek could be a model of faith and virtue, strong in the Spirit; in him, Jewish members might see an example of the grace of God given to the Gentiles without the encumbrance of the law of Moses.” Titus was brought as a “show and tell” type of feature, but I bet he didn’t mind. He’d probably wanted to go to Jerusalem and meet with the other church leaders, and there is definitely an ego stroking that goes into “I’m an example of the success you didn’t think could happen,” even though I’m sure he didn’t act like that. 2:3-10 - Again, circumcision is brought up, I swear these dudes can’t go 30 seconds without bringing it up. The arrival of Titus as a gentile convert to Christianity must have gone over like a monkey from Africa being brought to England, very exotic. In fact, Titus’ appearance is considered a “trial” by Richard Lloyd Anderson. Apparently, some of the church leadership were still subscribing to the policy of Christians keeping the law of Moses, and it seems they insisted that Titus be circumcised, and when Paul refused, Titus was not “compelled” to be circumcised. Paul describes the motivation of these “false brethren” who still taught adherence to the law of Moses as “spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage.” Now, is Paul saying they wanted literal slaves or just that they didn’t understand the “liberty” that came to those who follow Jesus as opposed to the “bondage” that came to those who remained committed to the law of Moses? I’m not sure. This is a really difficult section for me because I have no idea what Paul’s talking about. But the New International version helps me understand a lot better. Reading that, what I think Paul is saying is that there were those at the conference who said they were Christians but in fact were not and wanted to find out what they were doing so they could snare some of the converts. Also at the conference, there were other “esteemed” leaders, who approved of the message that Paul had been preaching during his 14 years on his own. These men recognized that Paul had been “entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised,” or to the gentiles, just like Peter had been called to preach the gospel to the “circumcised,” or to the house of Israel. Peter, John, and James the Lord’s brother, approved his message but only asked “that we should continue to remember the poor,” to which Paul was happy to oblige because he’d been doing that the whole time anyway. 2:11-13 - I don’t know if it was decided during the conference at Jerusalem but apparently the church leadership decided that Peter should go to Antioch to visit the members there, and then some other Jewish-Christian converts from Jerusalem would come up later and meet him there. Now, this is where a problem arose, because apparently while it was just Peter in Antioch with Paul, they would visit the houses of gentiles and eat with them. The IM comments, “in many cultures of the ancient world, including the Jewish culture, dining with others affirmed a bond of fellowship and loyalty. To some Jewish Christians, the cultural tradition of maintaining separation from Gentiles was more important than the Christian bond they shared with Gentile Saints.” When the other church leadership showed up from Jerusalem, they were not pleased that Peter had been meeting with gentiles in their homes and were offended, so Peter “began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.” Even Barnabas was caught up in this behavior of avoiding gentiles, and Paul was not pleased. The IM reminds us, however, to consider Peter’s position at the time, saying, “Peter was the leader of a relatively small church that was composed of two emotionally fragile factions; the situation was delicate. The Jewish Christians, on the one hand, did not appreciate the reluctance of some Gentiles to submit to the regulations of the Mosaic law, especially circumcision.” It’s important to remember here that Peter was ministering to the Jewish Christians so he probably knew many of them personally and was well acquainted with their beliefs and opinions. This is similar to the way Paul felt, but with the gentile Christians instead. The IM continues, “Paul and his followers, on the other hand, were not worried about offending the feelings of the Jewish Christians who still held fast to the traditions of the law of Moses. Peter the prophet, naturally, loved and was concerned about both Jewish and Gentile members of the Church. It was a no-win situation for Peter. If he continued eating with the Gentiles, he would offend the visiting group of Jewish Christians. If he departed, he would offend Paul and the Gentile Christians in Antioch. No compromise was possible. Either way, he was going to hurt some feelings.” It’s possible that Peter, being a Jew for most of his life, genuinely thought that following the law of Moses wasn’t a detraction from the Christian gospel because he had seen Christianity grow from the roots of Judaism. But when outsiders opposed adopting not only the new monotheistic religion but also the stifling law of Moses as well, then he had to decide what to do. The IM suggests that perhaps Paul made his decision to distance himself from the gentile converts while the Jewish converts were in Antioch because he believed that Paul’s faith was strong enough to remain true even in the face of offense, whereas the faith of the Jews might not have been strong enough to accept the offense and move forward and that they might take a lot of the other Jewish converts with them. It might be the case that Peter had performed a risk assessment and was acting on what he anticipated to be the least amount of damage to the cause, a sort of appeasement, if you will. But it’s also possible that really didn’t see the problem with the gentiles adopting the law of Moses as well. Though now that I think about it, after all this time, I doubt that this was the case. Peter embracing the gentile converts while he was in Antioch with Paul alone, then suddenly avoiding them when the Jewish converts show up is going to cause a big problem between Peter and Paul when we come back tomorrow.