Works vs. Grace - Galatians 2:14-21

2:14- - Peter is in a no-win situation when the Jewish Christians show up to Antioch from Jerusalem. They are not pleased that Peter has been associating with the Gentile Christians, so he stops while they’re there to appease them. Now Paul is not pleased with Peter’s actions because it offends the Gentile Christians whom Paul loves and serves. The article on this chapter from gospeldoctrine.com quotes Bruce R. McConkie as making a very interesting point about this situation that Peter and Paul were facing, saying, “Peter was the President of the Church; Paul, an apostle was Peter’s junior in the church hierarchy, was subject to the direction of the chief apostle. But Paul was right and Peter was wrong… The issue was not whether the Gentiles should receive the gospel. Peter himself had received the revelation that God was no respecter or persons, and that those of all lineages were now to be heirs of salvation along with the Jews.” This situation magnifies the purpose of having a quorum instead of a dictatorship. When Christ comes, he will rule in righteousness and it will be amazing, but He was the only perfect person, so no one else can rule perfectly, which is why we must have multiple righteous people organized into a governing body. Just a note about Peter, even the night that Christ was murdered, Peter did several things that went against what Jesus wanted, cutting of the guard’s ear, denying him, etc. Peter is such an amazing example of imperfection improving over time and becoming a pillar of righteousness. His humility is demonstrated by his willingness to receive correction from even a junior apostle, one he might have had an issue with personally because of Paul’s background of persecuting the church. If Peter had been involved in church leadership for some self-serving purpose then his ego would never have allowed him to accept Paul’s counsel. The article continues, “without question, if we had the full account, we would find Peter reversing himself and doing all in his power to get the Jewish saints to believe that the law of Moses was fulfilled in Christ and no longer applied to anyone either Jew or Gentile.” I legitimately can understand why the Jews were hesitant to give up much of their adherence to the law of Moses. They had lived it their whole lives believing that obedience to that law would save them. They knew enough to accept that Jesus was the Messiah, but unlike other religions at the time, Judaism was an all-consuming lifestyle. To simply give that up would be a very difficult thing, and honestly, probably a lot of it might not have been contrary to the gospel, mostly what was cultural. Like if someone didn’t want to start eating pork just because you changed religions, there’s no part of Christianity that requires the eating of pork. But there absolutely were parts that were inconsistent with the new gospel, such as treating people harshly or not associating with them simply because they were different nationality or religion. Honestly, this is something that make take a couple of generations to get rid of, just because it is so ingrained into someone’s lifestyle that their prejudices might never go away. It’s like getting rid of racism, we can eventually force the racist to just be quite and hate in silence, but they most likely wouldn’t be able to completely get rid of their subconscious bias in their lifetime. It’s a complex mix of psychology but you can disrupt and silence inappropriate views, but it’s almost impossible to get them to go away completely. So what did Paul do when he saw Peter acting in a way contrary to Jesus’ teachings? Naturally, he called him out in front of everyone. I’m going to turn to the New International Version for the next few verses to understand better. Paul tells Peter, “you are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew.” I don’t think Paul’s referring to pagan religion, but instead to lifestyle. For instance, at this point Peter is probably not attending synagogue on the Sabbath, but his own Christian worship services. He’s eating and socializing with gentiles, he’s probably studying Jesus’ words instead of just the Torah, etc. So Paul’s saying, “you don’t live the Jewish lifestyle, so why are you asking the gentiles to live it?” Paul continues, “How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?” 2:15-20 - Paul is in an interesting position here because he has such an intimate understanding of the scriptures from his time as a Pharisee. Also, spending 14 years preaching a new gospel to an audience that is either hostile towards (Jews) or ignorant of (Gentiles) the message without much leadership support, probably meant that Paul spent a significant amount of time in prayer and reflection trying to understand the gospel message so that he could teach it. Paul probably spent many years trying to help Jews understand why they didn’t need the law of Moses to be saved. He also probably taught gentiles how Jesus could save them, without the foundation of the Mosaic law to start from. Because of this significant amount of time he spent discerning the gospel message alone, Paul seemed to be in a unique position to help the other apostles understand these very same principles as well. Like he usually does, Paul starts out with the Jewish foundation, “the works of the law,” saying that, as Jews, they know that they are not saved by obedience to the law of Moses but “we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.” The concept of justification can be complex, and really, it can look like the same thing. It’s like works vs. grace, superficially, it can look like the same thing. We can be saved by Jesus’ atonement, but we won’t be saved unless we do what he says. From that angle, we looks like the same thing, that we are saved through our works, but this is one instance where the “if A=B and B=C, then A=C” formula doesn’t work. Jesus’ atonement made the way for us to be saved. If He hadn’t done that, then there would have been no way for us to be saved. Nothing we could have done would have allowed us to be return to God’s presence or to have resurrected bodies. Without the atonement, we would have been forced to eternally be spirits without bodies living in the after-like with Satan as controller. God couldn’t have let us come to him, we would have been here, forever and it would have sucked. It almost certainly wouldn’t have been a step up from our pre-mortal existence, it undoubtedly would have been a much more miserable existence. We could be the best person ever or the worst person ever, it wouldn’t matter, we couldn’t be resurrected and we couldn’t have the presence of God AT ALL. It would have sucked so much and there would be absolutely nothing we could do to change it. But because that would have been the worst existence of all, and that’s not what God wants for us at all, Jesus came down and performed the atonement so that we could be resurrected into perfect bodies and so that we could live with God again, if we wanted to. Because Jesus was the one who satisfied the demands of justice, he is the only one who can dictate the terms to which we can be saved. So when we talk about keeping the commandments, they aren’t some arbitrary rules like “hop on your left food 500 times every Tuesday of the full moon.” The commandments are rules set out by Jesus as terms for our accessing his sacrifice. And to take it one step further, Jesus actually isn’t setting conditions on who can receive forgiveness and salvation at all. The Savior has said multiple times that he calls all men (and women) to him to be saved. He wants everyone to come and use his sacrifice so that they can be happy now and forever. Jesus is basically saying, “I satisfied the demands of justice so that anyone who wants to be saved can. If you want to be saved, all I ask is that you become like me. I’m not asking you to do anything I’m not already doing myself. Here are the steps to take to become like me. I really hope that you take this offer, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to.” Why and how people do or do not try their best to keep the commandments is a complex topic, but if we accept that the Savior is the master psychologist, then we have to recognize that throughout human history, different groups of people in different circumstances might need commandments that are specific to them and their time. Jesus sometimes customizes sets of rules, or commandments, in order to guide a specific people through behavior modification in order to become more compatible with the mentality of heaven. But here’s where we get tripped up sometimes, we think that our obedience to the rules is what will save us, when in fact, it is our relationship with the rule maker that makes the difference. Again, as we just saw, our actions, beliefs, and behaviors have absolutely no impact on our ability to be resurrected or allowed into a happy afterlife. The atonement is the only reason why we might anticipate those things with any degree of optimism. Jesus offers us the atonement with a set of guidelines for how to use it most profitably. We decide to what degree we want to obey those guidelines, and then Jesus works with us, sometimes in very subtle ways, to progress along those guidelines. And it’s just like any other process, our abilities change as we grow, so the guidelines change as we do, which shows that it is not adherence to specific rules that saves us, but our ability to advance along them until we arrive at heaven’s door, just like the Savior, spiritually. We might consider the commandments as steps along a staircase that leads to heaven. The stairs were created by Jesus, if he hadn’t made them, then we’d just be stuck in a pit with no way out. We couldn’t get ourselves out and whether those steps are made of stone or wood or string, it doesn’t really matter, the point is that the steps are made for us to walk up. It’s not the physical steps that save us, but the step builder, and he can change the step material or path whenever he thinks it’s best. Like Adam and Eve had the law of sacrifice, and Abraham had something else, and Noah had something else, and Moses had something else, then Jesus brought the higher law. It’s not the statutes of the law that saves, but who we become as we obey the law. This all goes back to what Paul is trying to explain to Peter and the other Jewish Christians. The law of Moses is not what saves people, it is the atonement. He’s saying that “man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ.” The law of Moses isn’t the saving grace because if it was then Jesus would have taught that, but he didn’t, he taught the higher law of love for all people. So the law of love is the new set of steps the Savior provided for us as a set of guidelines to become as He is. Paul makes an interesting analogy that I think we can use here, he says, “if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.” The IM comments that this “refers to the prospect of turning back to his former life, which was based on observing the law of Moses, and leaving his new life based on faith in the Savior. If Paul had done this, he would have made himself a transgressor because it is not possible to do perfectly ‘all things which are written in the book of the law.’” Going back to our stairs analogy, if Jesus builds us a new set of steps and we ignore them and go back to the old set and try to start building them again, then we are in the wrong. The IM continues, “Though Paul apparently still followed certain practices of the law of Moses, it was no longer the basis for his relationship with God, and its practices were not required for exaltation. His faith in Jesus Christ had transformed his life so completely that he described his old life as dead and declared that he was living a new life in Christ.” I really liked the concept of who we define our relationship with God. If we are improperly focused on the commandments, then we might say that obedience to the rules is what’s important. But if we focused on the Savior instead, then we might believe that the commandments are prescribed ways in which we can grow closer to Christ and we are happy to live by them. In that instance, Jesus is our focus and the commandments are our tools. And I think it’s important to note here that most of us probably start our keeping the commandments as our focus and that making the Savior the focus of our beliefs is a more advanced strategy. But you know the beautiful part, when we try, even if it’s just the most miniscule portion of effort, Jesus recognizes our offering and it is acceptable. He takes the tiny bit we give to him and transforms is into a garden. We don’t have to have perfect focus on Jesus in order to our sacrifice to be acceptable to him, we don’t have to keep the commandments perfectly, we don’t want to be the best or brightest. We just have to want to be better and try. That’s it. It’s like these Jewish Christians, I think that Paul and Peter both knew that it was going to be difficult for these devout people to open up to new ideas, to eat with gentiles, or worship with them. They knew it was going to be hard, but they knew that bringing the truth of the gospel to all sides, Jew and Gentile was so important that they needed to try. 2:21 - Again, Paul is in a unique position because he has so much background knowledge and experience that he is able to make his point in a way that is irrefutable. He makes an excellent statement that if it were possible for us to save ourselves through our works, or “if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.” Jesus sacrifice would be for nothing is we were able to contribute to our own salvation, and I think that the fact that the Savior suffered everything ever felt throughout the history of the universe demonstrates that fact that we can not do anything to assist in our own redemption. Therefore, the rules or laws or commandments aren’t what we should be basing our belief system on, but we should be focusing on the Savior instead. Because as we progress spiritually, our guidelines will change. It won’t be enough to just “study the scriptures” or “go to church” but how we engage with them will be what comes next, and so on and so forth. The commandments are ambiguous enough to mean different things to different people at different times in their lives. He meets us where we are, there is always a place to start in keeping the commandments, and that advances as we progress spiritually. So again, our focus must be on the Savior and our relationship with him as we use the law as a way to guide us forward.