Grace Excludes All Works; Gal. 2:1-10
As we get further into
Galatians what we discover is that Paul has to deal with two aspects of
legalism. There are really two categories to legalism: a) soteriological
legalism (to do with the doctrines of salvation); b) sanctification legalism,
legalism related to living the spiritual life and growing to spiritual
maturity. Soteriological legalism is faith-plus something in order to be saved;
sanctification legalism is faith plus something in order to grow or mature in
the spiritual life.
An example of soteriological
legalism is believe and repent. What is wrong with
that? If we understand “repent” correctly it is not a problem, but of we look
the word up in an English dictionary it has the idea of repentance meaning
feeling sorry for, or remorse. That is not correct. The Greek word is metanoeo [metanoew] which means to change your mind, change your
attitude about something, change your thinking about something, to think
differently about. Another example of soteriological legalism is “believe and
confess your sins,” or “believe and confess your faith,” as in Romans 10:9, 10.
That passage is not dealing with salvation as justification. Remember, there
are three phases to salvation. At phase one we are
justified, and at this time we are saved from the penalty of sin, eternal
condemnation in the lake of fire. Phase two salvation,
i.e. Christian life salvation, which is to be saved from the power of sin. We
still have a sin nature and we have to go through the process of renewing our
minds with Bible doctrine. We have a growth process that has various ups and
downs as we grow towards spiritual maturity. That is being saved from the power
of sin. We still have a sin nature and we have to learn to live under the
filling of the Holy Spirit, not under the control of the sin nature, so that we
can grow toward spiritual maturity. One illustration is Abraham. Abraham was
already saved—justification, phase one—in terms of the illustration used in
James chapter two. What cases people to get confused here is that they think
that every time the Bible talks about salvation it is talking about phase one
salvation. But many times when the Bible uses the word
“salvation” it is talking about phase two salvation. In fact, in the Old
Testament only seven per cent of the time when it refers to salvation is it
talking about phase one salvation. The remainder of the time it is talking
about either physical deliverance from external enemies or it is talking about
the spiritual life. Phase three salvation of glorification when we are absent from the body and face to face
with the Lord and we are freed or saved from the presence of sin; we no longer
have a sin nature in our resurrected bodies. It is very important when we come
to these passages to distinguish what kind of salvation is in view.
Another example of
soteriological legalism is “believe and surrender your life,” the old Keswick
view or holiness doctrine. Believe and be baptised is very common but nowhere
in the Scripture is baptism made a condition for salvation. Believe and keep
the Mosaic Law is another. Believe and join the church, believe and make Jesus
Lord, etc. These have nothing to do with salvation. In fact, if belief for
salvation includes anything other than faith alone in Christ alone then a
person would not be saved by reading the Gospel of John. John 20:31. If adding
something to faith is necessary for salvation then we wouldn’t find it anywhere
in the Gospel of John. Faith is the absence of works; faith is non-meritorious
in itself. There is only one kind of faith. The object of our faith is Jesus
Christ and all the merit lies in Jesus Christ who paid the penalty for every
single sin in human history on the cross. It is not the faith that secures
salvation, it is the work of Jesus Christ on the cross that secures salvation
for we are saved through faith; it is merely the means by which we appropriate
the work of Jesus Christ.
Sanctification legalism adds
works to the spiritual life. It often confuses morality with spirituality; that
somehow adherence to some code of ethics or some code of conduct is what gives
us approval from God and then we receive blessing from God, spiritual growth.
That is just the opposite of what Scripture teaches. What Scripture teaches is
that in order to grow spiritually we have to first of all learn doctrine. It
becomes epignosis [e)pignwsij]
doctrine and as a result of that we apply it into our lives and spiritual
growth takes place. As a result of spiritual growth a number of other things
happen. There is production, the use of our spiritual gift[s], prayer, giving,
witnessing; all of these are products of our spiritual growth, they are not
causes of our spiritual growth. That is where legalism creeps in. Production is
not what causes spiritual growth; spiritual growth causes production. What
causes spiritual growth is what goes on in the mind. Renew your mind, put
doctrine into your mind, and then you begin to grow as you apply that in every
area of your life. The consequence of that is the production, the fruit of the
Holy Spirit, operation spiritual gifts, and we fulfil our roles as priests and
ambassadors. That is a consequence of our spiritual growth.
Morality is for everyone.
Morality is a system of ethics—right and wrong—based on the establishment codes
of the Old Testament, and it is for believers and unbelievers. But remember,
anything that an unbeliever can do is not part of the spiritual life. The
spiritual life is the unique life of the believer, his rapport with God the
Father, based on the filling of the Holy Spirit and walking by means of the
Holy Spirit. So it is a life that is produced by the Holy Spirit in us. We can
imitate it through the sin nature. The sin nature has an area of strength which
produces human good, and so often this morality is confused and thought of as
spirituality. This is the problem that Paul is running into in
All the people in
Acts
Acts 11:19 NASB
“So then those who were scattered because of the persecution that occurred in
connection with Stephen made their way to Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch,
speaking the word to no one except to Jews alone.” These are key cities. They
were speaking to Jews alone. They just don’t get the point,
they still think the gospel is Jewish oriented. [20] “But there were some of them,
men of
So what is happening here in
terms of background is that Barnabas is sent up to
About this time a prophet,
one Agabus, comes up to
This is the second time Paul
goes to
He takes Titus along and Titus
is a Greek, he has not been circumcised. That means he is going to be used as a
test case with the apostles in
Galatians 2:2 NASB
“It was because of a revelation that I went up; and I submitted to them the
gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but {I did so} in private to those
who were of reputation, for fear that I might be running, or had run, in vain.”
The word “submitted” is an aorist tense which indicates past action, and then
he says “the gospel which I preach” which is a present active indicative
indicating it is the gospel which he is still preaching. There has been no
change. He did it in private. There is a place for public confrontation and
there is a place for private confrontation. He wants to go and sit down with
the leaders of the church in
Then he tells us about the
test case. Galatians 2:3 NASB “But not even Titus, who was with me,
though he was a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised.” What is the point? The
point is that here we have Titus with us, and if the gospel was faith plus the
Mosaic Law, faith plus circumcision, then when we went down to Jerusalem and
had this conference with the apostles there and talked about the essence of the
gospel they would have compelled Titus to be circumcised. But he wasn’t. Titus
was a believer; circumcision is irrelevant to salvation.
Then we have a contrast.
Galatians 2:4 NASB “But {it was} because of the false brethren
secretly brought in, who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty which we have in
Christ Jesus, in order to bring us into bondage.” Remember that as believers we
still have a sin nature. The sin nature is what enslaves us in terms of
personal sins from our area of weakness. The sin nature also enslaves us with
regard to morality and human good from our area of strength. The sin nature is
motivated by lust patterns, approbation lust, power lust, money lust, revenge
lust, sexual lust, social lust, chemical lust, inordinate ambition and
inordinate competition. These are all lusts that we have which drive us in one
of two directions: a) asceticism or legalism; b) licentiousness or
lasciviousness. When we let our sin nature control us we are always going to
move in one of these directions, and as long as the sin nature controls us we
are in bondage. But the Scripture teaches us that we have freedom. Galatians
5:1 NASB “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep
standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.” We are free
from the power of the sin nature. That is our liberty; it is based on grace,
all of the grace provisions which God has given us which we neither earned nor
deserved. It is not based on some kind of legalism. Legalism means that God
blesses us on the basis of what we do. Paul is saying that this is the message
of the false brethren. The only place where we have true freedom is with regard
to our spiritual life.
Legalism, then, is to take us
right back into bondage—slavery to some human system of good works, morality or
some sort of conduct. Paul contrasts this in Galatians 2:5 NASB “But
we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of
the gospel would remain with you.” This is an idiom similar to one which we
would use: We didn’t pay attention to them for even one minute. The point here
is Paul’s devotion and adherence to the gospel in the face of false brethren. So
the situation in
Galatians 2:6 NASB
“But from those who were of high reputation (what they were makes no difference
to me; God shows no partiality)—well, those who were of reputation contributed
nothing to me.” He is not being
sarcastic here. He has a good working relationship with Peter, James and John
at this point; he is not ridiculing them. He is saying they do have a high
reputation; these are the leaders of the church. His position is that his
apostleship came directly from Jesus Christ; it is on the same level as Peter,
James and John. That means he is not going to show them any deference, they
were wrong and he is going to tell them. “Those
who were of reputation contributed nothing to me” means they didn’t change the
gospel. Paul came to them with what he had been proclaiming (v. 2).
Galatians 2:7 NASB
“But on the contrary, seeing that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the
uncircumcised, just as Peter {had been} to the circumcised.” The uncircumcised
are the Gentiles. [8] “(for He who effectually worked
for Peter in {his} apostleship to the circumcised effectually worked for me
also to the Gentiles).” Something we learn from a study of Acts is that Peter
is the apostle to the Jews and Paul to the Gentiles. Up to Acts chapter eleven
the emphasis is on Peter and to the Jews. Starting from near the end of chapter
eleven through the end of Acts the emphasis is on Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles.
One of the most important things
to note when studying Acts is that it is a transitional book. At the very
beginning there is no church, there is nobody indwelt by the Holy Spirit, there
is nobody with any spiritual gift. There are only about eleven plus about 150
others in
Galatians 2:9 NASB
“and recognizing the grace that had been given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me
and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, so that we {might} {go} to the
Gentiles and they to the circumcised.” Christian fellowship in the Bible is
centred around the person and work of the Lord Jesus
Christ. It has a spiritual dimension to it that goes beyond social interaction.
Notice the context here. Their fellowship was centred around
doctrine. The whole content was doctrine. They had been talking about doctrine
and it is fellowship based upon a unity of doctrine. Today people go out and
try to unify but it is at the expense of doctrine. That is not what the
Scriptures say. In Philippians the issue is the unity of the faith—doctrine.
People come along and say: “Well
you guys are just emphasising doctrine and that splits people.” Yes, it is
supposed to. That is what the New Testament teaches. The truth will always
divide and separate. The issue is: Stick with the truth. Unity is always based
on the truth of Scripture and not at the expense of the truth of Scripture. Now
that Paul and the other apostles are unified on the gospel they have true
biblical fellowship.
Galatians