Well now please take your Bibles in hand and return with me to Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Galatians chapter 2. We are working our way through the book of Galatians on Sunday mornings here at First Presbyterian Church. You can find it on page 972 if you’re using one of our church Bibles.
We saw last time the apostle Paul responding to attempts by false teachers at Galatia to undermine his message by undermining him as an apostolic messenger. And he began, you will remember, to answer their insinuations that he isn’t a real apostle in chapter 1:11-24, where Paul begins an autobiographical section of the letter and gives us his account of his own conversion and call to the ministry and call to apostolic office. And now today, as we turn to the opening ten verses of Galatians chapter 2, Paul continues that autobiographical account and focuses this time on his second trip to Jerusalem where instead of disagreement, which, if the false teachers were to be believed one would expect Paul to encounter, instead of disagreement, what he finds is that his message and the message of the other apostles in Jerusalem stand in complete harmony with one another.
And as we trace out Paul’s account of what took place on that trip, I want to focus your attention on three themes in particular. First, in light of the apostolic harmony that Paul describes, his story highlights for us the unified Gospel of the New Testament. The unified Gospel. Then secondly, Paul’s story, we are going to see, puts front and center for us the unconditional Gospel of God’s grace in Christ. The unified Gospel. The unconditional Gospel. And finally in the third place, Paul’s story also focuses our attention on the universal Gospel that opens the kingdom of God to all people everywhere – to Gentile as well as to Jew alike. Okay, so those are the main themes this morning. Have you got them? The Gospel is unified, it is unconditional, and it is universal. Before we read God’s Word together and work through those themes, let’s pause again and pray and ask for the help of the Holy Spirit. Let us all pray.
O Holy Spirit, You are the Lord and the giver of life, the Spirit of Christ sent from the Father and from the Son, the inspirer of Holy Scripture and the illuminator of the sin-darkened minds of Your people. We pray, O Lord, that You would now give light and life to our hearts as we read Your holy Word. For Jesus’ sake, amen.
Galatians chapter 2 at verse 1. This is the Word of God:
“Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. I went up because of a revelation and set before them (though privately before those who seemed influential) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain. But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. 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 truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. And from those who seemed to be influential (what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)—those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me. On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised (for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles), and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.”
Amen.
I’m sure you saw this during the recent coverage of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s recent funeral, that there was an interview with a Royal Protection Officer named Richard Griffin who tells the story of one occasion when he was alone with Her Majesty during one of her trips to her holiday home at Balmoral. And let me just retell the story in Mr. Griffin’s own words. And I quote, “The Queen used to go up there in May to Craigowan house” – which is a private hunting lodge on the Balmoral Estate – “and she would stay there just privately for a weekend and she would go up at lunchtime for picnics and very often it would just be the police officer and Her Majesty. And one of the picnics I went out with her, we had a lovely picnic and a lovely chat, and then we went out for a little walk just the two of us.”
Typically on such occasions there would be no one else around, but on this particular day, Griffin and the Queen came across two, sorry, two American tourists hiking in the area. Quote – “It was clear from the moment we first stopped that they hadn’t recognized the Queen, which is fine, and the American gentleman was telling the Queen where he came from, where they were going to next, and where they’d been to in Britain. And I could see it coming, and sure enough, he said to her majesty, ‘And where do you live?’ And she said, ‘Well, I live in London, but I’ve got a holiday home just the other side of the hills.’ This was followed up with a question about how long the Queen had been visiting, to which she replied that she had been coming for over 80 years. So he said, ‘Well if you’ve been coming up here for 80 years, you must have seen the Queen.’ And as quick as a flash, she says, ‘Well, I haven’t, but Dick here meets her regularly.’ So the guy said to me, ‘You’ve seen the Queen? What’s she like?’”
At this point, Griffin had been working with the Queen for a long time, and gave a cheeky answer that she could be cantankerous but had a lovely sense of humor. Afterward, the American put his arm around Griffin’s shoulder and asked the Queen to take a picture of them, which she did. And then they swapped places. And Griffin explained, “I took a picture of them with the Queen and we never let on and we waved goodbye and Her Majesty said to me, ‘I’d love to be a fly on the wall when he shows those photographs to his friends in America and hopefully someone tells him who I am.’”
It’s a lovely story that I think beautifully captures both the Queen’s humility and her sense of humor. As for the two American tourists…all I’ll say is their failure to recognize the Queen I don’t suppose matters too terribly much, except perhaps they will have to suffer a few blushes later on! Sometimes, however, our ability to recognize truth really, really matters. On that occasion, not so much, but sometimes it really matters. It could not be more important. And that is certainly true when it comes to recognizing the authentic Gospel. At Galatia, the false teachers were peddling errors and they were calling it truth. And Paul, as you know, is writing the Galatians this letter with such urgency because he can see that the Galatian Christians seem to be taken in by it. They are failing to recognize the authentic Gospel and they’re confusing it with an imposter.
The Unified Gospel
And so in our passage this morning, Paul actually gives us three marks, three distinguishing features of the true Gospel. These are not the only things to say about the Gospel. There are other marks even more germane to Paul’s larger argument that we will, by God’s help, bring out in weeks to come in this letter, but here at this earlier stage while he is telling us his own story, highlights these three things, these three characteristics of the true Gospel that we must be sure we do not miss.
As I said earlier, the first of them is that the true Gospel found in the New Testament scriptures comes to us as a unified whole. The unified Gospel. In verses 1 and 2, you’ll notice, Paul explains he returned to Jerusalem 14 years after his first visit. I think somewhere in the sermon last week I said something like Paul spent 34 years in relatively modest local church ministry. Well let me confess to you now that I must have been distracted by something when I said that because I looked back at my notes and I have absolutely no idea where I came up with that number. It’s clearly, from the opening verses of chapter 2, 17 years since his conversion, 14 years since he last visited the church in Jerusalem. And he says now he is returning to Jerusalem because of a revelation that had been given to him. There again, it’s just a little reminder that Paul, as he prosecutes his apostolic ministry, is not following the directions of other people but rather he is the servant of the risen Christ who guides him here supernaturally and directly. Paul, remember, is making the case that the origin of his apostolic authority and message and ministry lies not with men but with Christ.
And while Paul is in Jerusalem, we are told, he privately presented the message that he preached to those who seemed influential. Do you see that language in the text? “They seemed influential.” That’s really a rather unfortunate translation. Paul uses the phrase, “those who seemed influential,” twice more in verse 6 and in a very similar phrase again in verse 9. And we, rather, tend to hear it as a sly suggestion that the other apostles in Jerusalem only seemed influential but weren’t really. And that’s not at all what Paul intends here. The language is actually an expression of utmost respect, probably used originally by the Galatian false teachers themselves. You remember, they were saying, “Peter, James and John, now those are the influential ones. Those are the prominent ones. Those are the real apostles. Not like this cheap, knockoff, second rate huckster, Paul. And so you see what they were doing. They were trying to play the Jerusalem leaders off against Paul and then they were positioning themselves claiming that their own legalistic opinions were actually representative of the authentic use of Peter, James and John. And it’s Paul who is the deceiver and the one who is departing from the truth. That was their argument.
And so here, Paul is likely adopting their language to describe the Jerusalem leaders in order to demonstrate that whatever their prominence or importance, he says a little later, “Whatever they were makes no difference to me because God shows no partiality,” but whatever their prominence or importance, in the end they were all in complete lockstep when it came to the matter of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He shares his message with them privately to make sure, he says, that “he was not running” or “had not run in vain.” That is, he wants to ensure that the apostolic officers who govern the church and who direct the mission of Jesus Christ in the world were all standing in agreement together. What a catastrophe it would be were they out of accord.
But if you look down at verses 6 through 9 for a moment, you will see that they did in fact completely agree. Verses 6 through 9, “Those who seemed influential added nothing to me,” Paul says. “On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised (for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles), and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.”
So they added nothing to Paul. They modified in no way the message he proclaimed. Instead, they recognized Paul’s calling to the nations and the same apostolic gifts and ministry given to Peter for the ministry to the Jews, they said they also found in Paul for his ministry to the Gentiles. And so these pillars of the Jerusalem church gave the right hand of fellowship and gladly endorsed the mission and the message of Barnabas and Paul to the non-Jewish world, only asking they keep in mind the care of the poor. The point that Paul is driving home is that there was no division between the gospel Peter preached or James preached or John preached and the gospel Paul himself preached.
In the first part of his autobiography that we considered last week, Paul emphasized the divine origin of his message. Now here, he is insisting on the apostolic catholicity and unity of his message. Peter, remember, is the author of two New Testament letters that bear his name, as well as the one whose testimony to the earthly life and ministry of Jesus Christ, tradition tells us, Mark records in his gospel. James, the brother of Jesus, is the author of the letter to James. John is the author of the gospel, the three letters, and the book of Revelation. Luke was the close associate of the apostle Paul under whose authority and patronage he penned both the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts. And Paul himself wrote the remainder of the New Testament letters. That means that by citing Peter, James and John, who agree in message with Paul, Galatians chapter 2 covers the authors of the whole of the New Testament, Matthew’s gospel, and the letter to the Hebrews excepted.
Now do you see the point? It’s really very simple, isn’t it? There is in the message of the New Testament authors a beautiful harmony and coherence and agreement. The gospel, whether on the lips of Paul or James or Cephas, is the same gospel and it comes to us as the single, unified whole. Certainly each author brings out distinct emphases and writes for a particular audience and has his own use of language and literary sensibilities. There are differences. But the whole message of the New Testament hangs together in fundamental unity and coherence and agreement. And that means we must never play Paul against James or Peter against John. When Paul sat with the Jerusalem apostles, they found unanimity in a common message. We do not have various and different “Gospels,” each equally valid. There is but one Gospel and it is found exclusively, it is accessed by us now only in the pages of the New Testament. The extraordinary harmony and unity of that message, despite the diversity of the backgrounds and temperaments and training of the human authors, is, I hope you see, a great evidence and reminder to us of its divine origin and binding authority. That these disparate men, so different in temperament and habit and personality, should speak under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit and give testimony to the same blessed Savior and preach one unified Gospel, proclaims to us this book is the Word of God who is the final Author who speaks in it. The Gospel is unified.
The Unconditional Gospel
And then secondly, I want you to see here that the Gospel is unconditional. The Gospel is unified. The Gospel is unconditional. What was at issue as Paul and the other apostles sat down to discuss the message each proclaimed? What was the problem under consideration? It was whether or not the Gentiles should be required, in order faithfully to follow Jesus Christ, to add to mere faith in Christ, circumcision and the requirements of the Mosaic Law. Were there additional conditions necessary in order for a non-Jew to find acceptance with God? That was the question. That was what was at issue. And to help Paul make his case that nothing but faith in the finished work of Christ alone is required of any of us, to help him make that case, along with Jewish Barnabas, Paul brings alone Gentile Titus. Titus is “exhibit A.” He is an uncircumcised, Gentile, Greek-speaking follower of Jesus. And verse 3 tells us, “Even Titus who was with me was not forced to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek.” No additional requirements were placed upon him before they were willing to count him their beloved brother in Christ.
Now look closely at verses 4 and 5 and you’ll notice as you read it through a couple of times the sentence is rather broken and disjointed and the flow of Paul’s thought is not all that easy to follow. He is writing this, remember, as it comes to him. And I rather imagine Paul’s blood pressure beginning to rise and his blood beginning to boil at this point as he casts his mind back and remembers the incident he is about to describe in these two verses. And so he dashes off these lines without any real thought to perfect literary style. Bishop Lightfoot, one of the 19th century commentators, says of this part of the text, “The thread of the sentence is broken, picked up, and broken again. From this shipwreck of grammar, it is even difficult to extricate the main incident on which the whole controversy hinges.” I rather suspect Bishop Lightfoot was a bit of a literary snob, don’t you, but Paul could not care less about displaying a flair for perfect prose. He is writing urgently to expose error and preserve the Galatians in the truth.
And what is it that has gotten him so riled up? Look at the passage? “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 truth of the Gospel might be preserved for you.” You see why he is so frustrated he can barely string a sentence together? The false teachers are not just false teachers; they are false brothers. They are counterfeit Christians and their agenda, he says, is to slyly subvert Paul’s labors and efforts among the Galatians in order to bring them back into slavery and bondage to the crushing, intolerable, impossible task of self -salvation, self-justification by means of keeping the Law. And when Paul thinks about them and their antics at Galatia, he’s barely coherent, so frustrated and upset does he become.
And yet what is crystal clear as you read him is that he is passionately and immovably committed to preserving the Gospel at all costs for the sake of the Galatians, for their welfare. It is, he says, “the only hope of our freedom, our liberty in Christ.” And so he says he would not yield to them even for a moment. He is rock steady as he takes his stand on the Gospel of unconditional acceptance by God for sinners who trust in Jesus Christ alone. He will not waver or move from that message. Titus was not required to be circumcised because Christ has fulfilled all the demands of the Law and now has done away forever with the need for circumcision in order to be obedient to God. Nothing can be added, no other ground of acceptance is possible, no additional qualification is needed for pardon with God other than simple faith in the obedience and blood of Jesus Christ alone – not circumcision, not prayer, not charity, not moral accomplishment, not personal piety. None of these things will be an adequate basis for your hope. Only Jesus is. Only Jesus. The Gospel is unconditional. Jesus has met all the conditions of God’s Law for us, on our behalf, in our place. None remain outstanding to be fulfilled. All that is required of you now is to entrust yourself to Him for mercy. You cannot try to be saved. You can’t try to be a Christian. You can’t try to secure God’s forgiveness. You can only receive it for free. There’s no try. There’s only trust.
We always want to do something, don’t we? We always want to do something, but we will never find peace with God, never, until we realize that the Gospel has nothing to do with our doing, nothing, and everything to do with what Jesus Christ has already done. It has all been done. It is finished. Your debt is paid. Your sin atoned for. Your guilt, removed. All that remains is to rest, not work, rest the full weight of your soul on Christ who has secured your deliverance. The Gospel is unified, and do you see wonderfully, the Gospel is unconditional.
The Universal Gospel
And then finally, the Gospel is universal. You’ll see that point if you look back again at verses 7 and 8. Would you look there with me once more? Peter’s apostolic ministry, we are told, was for who? It is for the circumcised. He is sent to the Jewish people primarily. And in the same way, the apostles recognized Paul’s apostolic ministry was primarily for the Gentiles. He was sent to the nations. Or as you see summarized in verse 9, “They gave the right hand of fellowship to us that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.” What’s the message? Well let me ask you this. In light of the teaching of our text, “Who is the Gospel for?” Is there a class of human being to whom it is not sent? Is there some category of person disqualified from all possibility of saving grace? Clearly not! The Gospel Paul is insisting is for everyone. It is for all people of all classes and ethnicities and backgrounds and types. The Gospel is for you!
There’s only one qualification you will ever need in order to be a valid recipient of salvation through Jesus Christ. Only one. Do you know what it is? You need to be a sinner. That’s it. Unless you are not a sinner, then you are already perfectly entitled to come boldly to Jesus and ask Him to give you that cleansing His blood secures for everyone who believes. If you are a sinner and today you are prepared to have Christ as Lord in your life, you may immediately demand of Jesus with the utmost confidence that He reconcile you to God and take away your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. You can press upon Him the obligation under which He has bound Himself to rescue every single sinner who cries to Him for mercy from the wrath of God and the snares of the devil and He will do it! You don’t need any more warrant to claim every benefit and blessing of salvation. They cost Christ the hell of the cross to secure, but they cost you nothing at all. Only that you see yourself to be a sinner and Christ your only Savior. That’s all it requires.
If this is you, you are invited to Christ. If you are a sinner, you are invited to you. He welcomes you, calls you, He commands you, He pleads with you to come to Him. You don’t need to be circumcised. You don’t need to be Jewish or Scottish or Jacksonian or white or black or wealthy or elite or well educated. You don’t need to be good enough, and neither can you be so bad that there is no room for you. You need only to know that you are a sinner and God has ordained Jesus to be the Savior of sinners. And that is all the warrant you require, freely to come with confidence to Christ to receive the salvation He has won. You are holding, as it were, in your hand, His own “IOU,” written in His own words. And now you can go to Him and say, “Lord Jesus, I have Your promise right here. And written on it in Your own words it says, ‘All who come to Me I will never cast out.’ It says, ‘Whoever believes in Me shall never die.’ It says, ‘Come to Me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.’ Well I’m coming to You now and I’m weary and heavy laden. Give me rest. Never cast me out, but welcome me home and give me that life that cost Your death to provide.” Because the Gospel is universal, the Gospel is for everyone. The Gospel is for you.
And let me say this also to those of you who have embraced that Gospel. Because the Gospel is universal, the Gospel is for them. It’s not just for you; it’s for them. For those people, for that guy. It’s for her. For that family. The truth is, we all really like free, unconditional, universal good news when it comes to our own story and our own condition. It makes room for us in all the ugliness of our sin. Free mercy in Jesus for sinners like me. “But having come to Jesus, I’d really rather prefer it, Lord, if You keep the riff raff out. Make sure only folks like me ever qualify.” Beloved in Christ, let’s search our hearts, shall we, and make certain that while we run to Christ ourselves for mercy we are not found quietly mimicking the Galatian false teachers who want to exclude others that they did not think quite fit their standards. The Gospel is not about social standing or personal pedigree. The Gospel is about big sinners finding even greater mercy in an all-sufficient Savior. And we need to make sure there is room in our hearts, room in our church, for all those for whom Christ makes room in His kingdom.
The Gospel is unified. There is one message through different authors because there is one Savior and one Spirit and one God who inspires this amazing book. The Gospel is unconditional. Nothing is required. Isn’t it glorious? Nothing at all. Everything has been done by Jesus. All you need do is trust Him. And the Gospel is universal. There are no exclusions, no footnotes, that explain that while the offer of Christ is for everyone, it’s not for you. Not at all. No, Jews and Gentiles, men and women, young and old, rich and poor, black and white, moral and irreligious alike, there is room in the kingdom of Jesus Christ for every sinner who repents and cries out to Him for mercy. So what are you waiting for? He’s not impressed by your best religious efforts. You’re just spreading the muck of your sin around. You need to quit and come to Christ and rest on His work, not yours. That’s the only path to mercy and pardon and peace. Come to Him and receive His grace for free.
Let us pray together.
O our Father, how we bless You for the Gospel of Your amazing grace. Help us to embrace it gladly and freely and while we rejoice in it, help us not to restrict it for others but gladly to welcome all that Christ welcomes home. For we ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.