Fellowship of the saints
Read: Galatians 2:1-10
1) vv1-2: Why did Paul take the time to visit Jerusalem, and why only now?
- Why did he want to meet the leaders of the church there in private, and why tell the Galatians about it?
- What depended on the outcome of that synod? cf 2Jn 1:8
- Which propositions of Paul’s gospel preaching were at stake? v5; cf Ro 3:28-31*
2) vv3-5: What was wrong with those who wanted to inspect (gr. kataskopeo) Christian freedom only to take it away?
- On what grounds did this law party in Galatia question Paul’s authority? v3
- How were they “brought in secretly”? cf Mt 13:24-25
- How did Paul dare to call them false brothers?
3) v5: Why wasn’t the ceremony of circumcision declared a side issue?
- How did the circumcision party overthrow “the truth of the gospel”? Gal 2:18; 5:4
- How could the leaders in Jerusalem have ruined Paul’s effort as a missionary at this point?
- What if they would have charged Paul of being divisive for making this issue central?
- How did Paul’s initiative to jointly study the matter prove that he wasn’t divisive? v2
4) vv6-10: How did the actions of those church leaders prove their own godliness and that they could see why Paul was right?
- Hint: Why was Titus not forced to be circumcised? Why didn’t that suffice to rest the case about circumcision among the Galatians?
- v10: How did the legalistic agenda of ‘false brothers’ such as the circumcision party fall short of fulfilling the law?
- What distinguished their moralistic interest in the law from the desire of true saints to freely obey God because of faith?
5) Personal & application
- Is God more interested in why we do something than what we do? Why or why not?
- Why is the preaching of Christian freedom bound to offend unbelievers, especially when they are religious?
- Since Mosaic law did demand circumcision, why didn’t the early church side with the circumcision party that it must be retained alongside faith (e.g. as a paradox, or to ‘keep things balanced’)?
- How can you find out whether this or any other issue is a side issue, or whether it is about the truth of the gospel how we can be truly saved?
- How do you emulate Paul’s example (and of the leaders in Jerusalem) how to address diversity of opinion on these or other central issues?
* According to Ro 3:31, the doctrine about Law and Gospel as two mutually exclusive ways of salvation is at heart a question of how the law is fulfilled.
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