Galatians 2: Paul, Peter and Who Sat Where at Antioch

Galatians 2 opens with a number and doesn't say what it's counting from. "Then fourteen years after I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and took Titus with me also" (Galatians 2:1). After his conversion, after his first visit, after the thing he described at the end of chapter 1? The verse leaves it open and so will I, since people who know far more Greek and first-century chronology than I do still argue about it.

Past that it's easier to follow, because Paul goes up to Jerusalem, there's a private meeting and a dispute over Titus, and the leaders shake hands on a division of labor. Then the scene jumps to Antioch, where Paul tells Peter in front of everyone that he was wrong. After that the chapter turns into argument, and I'll get to it.

Why did Paul go back to Jerusalem at all?

I stall at verse 2, where he says he went up "by revelation" and laid out the gospel he preached to the Gentiles, "but privately to them which were of reputation, lest by any means I should run, or had run, in vain." Run in vain. This is the same Paul who told the Galatians in chapter 1 that no man gave him his gospel, and he wanted it checked anyway. Four verses later he says those men "added nothing to me" (Galatians 2:6), and he doesn't seem to feel any strain between the two.

Then comes "whatsoever they were, it maketh no matter to me: God accepteth no man's person" (Galatians 2:6). That's a cool thing to say about James, Cephas and John, and "seemed" turns up three times across verses 6 and 9, the last time when he finally calls them pillars. Some readers hear sarcasm. I hear a man who intends to lean neither on their reputation nor against it.

Titus is the test case, a Greek who traveled with Paul and wasn't made to be circumcised, and Paul says "false brethren" had been slipped in to "spy out our liberty," and that he gave them no ground, "no, not for an hour" (Galatians 2:4-5). What surprises me is what the three men do next. They don't side with the spies. They see "the grace that was given unto me," and they give Paul and Barnabas "the right hands of fellowship" (Galatians 2:9). Paul goes to the Gentiles and they go to the circumcised. The one thing added is a single sentence, verse 10: "Only they would that we should remember the poor; the same which I also was forward to do."

Paul says he was already eager to.

What actually went wrong between Peter and the Gentiles?

This is where I slowed down this morning, before anyone else was up.

For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision.

Galatians 2:12

Peter had been eating with the Gentile believers, and he was the man who went into Cornelius's house in Acts 10, so if anybody knew why it was fine, he did. Nothing in verse 12 says he changed his mind about the gospel. Men arrived from James and he "withdrew and separated himself," which is the entire offense, and according to Paul it was plenty.

The verse gives Peter's reason, which was fear, and doesn't have him announcing anything. An announcement would have been easier to argue with. What he did was sit somewhere else, and sitting somewhere else says the people at the first table rank lower without anyone having to say it. Then "the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation" (Galatians 2:13). Barnabas, who had gone up to Jerusalem beside Paul, went along with the rest.

I've sat on the wrong side of a table like that once or twice and kept my mouth shut, and that's the part of verse 12 I can't read past.

Paul says he "withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed" (Galatians 2:11), and when he saw that they "walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel," he spoke to Peter "before them all" (Galatians 2:14). People get uneasy about that, and a quiet word would have been the kinder way to go about it on most days. This wasn't most days. Everybody at that table watched Peter move, so the answer had to be as visible as the offense. We only get Paul's account, and the chapter never says what Peter said back.

I won't read this as Paul unmasking a fraud. The text doesn't say Peter taught anything false. It says he lived out of step with what he already knew, which is a different failure and a more common one, and most of us are far likelier to commit it than the other.

If you want to see how Paul sounds when he's irritated, the letter opens that way, and I wrote about it in Galatians 1 and the Letter With No Thank-You in It.

Is "justified by faith" a way around the commandments?

The chapter slides from Antioch into argument. Verse 14 is plainly Paul speaking to Peter and by verse 15 he's saying "we who are Jews by nature," but the text doesn't mark where the speech to Peter ends and the teaching to the Galatians begins. Nothing in the chapter draws that line, so I'm not going to either.

Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.

Galatians 2:16

"The works of the law" comes up three times in that one verse, which is narrower than "works." The Church's student manual reads it as the observances of the law of Moses, such as circumcision, the food rules and holy days. The whole dispute began with Titus and a dinner table, so that reading fits the chapter better than anything else I've come across. Paul isn't arguing about whether people should keep commandments. He's arguing about whether a Gentile has to become a Jew before he counts.

It's easy to hurry past verse 18: "For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor." Paul doesn't name Peter there, but Peter had taken that wall down once, at the first meal in Antioch, and then put it back up. It reads to me like a description of exactly that, though the verse doesn't say so and the connection is mine.

The obvious objection comes in verse 17, that letting go of the law makes Christ "the minister of sin," and Paul answers in two words: "God forbid."

Then the part most people know best, which I'd rather you read than have me summarize. "Dead to the law" in verse 19 sounds like the opposite of everything above it until you notice Paul gives the purpose, which is to "live unto God."

For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

Galatians 2:19-20

The chapter closes on verse 21: "I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain."

Paul has to defend his standing again with the Corinthians, and 2 Corinthians 11: Paul's Sufferings and False Apostles shows him just as direct there.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did Paul confront Peter in public?

Because Peter's withdrawal was public. Everyone at the table saw him get up and everyone drew the same conclusion about the Gentile believers, and Paul says Barnabas drew it too. A private word afterward would have left the damage standing.

Does Galatians 2:16 mean works don't matter?

No, and Paul never says it does, because the phrase is "works of the law," which in this chapter points to circumcision and the rest of the Mosaic observances, since that's what the Titus dispute and the dinner table were both about. Read the verse as covering every act of obedience and you've made it answer a question Paul wasn't asked.

Was Peter a false apostle?

I don't think the text supports that, and I'd be wary of anyone who says it does. Peter ate with the Gentiles first and then stopped out of fear, so what Paul describes is conduct that didn't match belief. Fear is what the verse names.

Are Galatians 2 and Acts 15 the same event?

Scholars disagree, and the chapter itself doesn't give an order. Both deal with whether Gentiles had to keep the law of Moses, and Galatians never mentions a council by name, which is part of why some people put the Antioch scene earlier. I'd read each on its own terms and let the overlap be an overlap.

Verse 10 is still with me. Remembering the poor gets one line in a chapter that spends the rest of its length on circumcision, tables and the nature of the law, and I read it fastest of all and then went back.

So before we load the Odyssey on Saturday for Bear Lake, I'm going to sit down with Melissa and the fast offering envelope and decide what we're actually giving instead of what we usually give. Mosiah 26 is tomorrow morning.

— D.