Thursday, May 24, 2007

Paul 2.4

Then to make matters worse, a merchant who was also a believer arrived at Antioch from Galatia. After Barnabas and I had left the region, apparently some Jews had come from the conservative part of the church at Antioch on business. They were teaching our new converts that they needed to be circumcised to be saved from God's coming wrath. They said I had only told the Galatians part of the story, that they could not truly be children of Abraham unless they were willing to submit fully to God and be circumcised.

I was livid, especially on top of the conflict with Peter and Barnabas I was having. I did not have a regular scribe at that time, so I did something I almost never did. I drafted a letter to them with my own hand. It was not easy, especially with my continuing eye problems. But we would never have come to some of those places in Galatia if I had not sought out help in Iconium from a doctor renowned for his skill. The large letters of my own handwriting would remind them of who I was and about the fellowship we had enjoyed together.

I was angry as I drafted the letter. I left out the customary thanksgiving to God for them. I expressed my desire that if those troubling them were so keen on cutting things off, they should cut their entire organ off. Normally a letter took several days to plan and draft at a minimum, and this letter to the Galatians was no exception. Yet I left the marks of my anger in the letter, just as my body bears the marks of the lashings I have received at the hands of my Jewish brothers.

But I thank God for the crisis, for some very important things coalesced in my mind in the course of planning the argument of the letter. I recounted my experiences thus far with Peter and James. I made it clear that God had chosen me as an apostle just as them. I made it clear that God is no respecter of persons and that my teaching came straight from Him, not from men like these so called pillars.

Peter, like the other Jews by nature, recognizes that we cannot be right with God unless we trust in the faithfulness of Jesus, his obedience to death on the cross. But what they don't understand is that this is the only way to be right with God. Trust in Christ is not just an extra thing that we Jews do to be justified before God. Trust is the only thing we do that truly counts toward righteousness.

My Christian opponents claim that you cannot be a child of Abraham unless you are circumcised. But what does Genesis say? It says that Abraham trusted, had faith in God, and God declared him righteous, justified him. And when did this happen? 430 years before God gave the Law to Moses.

So a true child of Abraham is someone who has faith--not just someone who is circumcised. The promise of Abraham was for everyone, Jew and Gentile alike. It was to his "seed," singular, not "seeds," as if it only applied to his physical descendants. Abraham's singular seed is Christ, and those who have been crucified with him, who have been baptized into him, these are the true sons of Abraham.

To try to secure God's approval by works of the Jewish law is only to condemn yourself, for not even those urging circumcision keep the Law perfectly. And what is worse, it's a slap in the face of Christ, who died for no reason if it is keeping the Law that gets us right with God.

It was through the Spirit that God did all those miracles in the Galatian churches. For Gentiles to worry about earthly things like circumcision and Sabbath observance is for them to remain slaves to the elements of the world, to the things of flesh.

But the Spirit has set us free from the things of the flesh, including the power of sin. It is those who walk by the Spirit that do not fulfill their fleshly desires, not those who try in their own power to keep the Law. It is those who have the Spirit whose lives bring forth love, joy, and all of the Spirit's fruit.

The fact of the matter is that all have sinned--both Jew and Gentile--and all lack the glory God intended humanity to have in the world. So it is only God's grace that can reconcile anyone to Him.

And it is only God's Spirit that makes us sons of Abraham, whether one is a Jew or a Greek, a slave or a freeman, a man or a woman. All of us are one and the same in Christ.

7 comments:

Ken Schenck said...

I might add that I do not actually date Galatians to this time. I currently date Galatians to Paul's time in Ephesus on his third missionary journey and see the destination as the northern area of Galatia rather than the southern part (this, by the way, while not the current evangelical favorite position is the traditional position).

Garwood Anderson said...

This comes from a flip-flopper on the destination/provenance of Galatians, but I wonder if the need for your aside suggests a crack in the N Galatia edifice? Why, supposing the the N Galatia hypothesis, do you think Paul appeals to this Cephas/Antioch incident from so many years earlier?

Thoughts?

Ken Schenck said...

OK, now I see why F. F. Bruce put the Gal. 2 visit of Paul to Jerusalem during the gift trip in 46ish. The story of Peter's coming to Antioch seems further back in the past from the writing of Galatians than I've put it in this iteration of the story.

The problems with that scenario are 1) Paul says he went up by revelation, not because the church at Antioch was sending him, 2) it seems to me that the most natural way to take "through 14 years" is 14 years after his last visit, which puts the visit too late for the gift trip, and 3) it would put Barnabas and Titus going with Paul to Jerusalem even before the first missionary journey, which is of course possible.

Ken Schenck said...

Hey Woody, I thought I had responded to you earlier.

Yes, northern Galatia in my scenario would require about 5 years between the Peter event and Galatians, during which Paul would have visited Galatia twice apparently without mentioning it. That does seem somewhat problematic.

But then again, how can we fit stopping with eye troubles with how Paul ended up visiting Galatia in Acts? And even if there were hardly any ethnic Galatians around at the time of Paul, would he, a Cilician, have most naturally referred to the southern peoples by the Roman designation of Galatia?

It's enough to make your head hurt...

Ken Schenck said...

OK--if I ever compile all this, I think I'll go with Bruce's template and put the visit to Jerusalem with the gift trip, even though it's not how I personally date the thing. Otherwise it's just too cramped.

Garwood Anderson said...

Yes, it does make the head hurt. Especially when at one point or another you thought you had it figured out!

Doesn't Dunn argue for a S Galatia destination but a mid-50s date?

Ken Schenck said...

Yes, Dunn goes South Galatia but post "Jerusalem Council." That way the timing works with Galatians 2 being after the first missionary journey, and the timing works with Paul having recently been through south Galatia on his second missionary journey, and yet close enough in time after the Antioch incident that the Peter thing might still be new information.

Curses he's good. But I'm still stumbling on the eye thing as the reason for evangelizing, unless Luke's moved some things around we can't really know.