Part XXIII on Galatians Study

Ephesians 3:1
"For this cause (because of what he has written in chapter 2) I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ ( he's in the yoke of Christ [Mat 11:29] but for what purpose?) for you Gentiles,"  (Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and you shall find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.)  Paul is not in opposition to the teachings of Jesus; it's just an extension of them. Now that the external and material life of Christ was culminated there at the Cross (the requirement of the first oracles or the foundation upon which the cornerstone is laid), and then picked up in resurrection power (the building of the churches structure or framework), of course that makes it different, but it's still the same God. His mode des operendi has changed to spiritual from the external and material things of the old but still the same God. Remember that this book is all spiritual and it requires the Holy Spirit's indwelling presence and waiting on Him in dependency to understand all that this book contains and tells us. Now back to the Book of Galatians, and we're ready for chapter 2. Now remember we've seen him saved on the road to Damascus and we've seen him spend from 40 days to one year either in Arabia (wilderness, as Moses and Jesus were both in the wilderness) and then back to Damascus. And so he says: 


Galatians 2:1a
"Then fourteen years after..."
After what? His conversion and time spent with the Lord and in Damascus. Once in a while the Lord has seen fit to give us the time element, and the chronologists can jump on this and they can pretty much reconstruct the whole time-table even though there is nothing definitive; and, consequently, we have not found two chronologists that agree. They are always at least a few years apart on their estimation of some of these things. Because the Hebrews counted any portion of a day as a whole day and any portion of the year a whole year. This throws people such as these off and frustrates them. But in this verse here is a benchmark as Paul says:


Galatians 2:1
"Then fourteen years after (his conversion) I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and took Titus with me also."   Well where did Paul hook up with Barnabas? Up at Antioch. And when did he get to Antioch? After he had been up to Cilicia. So we know there's a time frame in there between his conversion and this counsel in Jerusalem. Now most chronologists feel that this counsel in Jerusalem was somewhere around 51 or 52 AD. Now, we want to remember that Christ was crucified, and Pentecost took place, in 29 AD. Then (and again some chronologists also feel) that there was a seven-year interval between Pentecost and the stoning of Stephen which would be in 36 AD. This was when Saul was at the height of persecuting those Jewish believers, which had brought about the stoning of Stephen. Then in the next year (37 AD) we have Saul's conversion on the road to Damascus. Then adding as much as three years or as little as one year for Arabia, it would take us up to 40 AD when he returned to Cilicia. But if he went back up to Jerusalem here in Galatians chapter 2, then 14 years after 37 AD would take you up to 51 AD. 

Now the only reason we do this is to show that all during the Book of Acts, time is moving on. This isn't all happening just in a year or so. Time has been going by, and now here we are 14 years after his conversion. He has been out in the Gentile world preaching his Gospel of Grace, and in the meantime, as we saw in the Corinthian letters, the Judaizers from Jerusalem are opposing him at every turn. Whether they were believing Hebrews, whether they were under the influences of Peter and the eleven, or whether they were from the Orthodox groups, it made no difference. They would come into these Gentile congregations and say, "You can't be saved by Paul's Gospel alone. You also have to keep our Law, and practice circumcision and all our rights and ordinances or you can't be saved." All right let us show where the Scripture makes that so plain. We have to go back to the Book of Acts again for that. We know when we where in Acts, we used Galatians, and, when we are in Galatians, we'll use Acts. That's sensible, isn't it? Back to Acts chapter 15 and verse 1. We maintain (and not everybody is going to agree with us), that this counsel in Jerusalem is Luke's account, whereas in Galatians chapter 2 it's the same counsel, but it's Paul's account. They both go together. Now then, let's go back to Acts 15 first. We've got to take our time here. We have to force ourselves to slow down because otherwise we're going to lose the thread.

Acts 15:1
"And certain men which came down from Judaea taught the brethren,...   Now look at that. Analyze it. What kind of Hebrew would come into a Gentile congregation and begin to teach them? Well, not the Orthodox, nor the Pharisee. They wouldn't have anything to do with something like this. After all, what were Gentiles in the mind of a Pharisee? They were dirty dogs! So they certainly wouldn't. So who must have been coming into these Gentile congregations? Jewish believers that believed that Jesus was the Christ. Now they weren't believers in Paul's Gospel. They were still believers that Jesus was Who He said He was. He was the Messiah of Israel. And so they are still under their Law and its legal system. Now a lot of people don't realize that. Those early Jewish believers, under Peter's preaching, were still Law-keeping Hebrews, still bond by the chains of a now passing away religion legal system. And blinded to this fact because of a hard heart of unbelief or resistance to the divine inspiration of revelation or illumination given to Paul personally by the Lord.The same thing that we see and hear from those claiming to be something when in fact they are not. They are however still within the corral of the first oracles based upon the foundation of Judaism with all its customs, rites and rituals and legalism. Many don't know that all this was for is for our schooling unto obedience, only.  All of which God put away because of the Blood of a Better Covenant which is based on His Oath.

It's so evident that we don't have to show the scripture. We remember when Peter had the vision of the sheet and all those creatures were in there and the sheet came down and opened before him. What did the Lord command Peter to do? "Rise Peter. Kill and eat." What did Peter answer? "No way, Lord. Why, I've never eaten anything unclean." Why hadn't he? Because he's a Law-keeping Hebrew. It had to be kosher or Peter wouldn't eat it. Then a little later he gets up to the house of Cornelius and he is full of trepidation, and we've put it this way. From Joppa, where the Lord revealed all this to Peter until he gets up to the house of Cornelius, some 80-90 miles up the coast, we've said there must have been heel prints in the sand where the Lord just pushed him and pushed him because Peter didn't want to go. No more than Jonah did.

So he gets to the door of Cornelius' house and still full of trepidation, what's the last thing he said before he steps in? He said, "Now Cornelius, you know it's an unlawful thing for me, a Hebrew, to keep company with a man of another nation." Well why does he say something like that if he's set free? He wasn't set free. He was still in the corral of the Law-keeping Hebrews mindset. Blind and ignorant to the workings of God now among the gentiles. Now those same kind of believing Hebrews who were under Peter's control there at Jerusalem, they had maintained a separation but they were still Temple worshipers and still bond in its religious legalism. They can't ever prove to us that they weren't. And they were still legalistic Hebrews, but they had recognized Christ as the Messiah. Now back to Acts 15.