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Gal_2:1-10
It has been much questioned to which of the visits to Jerusalem, recorded in the Acts, this statement may be referred. Some say that it was the visit mentioned in Act_11:29-30, when Paul and Barnabas took the alms of the church at Antioch to the church of Jerusalem. There is this in favor of that conclusion—that it is certainly the second recorded visit after the one that followed his conversion, and that he was then also accompanied by Barnabas. This last circumstance tells equally in favor of the visit which has just passed under our notice. The circumstances and objects of the former visit are altogether different from those which Paul ascribes to the one he made “fourteen years after;” and it would be difficult to make out that this visit could have been so late as “fourteen years after” either the first visit, or the conversion of the apostle, from which date some suppose the years to be computed. On the other hand, neither does the business of this visit, is described by Paul himself, appear to be identical with that recorded in Acts 15, and there are other difficulties, presently to be stated, which have seemed to many so insurmountable, that they have felt themselves driven to the expedient of supposing that the apostle’s statement in the epistle to the Galatians, refers to some intermediate visit not recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. In itself there is no objection to this supposition. We know that all the circumstances of Paul’s evangelical history are not reported in the Acts; and the distance between Antioch and Jerusalem was not so great, nor the intercourse between them so infrequent or difficult, as to render it unlikely that there should have been, in the long interval, one or more visits than those recorded. We are, however, satisfied in our own minds, that the visit to which Paul now refers, is that which was taken respecting the affairs of the Gentile converts, and which resulted in the decree we have examined.
Before noticing the grounds upon which that conviction is founded, and endeavoring to remove the obstacles that oppose it, it may be stated, that the chronological intervention of the alms-bearing visit offers no real impediment; it is passed over simply because nothing on that occasion transpired relating to the subject in hand. Paul says, that on his visit to Jerusalem, three years after his conversion, nothing occurred to invalidate his claims to the office of an apostle; and then he adds, that when he was again at Jerusalem, fourteen years after, the apostles, with whom he had private and full communications on the subject, distinctly recognized his apostolic claims. He had no occasion to mention the intermediate visit, which had nothing to do with the question in hand; nor indeed had he occasion to state any of the other business of this visit, however important (as recorded by Luke), but that which bore upon the question in discussion with the Galatians, and which as having been a comparatively private matter (as Paul himself expressly states) is not noticed by Luke.
The difficulties which have been urged against this identification of the third visit of the Acts, with the second of the Galatians, are these principally—
That Luke says Paul and Barnabas were sent by the church at Antioch, after much disputation, whereas Paul states that he went up by revelation. But these particulars are surely compatible. The revelation may either have led to this determination of the church; or may have been needed to reconcile Paul to a step to which he may have been possibly averse.
That after the part which Peter took in the council at Jerusalem, and his concurrence in the resulting decree—he could never have acted in that very matter as he afterwards did at Antioch, and that, consequently, Paul’s own recital must apply to a visit anterior to that which Luke records. This we may pass by now, and will look into it when we come to consider that point historically.
The remaining objections make a connected group, and may be disposed of presently in one statement. These are—How comes it that Paul does not, in the epistle in which this statement occurs (nor indeed anywhere else), make any mention of the important decree of which he had been the bearer to the churches, notwithstanding that it is so evidently applicable to the case, in his rebuke to the Galatians for their Judaizing errors? How comes it that, having to answer the question, as to meats offered in sacrifice to idols, in his first epistle to the Corinthians, he makes no mention of the decision already given? And, how comes it that his report of the journey to Jerusalem, in the epistle to the Galatians, seems so different from that of the narrative in the Acts?
Notwithstanding this, we must assume the two journeys were identical; for, in the face of these difficulties, there are considerations which preclude the possibility of their being different. The visit described by Paul could not have been prior to the one recorded by Luke; because acts proving the apostleship of Paul must already have been performed; and the journey recorded in Act_11:29-30, must have been then over. Neither could it have been a subsequent one; because, immediately after the council at Jerusalem, Paul and Barnabas disagree, whereas here we find them still united. Furthermore, the two accounts correspond in all important points—the same controversy, the same immediate occasion from the efforts of the Judaists, Peter and James the same chief actors, and the same testimony by Paul and Barnabas to their success among the heathen. But while the two statements refer to the same journey, they clearly refer to separate and independent deliberations and results of that journey. At this we have already hinted, and its further development seems to offer a fair solution to every difficulty the subject involves. The narrative in the Acts treats of the public object of the journey, and the public discussion thereon, that is, on the rights and duties of the Gentile Christians. On the other hand, the conference reported to the Galatians had reference solely to Paul’s apostleship; and there is no allusion to the demands made on the Gentile converts. The full recognition of his apostleship, and the agreement as to the division of labor, are there given as the results of the conference at Jerusalem. These two things are very different. But Paul himself used a phrase which renders clear the relation between the two transactions: The understanding come to respecting his apostolic office occurred “in private,” after, or it may be before, the settlement of the more public matter retarding the Gentile Christians. And why was this? The questions were akin to each other, and yet they were different. It was much more difficult to recognize Paul’s apostleship than the rights of the Gentile Christians; and the two questions could well be kept apart. Both Paul and Peter were probably desirous to spare the faithful at large the trial of a question for which they were not prepared, and of which they were not the immediate judges. The matter was, therefore, brought before those only who, by virtue of their office, were called upon to express an opinion on the point, whether Paul was, in the fullest sense of the term, all apostle or not, and to take a definite position towards him. It appears probable, as a recent writer Note: Dr. Henry W.J. Thiersch, History of the Christian Church, vol. i., ch. ii. of the English translation by T. Carlyle, Esq., of the Scottish Bar: London, 1852, a work which, although we dissent in some points from the conclusions it exhibits, contains many valuable suggestions and we are essentially indebted to it in this evening’s Reading. supposes, “that no one in the Jerusalem church had as yet had a correct view of the new claim to apostleship. James, Peter, and John alone, were enabled, by an admirable self-denial, and by illumination from above, to recognize the wonderful fact that, without their intervention, an apostle in the fullest sense had appeared, invested with the same mission and authority from the risen Lord, for the heathen, as Peter had received from Him while on earth for the Jews; Note: Gal_2:7-8. and responsible, like Peter, to Christ alone.”
This being explained, we can the better understand how Paul came to pass over the Jerusalem decree in his epistles, liven when engaged upon matters which might seem to suggest a reference to its decisions. He was as independent in his guidance of the churches as Peter was in his; and his independence had been acknowledged by the apostles themselves. He was trammeled by no human authority and was responsible to none. This he asserted in Galatia and at Corinth. When his epistles to these churches were written, the time had come for him to vindicate his apostleship on every hand. He had no need, in correcting errors, to cite the decrees of others. His word, as an apostle of Christ to the heathen, was decree sufficient for them. At the very time when his authority was questioned by the church which he had himself planted, it would have been a fatal concession had he cited to them another power than his own as their guide.
The unequivocal acknowledgment which Paul received from Peter and others of his call and authority as an apostle, extended to a distinct recognition of his peculiar qualifications and commission to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles. They perceived distinctly from his statement of “the Gospel which he preached among the Gentiles,” that “the Gospel of the uncircumcision” had been as fully committed to him as “the Gospel of the circumcision” had been assigned to Peter; that is, as we think with Dr. Brown, Note: In his Expository Discourses on Galatians, where this matter is fully explained. Pp. 76-89. “they distinctly saw that the Holy Spirit had taught him to preach the Gospel, in a way peculiarly calculated for the conversion of the Gentiles, just as He had taught Peter to preach the Gospel in a way peculiarly fitted for the conversion of the Jews.” And perceiving this, “they readily acknowledged Paul and Barnabas as brethren; they gave them the right hand of fellowship, as a token of agreement in sentiment, an acknowledgment of their possessing the same authority as themselves, and as a pledge that they would mutually assist each other in the work in which they were engaged; and at the same time it was agreed that while James, Peter, and John continued to labor chiefly among the Jews, Paul and Barnabas should continue to labor chiefly among the Gentiles. Not that either party was scrupulously to confine their labors within those bounds, but that, generally speaking, they should respectively occupy these fields of labor for which the Holy Spirit had particularly qualified them.” This was not, however, an appointment laid upon Paul by his superiors. It was a mutual agreement of equals, arising out of their clearly perceiving the will of their common Master. Accordingly, they gave Paul and Barnabas no instructions. They knew that they needed none. The only subject on which they gave anything like advice, was one of a practical, not of a doctrinal kind; and even then it was a friendly hint, not an official command: “Only they would that we should remember the poor:” “the same which,” says the apostle, “I also was forward to do.”