Gospel Plan of Paul - Nothing Added

All right, so here we are. I think this is lesson 20 of Galatians, and we're going to be looking this morning at chapter 2, verses 4 through 7. Verse 7 is sort of connected to the next section, and we'll talk about that, but we're going to be looking at those verses.

And I've entitled this Paul's Gospel, Nothing Added. And last week we talked about Paul's gospel submitted or presented to the apostles. And today what Paul is going to tell us is the situation that prompted Paul to present his gospel to the apostles, and we see that in verses 4 and 5. And then in verses 6 through 10, Paul gives the response of the apostles.

Now we're only going to cover 6 and 7 and even that. somewhat briefly because that will be picked up more in depth next week. But that's what we're looking at. The reason that Paul presented his gospel to Peter, James, and John, and then their response to that. And the title of the lesson kind of gives away their response. Nothing added. So let's do a little bit of review here first. Let's look at last week's verses, Galatians 2 verses 1 through 3.

Then, after an interval of 14 years, so this is after having left a brief stay at Jerusalem, he was sent away to Syria and Cilicia, his home area, Tarsus, we find out in Acts, and he spent 14 years up there before Barnabas brought him back to Antioch, and then Paul and Barnabas make this trip down to Jerusalem.

So after 14 years, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along also. It was because of a revelation that I went up and I submitted to them the gospel which I preach among the Gentiles. But I did so privately to those who were of reputation for fear that I might be running or had run in vain. But not even Titus who was with me, though he was a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised." And we had a couple of main points that we drew out last week.

The first one was that Paul's concern was not that his gospel teaching was incorrect, but that his gospel teaching would be made vain or unfruitful if his spiritual children, his converts, were put under the bondage of of law. And that's important to see because at first glance, at those verses, you could think that maybe Paul thought he was teaching an incorrect gospel, that he was teaching in vain. Well, no, there's nothing wrong with his teaching or his gospel, but he was worried that the ideas of legalism might cause a vain or unfruitful walk in the lives of believers. And so how would it render Paul's ministry vain if false teachers were able to convince Christians that they were under law? Well, what did Paul know and teach about the law?

Romans 6 and 7, the Christian is dead to the law. That's key. Paul also taught that the sin nature, that the believer still has, uses the law as a springboard, right? We see that in Romans 7, 8 and verse 13. And so Paul knew that if his converts were convinced that they were under law, then they'd be unable to produce the fruit of the spirit, which is by grace, not by law. And so that's how law derails or interrupts the spiritual life. And that's what Paul was concerned about, that his ministry would be made vain or unfruitful. And so Paul understood that it was critical that the other apostles needed to begin to understand and teach the truth that the Christian is not under law.

And we're going to see this morning in these verses that this legal teaching was beginning to encroach upon the church. And so Paul is combating that. He's trying to deal with this in the early stages. So that's kind of our first point. And the other thing that we spend a little bit of time on is the way in which Paul addressed the doctrinal deficiency of the apostles. And we could just highlight maybe three things that Paul exercised. He used wisdom. He had wisdom in his approach.

He didn't want to create division. in the Church of Jerusalem by undermining the authority of the Apostles of Jerusalem. But he knew that if he could instruct the apostles, then they would be the right ones to pass this understanding along to the believers at Jerusalem. We also saw that he came on friendly terms. He was bringing a financial gift, likely, to Jerusalem.

And so he exercised wisdom and tact in his approach. He also exercised respect or humility, we might say, that he came as a messenger not the authority, at least not in and of himself, right? And so he approached them with humility. Very important if we're going to be addressing fellow believers on some issue of doctrine. But thirdly, he also came with confidence. And sometimes we don't put those two together, right? Humility and confidence. But he had confidence in God's word, not in himself, but in God's revealed word to him.

And so this sort of describes the way that Paul approached these three. And now we should keep in mind that Paul was addressing a particular problem, a particular issue. There are other kinds of problems that call for different approaches, though I think these three characteristics are always needed.

We see, beginning in Galatians 2.11, that Paul deals with Peter in a very different way later on through open public rebuke. And that was necessary in the case where Peter committed open and public sin. And it required this public rebuke. So it's still Paul exercising wisdom and respect and confidence in the word, but a different approach because in this case it needed to be publicly addressed and forcefully so.

So, you know, I think these three principles and probably more apply whenever we're in a situation like this. Ultimately, we know that this is about applying the Word of God to every situation. We have 2 Timothy 3.16, right, which tells us that all scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof or rebuke. for correction, for training in righteousness. And so scripture is the perfect tool regardless of the situation.

I kind of thought it was sort of like a hammer. A hammer can be used to smash concrete. It could also be used to set a finishing nail. It's powerful enough for the toughest jobs, but it's delicate enough for the most sensitive work. And sometimes rebuke is necessary, but sometimes gentle correction.

So we've seen here Paul's kind of gentle correction or further instruction, not necessarily that these apostles were wrong on this issue so much as they just had not been instructed about the fact that the Christian has died to the law. And of course, none of us can exercise these qualities, these characteristics, apart from dependence on Christ as our life.

So that's a brief review of last week's verses. Any thoughts on that before we move into today's? All right, so let's look at today's verses, Galatians 2, four through seven. Now I've also tacked on verse nine because verse seven is really the beginning of a sentence, and Paul's got some parenthetical comments in there, but verse nine kind of completes the thought there. So we'll read that with it.

So Paul says, but it was because of the false brethren secretly brought in who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus. in order to bring us into bondage, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. But from those who were of high reputation, what they were makes no difference to me, God shows no partiality, while those who were of reputation contributed nothing to me. But on the contrary, seeing that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised, He comes and jumps down, we'll just jump to the end there. Those who were reputed to be pillars gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, so that we might go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. So this gives us, as we said, the reason that Paul addressed the apostles and also their response.

Sorry, we'll wait a second before that. What Paul is really giving us here in these verses, I believe, after having studied this out, is a window into the cosmic battle that was being waged in the early church. And you read this and you think, well, where are you getting that? Where's the battle in these verses? Well, we'll get there. We'll unpack this.

But we need to remember that Satan is intensely interested in destroying what God is doing in the church, right? And Satan is not dumb. He knows that the church is a threat to his kingdom and he's intensely opposed to it. And so that's really what's going on beneath the surface, I think. And notice that Paul's whole reason for laying out his gospel to the apostles is given here in verse 4, as because of false brethren secretly brought in to spy out our liberty. So these false brethren beginning to cause trouble in the churches. And how were they causing trouble?

What does it say there? What were they doing? In verse 4. Exactly, right? That was their goal. They were trying to bring believers into bondage. And like we said, so that fits really well actually with what we were saying in last week's verses, right? Paul was concerned about his ministry being made vain through believers being put under law. And that's exactly what these false brethren were attempting to do.

Okay, so now before we talk about these false brethren and how they got in and why, we need to kind of answer the question, what makes someone a false brother? Because that term is used a lot, or similar terms, is used by those in a view that we would call lordship salvation. And they talk a lot about someone being a false believer or having spurious faith and those kinds of things. So what makes someone a false brother and how do we find out who's a false brother from a true one? And like I said, those who hold the Lordship Salvation, they love to tell us that we can distinguish between true believers and false believers. And how do they do it? They do it on the basis of works, right? That will always be the measure, are there good works? But what's the problem with that idea? Can anyone? It's not a faith.

I mean, yeah, it works. Yeah, yeah, exactly. In fact, what they say is exactly the opposite to what the Bible says. The Bible consistently says, yes, go ahead. No, I was just going to say, I mean, in the early church, of course, that's Mosaic law applied to the life, right? Whereas today, it's much more subtle, isn't it? It's absolutely, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it's going to depend on who you're talking to and their personal preference, but there are those who want to put you under the mosaic law, but there are also those who, you know, who understand in part that we're not under the Mosaic Law or parts of it, but still want to put you under a legal principle. And it doesn't matter whether it's the Mosaic Law or any other principle of law, it's going to result in bondage. Of course, in this case, at this time, it was specifically the Law of Moses, right? So the Bible actually tells us very clearly that outward appearances can be deceiving.

I just put a few references up there. I'm going to read these verses. 1 Samuel 16, verse 7. Remember when Samuel came to anoint David. The Lord says to Samuel, do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For God sees, not as man sees. For man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. Samuel is looking at David's older brother. He was a good looking guy. But the Lord looks at the heart.

Matthew 7, 15, Jesus said, beware of the false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly A ravenous wolves, good looking at exterior, dangerous underneath. Matthew 23, 25, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside, they are full of robbery and self-indulgence.

So, if we use, yeah. Even in Titus, not by works of righteousness that we have done, but according to his mercy, We're not. Exactly. Yeah. And it's over and over and over, right? By faith and not by works. And the reality is it works outward, external appearances, the things that we can see as fellow men can be very, very deceiving.

So then what makes someone a false brother? It can't be outward appearances. And as it's been pointed out here, it's the lack of one thing that's required to be born again, which is faith. So a false brother is someone who has never put their faith in Jesus Christ, someone who has never been born again.

So we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that these false brethren are those who were outwardly immoral or vulgar or something like that. Quite the opposite. A false brethren may look very good on the outside. St. Miles? Yeah. They're called a brother. So I'm kind of inclined to believe that they are born again. and they've accepted Christ by faith, but then they've left that, and they don't live by faith. I agree with Bob. I think that's correct. That's my opinion.

And then, Bob, the verses you stated really were not church-age verses either, right? I mean, I'm not being critical of verses. They really point to a topic before us. They're brothers, I mean, and they're in the Lord, are they not saved? Right. So a good illustration of a false brother is back in the early church are those believers who wanted to keep following the law. But today, a false brother is someone who is saved And he's probably 95% correct, but there's that 5% that ruins it all. Right.

So, yeah. So, I mean, and I guess you could go either way potentially on false brethren. When I hear the word, the term false brethren, I right away think of the lordship argument that says that, you know, if you don't manifest, you know, outward behavior of a certain sort, then they'll say you were never really saved to begin with. That's the kind of the Calvinist argument that you weren't genuinely saved. Yes.

Well, when I look at this term, false brother, if someone has accepted Christ as their savior, they're a true brother to anyone who's in the family of God. So, if they're false, then they're not a believer. And that's how I see it. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the way I took it. It's not easy, Miles. It's not easy. Yeah. No, I hear where you're all coming from.

The Greek word I don't have right in front of me here, but it's actually pseudo Adelphox along those lines. So it's like a pseudo brother. And so we bring that into false brother. And so it's a compound word. And so I took this as someone who, you know, looks like or purports to be a brother, but we're not. I never really put their faith in the Lord.

Now, I agree with Bob who was saying that there are those who are truly born again. but then have put themselves under law. But we see an example of that coming up in Chapter 2 here with Peter himself, who was definitely a true brother, but submitted himself to law. And Paul rebukes him for that. but I don't think qualifies him as a false brother at that point in time. So maybe there's some discrepancy as to whether these were, you know, that these were born-again believers who had, you know, slipped back into law or were teaching law or whether they were unsaved.

In either case, they were teaching law. They were seeking to enslave the uh, enslave the church to the law. So hopefully we're, we're in agreement on that. Yeah. Miles, it isn't, their intent was still not right. Whether, whether, whether they come, whether they were saved or not saved, their intent was, was not good. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's good. Good, good discussion. So, um, so, um, sorry, just checking.

Got to, got to find my spot again here, but, um, So what was going on here is that these false brethren had infiltrated the local church. And I guess this is probably where my thinking has led a little bit more to the perspective that these were not actually believers. Now, Paul doesn't say which church or churches, but I take it that Paul is actually describing a problem that was developing in Antioch because in verse 5 he says, we did not yield to them. So he's personally involved in this situation and did not personally yield to them. So that brings us to the question here, how did these false brethren get into the church? And in verse 4, the words secretly brought in. Now those are actually, that's actually one word in the Greek and it's an adjective modifying the word for false brethren or pseudo brethren. And the word actually means smuggled in.

And it's like when we travel home to Canada and Nick gives us a pack of plastic straws so we can smuggle them. And they say, do you have any plastic straws to declare or any other illegal contraband? And we just keep our mouths shut. Oh, that's that's all joking.

But I mean, obviously, in this case, this is a serious situation, but it's the same word smuggled smuggled in. So, so these are we could say smuggled in false brethren. So there was a deception involved in these men getting into the local church. And then it says, who had sneaked in, or who came in by stealth in the New King James. And that word is an interesting one. It means to come in alongside. So the idea is just to blend in.

And I think that's how these false brethren got in. They just slipped into the back pew on Sunday morning, right? They stood up to sing. They bowed their heads to pray. They maybe even put money in the offering box. They just made themselves blend in, right? But what was their intent in doing this?

Why did they sneak in, as it says, to spy out the church's liberty in Christ Jesus? And the word there for spy out is kataskopelo. Now, you might not hear it in there, but in the middle of there, that's skopelo. That's where we get the English word scope. So you could say they came in to scope out the church's liberty.

And it's an interesting word because it has really a military tone to it. We would use the word in the military, we'd use the word reconnaissance. And it's not a common word in the Bible, but it has a few uses in the Greek translation of the Old Testament. where spies were spying out an enemy camp. It's used in Joshua 2-2 when spies were sent to spy out the city.

And so what Paul is indicating is that there was an infiltration of the church going on that was strategic and we could even say militant. And that's why I brought that up earlier about the cosmic battle that was going on in the church. I think that what was going on was nothing less than a very strategic and calculated attack by Satan against the church. Because, as we said, the end goal of the false brethren, the goal of spying out their liberty, was to bring to bring the church into bondage, to utterly enslave the church to the law. So what was going on? Why do we have this attempt to bring Christians from liberty into bondage? Why would I say that this is Satan's program?

Now, we have to understand what the church is. The church is the body of the resurrected Christ. Jesus Christ is the resurrected head of the body, seated in heaven. The church is a living witness to the fact of Jesus Christ's victory over Satan, his death and his resurrection life. And so everything that we represent as attached to Christ represents Satan's demise. With the cross that we represent and the resurrection that we represent, Satan's kingdom has already begun to pass away.

It's really a matter of time. And yeah. Yeah. Sorry to interrupt, but there's two additional thoughts. I mean, Satan, yes, I agree. Good, good description of that motive. But, you know, the world system honors law, right? And the sin nature, you know, gives self gratification. for living under law, too, right? So, I mean, Satan uses the world system and the sin nature both to accomplish his goal here. Absolutely. Yeah, we can't – what Satan is doing is he's using our natural tendency, our natural fleshly tendency toward law, right? So it's very effective, right? That's good.

So what I'm trying to point out here is that Satan can't stand to have the church present in his domain. He really cannot stand to see that. And so Satan launched an attack against the church at the very beginning that we actually see very clearly in the book of Acts. And this pattern, we see over and over again throughout the last 2,000 years of church history. So what was Satan's first attack against the church in the Book of Acts? How would you describe it? And who was his key instrument, by the way? This is what's really intriguing. Paul was Satan's key instrument in his first attack against the church.

And what Satan tried to do is he tried to snuff the church out of existence. It was just a a goal, a motive to completely destroy the church, to wipe it out of existence. And did that work? No, right? In fact, the Lord completely turned that one on its head and actually pulled Paul out of that and turned him around into the exact opposite. So then what was Satan's plan B? If Satan couldn't wipe the church out of existence, I think his plan B was to destroy the effectiveness of the church. And how could Satan do that?

Well, it's exactly what we've been talking about, right? The church is to be a witness of the life of Christ, and what is the number one way to destroy the witness of a Christian to the life of Christ is to put him under law, right? As soon as you put a Christian under law, you immediately activate the flesh. He's no longer walking in dependence on the spirit, there's no longer a production of the fruit of the spirit, therefore there's no longer a witness to the life of Christ. And so if you've destroyed, if you put the Christian under law, if you put the church under law, You've effectively destroyed the church's witness to the life of Christ.

Now, has Satan been effective in this? This is what's interesting. He has. He absolutely has. Now, Paul was fighting against this right in the outset, right? And if Paul hadn't done this, we wouldn't have. Things like the Book of Galatians, right? But nonetheless, this has been an effective strategy of Satan. He continues to use it today. We'll see this two-fold attack of Satan.

When the gospel goes into a new area, a new region, often, I mean, often missionaries are killed, right? Regularly. But once the church is established there, how long does it take before that church is under the bondage of law? One generation. You know, it's not law. It's where the church is at today in North America. You know, mostly enslaved to the law.

So what exactly is our liberty in Christ that they were trying to scope out, to see? Our liberty is freedom from everything which formerly enslaved us. Okay, this is everything to which we died with Christ Jesus. This is all about our co-crucifixion, our death to these things and our resurrection out of and into a brand new life.

So that's the liberty, that's the Christian's liberty. Now, a lot of people will get really upset when you talk about Christian liberty. They take that as a license to sin. Well, if you say that the Christian has liberty, You're teaching that a Christian can do whatever they want. And that completely misses the point.

The whole point with Christian liberty is that we've been freed from sin. We've been freed from self. We've been freed from the law and the world system. And we've been given an entirely new life. And so our liberty is freedom from everything which formerly enslaved us. And walking in this liberty, is completely foreign to the world system in which we live. Walking in liberty is the way in which the resurrection life of Jesus Christ is displayed. So that's why Satan wants to wipe that out. That's why he wants to destroy the effect of that. He does not want any witness in this world of Jesus Christ and his life as the resurrected Lord. So that's what was going on with these false teachers.

That's why Paul had gone up to Jerusalem to address this problem. It was very important that the church come to understand their liberty in Christ, their death to the law, the danger of the law and what the law does to the church. And this is why it was so critical that Paul never yielded for a moment to the legalism of these false brethren. To have yielded to them would have been to put himself back under law. It would have denied the believer's liberty from sin, would have denied the gospel.

Because the gospel includes the fact that you have died with Christ. As Paul says in Romans 6, do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ have been baptized into his death? It's not that we have to understand that when we're born again, but nonetheless it is included in the good news of the gospel.

We come to understand it in time, and Paul was not willing to give that up. Praise the Lord. So by God's grace, Paul and Barnabas, because it says we, at least more than one, stood their ground on the truth against these false brethren. And because of that, the doctrine, the truth of our liberty in Christ was preserved for all time. So let's look at, in brief here now, we've spent most of our time on kind of the circumstances that led to this, these false brethren and what they were teaching and what they were trying to do and how dangerous that was and how important it was that Paul stood against them and addressed the other apostles on this. But let's look at the response of Peter, James, and John. I keep saying Peter, James, and John, and that's because of the following verses that indicate that that's who is talking to, James, Cephas, and John. So what was their response?

And this is really, really important. At the end of verse 7, it says, they contributed nothing to me. And that's very important. In fact, Paul's got kind of a wordplay, not a wordplay, but we just don't see it in English so much. When Paul presented his gospel to them, he said, I laid before them the gospel. And here he says, they laid before me nothing in addition. We could say it like that. It's a similar word. It's a little different prefix. And so he's saying, I laid the gospel out before them. And in response, they laid nothing before me. In other words, they didn't give a counter argument. They accepted what I was telling them as I gave it. And so the Lord allowed the other apostles to grasp the validity of what Paul was telling them.

And because he allowed that, and the church as a whole was able to become unified in the doctrine of grace early on, it was tough for them to understand. Like Peter says, there's some things that Paul writes there that are hard to understand, but they knew that it was true.

And that was very, very important for the church to be established on this basis. Now, what's really interesting, and you're kind of wondering, why did Paul share all this? Why is he getting into all this history? Well, because this is critical background for what he's about to address the Galatians regarding beginning in chapter three.

The Galatians had fallen into the very same error that Paul had stood against and defended against back here in this Acts 11 encounter with the apostles, with these false teachers and so forth. So he's showing them this is already something we've already dealt with and cleared up. You guys are falling into the same old error. And unfortunately it's an error that the church has fallen into over and over again. throughout the centuries.

But what Paul defended before Peter, James, and John, and what Paul is about to lay down in this letter to the Galatians, stands forever as God's word on the question of the Christian's relationship to the law. I've noticed that those legal type teachers aren't big fans of the Book of Galatians. They don't like it because it's so clear. It's just so clear. And I would say that there's no excuse for any pastor or teacher or theologian who teaches that the church is under law. There's no excuse for doing that.

And yet it goes on and on, right? And the reason is because Satan is as active as ever. So long as there is a living expression of the life of Christ in this world, he is going to do what he can to extinguish that. And he's still spreading the same lie within Christendom today, right? Enslaving believers to the law, ensnaring them to the hopeless struggle of living in the flesh, which is bondage, as Paul describes it, right? So the same thing goes on today. But by God's grace, we can continue to declare the plain word of God about the liberty that we have in Christ Jesus. Very, very important. Same, just as important for us today as for Paul in that day.

So any thoughts or I feel like I've rushed over the last couple verses really quickly, the Apostle's response. I didn't really deal with that whole question of, you know, what they were makes no difference to me. God shows no partiality. So I apologize. There's just more there than we could really talk about.

But it's clear that Paul didn't put them on a pedestal. It's really important to understand that though God puts people in places of authority, in the church, that nobody is on a pedestal above anyone else. And Paul's just recognizing that. He's pointing out their authority, but he's also saying You know, it's really not doesn't make them anything special.

It's just it's just a role that God gave them. And so he was using those proper channels of authority to say, OK, I'll talk to the leaders. I'll talk to these apostles and they can, you know, share this information down through the ranks of the local church. But just because they're the apostles doesn't mean that they're any more special to the Lord. But anyway, any other thoughts or comments? So, Miles? Yeah.

During this time period, I think we can look at two churches. We can look at what's going on at the Church of Jerusalem and also what's going on in the Church of Antioch. In the Church of Jerusalem, we have basically Jewish Christians who are surrounded by Jews and they're having a hard time getting rid of the law. But in Antioch, We're having many Gentiles coming in, and they're putting aside the law, and there's conflict between these two churches.

And it doesn't get solved here in this meeting. As a matter of fact, Paul and Barnabas are going to go away on their first missionary trip, and they're going to come back, and the problem is still there. And they've got to go down, excuse me, they've got to go up to Jerusalem, and tell the Jewish believers in Jerusalem who are surrounded by legalistic Jews that, you know, you've got to get your stuff together. Yeah, by no means was this issue resolved on this one occasion, right? It persisted, same as it persists today. And the reason being, again, because it's, I think, the number one thing that destroys the, and it's what Paul deals with in this letter, right?

It's the difference between walking by the flesh and walking by the spirit. When you're under law, you are guaranteed to be walking by the flesh. The spirit does not. does not administer our lives through law. Very good, yeah, absolutely. I was just maybe another thought about liberty. Price himself said, when I set you free, you will be free indeed. And that freedom we have is to live by faith. And then Paul says, you know, this idea of if you believe in the grace principle, you can do whatever you want. Paul says, God forbid. Should I continue in sin?

That's right. Grace may abound. No, God forbid. That's not on his agenda. Right. So, I mean, I mean, that's why we're a body of Christ worshiping together with you teaching us today. I mean, that's because we all believe in this. And it's so critically important. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Liberty is not liberty to sin, but liberty from sin. Right. Amen. Great. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the truths that we are able to learn from it, and we just pray that you would continue to impress these things upon our hearts, that we might know you more. Lord, we thank you for the liberty that we enjoy in Christ Jesus, liberty to no longer be enslaved to the flesh, no longer be enslaved to the principle of law, but to serve you in newness of life by grace through faith. We thank you for that. And we just pray that you would continue to illuminate these things to us, open our understanding to these things. We just thank you for all that you have taught us this morning and all that you continue to teach us in Jesus name. Amen.