Agreement

We are in the early part of a letter written by Paul to Jesus followers in the Roman province of Galatia. Yesterday, he defended the source of his understanding concerning the message of Jesus. Today, he is going to defend the content of what he has been teaching.


Galatians 2
1 Then fourteen years later I went back to Jerusalem again, this time with Barnabas; and Titus came along, too. 2 I went there because God revealed to me that I should go. While I was there I met privately with those considered to be leaders of the church and shared with them the message I had been preaching to the Gentiles. I wanted to make sure that we were in agreement, for fear that all my efforts had been wasted and I was running the race for nothing. 3 And they supported me and did not even demand that my companion Titus be circumcised, though he was a Gentile. 4 Even that question came up only because of some so-called Christians there - false ones, really - who were secretly brought in. They sneaked in to spy on us and take away the freedom we have in Christ Jesus. They wanted to enslave us and force us to follow their Jewish regulations. 5 But we refused to give in to them for a single moment. We wanted to preserve the truth of the gospel message for you. 6 And the leaders of the church had nothing to add to what I was preaching. (By the way, their reputation as great leaders made no difference to me, for God has no favorites.) 7 Instead, they saw that God had given me the responsibility of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as he had given Peter the responsibility of preaching to the Jews. 8 For the same God who worked through Peter as the apostle to the Jews also worked through me as the apostle to the Gentiles. 9 In fact, James, Peter, and John, who were known as pillars of the church, recognized the gift God had given me, and they accepted Barnabas and me as their co-workers. They encouraged us to keep preaching to the Gentiles, while they continued their work with the Jews. 10 Their only suggestion was that we keep on helping the poor, which I have always been eager to do.


Agreement. Most scholars believe the meeting that Paul is talking about coincides with his visit to Jerusalem that is detailed in Acts 11:27-30. The primary issue of this meeting was circumcision ... did Jesus followers have to first convert to Judaism (by being circumcised and held to the “letter” of the Law) or did they simply have to have faith in Jesus? Paul wasn’t worried about the truth of what he was teaching (that circumcision was unnecessary and that faith in Jesus was all that mattered). He just wanted to make sure the leaders in Jerusalem were in agreement with him ... that there was unity. This idea of agreement ... of unity among Jesus followers ... was actually something Jesus prayed for the night before he was crucified (check out John 17:20-23). The reason he thought agreement, among Jesus followers, was so important was the impact it would have on whether or not the world would believe the message of Jesus (seriously, check out John 17:20-23). I am not suggesting we believe anything just to preserve unity. I am suggesting there are a lot of issues Jesus followers do agree on and could emphasize together that would impact the world and whether or not it believed the message of Jesus. Maybe we could start with the suggestion the Jerusalem leaders offered ... helping the poor.