Galatians 2:5 - Printer Friendly

ESV: to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.

NIV: We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.

NASB: But we did not yield in subjection to them, even for an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

CSB: But we did not give up and submit to these people for even a moment, so that the truth of the gospel would be preserved for you.

NLT: But we refused to give in to them for a single moment. We wanted to preserve the truth of the gospel message for you.

KJV: To whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel might continue with you.

NKJV: to whom we did not yield submission even for an hour, that the truth of the gospel might continue with you.

Paul understood that he was on the front lines of a battle for the truth of what it really means to be saved. What does it mean to be a Christian and included in the family of God? What do you have to "do" to make it in?

Paul, who received the truth from Christ Himself, insisted that nothing was required of a person to be saved, because Jesus had already paid the full price for our salvation when he died for our sins on the cross. A group in the church known as the Judaizers could not accept this. They had accepted the idea of Christianity, but they wanted to blend it with the law of Moses. According to them, you must follow Christ, but you must also be circumcised and follow the Law to be saved.

Paul called these men "false brothers" and spies with the aim of stealing away the freedom Christ had purchased with His death. They weren't Christians, because they did not trust Christ's death to be enough to pay for their sins. Paul now says that he refused to budge an inch on this all-important point at a meeting in Jerusalem with the most influential leaders of the Christian movement. He saw it as his job to preserve the truth of the gospel.

This is a point on which the Bible is excruciatingly clear: adding even the slightest hint of "works" to the gospel, requiring any kind of ritual or act on our part, is to replace the truth with a lie.

Galatians 2:1–10 describes an important meeting in Jerusalem between Paul and the other apostles. Paul is pleased to learn they preach the same gospel of God's grace through faith in Christ that he does. They agree that Gentiles should not be made to follow the law, and they endorse Paul's God-given calling to preach to the Gentiles. Peter, James, and John offer to him and Barnabas, his partner in ministry, the right hand of fellowship, a symbol of their support, approval, and unity with them.

Paul holds a crucial meeting with the other apostles. Do they preach, as he does, that salvation can only be found through faith in Christ and not by following the law? He learns that they do, though ''false brothers'' in their midst are opposed to this gospel of God's grace. After receiving official approval from Peter and the others, Paul later opposes Peter for publicly trying to distance himself from Gentile Christians out of fear of how others might respond. Paul declares that justification comes only through faith in Christ and not by the works of the law.

In Galatians 1, Paul defended himself in order to defend the trustworthiness of his message. He made the case that he was a legitimate apostle. He shows in Galatians 2 that the other apostles stand with him in teaching the gospel of salvation through faith in Christ. He describes a moment in which he rebuked Peter for hypocrisy and then makes the case that only faith in Christ can bring justification for any person in the eyes of God. The works of the law can never make anyone righteous, or Christ would not have had to die.

Galatians is sometimes called “a short Romans” for its similar themes of justification and sanctification through faith. A group of Christians known as “Judaizers” were preaching a gospel of legalism, rather than grace. Paul’s main purpose in writing the letter to the Galatians was to reiterate the true nature of the gospel: we are justified (made righteous) and sanctified (made more Christlike) through our faith in Jesus Christ alone. This letter was probably written shortly before the church elders in Jerusalem issued their official refutation of the Judaizers, commonly called the Jerusalem Council.