Galatians 2: 11 – 21
 
The underlying cause of this deeply embarrassing event between the Apostles Peter and Paul at Antioch, resurfaced in the Galatian Church, and Paul’s account in his Letter holds significant lessons for our instruction. Without doubt, it sheds light on the near impregnability of cultural and racial conditioning or prejudice among the early apostles, in the face of their spirituality or lack of it. The gist of the incident was Peter’s apparent hypocrisy in abstaining from table-fellowship with Gentile believers, with whom he had been participating earlier, until Jewish brethren from Jerusalem arrived in the city. Paul went to great lengths expositing to the Galatian Jewish believers their new position in Christ resulting from the gospel. Was Paul being facetious here as he spelt out what the gospel was all about? After all, it has been about 15 years since the crucifixion of Jesus. Reemphasizing the defining theological foundations of their beliefs was critical as these distinguish them from their Judaic faith, and unless they got this right, their identity in Christ will remain nebulous and treacherous. Here are a few expressions Paul defined.
 
We are justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law (Gal 2:16). Despite Jewish legal prescriptions, Paul negatively asserts that no human being is ever justified or declared righteous before God by doing what the Law demands. Our sinfulness remains extant before God, and nothing can change it. In fact, God’s view of sin has been constant from the beginning of time and will remain until the end of it. He then positively enunciated that we have been affirmed righteous only through the God-initiated process of salvific faith in Christ, due only to Christ’s death (Rom 5).
 
For through the Law I died to the Law, so that I might live to God (Gal 2:19). Being a learned Pharisee, Paul was familiar with his own efforts to gain God’s righteous acceptance, to the point of persecuting and murdering Christians prior to his Damascus Road experience. He understood that despite his religious zeal, he could never fulfill the Law. God’s Law judged him, and he had to accept it and be judged by it. By virtue of his objective position in Christ by participating in Christ’s vicarious death, Paul had undergone a ‘death’ himself, whereby his relation to the law has been decisively severed, so that he might be set free to serve God without his own uprightness getting in His way. It would not be an understatement to conclude that in God’s eyes, our self-righteousness is equated with sin (Is 64:5-7).
 
I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me (Gal 2:20). This mystery is profound, but it is beautiful if we can grasp God’s way and ultimate purpose in realizing Christlikeness in us! Definitively, we died when Jesus died, and we live because Jesus lives, and His obedience towards His Father becomes our motivation to obey Him too. That sublime spiritual reality is balanced by our down-to-earth existence, as Paul explicates that the believer is now set free from the dominion of the law for a life of consecration to God. It is not some kind of mystical depersonalization to have Christ living in Paul, as though Paul’s humanity was absorbed into the pneumatic personhood of Christ. On the contrary, Paul fully retains his identity as an “I” who sustains an “I-Thou” relationship with Christ. This is indeed a divine privilege for fallible man.
 
If righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly (Gal 2:21). Biblical righteousness implies a right or proper relationship with another, and relating to God is always based on righteousness according to His Law. If there was a possibility of anyone gaining righteousness by observing Yahweh’s Law, then there would be no requirement for Christ to have died for us; implying that Jewish laws of righteousness and purity in maintaining a separation between themselves and the Gentiles are no longer the basis of a right relationship between men and God, as His righteousness can only be met by God Himself.
 
Thus, the church’s unity in terms of the Jewish-Gentile divide would have been compromised by Peter’s and the Galatian believers’ conduct, which also went against the very basis of their new identity in Christ. Furthermore, if they carried on as they did, they would be challenging the grace of God in the life of the body of Christ, where the church, in favour of the order of performance, focused on the principle of  the Law. May it never be! 

​Isn't it remarkable that God did not surprise humanity with His sudden transcendent ‘physical’ appearance, instead He arrived as a babe in arms. Nevertheless, He looked forward to it with amazing indefatigable anticipation, repetitively addressing His exciting visitation with deplorable man, through His Prophets. His persistent visitations with men like Abraham on his pilgrimage, Moses in his judgments, and David in his governance, and others throughout Old Testament human history, intimated that He would come. Isaiah captured the grand themes of this coming so aptly when he described Him as the Mighty God and Eternal Father, where the government will rest on His shoulders (Is 9:6-7). To appreciate this incredulous plan of Yahweh, one has to put on the cap of a heathen, where with hindsight, this historically bizarre news ought to elicit from deep within our hearts a disbelief, yet profound worshipful gratitude, where Immanuel, God with us, was and still is the Christmas refrain to this day (Matt 1:23). 
 
The first four books of the New Testament, the Gospels, each brought us a perspective of the birth of Jesus. Again, God continued to highlight His advent to the priest Zacharias in the Gospel of Luke. The latter delineated the only detailed account of the angelic visitation to Mary and events leading to her miraculous conception, with the command to name this august baby the Son of God (Luke 1:35). Son of Yahweh? I cannot imagine how Mary might have felt, as any Jewish person would, with this abhorrent announcement by the angel Gabriel. Perhaps recurrent insomnia may not be an unexpected outcome! In Matthew’s Gospel, Joseph gets to tell his side of the story, as he struggled to come to terms with a stoning judgment on Mary for an illicit relationship, if news got out about her pregnancy before they were officially man and wife. He dreamt that an angel informed him to take Mary as his wife, and the baby should be named Joshua, for He will save His people from their sins (Matt 1:21; Jesus is the Greek form of Joshua, meaning Yahweh saves). The ‘I AM WHO I AM’ to be born and to save! It boggled his mind, and probably a few more sleepless nights entailed. Throughout Matthew’s report, he recounted Jesus saving His people from their sins through His healings and forgiveness, time and again. Well, only God can forgive sins –every Jew knew that! It was blasphemous to consider that a normal person can truly forgive another’s sin. 
 
John was more theologically courageous in his Gospel, expositing on the outrageous origin of the coming God-Man: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it….. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1-5; John 1:14). How does one begin to clarify such confounding implications? The human mind is incapable of grasping the magnitude of God’s self-expression here: where ‘light’ isn’t about brightness, but focused on the revelation of moral truth (John 8:12); where salvation from sins isn’t about conversion to a religion, but is a new birth directly initiated by God Himself (John 1:10-13); where the Word became flesh, and not just lived among us, He became the convergence of man and God in Himself (i.e., He tabernacled among us; John 1:14), and the source of protection and communion with God for us. John glimpsed His glory, and that revelation was extraordinarily singular, as few noticed it since He was just a man with no stately form or majesty (Isa 53:1-3). But that glory is identical with God’s heavenly glory that smothered Isaiah (Is 6:1-5). What did John see when others did not, that completely transformed his view of the Messiah, because no one is able to see God and live? (Ex 53:20). Perhaps it was Jesus’ exemplary and sacrificial journey of grace and truth which culminated at the cross, that spoke of His glory – in death and in resurrection – the process rather than the events. The Lord said to Philip, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me? (John 14:9). Many had seen Him when He walked this Earth, but they did not look closely nor paid any attention to His actions, words and manner of life. They had eyes but could not see! But it could have been any of us, who heard and knew much about Him, and yet do not know Him, nor desire to communicate with Him! We can even be presumptuous with what we are familiar with concerning God’s advent, but what does the Word became flesh mean to each of us? After all, a relationship with Yahweh cannot be at arm’s length, for at its crux, it is a heart-to-heart engagement with Divinity.