God’s Word for You

Galatians 2:8-9 The right hand of fellowship

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Thursday, June 13, 2024

8 For God who worked effectively through Peter as an apostle to the circumcised worked effectively also through me to the Gentiles. 9 And since James, Cephas and John, who have the reputation of pillars, recognized the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.

As James, Peter, John and Paul met, they saw at every point that they shared the very same doctrine and teaching about Jesus, and they also saw that God was working effectively through their preaching and teaching. God’s word will always produce the result he desires, but that does not give his ministers the excuse to avoid hard work and stressful conversations. We should not think of our labor as necessary for God’s word to be effective, but that the privilege to work in the word of God spurs us on to serve him with our lives even when the supposedly tireless minister gets tired, or the indefatigable missionary becomes fatigued, or the young and energetic teacher grows old.

Paul was recognized as an apostle by the leaders in Jerusalem. An apostle (ἀπόστολος) is someone sent out on a mission, with the authority to carry out that mission. Paul’s work as an apostle of Christ, preaching and teaching salvation through faith in Christ, was effective; he was making progress, and many people were being turned to the Christian faith.

Paul describes the division of the work with the uneven terms, “circumcised” and “Gentiles.” Why not say “Jews and Gentiles,” or “circumcised and uncircumcised”? He is explaining the labor, not the people. The circumcised were those who were Jews. Jewish men were circumcised when they were a week old, which Moses said was the eighth day. But to say “Gentile” could mean either an uncircumcised foreigner, or a circumcised one. Paul’s message was not about circumcision at all, but about freedom from the Law of Moses, and therefore even here in his description of his field of work, he will not budge a single inch on the question of circumcision. Paul might be circumcised himself, having come from a Hebrew family of the tribe of Benjamin (Romans 11:1), but his circumcision had no value toward the condition of his eternal soul.

When Paul describes James, Cephas and John as pillars, he is not speaking with irony and certainly not with sarcasm. He is speaking with great respect. Those men were not just “pillars,” but they had the reputation of being pillars. A pillar holds up a building that would otherwise collapse. Pillars in our culture are often decorative; in their culture they were vital to architecture and to the firmness of a building. They were, in other words, notable for their function. They were strategically set in place to keep the church functional, especially at this time. For at least some the Apostles remained in Jerusalem until the destruction of the city became imminent.

Having investigated one another’s doctrine, and seeing the grace of God in one another’s work, the apostles were left with no obstacle to giving Paul “the right hand of fellowship.” What does this mean? Fellowship in the church is every activity where Christians join together as members of churches (that is to say, of the visible church). This fellowship is an expression of faith, united by a common acceptance and confession of all the teachings of Scripture.

Let’s remember what Peter and Paul did here. They met in private and saw what each was doing and teaching. This “seeing” means that they talked about it, discussed their teachings, and found that they were in agreement on every level. If Paul had found that Peter disagreed with him about circumcision, he would never have accepted “the right hand of fellowship” from Peter, even though Peter was an apostle and a pillar of the church. In this way we see that common claims at fellowship today often fall far short of the Bible’s definition of church fellowship. It is not enough to agree on the “basics,” whatever those basics might be. If two churches agree that they believe in Jesus and worship him, but one church doesn’t believe that the Bible (such as the letters of Paul) has any authority, and that we are free to believe anything we want about salvation, then those two churches are not in fellowship at all. They should not do anything as a joint undertaking, such as worshiping together or building anything together or training ministers together.

We should also notice that fellowship is not something that is a matter of preference. If I am not fond of a certain pastor’s style of preaching, but we are in complete agreement on doctrine, I cannot choose whether or not we are in fellowship. We are in fellowship. I can only recognize and acknowledge that fact. So when churches might have a vote about fellowship, the vote is only on whether or not we recognize that we are indeed in agreement, not whether we would rather not associate with the other group.

As we look at the actions Paul has taken, and the way he has laid out his reasons for doing these things, we understand his conclusion: He has proved that he preached the gospel of Christ correctly and truly. This was based on divine testimony—which was enough for Paul and the apostles, but since Paul was being disputed by the Judaizers, he also proves that his gospel ministry also had the backing of human testimony, from the apostles in Jerusalem themselves. Paul didn’t need their approval, but he had it, and he includes it here in his response to them (for that is partly what this letter to the Galatians is). Therefore, everything that they cited against Paul was shown to support Paul, instead. The opinions of men, the conclusions of (mere) human reason and logic, and the conclusions drawn from traditions, are all nothing before the proclamation of the word of God. “The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever” (Isaiah 40:8 ).

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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