Amazing Grace

Paul recounts traveling to Jerusalem after fourteen years with Barnabas and Titus, a Gentile believer, to set before the apostles the gospel he preached. The central issue was whether Gentile converts must be circumcised to be saved. Paul reports that "not even Titus... was compelled to be circumcised" (Galatians 2:3, NKJV). The passage defends one gospel of grace for Jew and Gentile alike, sealed when the Jerusalem pillars gave Paul "the right hand of fellowship."

Titus was a test case. If the church had required circumcision for a Gentile believer, it would have added human works to the finished work of Christ. Paul writes that "not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek" (Galatians 2:3, NKJV). Justification is by grace alone through faith alone (WCF 11.1). To add circumcision would corrupt the gospel itself, which is exactly why Paul refused to yield "even for an hour" (Galatians 2:5, NKJV).

It is a formal gesture of partnership and recognition. Paul writes that "James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars," when they "perceived the grace that had been given to me," gave him and Barnabas "the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised" (Galatians 2:9, NKJV). The Jerusalem leaders did not correct Paul's gospel; they acknowledged it. The handshake confirmed that there was one gospel and two mission fields, not two gospels.

No. There is one gospel with two spheres of labor. Paul was "entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised" (Galatians 2:7, NKJV). The message of justification by faith in Christ was identical; only the audiences differed. J. Gresham Machen, in defending the faith against modernism, stressed that Paul tolerated no rival gospel. The Jerusalem agreement was about strategy and recognition, not two competing ways of salvation.

God told Abram, "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (Genesis 12:3, NKJV). The inclusion of believing Gentiles is not an afterthought but the fulfillment of a promise older than the law. Paul later argues that "the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand" (Galatians 3:8, NKJV). John Calvin saw the Abrahamic covenant as the substance of the one covenant of grace running through Scripture, now reaching the nations.

For centuries Israel was set apart from the nations by circumcision, dietary law, and the temple system. These distinctions guarded the covenant people until Christ came. Paul elsewhere says Christ "has broken down the middle wall of separation" (Ephesians 2:14, NKJV). In Galatians 2 that wall is already coming down, as a Gentile like Titus is received without circumcision. The barrier was never meant to be permanent; it pointed forward to the gathering of all families promised to Abraham.

Paul calls them "false brethren secretly brought in" who "came in by stealth to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage" (Galatians 2:4, NKJV). The gospel's freedom was at stake. Martin Luther, whose great commentary on Galatians shaped the Reformation, insisted that any addition to faith in Christ overthrows the article of justification. Paul did not yield "that the truth of the gospel might continue with you" (Galatians 2:5, NKJV) — pastoral love demanded doctrinal firmness.

Everything Paul received and offered came as grace. The Jerusalem pillars recognized "the grace that had been given" to him (Galatians 2:9, NKJV). Salvation is not earned by circumcision, law-keeping, or ethnic privilege; it is the free gift of God to undeserving sinners, Jew and Gentile alike. This is the heart of the Reformed doctrines of grace: God saves by His sovereign favor, not by human merit. The Gentiles are grafted in for the same reason anyone is saved — grace.

No. Because justification rests on Christ's work received by faith, every believer stands on equal ground. Paul later declares, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28, NKJV). Grace levels every distinction of ancestry and status. Gentiles are not probationary members of God's family; they are full heirs of the promise given to Abraham, adopted as sons (Galatians 4:5–7).

It guards two things at once: the purity of the gospel and the unity of the church. We must never add to grace the modern equivalents of circumcision — performance, pedigree, or pride. And we must receive every true believer as a full brother or sister, as the apostles received Titus. The right hand of fellowship still belongs to all who share the one gospel. Where grace is preached purely, walls between peoples fall.