Galatians 2

Yesterday we continued our current series on the Book of Galatians. Check out Galatians 2 for free online by clicking here: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=galatians+2&version=NIV

Here are the points, passages, and ponderings for yesterday’s service, which you can watch in its entirety on YouTube by clicking here: https://youtu.be/VWjSMgeM81E.

Last Week

• Easy to stray from God’s way
• False teachers
• We tend to want rules to follow

Galatians 2:15-21 (NIV) | 15 “We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles 16 know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified. 17 “But if, in seeking to be justified in Christ, we Jews find ourselves also among the sinners, doesn’t that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! 18 If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker. 19 “For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”

Setting the Stage

• Sinful Gentiles (dietary rules)
• Does Jesus promote sin?
• Jesus did NOT die in vain!

So what about the Law?

• Gives us behavioral standards
• Reveals our sin and our blind spots
• Reminds us to trust GOD’s mercy, not take it for granted

Justification

• How we are made right with God
• It’s about faith in Jesus
• Relationship > rules

Galatians 2:16 (MSG) | We know very well that we are not set right with God by rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. How do we know? We tried it—and we had the best system of rules the world has ever seen! Convinced that no human being can please God by self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as the Messiah so that we might be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to be good.

1 Corinthians 8:9-12 (NIV) | 9 Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. 10 For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols? 11 So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. 12 When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.

We must fight the temptation to:

• To try and earn God’s favor through performance, which frequently leads us to compete with others
• To compare our own sense of righteousness based on another

Reflection Questions

1. How do you sense the theme of rule following rules versus relationships developing in this second chapter of Galatians?
2. What were the primary set of rules that were causing issues for those of Jewish descent as they thought about how to relate to new followers of Christianity?
3. What was Paul’s main argument in terms of Jesus’ sacrifice, especially when we try to add rules to a relationship with Jesus?
4. When then becomes our priority for how we are to live with others?
5. Pastor Mark expressed two different kinds of temptations we face. What are they? How have you fallen victim to them in the past?