NOTES for Gal 2:7-14

Speaking about the new life, the life of the Kingdom, Paul contrasts it with what he calls "works of the Torah" ("works of the Law," v. 16). It would seem that the works of the Torah should be the main occupation of those who seek to fulfill the commandments. But the matter, as can be seen, was not quite like that. In the time of Christ and Paul, works of the Torah were often understood as roughly what we today call religious duties. Formally, all of them were connected, of course, with the need to fulfill one or another norm of the Torah, but in fact many of them had long since ceased to have any relation to it, being based solely on tradition, often only loosely connected with the Torah. The fulfillment of these religious duties turned, in circles of religiously active people, such as the Pharisees, into a kind of religious sport, in which successes and achievements were valued very highly. After all, according to the opinion generally accepted in the religious environment, the reward for those who succeeded was the Kingdom, toward which religious activists sometimes strove with complete sincerity, though at times without a very clear idea of what that Kingdom was, the one they were so eager to reach.

Paul, as can be seen, understands perfectly well that no successes in religious life have any relation to solving the main task: they cannot bring anyone closer to the Kingdom. The apostle never tires of reminding us that a sinful person is not able to follow the Torah to the end, that for this he will have to die; otherwise sin will never leave him, and no religion has the power to change anything here (vv. 19-21). The former, natural life must disappear in order to give way to another, new life, the life of the Kingdom, by which the risen Christ lives. But this is a difficult path, and fallen human nature begins quite naturally to look for easier paths, turning among other things to religion. For Paul, all such attempts are nothing other than a desire to return to the former, sinful life, refusing the path to which the Savior calls His faithful ones (vv. 17-18). It is a refusal of the Kingdom for the sake of human opinions, human concepts, and human religiosity. It is a refusal that never passes without a trace for those who have refused.

As we can see, Paul did consult with the other apostles about his ministry (vv. 1-2). Judging by the fact that the question concerned circumcision, Paul did bring it before the Church so that it would not bring splits and divisions into the churches (vv. 3-5). But for Paul himself this was not so much permission to preach what he preached about religion in general and circumcision in particular, as it was testimony from the Church itself, testimony that for him was as binding as any other testimony. He does not wait for any confirmation from people of the spiritual authenticity of his ministry, even if those people are the apostles themselves (v. 6). Yet the apostles, as we can see, confirmed the authenticity of Paul's ministry (vv. 7-10).

Here the apostle reveals to us a very important principle of spiritual life and spiritual ministry: its uniqueness and unrepeatability. That is why evaluating someone else's ministry is far from simple. Every revelation is always unrepeatable and fully understandable only to the one for whom it is intended. To evaluate its authenticity, one must be able to see another person's revelation through the eyes of the one to whom it was given, and that is far from easy. It is another matter when a person lives not by his own revelation but by other people's ideas and opinions, while it seems to him that those opinions are his own. There everything is much more definite. That is why Paul assesses rather sharply the attempts of the Galatian Christians to follow preachers who rely not on the experience of revelation but on their own human constructions. One must not hinder a person from doing God's work. But one can and must warn him when he tries to replace God's work with human works.