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Bible Reading Notes
April 2010
Monday, April 26th – Galatians 2: 11
Paul moves in this letter from his giving an account of the most sweetly blessed cooperation among the apostles (vv.7-10) to his detailing a most painful conflict he had with one particular apostle. This movement from cooperation to conflict is made without Paul expressing the slightest sense of apology for such a drastic shift. This is so because both cooperation and conflict are part of normal life in the Church. Each one plays its part in the advancement and growth in the grace and knowledge of Christ among His people. Both are manifestations of the saints endeavoring faithfully and with loving diligence to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Cooperation is the positive and sweet fruit of the Lord’s gracious and effectual working being perceived by the Lord’s servants, while correcting conflict rightly arises when defects in faith and practice spring up in the Church.
Tuesday, April 27th – Galatians 2: 11
The form and spirit in which Paul opposed Peter are mentioned in v.11. The form was a straightforward approach. Paul opposed Peter to his face. This does not mean that these apostles engaged privately, for v.14 informs us that Paul challenged Peter before a number of brethren in the church at Antioch. Because Peter had sinned publically, his conviction, repentance, and restoration would rightly be brought about publically. Similar public discipline had taken place when Jesus rebuked and restored Peter in the presence of the rest of the disciples after he had proudly and vainly boasted before them that he would never deny the One he had previously confessed to be the Christ (Mt. 16:16; Jn. 18:25-27; 21:15-22). Public scandals are to be dealt with publically, while private and personal sins call for private dealings (Mt. 18:15-17). Cowardly gossip and malicious backbiting are never the way in which we are to speak the truth in love.
Wednesday, April 28th – Galatians 2: 11
As painful as this public rebuke of Peter surely was for all concerned, we have cause to thank our God that it took place in a public setting. It is right and loving that private and personal sins be lovingly covered (1 Pet. 4:8), but public sins that yield bitter public consequences are most lovingly and effectively dealt with in the presence and for the edification of all concerned. In this particular case, not only did Peter and the offended Gentiles profit from Paul’s faithful public stand, but also, because Paul recounts the matter in this letter, believers in all ages may profit from this critical engagement and its edifying resolution.
Thursday, April 29th – Galatians 2: 11, 12
The church at Syrian Antioch that Peter visited was the home church of Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13:1-3). We do not know when Peter came to Antioch, but the timing of his visit appears to have been before the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:1-35) and possibly as early as sometime before Paul and Barnabas were commissioned by the Church at Antioch to undertake what became Paul’s first missionary journey. The spirit in which Peter visited Antioch was surely that of brotherly love, as indicated by his initial eating with the Gentiles there. This would indicate that Peter had already experienced the Lord’s dealing with his prejudice against Gentiles through the vision he had received at Joppa and his subsequent leading the Gentile Cornelius to faith in Christ (Acts 10). It is therefore a sad and sobering warning to us all, that such an eminent and spiritually experienced apostle could revert to sinful prejudice simply through pietistic peer pressure. Let us take heed lest we, too, be tempted and fall into similar sin (Gal. 6:1).
Friday, April 30th – Galatians 2: 11, 12
We might wonder why Paul mentions his opposition to Peter in this letter to the Galatian believers. Is the apostle to the Gentiles inconsiderately opening old wounds in Peter, or exposing that apostle to continued censure? The fact is, as we shall see, that Peter had repented of his earlier sinful and injurious hypocrisy. Yet, there were Judaisers in the region of Galatia, actively teaching that Gentile converts to Christ must receive circumcision, and so troubling Galatian believers, as Peter’s behavior had previously troubled Gentiles in Antioch. Therefore, Paul appeals to his previous faithful and open dealings with Peter as an apostolic precedent that should have served to settle this disturbing matter in the Galatian churches. When the apostles of Christ, who were charged by the Lord to feed His sheep, agree on a disputed matter, it should provide clear and edifying guidance for all of the sheep of Christ’s flock in all places and for all time.
Saturday, May 1st – Galatians 2: 11, 12
Would Peter have resented the reference in this letter to his earlier sin? He surely would not have protested having his own sin serve as an object lesson for the spiritual protection, comfort, and edifying education of the sheep in the wider Church. He would not have protested had he repented of that sin, any more than he had protested the fact that all of the Gospel writers told of his having denied Jesus. We know from John’s account that Peter did repent of that sin and was graciously restored by Jesus (Jn. 21:1-22). Satan designs scandal and injury when he tempts believers, especially church leaders, to sin. The Lord’s granting His sinning servants repentance and restoration enables them to use testimony of such sin and recovery to remove scandal, heal injury, and strengthen in faith and life others in the Church who struggle with similar temptations and lapses in faithfulness.
Sunday, May 2nd – Galatians 2: 11, 12
Peter’s lapse from faith into fear was sinful against God and injurious to his Gentile and even Jewish brethren. Paul’s condemning challenge was well deserved. The fact that Peter silently accepted this condemning challenge indicates his conviction by God. The fact that he writes about Paul so cordially in one of his own epistles (2 Pet. 3:15), indicates that Peter perceived and accepted in Paul’s challenge the faithful wounds of a beloved brother. If others could truly profit spiritually from Peter’s painful lapse and condemnation, that apostle would surely have rejoiced to know that his brethren could grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ as a result of the Lord’s sinless use of his sin.
Monday, May 3rd – Galatians 2: 12
This verse tells why Paul so strongly and openly opposed Peter. The condemned apostle was moved by fear rather than faith. He was also influenced by Jewish party spirit rather than by the Holy Spirit. Accordingly, Peter lovelessly treated Gentile believers at Antioch as defective Christians simply because they had rightly regarded their baptism in Christ to supersede the shadowy rite of circumcision, and the mingling of their own blood with the blood of the covenant that had been shed for them by the Son of God to be unnecessary. Paul rightly regarded the Judaisers’ demand for Gentile circumcision to be blasphemously offensive to God who had accomplished redemption at the infinite cost of the shed blood of His only begotten Son.
Tuesday, May 4th – Galatians 2: 12, 13
Paul touches in v.12 upon Peter’s actions and his motivating fear of the circumcision party. In v.13, Paul calls Peter’s action hypocrisy. Jesus designated such hypocrisy the leaven of the Pharisees, and He had warned His disciples, including Peter, against it (Lk. 12:1). We learn also from v.13 how such leaven spread from Peter to others, including the pacific and lovingly reconciling Barnabas. If Jesus pronounced woe upon the man who caused the least in the kingdom of God to stumble (Lk. 17:2), surely the condemnation is greater for those, like Peter, who caused prominent and productive servants of Christ to stumble. Peter should have feared Christ more than the circumcision party. Thankfully, Paul, the one apostle who had not been warned by Jesus to avoid the leaven of the Pharisees, served to restore Peter and Barnabas to a sincere and holy love for Christ and for their brethren in Him.
Wednesday, May 5th – Galatians 2: 13-15
Paul not only discerned Peter’s hypocrisy, but he also openly denounced it. Paul did not practice an apathetic or fearful toleration of Peter’s sin, but spoke out boldly and faithfully against it. The apostle to the Gentiles, who himself had been a Hebrew of Hebrews and an eminent Pharisee, knew that the best any Jew could do without Christ would be to affect a guise of sincere piety that in truth consisted of outward and public conformity to some aspects of God’s Law, while hiding an inward and private failure to worship God in spirit and truth. Such Jews could only aggravate their essential sin by their vociferous demands that Gentiles keep God’s Law in ways that the Jews themselves failed to do. How thankful Peter, Barnabas, the Gentiles at Antioch, the Galatians, and the Church to and beyond our day should be for the holy, loving, and judicious candor of Paul, that called such demonic hypocrisy out of its hiding and cast it out of the hearts and minds of the godly.
Thursday, May 6th – Galatians 2: 16
With the words of this verse, Paul shows the true magnitude of the evil that the circumcision party was bringing to bear upon Peter, Barnabas, and Gentile believers throughout the churches that were spreading from Jerusalem, Judea, and throughout the world. It was not merely a matter of Jewish party spirit confusing and offending Gentile believers. It was a contention over the very heart of the gospel. In short, Peter, by his withdrawing from the Gentiles, was asserting in practical terms that circumcision, an aspect of the ceremonial law, was required for any person to be fully saved. It was unlikely that James himself countenanced this contention, and also unlikely that the circumcision party visiting Antioch had consciously put this pressure on Peter. Had they done so, Paul would surely have challenged them as well. Paul rightly grasped that even a practical suggestion, especially from an apostle of Christ, that a person was required to keep personally, perfectly, and perpetually any aspect of the Law of God, nullified the necessity and perfection of the grace of God in the saving work of Christ. The person and work of Christ must be the touchstone of all that a Christian thinks, feels, believes, says, and does. All that believers are and do must be brought captive to Christ.
Friday, May 7th – Galatians 2: 15, 16
Paul refers to the churches that were in and spreading out from Judea as being in Christ. In v.16, the apostle referred to Christ being in him. Both are true for all who have been made new creatures by the effectual calling of God in Christ. We are in Christ (Rom. 6:11; 8:1:2; Cor. 5:17), and Christ is in us (Rom. 8:10; Col. 1:27). Before his conversion, Paul had regarded Christ as a hated threat to his life and to his Jewish traditions. After his conversion, the apostle saw Christ to be no hated enemy but rather the true helper, Savior, and lover of his soul. He saw Christ as taking precedence over all that is natural and he saw his election in Christ to be the work of no foreign invader, alienating him from all he knew and loved, but rather the work of his loving God who delivered him from his sin and brought him into his true home in Christ and into the world of His grace. This is how Paul preached Christ and how we have accepted Him. Paul acknowledges that he—along with Peter, Barnabas, and the members of the circumcision party—were Jews by nature. As such they should have found it easier than could have the Gentiles, not to keep all that the Law of God demanded, but rather to know and accept all that it signified. The Law of God itself never promised salvation to anyone who kept it, but rather demanded what all sinners found impossible to give: perfect, personal, and perpetual obedience. The ceremonial law, with the blood of men (via circumcision) and animals (via sacrifice) pointed at the same time to what sinful men deserved (death) and what God graciously provided and accepted (a substitutionary atonement). Hence, the Law itself pointed beyond itself to the source of man’s salvation. The Law, the prophets, and the entire Old Testament point to Christ crucified for man’s salvation, and to nothing less, more, or beside Christ crucified.
Saturday, May 8th – Galatians 2: 15, 16
When Paul writes that he and those he was opposing were Jews by nature and not sinners from among the Gentiles, he is not denying that the Jews were sinners in the eyes of God. What he is alluding to is that the Jews had for centuries been privileged with certain advantages over the Gentiles, such as their being entrusted with the oracles of God (Rom. 3:1,2). As such, the Jews should have been the first to be convicted of their sin and humbled before God. They should have been the first to die to the Law of God as a means of salvation, and to be taught by the Law to look for the Lamb of God whose shed blood takes away not only their sin, but also the sin of the world. They should have known, too, that they were entrusted with the oracles of God to share them with the world, not to horde them and hide them under the increasing stench of their national pride and religious hypocrisy. The Jews pretended their obedience to the Law, while Gentiles sinned in ignorant and open disobedience to God’s Law. God forbid that we who now possess the oracles of God should ever become like those Jews who boasted only in their possessing the Law and vainly boasted of their performance of the Law, while refusing to be tutored by the Law to come to and abide in Christ.
Sunday, May 9th – Galatians 2: 15, 16
In v. 15, Paul acknowledges that he and his opponents at Antioch were Jews by nature. In v. 16, the apostle appeals to his opponents as his fellow-Christians who had been saved by God’s grace through their faith in Christ alone. Peter, Barnabas, and the others knew better than to play such legalistic hypocrites. They knew what, by God’s grace, we who are in Christ should know and rejoice in, namely, that the Law of God was not given by God to save sinners. The Law can only convict but never can convert a soul. The end of the Law is Christ in whom we believe and receive through such faith justification before God.
Monday, May 10th – Galatians 2: 16
Paul reiterates at the end of v.16 that no one is saved by works of the Law, and that by the works of the Law, no flesh ever has been or will be justified in God’s sight. Men may be impressed by pretended and partial law-keeping, but the Lord is not so impressed. When Jesus summarized the Ten Commandments, He did not say that the Law teaches that we should obey the Law, but rather that we should love God and our neighbor (Dt. 6:5; Mt. 22:34-40). We initally love God not because He is great and holy and glorious, but because He is gracious and has first loved us, even while we were sinners (Rom. 5:8). Those who have tasted such love and have been delivered from their bondage to guilt and fear, desire and delight to love their neighbors best by pointing them to Christ, the loving Lord, and not to circumcision and the killing Law.
Tuesday, May 11th – Galatians 2: 17-19
These verses are challenging to understand. The reason is that in them Paul speaks in a hypothetical sense. He used this form of communication as an appeal to Peter to reason with him through the absurdity of what Peter’s action entailed. When Paul uses the first person pronouns, we (v.17) and I (v.18), he joins himself to his condemned fellow apostle in a compassionate endeavor to walk with him out of his sinful folly. With such a hypothetical device, Paul can explore with Peter and with all readers of this letter the irrational and ultimately blasphemous ramifications of Peter’s position from the perspective of reasoning rather than actual living so that the erring apostle could repent long before he aggravated his sin by long practice of it.
Wednesday, May 12th – Galatians 2: 17
Paul in this verse invites Peter and the readers of this letter to think through the logical conclusion of Peter’s action. The gist of what he writes is as follows: What if it were so, he begins by saying, that we who both have sought our justification in Christ alone, having been prompted to do so by Christ who had clearly and repeatedly taught us that He is the one thing necessary, the Lamb of God who alone takes away the sin of His people, find that our faith in Christ alone has proven insufficient to justify us before God? Such an experience would make Christ a deceiving or at best mistaken minister of sin, would it not? Because Christ told us that no man could come to the Father except through Him, and now, by our practically adding that circumcision is necessary as well as Christ for our justification, we have found that had we completely believed in Him we would still be in our sin. To this logical outworking of what Peter was believing and teaching by his action of withdrawing from the Gentiles and clinging to the circumcision party, Paul declares: May it never be! For Paul rightly realized that Christ, the Son of God, the living truth of God, and the Savior of sinners, could never be such a minister of sin.
Thursday, May 13th – Galatians 2: 18, 19
Paul continues to reason hypothetically in v.18. He says that if he were to rebuild the belief that to any degree his salvation depended upon him fulfilling the Law, a belief he had demolished by the clarion proclamation that a man is justified by faith alone in Christ alone (v.16), he would not attain salvation but would confirm himself in his sin. For the Law of God can only convince a man of his sin but is powerless to convert him from his sin. The right use of the Law is to point a sinner not to the Law that only convicts and kills him, but to the Savior in whom by faith we have eternal life with God (Jn. 17:3). This right use of the Law, Paul came to know and practice as he declares in v.19.
Friday, May 14th – Galatians 2: 20
With this verse, Paul emerges from his illustration of the self-destructive, blasphemous, and condemning hypothetical reality he painted in vv.17-19. The apostle counters that hypothetical construction with the glorious reality of his regeneration and faith in Christ. Here the scaffolding of the Law, that prior to the coming of Christ pointed men to Christ, has fallen away and in its place stands a living, loving, forgiving, and justifying Savior, who has silenced all accusations against His people from whatever source, even from the Law of God.
Saturday, May 15th – Galatians 2: 20
This verse explains how Paul died to the Law (v.19). It is a single sentence that pulsates with strong and glorious life. Paul states a series of things that are not hypothetical, theoretical, speculative, or even symbolic, but that are awesomely real. He tells in profound and concentrated terms of the radical change that Christ made in his life—a change infinitely beyond anything that the Law ever did or could have done for him.
Sunday, May 16th – Galatians 2: 20
Paul’s death to the Law was one of crucifixion. He does not say only that Christ was crucified for him, although that was blessedly true for him and for all believers is Christ (Rom. 6:1-3). Instead, he asserts that he had been crucified with Christ. This is not true, of course, in a physical and literally historical sense, but it is true and radically real in a spiritual sense. The apostle tells us in Rom. 7:7-11 that prior to his regeneration the Law killed him, implying that its convicting power spiritually mortified him in the same way that physical death was bound to come upon him one day as the wages of his sin (Rom. 6:23). But crucifixion is a very specific kind of death. It is a judicial execution. For the unregenerate, after their death comes judgment (Heb. 9:27). But for Paul, by his union to Christ through faith, he in Christ experienced full divine judgment and execution for all of his sins. This is why for every believer, not even the Law of God can any longer bring an accusation, (Rom. 8:33,34) for the penalty of violated Law has been fully punished by God in Christ, and God does not impose double jeopardy on those who are in Christ.
Monday, May 17th – Galatians 2: 20
The Law could prescribe righteousness through its codified commandments, and it could describe righteousness symbolically through its ceremonial aspects (e.g., a lamb without defect for sacrifice). But the Law could not provide righteousness to any sinner. It could only convict and kill sinners. Yet, by faith in Christ, Paul was crucified and made alive. By his union to Christ in His death, Paul died to sin (Rom. 6:6,7), and by his union to Christ in His resurrection, the apostle was made alive to God (Rom. 6:4,5,8-11), not as a Law-obsessed Pharisee, desperately donning the filthy rags of his own vainly attempted righteousness, but as a beloved son clothed in the perfect righteousness of Christ.
Tuesday, May 18th – Galatians 2: 20
The sequence of existence for all unbelievers is: life, death, judgment, condemnation, and eternity in hell. The unbeliever senses the force of this sequence even apart from the Law of God, and for that reason he suppresses the truth not necessarily of what is revealed in Scripture (to which many, if not most, unbelievers are never exposed) but rather of this intuition that God has made known to all men (Rom. 1:18,19). Accordingly, unbelievers cling to life and dread and avoid a voluntary crucifixion. For believers, the sequence is: life, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension with Christ, vindication on Judgment Day, and reigning with Christ forever in glory in unimaginable joy (Ps. 16:11). Therefore, Paul writes of his crucifixion with Christ not as a dreaded curse, but as the portal through which he was ushered into new, abundant, and eternal life with Christ.
Wednesday, May 19th – Galatians 2: 20
Although he has been crucified with Christ, Paul confesses that he yet lived in the same flesh and blood that were his from the time of his conception and birth. However, his flesh and blood were all that for the time of his earthly pilgrimage remained unchanged in him. For his mind, soul, and will were mastered by a radically new and animating power through the Spirit of Christ indwelling him by faith (Rom. 8:9-17).
Thursday, May 20th – Galatians 2: 20
Paul summaries his new life in Christ as a life he lived by faith in the Son of God. This is radically different from the life he had lived by the power of his own natural endowments, endeavoring to attain, at best, an external conformity to the Law of God. Instead, the apostle lived by the power of faith, given to him by God’s grace (Eph. 2:8,9), and that faith united him to the living, resurrected, and ascended Son of God who is seated at God’s right hand ever to intercede for His people. There is no comparison between this living Savior and the letter of the Law to which Paul had died.
Friday, May 21st – Galatians 2: 20
When Paul says that he lived by faith in the Son of God, he speaks of the person of his Savior. In particular, this saving person is the divine and only-begotten Son of God who is eternally beloved of the Father. Earlier in this verse, Paul referred to his Savior as Christ, indicating His anointed office as the unique God/Man who came into the world to save sinners. Paul lived by faith in no ordinary or low person, but rather by faith in the majestic and glorious Son of God, who gave Himself and who fulfilled the Law for the salvation of His people.
Saturday, May 22nd – Galatians 2: 20
The attitude that prompted the Son of God to save Paul and all other believers is indicated by the phrase, who loved me. The demands of God’s Law were satisfied by the person and work of Christ. However, the reason behind such redeeming work having been accomplished by God’s Son for sinners has nothing to do with the Law. It has everything to do with the love of God the Father, who gave His Son to die on the cross (Jn. 3:16), and it has everything to do with the love of Christ, who voluntarily gave Himself to die so that sinners might by faith in Him live. In and through Christ, the loving mercy of God triumphs over the condemning judgment God’s Law demands for sinners.
Sunday, May 23rd – Galatians 2: 20
God the Father lovingly gave His beloved Son, and the Son of God lovingly gave Himself for the salvation of sinners in a very specific way. Christ did not give Himself primarily as a teacher or worker of miracles, although He did those things in the course of His earthly ministry. Supremely, the Son of God delivered Himself up, meaning that He submitted to the judicial demands of God’s Law in both His active obedience, wherein He obeyed the Law perfectly, and especially in His passive obedience, wherein He who knew no sin consented to be made sin and bear God’s judgment and condemnation for sin on behalf of His people. Greater love has no one than this.
Monday, May 24th – Galatians 2: 21
Anyone who thinks, feels, acts, or teaches by word or example (as Peter had been doing) that we are saved by Christ and our obedience to the Law, does not simply obscure or diminish the infinitely precious and potent grace of God, but he nullifies or makes into nothing that divine grace. The reason Paul gives is that if righteousness is earned by man to any degree, it may and must be earned to a perfect degree. Such an assertion makes God’s wisdom foolish, in that God acted needlessly in giving His Son, and Christ bore the exquisite and infinite anguish of His death needlessly. We can therefore see that even the slightest legalistic tendencies in us or others in the Church have monstrous and blasphemous implications.
Tuesday, May 25th – Galatians 2: 21
With this verse, Paul concludes his instructive reference to Peter’s hypocrisy and to Barnabas having been affected by it. Did Peter and Barnabas repent? Read Acts 15 to learn how united Peter and Barnabas were with Paul in their arguing prevailingly at the Jerusalem Council for the full standing of Gentiles in the Church by their faith in Christ alone. It appears very likely that the bonds of such a strong consensus and confession were forged at Antioch when one man, Paul, stood against the sin of his brethren, and won them for the glory of God and the good of Christ’s Church.
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