GALATIANS 2.1-21
Life by the Faith of Christ
Many are reading this little book not out of curiosity to see what another person thinks about the letter to the Galatians, but for actual help in understanding that much-discussed portion of Scripture. With each one of you I wish to hold a little personal talk before we proceed farther.
Every portion of Scripture is connected with every other portion; as soon as we learn one thing thoroughly, making it a part of ourselves, it joins us and aids us in the search for more knowledge, just as each morsel of food that we eat and assimilate assists us in our labor for our daily bread. If, therefore, we proceed in the right way with the study of the epistle to the Galatians, we shall have opened a wide door to the whole Bible.
The way to knowledge is so simple that many despise it. It is a royal road, open to all: "My son, if you receive My words and treasure up My commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding; yes, if you cry out for insight and . . . seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures; then you will understand . . .. for the Lord gives wisdom." Proverbs 2:1-6
God appeared to Solomon in a dream and promised to give him wisdom; but it was not by idle dreaming that the wisdom came. Solomon did not go to sleep and wake up to find himself the wisest man that ever lived. He longed for knowledge so much that he did indeed dream of it by night, but he worked for it by day.
If you would understand the Word of God, study it. No man on earth can give you his knowledge. Another may tell you so that it need not take you as long as it took him; he may direct you how and where to work; but whatever anyone really knows he must acquire for himself. When you have traveled over a road a thousand times, you know every turn in it and can see the whole way in your mind. So after you have thought through a portion of Scripture time after time, you will at last be able to see the whole of it, and every separate statement in it at a single glance. And when you can do that, you will see in it what no other on earth can tell you.
1 Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and also took Titus with me. 2 And I went up by revelation, and communicated to them that gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately to those who were of reputation, lest by any means I might run, or had run, in vain. 3 Yet not even Titus who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised.
"After fourteen years," following the natural course of the narrative, means fourteen years after the visit of Galatians 1:18, which was three years after Paul's conversion. This visit therefore was seventeen years after his conversion, or about A. D. 51, which coincides with the conference in Jerusalem recorded in Acts 15. It is with that conference and the things that led to it and grew out of it that the second chapter of Galatians deals.