The events mentioned early in Galatians 2 probably occurred in Acts 15. Paul found it necessary to go to Jerusalem to help clarify the issue of circumcision in the early church. It would be helpful to read Acts 15:1‑31 in connection with this chapter.

As those great men of faith gathered in Acts 15, they came to the realization that circumcision was strictly an Old Testament requirement and that, once the Law of Moses was replaced with the gospel, circumcision was no longer an ordinance of God. It has been nailed to the cross. People could still circumcise their male children if they wanted to, but it was not necessary to please God.

Both the circumcised and the uncircumcised could join hands in fellowship with God and with one another. This was a huge test in the first century church. Once they got past this issue, real spiritual and numerical growth could occur.

Verse 10 also gives a brief, but important reminder to Christians to help those who are less fortunate. Do not underestimate the value of helping others.

In verses 11-14, Paul recounts an occasion when he had to confront the apostle Peter to the face because he had not handled an encounter with Gentiles in a proper way. Peter had come to Antioch and was eating with Gentiles, according to the agreement reached in Acts 15. But when a group of Jews from Jerusalem (“certain men came from James”) came there, Peter withdrew himself and would not associate with the Gentiles, while his Jewish brothers were there. Paul says that they “were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel.”

Notice Paul’s statement in verses 16 that makes it crystal clear that we are under the New Testament and not the Old. “…that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law.” This truth is taught multiple times in the gospel of Christ.

One of the hardest lessons for the first century Jews to learn was that Gentiles who were converted to Christ were full heirs of God and not subject to Old Testament Jewish customs and practices. It was not easy for them to set aside hundreds of years of traditions.

--Roger Hillis

The great apostle Paul is under attack. Judaizing teachers, who wanted to return to at least part of the Old Law, needed somehow to discredit Paul and his apostleship. Their influence was leading many away from Christ to a perverted gospel which would only condemn their souls. Galatians is Paul's attempt to reaffirm the truth of the gospel in their lives.

Some have divided the book of Galatians into three major sections:

• Chapters 1‑2 – Personal
• Chapters 3‑4 – Doctrinal
• Chapters 5‑6 – Practical [applications of the truth]

The first ten verses of this opening chapter are a defense of the gospel in its purity and simplicity. The apostle makes it quite clear that no other gospel than the one he had preached to them was acceptable. Even if an angel tried to change the message of the gospel, they were not to listen to any false teaching. Those who preach a different gospel (which he says is not another true gospel, but a perversion of the only true will of God) are under a divine curse from the Lord. Most translations say that such a false teacher is “accursed.” Some versions say that he is “anathema.” This means that the curse comes from God Himself.

In verses 11-24, Paul clarifies and reminds them that his message came through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, not from mere men. This is a fulfillment of the promise from Jesus that He would send the Helper (Comforter, KJV) who would reveal all truth (John 14:26; 16:13).

False teachers (Judaizing teachers) sought to minimize Paul’s influence on Christians by claiming he was not a true apostle of Christ. If he was a false apostle, his teaching could be ignored. In this section, Paul refers to his pre-Christian background and then to his conversion and his inspiration from God.

The account of Paul’s conversion from Judaism is one of the strongest proofs for the validity of Christianity that there is. Why would he change so suddenly from being a persecutor of Christians to one who preached that Jesus was indeed the Christ and the Savior of the world? He explains it in several places by telling them that he personally saw the resurrected Lord after he knew he had been put to death. He could no longer deny that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah of Old Testament prophecy.

--Roger Hillis

After having witnessed faithful leaders, we come to Micah. Micah and his mother adopt idolatry and fail to honor God. The family dysfunction in verses 1-6 is pretty clear. Micah had stolen money from his mother, and she had accursed the one who had stolen it before he came clean to her. But once he fessed up, she praised him and said that he should be blessed by the Lord. 

Next she says that the money is to be as a dedication to the Lord, then the money is used to fashion the image of an idol. Then Micah has his son be the priest of this arrangement. Still later, Micah makes the request of a young Levite priest to live with him and to also serve as a priest. Micah assumes that God will be proud of him for having such an arrangement.

However, what sort of arrangement is it when there are two consecrated priests, no temple, the true God, and idols as the subjects of worship? It is an arrangement born of ignorance and self-serving. And Micah’s family’s example is an abomination. It is sad when people know God’s will and willingly turn away from Him, forsaking His grace and mercy in favor of worldly pleasures.

But it is something altogether different when people are deluded into thinking that they are doing what God wants. We have the Bible, we need only to read it. Not the Quran, not the Bhagavad-Gita, not the Book of Mormon or another book written by man. God has done so much for me. The very least I can do is listen to Him in His Way and do as He would have me.

When He has made it so easy for me to know His will, I must take the time to listen to Him by reading His Word.

Not one of us is too good to take the time to find out how God would have us serve Him.

— Cory Byrd

This post originally appeared on Monday Night Bible Study.

Lord willing, beginning on May 1st, I will post, for the first sixteen days, chapter summaries of the New Testament books of Galatians, Ephesians, and Philippians. I hope you will find these studies helpful and encouraging to your walk with the Lord. Thank you so much for reading these posts.

--Roger Hillis

In this chapter we see the culmination of Samson’s character. Samson was imperfect, yet his faith in God led him to overcome seemingly impossible obstacles. Samson is mentioned by name as one among many in Hebrews 11:32-34 that accomplished much through faith.

In verses 1-3, there is evidence of Samson’s lack of righteousness and weakness in that he goes in to a harlot at Gaza. But he outsmarts his adversaries that wish to trap him by fleeing at midnight. His strength is indeed great as he places the gate doors of the city on top of a hill. 

The story of Samson and Delilah begins in verse 4. The Philistines were still looking to subdue Samson at this time, and just like with the woman from Timnah, the Philistines try to get to Samson through Delilah. 

She is to find out from Samson where his strength lies and report back to the Philistines so that they can finally subdue him. Instead of using threats as they did with the woman from Timnah, they bribe Delilah with money. 

Thus Delilah asks Samson where his strength is and how he could be bound. Three different times he seems to suspect her motives and he tells her things that really could not bind him. Three different times he escapes the trap that the Philistines set for him. Then, starting in verse 15, Samson becomes tired of her endless questioning, “his soul was vexed to death” (vs. 16). He tells her that his strength lies in his hair and she arranges for his hair to be cut and for the Philistines to take him. They put out his eyes and take him to Gaza where he is bound by bronze and forced to grind grain. Samson is humiliated and enslaved, but his hair begins to grow again. 

Notice in the latter part of verse 20 that even though Samson’s strength seemed to lay in his hair, the true source was the Lord. 

The climax of Samson’s death and that of some 3,000 Philistines is a memorable one, full of vengeance and might. The Philistines are sacrificing to their false god dagon and they also are rejoicing in how they finally captured Samson. 

Samson wants to take vengeance upon the Philistines because they took his eyesight and generally because of the adversarial history he has with them. Samson is able to bring down the temple on the Philistines and kill more of them with one act than he has done ever before. It is not his desire for vengeance that enables him to push on the pillars and bring down the temple. Rather it is Samson’s faith through prayer that God will give him the strength to do so. Add Samson’s faith to an environment where God seemed to be inclined to make the Philistines suffer and that Samson was a judge in Israel for twenty years, and you have the will of God bring enacted through Samson. Even with Samson’s faults and sins, God’s saw fit to bless him and use him. The same is true for us today. Even though we turn away from God, He still answers our prayers when we repent and call on Him in faith.

I am a sinner like Samson. I behave foolishly and selfishly and make decisions based on sinful desires. 

Samson, living under the old law, was not subject to the gospel call of Jesus Christ. But we are, so what saves us?

 – Faith

 – God’s grace

 – Obedience to Him and His word

 – Baptism for the remission of sins (Mark 16:16, I Peter 3:21)

We hear the Word of God and we believe. We repent of our sins and confess that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Then we are baptized and our sins are washed away. We become a new creation. 

God bless you as you study along with me tonight. Thank you for reading. Samson’s story is remarkable. Is your faith as strong as his was? Have you been saved?

— Cory Byrd

This post originally appeared on Monday Night Bible Study.

Samson tries to make peace with the one he would call his wife by bringing a young goat to her house and asking to see her. Thus does he comes to know that she was given to someone else. Samson’s example here is noble. She, and her people the Philistines betrayed and tricked him. To sell peace again in such a way after having been mistreated so took a great amount of character. Little by little, we are being shown the nobility of Samson’s character, and little by little, we see God working through Samson to bring down the Philistines.

The woman’s father offers Samson her sister instead. But this is where Samson’s patience runs out. God then works through him and Samson makes the curious statement, “This time I shall be blameless regarding the Philistines if I harm them!” This means that Samson felt justified by his next actions – that considering what they had done to him and what he was about to do to them, he still was morally right to act in the way that he does.

Samson catches 300 foxes, ties their tails to torches, and releases them into the grain, vineyards and olive groves of the Philistines. All were burned up. When the Philistines found out that Samson was the author of this deed, they burned up Samson’s “wife” and her father. Remember in Chapter 14 when the woman was threatened to be burned unless she told the houseguests the answer to Samson’s riddle? That threat caused her to betray Samson and she thought that it was also an escape to the threat of the Philistines. But, no. She and her father were burned up anyhow. From this we learn of the cold-blooded relentlessness of the Philistines. And there is also an application for us: in trying to escape a quandary by dishonest means, we are the authors of our own destruction in the end.

Samson then attacks the Philistines with a great slaughter and flees. Then the Philistines pursue him, going to the men of Judah and asking that they see him so that they could do to him what he has done to them. The men of Judah, 3,000 of them, go to Samson and remind him of the position he had put them in as the Philistines rule over Israel at this time. Samson agrees that he will let them take him to the Philistines as long as the Israelites themselves do not kill him. They agree and take him to the Philistines securely bound with new (very strong) ropes. 

When he came to the Philistines, they began shouting against him. The Spirit of the Lord works through Samson again as he breaks through the new ropes as if they were weak strings. 

Then Samson kills 1,000 men with the jawbone of a donkey. 

Think of the pieces at work in this story: a strong man, made VERY strong by the Spirit of the Lord. A large force bent on killing that man. And a jawbone, a crude facsimile of a weapon, almost an absurdity. God’s power was made all the more evident through the use of such a tool. How else could one explain killing 1,000 by the jawbone of a donkey than to say that God had a hand in it?

After this, Samson is very thirsty with exertion and God provides him with water from a hollow place in the earth. Then Samson judges Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines, the strength of the Spirit of the Lord having gotten him there.

An Old Testament story like this one can seem at odds with the peaceful methods and teachings of Jesus. When Jesus died on the cross, we received a new covenant from God, a perfect and loving solution to the problem of sin. God’s grace saves us now, through baptism into Jesus Christ. This portal allows us the assurance of eternal life with Him in heaven as long as we remain faithful. 

But before Jesus, God worked through men like David, Joshua and Samson. These strong men of faith were inspiring yet imperfect precursors to the perfect Son of the Living God.

— Cory Byrd

This post originally appeared on Monday Night Bible Study.

Socrates once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

As Christians, we most certainly recognize the importance of self-examination. It is all too easy to drift into bad habits and attitudes that would lead us away from the Lord. “Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away” (Hebrews 2:1).

Especially are we in danger when we have been influenced by false teachers, as had the Corinthians.  They had listened to the Judaizing teachers and had fallen prey to their evil leaven. They had been the victims of a “spiritual con job” and did not even realize it.

This should be a grave warning to us today. Earlier the apostle had written to these Christians, including this warning: “Therefore let him who thinks he stand take heed lest he fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12). This is an interesting passage in view of the prominent false teaching in the religious world that one cannot fall from God’s grace. Paul says you can and you need to “take heed” that it not happen.

Paul says that he trusted that they will not find themselves out of favor with God and be disqualified. But, in order that this would happen, they needed to listen to what he has written them in both of these inspired letters and make changes in their lives and their relationship with God. Without those changes, they might easily be disqualified.

He wrote these things to them, not to make a show of his apostolic authority, but for their “edification and not for destruction” (verse 10). We are in the church so that we might gain strength from the encouragement of one another.

Because the same thing could happen to us (that we might be led astray by false disciples), we must be constantly on guard, never forgetting that these false teachers appear as “ministers of righteousness” (11:15).

--Roger Hillis

“This section is the climax of Paul’s defense of his apostleship and his love for the believers at Corinth. He was reticent to write about these personal experiences, but there was no other way to solve the problem. In fact, to avoid exalting himself, Paul described his experience in the third person rather than the first person” (Wiersbe, page 132).

The apostle refers to one who was taken up into the third heaven (the realm of God) and had seen “the abundance of the revelations” from God. He had seen and heard things which it was “not lawful for a man to utter.” He wanted them to judge his faithfulness based on the truth God had revealed to Paul and that he had delivered to them.

He makes a brief reference to his “thorn in the flesh” from Satan that God used to keep him humble. He had pleaded with the Lord to remove it, but God would not, choosing rather to help Paul work through his challenges than to take them away. (That is a hard lesson for all of us to learn, isn’t it?)

Paul tells the Corinthians that he just wants them to recognize him for what he was, an apostle of Jesus Christ . He did not take from them the financial help he had a right to because he did not want them to misjudge his motive for preaching.

Reminding them of his upcoming visit to Corinth, he says that he still will not accept any money from them. Even though Paul was “in nothing,” any less than “the most eminent apostles,” he was not boasting in order that he might receive personal gain or benefit from them. He even asks their forgiveness in this area.

He makes the clear statement, in verse 15, that he had done this to care for their feelings on the matter and, as a parent who loves his children, was willing to spend and be spent for their salvation.

He concludes the chapter by insisting that they needed to repent of all ungodliness so that the trip would not cause him even greater sorrow.

--Roger Hillis

In challenging those who were questioning his apostolic authority, Paul pulled no punches. He wanted the Corinthians to know that the false teachers were messengers of Satan who would destroy the Lord's church.

Of course, they did not see themselves or present themselves in that way. False teachers do not come with a name tag identifying themselves as such. 

The Judaizers had so bragged about themselves that many of the Corinthian Christians had believed them and begun to follow them and their teaching. It has often been said that if you repeat a lie enough times, people will begin to believe it. That seems to be what was happening to Paul’s reputation in Corinth.

Although Paul considered it to be foolishness, he realized that he needed to do some boasting of his own in order to persuade the Corinthians of his credentials.

And so reluctantly, he warns them against being deceived (verses 3-4) by those who would make false accusations against him, with no proof. He was innocent until proven guilty.

He also reminds them that he was not preaching simply for the money (verses 5-10, he had probably been accused of that by the Judaizers). He had not taken financial support for his work in the gospel at Corinth primarily so such a false claim could not be made against him.

Paul gives them a warning against being deceived, not only by Satan himself, but by those false apostles whom the devil had sent into their midst (verses 12-15).

To assure them of his faithfulness to God and not to money, he then recounts the tremendous suffering he had endured because of his devotion to Christ (verses 22-33). They knew all of these great hardships he had gone through for them and the sake of the gospel.

Surely they would realize the truth when they saw it clearly.

--Roger Hillis

Paul begins his personal defense of his apostleship here. He starts out by reminding them that we fight a spiritual battle, not an earthly one and that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal.

The Judaizing teachers had apparently been accusing Paul of using worldly, carnal tactics. The truth is that they were the guilty ones. They made false accusations and they tried to turn the Corinthians against Paul.

In verse 10, they said of Paul that his letters were weighty and powerful, but they referred to his bodily presence as weak and his speech as contemptible. They were trying to do whatever they could to diminish his apostolic authority.

Paul assures them that the things he taught them and had written to them were for their edification, not for their destruction. He only wanted to do those things that would strengthen the disciples in their commitment to God. The false teachers, on the other hand, were just trying to line up their own disciples and draw them away to their destruction.

Paul tells them that his gentleness with them was because he was dealing with them as a loving parent. But, if necessary, on his next visit, they would see the boldness and courage of this apostle of Christ.

The apostle makes it clear that they were not to compare themselves with other Christians, rather with the perfect standard of Christ. We are always foolish when we try to make ourselves look stronger by trying to make someone else look weaker.

Paul says that he did not overextend his authority when he preached the gospel to the Corinthians. It was his goal to take the gospel of Christ to areas of the world where it had not been preached. His motives were pure and he wants to assure these early Christians that the gospel message is trustworthy.

The criticisms against him were unfounded. He knew he could not convince the false teachers, but he did not want to lose the Corinthians themselves to the devil.

--Roger Hillis