Galatians 2 Bible study: Christ lives in me

"Then after a period of fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus also with me." (2:1). The verse doesn't say what the fourteen years are counted from, and these notes don't count them, add them to anything, or date anything by them. The letter's I says how: "I went up by revelation" (2:2) (tap revelation), and what happened there: "I laid before them the Good News which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately before those who were respected, for fear that I might be running, or had run, in vain." (2:2). Then Titus: "But not even Titus, who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised." (2:3). The next verse goes on, "This was because of the false brothers secretly brought in, who stole in to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage" (2:4) (tap liberty), "to whom we gave no place in the way of subjection, not for an hour, that the truth of the Good News might continue with you." (2:5) (tap truth).

Psalms 143:2→leads toGalatians 2:16

The psalmist prays, "Don’t enter into judgment with your servant, for in your sight no man living is righteous" (Psalm 143:2). Paul (Galatians 1:1), writing "to the assemblies of Galatia" (Galatians 1:2), has this: "a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ" (Galatians 2:16), and the same sentence ends, "because no flesh will be justified by the works of the law" (Galatians 2:16). In Romans (Romans 1:1) he writes, "by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight" (Romans 3:20). Paul doesn't name Psalm 143 in either place, and the WEB words him and the psalm differently, so setting them side by side is a reading. It rests on a subject both speak of: whether anyone living is in the right in God's sight. Some hear the psalm's words in Paul's, and read Galatians 2:16 as saying how a person is justified, through faith in Jesus Christ, where the psalm says no one living is righteous before God. Others keep each to its own words: the psalmist asks God not to enter into judgment with him and calls on God's own faithfulness and righteousness (Psalm 143:1, 143:11), and Paul, who names no Scripture here, speaks of the works of the law and of faith in Jesus Christ. These notes don't choose between the readings, and don't say more about being justified than the verses say.

δοκέωdokeosay dok-EH-o

Strong's: "to think; by implication, to seem (truthfully or uncertainly)". Thayer lists 2:2 under "those highly esteemed, of repute, looked up to, influential". Here is what almost everyone misses: in this chapter the WEB gives the verb as respected twice and reputed twice, "those who were respected" (2:2), "those who were reputed to be important" and "who were respected" (2:6), and "those who were reputed to be pillars" (2:9), and in the Greek it is the same verb all four times. Galatians has it five times (counted in RP2018). Luke's Gospel has it in its opening lines, where the WEB gives it as seemed: "it seemed good to me also" (Luke 1:3).