Galatians 02 Round Two: Dead Man Walking

Grace doesn’t need your perfection; it needs your trust. We open Galatians 2 and follow Paul from a high-stakes meeting in Jerusalem to a face-to-face challenge with Peter in Antioch, uncovering why the early church fought so hard to protect the freedom found in Jesus. The question is timeless: are we made right with God by keeping the rules, or by placing our faith in Christ?

Paul’s account is both humble and fearless. He brings his message to recognized leaders, confirms alignment, and holds up a living case study in Titus—a Gentile who isn’t forced to be circumcised. That detail matters because it crushes the idea that ritual earns belonging. When pressure mounts and Peter withdraws from Gentile tables, Paul steps in. Not to win an argument, but to guard the truth that unites us across cultures: justification by faith, not by the works of the law. If performance could save us, the cross would be unnecessary.

From there we explore the heartbeat of Christian living: “I have been crucified with Christ.” The old self that hustles for approval is gone. Christ’s life in us produces what the law could only demand. Obedience shifts from fear to love. Community widens instead of fractures. Mission becomes focused and fruitful—Peter toward Jews, Paul toward Gentiles—while the message stays one: saved by grace through faith, and eager to remember the poor. This isn’t about lowering the bar; it’s about changing the engine that gets us there.

If you’re weary of trying to earn what Jesus already gave, this conversation will help you breathe again. Hear how grace dismantles hypocrisy, heals our need for approval, and turns daily choices into a response to love. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs freedom, and leave a review to help others find the show. What part of your faith is still running on performance—and what would change if you trusted grace today?

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The More We Dig. The More We Find.

Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation (NLT).
Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Theme Of Galatians
• 0:50 Grace Versus Law Explained
• 2:30 Paul’s Jerusalem Meeting Recapped
• 4:50 Freedom Protected From False Teachers
• 6:20 Paul Confronts Peter In Antioch
• 8:10 Justified By Faith, Not The Law
• 10:05 Crucified With Christ: Dead Man Walking
• 11:40 Practical Call To Love Jesus Daily
• 12:20 Closing Prayer And Key Verse

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to the Bible Breakdown Podcast. Every day, we take one chapter of the Bible, dig deeper, and discover that the more we dig, the more we find. You can find out more at the BibleBreakdown.com. Now let's grow in God's Word together. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast with your host, Pastor Brandon. Today, Galatians chapter two. And if I were to give this one a title, it would be Dead Man Walking. We're going to get to that toward the end of the chapter today. But if you like what we're doing here, make sure you like, share, and subscribe to the YouTube video. Make sure you leave us a five-star review on the podcast. You are forever and always my favorites, podcast listeners. I love you. And then always where we gather together at the Bible breakdown discussion on Facebook. And I'm going to tell you something, the more we dig, the more we find. And we can dig for days in the book of Galatians. So if you got your Bibles, you want to open up with me to Galatians chapter two. I want to just remember what we're doing here. And that is that Paul is writing to this church that he helped start in a city called Galatia. And he is devastated because when he left them, man, they loved Jesus. They were growing in God, walking toward freedom. It just seemed like they just, things were in a good place. Whereafter he left, people came in and started trying to confuse things and say, well, loving Jesus is good and all, but you really need to be Jewish. You really need to get that works thing going on. And really, God will love you if you're perfect. Not because you are forgiven, you start walking in freedom, the exact opposite way. And so they start frustrating and getting things confused. And Paul is riding back and he's he's frustrated, he's angry, and he's like, we're missing it. It's all about Jesus. God isn't looking for a contract, he's looking for a relationship. And he's helping them find that balance. Because on one end, it's this free grace theology that says anything goes because God loves me. Well, that's not that's not right. The other side, well, God does love you, but it's not right to do it that way. Other side says, I got to do all the things right so that God will love me. Well, that's not right. The answer is in the middle. Because God loves me, I do what is right. I want to follow God. I want to get rid of the sin in my life because God loves me. It's from a relationship, not from a place of fear. And so the overall theme of Galatians is we are saved for good works, not by good works. We're saved by grace through faith. And in chapter one, Paul's just pleading with him and he's saying, Man, it's really all about Jesus. It's really all about Jesus. And I made a mistake because yesterday I told you that he wrote this right before he goes to Jerusalem to complain about the Judaizers. Because we're gonna see today, he's actually right after that that he's writing to them to tell them the truth. Because he's gonna talk about how he ends up after 14 years, he finally has had enough of these Judaizers who are, you know, who are telling another gospel and he goes up to deal with it. And I'm gonna tell you something about Paul. Paul don't mess around, right? I don't know if you've noticed this yet. If you're just now new to the Bible breakdown podcast, you can go back and listen to some of the other ones. Paul don't mess around. Now, you think about in the early church, like you have these people that probably had a little bit of reputation, like Peter. He don't care. Watch what happens today, and we're gonna see what God's Word will say to us about this idea of being a dead man walking and how we can live for God in this world today. Let's read it together. Chapter two of Galatians, verse one. Fourteen years later, I went back to Jerusalem again, this time with Barnabas and Titus came along too. I went there because God revealed to me that I should go. While I was there, I met privately with those considered to be leaders of the church and shared with them the message that I had been preaching to the Gentiles. I wanted to make sure that we were in agreement for fear that all my efforts had been wasted and I was running the race for nothing. And they supported me and didn't demand that my companion Titus be circumcised, though he was a Gentile. So pause. So other words, Paul is humble enough to say, now listen, I got this from the Lord, but maybe I'm crazy. Maybe I didn't hear this right. So I'm gonna go to you guys. I mean, he he says over and over again, he considered himself to be the lowest apostle there. I just want to, I just want to be a blessing, man. I just want to serve. So you tell me if I'm wrong. He said, not only was I not wrong, but they told me that Titus didn't have to be to be circumcised. Now that's that's interesting because the Judaizers who had came to Galatia was like, well, if you really want to serve God, snip snip. To which I'd be saying, uh, no, no. But that's what they were saying. And so Paul's like, uh-uh, no, that is not what they were saying at all in Jerusalem. Verse 4, even that qu I can't believe I said that. That was amazing. Verse 4, even that question came up only because of some so-called believers there, false ones really, who were secretly brought in. They sneaked in to spy on us and to take away the freedom we have in Christ Jesus. They wanted to enslave us and force us to follow their Jewish regulations, but we refused to give in to them for a single moment. We wanted to preserve the truth of the gospel message to you. And the leaders of the church had nothing to add to what I had been preaching. By the way, the reputation as great leaders made no difference to me, for God has no favorites. Instead, they saw that God had given me the responsibility of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as he had given Peter the responsibility of preaching to the Jews. Isn't that interesting, by the way? Paul was mainly sent to the Gentiles. There was noticing that Peter was mainly sent to the Jewish people. Verse 8, for the same God who worked through Peter as the apostle to the Jews also worked through me as the apostle to the Gentiles. In fact, James, Peter, and John, who were known as pillars of the church, recognized the gift God had given me, and they accepted Barnabas with me as their co-workers. They encouraged us to keep preaching to the Gentiles while they continued to work with the Jews. Their only suggestion was that we keep on helping the poor, which I have always been eager to do. So in other words, he goes and he says, Now listen, guys, are we running two different plays here? And they said, No, absolutely not. We are saved by grace through faith. We are saved for freedom, not from freedom. In other words, we don't we don't get free, and then God accepts us. He said, No, no, no, I want you just like you are, and then I'm gonna walk you to freedom every day. Cool, we're good. I tell you what we're gonna do, Paul. We're gonna go reach the Jewish people, you go reach the Gentile people. That way we can multiply our efforts. He said that's that's what we were gonna do. But then watch what happens in verse 11. But when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face, for he did what he did was very wrong. Pause. Can you imagine? Peter comes to Antioch and Paul got in his grill. Okay, Paul. Gangster mode. What did you what happened? Well, verse 12. When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile believers who were all not circumcised. But afterward, when some of his friends, some of the friends of James came, Peter wouldn't eat with the Gentiles anymore. He was afraid of criticism from these people who insisted only on the necessity of circumcision. As a result, the other Jewish believers followed Peter's hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. When I saw that they were not following the truth of the gospel message, I said to Peter in front of all the others, Since you, a Jew by birth, have discarded the Jewish laws and are living like a Gentile, why are you now trying to make these Gentiles follow the Jewish traditions? You and I are Jews by birth, not sinners like, in quotes, sinners like the Gentiles. Yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. We have believed in Christ Jesus so that we might be made right with God because of our faith in Jesus Christ, not because we obeyed the law. For no one will ever be made right with God only by, or be right with God by obeying the law. So like only by obeying the law. You've got to have a relationship with Jesus. Verse 17. But suppose we seek to be made right with God through faith in Christ Jesus, and then we are found guilty because we have abandoned the law. Would that mean Christ has led us into sin? Absolutely not. Rather, I am a sinner if I rebuild the old system of law I already tore down. For when I tried to keep the law, it condemned me. So I died to the law. I stopped trying to meet all of its requirements so that I might live for God. And here's what he says: My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For I, for if keeping the law could make us right with God, we would have no need for Christ to die. Now, what did Paul just say? What he's saying is, is I stopped trying to merely obey the law, thinking that obeying the law, the Old Testament only, was how I was going to get a relationship with God. Because if being perfect was possible, then Jesus didn't need to die. The reason why Jesus had to come and die was because being perfect is impossible. We already messed up. The first time we sinned, we're not perfect anymore. And so what Paul is saying is I realized that I can't get to God by being perfect. I have to surrender. I have to surrender my life over to Jesus. And that's why I pursue God. I no longer live my life according to Him. I now belong to Christ Jesus. I live according to what He wants me to do. And so therefore I end up doing everything the law says, but I'm not doing it so that I will get forgiveness. I will do it out of a sense of freedom because I have received forgiveness. You look at what he says in the book of Romans. We read that just a couple months ago. It said in Romans that chapter one, everybody has sinned and gone their own way. Chapter two, God gave the law to show us what perfection looked like and to show us how far we had truly fallen, so that chapter three we would realize that when Jesus came to die for our sins, what he was doing. Paul is now saying the exact same thing. If we keep trying to live perfect, we're never going to get there. And we're going to always live a life of failure. But instead, when we turn to God, then he changes us from the inside out. He washes away all of our sin. And now we start to pursue him. And in pursuing him, out of joy, we begin fulfilling the law. The Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments we begin to fulfill because we're wanting to live in freedom every day. Because it's about Jesus and not about perfection. And so that's why he's saying, I'm a dead man walking. I don't live for myself anymore. I have died to my sin. I'm now alive in Christ. That's why people say, Pastor, how is it possible to live without sin? Well, it's because you can't. You can't live without sin. But Christ living through you will walk you toward freedom every day. And it's a journey. It'll take you the rest of your life. The greatest thing about Jesus is that he saves us and then he goes to work on us. And he starts to deliver us of every sin, every self-medicating, destructive habit in our life. And we do it because God loves us, not for it. So I'm going to encourage you with something. Focus on falling in love with Jesus. Focus on loving him with everything you have, doing what honors him, living according to his word because he loves you, not so that he will love you. And watch what happens. Let's pray together. God, thank you so much. I love you. I'm thankful for you who you are and what you're doing in our life. I pray that as we fall more in love with you and we realize that it's all about you, we'll see our life as a dead man walking. We're not living according to our ideas and our things anymore. We're living according to your grace. And as we do that, we get to see you for who you are. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. And amen. Well, don't forget Galatians 2.16. We just got through reading. It says, we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Christ Jesus, not simply by obeying the law. Jesus is looking for a relationship, not a contract, and we fall more in love with him every day. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow for Galatians chapter three.