Gal 2:6-14 - Acting in line with the gospel

There are many Christians who live out of sync with the truth of the gospel and it was no different in Galatia in the 1st century. I have already stated in previous posts on Galatians that Jesus fulfilled the law and that the Galatians' problem had to do with living inconsistently with the logical implications of that fulfillment. The some of the details will come out later in Paul's letter, but for now, we'll look at Gal 2:6-14 (NRSV):

⁶And from those who were supposed to be acknowledged leaders (what they actually were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)—those leaders contributed nothing to me. ⁷On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised ⁸(for he who worked through Peter making him an apostle to the circumcised also worked through me in sending me to the Gentiles), ⁹and when James and Cephas and John, who were acknowledged pillars, recognized the grace that had been given to me, they gave to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. ¹⁰They asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was^* eager to do. 11 But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned; ¹²for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. ¹³And the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. ¹⁴But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, ‘If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?’^*

There are two instances of the word 'gospel' (v7 [only once in Greek, but put twice in English for sake of clarity] + v14) and I contend that they are still talking about the same basic message about Jesus and what he has accomplished. Verse 7 doesn't reveal much about the gospel itself, but rather that Paul got it right and was not made to change anything. The second instance confirms what has been said thus far about the Galatian controversy, namely that the problem is not that they don't know the gospel, but that they are not living in light of the gospel (in line with the logic of what should naturally follow). The Greek word only occurs once in the entire New Testament so I should point that out. "Acting consistently" is ορτηοποδεο (Strongs 3716) with the following definitions: 1) to walk in a straight course 2) metaph. to act uprightly. Both options say exactly what we've established about following what has been taught concerning Jesus.

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