Verse of the Week - Galatians 2:1

How are you doing on your memorization challenge? 

Personally, I don't know how much I have memorized, but I know more about Paul and his ministry than I did before I started this challenge.

As I sat reading this week's verse, I asked myself what I could gain from this one sentence. 

1. Fourteen years is a long time to be preaching and teaching the gospel. 
2. Paul also gained supporters like Barnabus and Titus who were willing to travel with him.
3. Traveling in biblical times was quite a journey. 
4. I wonder how many folks are traveling in primitive conditions to spread the Good News of Jesus today, or to resolve an issue with leaders in the church. 

My next course of action was to read the bible commentaries about this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible helped me to gain a better understanding of the verse in the context of Paul's ministry.

Then fourteen years after I went up again to Jerusalem,... 

• That is, either after it pleased God to call him by his grace, and reveal his Son in him
• or after he had been at Jerusalem to see Peter, with whom he stayed fifteen days, and then went into Syria and Cilicia; 
• It was seventeen years after his conversion that he took this journey to Jerusalem he here speaks of 
• He seems to refer to the time when he and Barnabas went from the church at Antioch to the apostles and elders about the question, whether circumcision was necessary to salvation
• Acts 15:1 which entirely agrees with the account the apostle here gives of this journey, and which he went not alone

with Barnabas: and took Titus with me also

• Barnabas is mentioned in Luke's account (in Acts) as going with him at this time, but Titus is not.
• The apostle might judge it proper and prudent to take Titus with him, who was converted by him(Paul), was a minister of the Gospel, and continued uncircumcised.
• Paul might choose to have Titus along with him, partly that he might be confirmed in the faith the apostle had taught him; and partly that he might be a living testimony of the agreement between the apostle's principles and practice.
• By having Titus and Barnabas with him, he might have a competent number of witnesses to testify to the doctrines he preached, the miracles he wrought, and the success that attended him among the Gentiles; and to relate, upon their return, what passed between him and the elders at Jerusalem; for by the mouth of two or three witnesses everything is established.

"Though Paul conversed with the other apostles, yet he did not receive any addition to his knowledge, or authority, from them." Matthew Henry's Bible Commentary