Don’t Forget the Poor

In Galatians 2:10, Paul unexpectedly makes a reference to the Jerusalem apostles’ interest in the poor and his own  eagerness to provide assistance. What is this doing in a letter about justification and Jew/Gentile relations?

Historically, this reference suggests that the visit he describes in Galatians 2:10 is the same visit recorded in Acts 11:27-30, where Saul and Barnabas are sent to Judea with relief for the brothers there who are suffering from famine predicted by the prophet Agabus. Paul is there to help the poor of Jerusalem, and that is what they ask him to do. They don’t demand that anyone be circumcised.

The reference to relief of the poor is significant in the context of the debate in Galatia. 2:8 indicates that the apostles had divvied up the world. On the one hand, the apostles based in Jerusalem – Cephas, James, John – were working among the circumcised, while Paul and Barnabas worked among the uncircumcised. But that separation of areas of ministry was not a division within the church, and the relief provided to the poor of Judea was the chief indicator that the church was not going to divide up along Jew-Gentile lines. Gentiles brought relief, and Paul later spends a good bit of time gathering up relief for the poor and hungry of Judea from the Gentile churches, in an effort to seal the koinonia between them.

Sharing goods had been a mark of koinonia from the first. When the Spirit fell, all who received the Spirit had the Spirit in common, and the diverse gifts that the Spirit gave were to be used for the common good. That koinonia in the Spirit was also to be expressed in a koinonia of material goods. So the early Christians sold property to provide for poor members of the community, and they had all in common, treating their wealth not so much as property for their own disposal but a trust for the church as a whole.