Then fourteen years after I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and took Titus with me also.
Translate, 'After х dia (G1223)] fourteen years'-namely, from Paul's conversion inclusive (Alford). In the 14th year from it (Birks). The same visit, his third, to Jerusalem, as Acts 15:1-41 (A.D. 50 AD), when the apostles and church in council decided that Gentile Christians need not be circumcised. His emitting allusion to that decree is:
(1) Because his design is to show his own independent apostolic authority, whence he would not support himself by their decision. Thus general councils are not above apostles.
(2) He argues upon principle, not authoritative decisions.
(3) The decree did not go the length of the position here: the council merely did not impose Mosaic ordinances; the apostle maintains the Mosaic institution itself is at an end.
(4) The Galatians were Judaizing, not because the Jewish law was imposed by the Church as necessary to Christianity, but because they thought it necessary to these who aspired to higher perfection (Galatians 3:3; Galatians 4:21).
The decree would not disprove their view, and therefore would have been useless to quote. Paul confutes them far more directly, 'Christ is of no effect unto you, whosoever are justified by the law' (Galatians 5:4) (Paley).
Titus with me also - specified on account of what follows as to him in Galatians 2:3. Paul and Barnabas, and others, were deputed by the church of Antioch (Acts 15:2) to consult the apostles and elders at Jerusalem on the circumcision of Gentile Christians.