Galatians 2:3

_ _ But — So far were they from regarding me as running in vain, that “not even Titus who was with me, who was a Greek (and therefore uncircumcised), was compelled to be circumcised.” So the Greek should be translated. The “false brethren,” Galatians 2:4 (“certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed,” Acts 15:5), demanded his circumcision. The apostles, however, constrained by the firmness of Paul and Barnabas (Galatians 2:5), did not compel or insist on his being circumcised. Thus they virtually sanctioned Paul’s course among the Gentiles and admitted his independence as an apostle: the point he desires to set forth to the Galatians. Timothy, on the other hand, as being a proselyte of the gate, and son of a Jewess (Acts 16:1), he circumcised (Acts 16:3). Christianity did not interfere with Jewish usages, regarded merely as social ordinances, though no longer having their religious significance, in the case of Jews and proselytes, while the Jewish polity and temple still stood; after the overthrow of the latter, those usages naturally ceased. To have insisted on Jewish usages for Gentile converts, would have been to make them essential parts of Christianity. To have rudely violated them at first in the case of Jews, would have been inconsistent with that charity which (in matters indifferent) is made all things to all men, that by all means it may win some (1 Corinthians 9:22; compare Romans 14:1-7, Romans 14:13-23). Paul brought Titus about with him as a living example of the power of the Gospel upon the uncircumcised heathen.