Galatians 2:11- 21

The fear of man does bring a snare (11-16). Social pressure can squeeze you into a mould where you don’t really fit and don’t truly want to be. Fear makes its presence felt in the lives of the best of people, and can cause them to act out of character. Fear can lead to hypocrisy. That’s what happened in the case of Peter, and Paul was right to call him out on it. I suppose, spiritually speaking, Paul was the ‘new kid on the block’. But he had the loving courage to rebuke the revered apostle. Paul saw that the gospel was at stake (14). The good news of Jesus creates a level playing field in which all the old barriers come down (3:28). In Christ Jews and Gentiles are one before God, and should be able to express their unity in sharing meals and in many other ways Before the Judaizing pressure group came in and started throwing their weight around, Peter lived ‘’like a Gentile and not like a Jew’’ (14). He used to eat with Gentiles (12). He was perfectly free to do so. But then the fear of people got him into double standards. ‘’If you, a Jew, live like a non-Jew when you’re not being observed by the watchdogs from Jerusalem, what right do you have to require non-Jews to conform to Jewish customs just to make a favourable impression on your old Jerusalem cronies.’’ The Message.

Our calling and responsibility is to always act ‘’in line with the truth of the gospel’’ (14). When a leader strays from this path, regrettably, others of Christ’s sheep follow him over the cliff edge (13). Peter’s hypocrisy set in motion a chain reaction of hypocritical living (13). This was probably not something he intended or expected, but it happened. Our actions have consequences. Paul was not being awkward for the sake of it in pointing out this inconsistency. It’s not that he was being belligerent because he was naturally pugnacious, or that he liked to point the finger at others. But when ‘’the truth of the gospel’’ is at stake you have to draw a line in the sand and make a courageous stand. The Judaizers added to the gospel. They insisted that in order to be saved a person must keep the Jewish law in addition to having faith in Christ. A man must be circumcised, they said. Paul, in response, put on his theological boxing gloves and fought for the central truth that justification (a right standing with God) is by faith alone. Four times in (15-20) Paul uses the word ‘’faith’’ (three times in 15 and once in twenty). ‘’We know very well that we are not set right with God by rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. How do we know? We tried it-and we had the best system of rules the world has ever seen! Convinced that no human being can ever please God by self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as the Messiah so that we might be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to be good…So I quit being a ‘’law man’’ so that I could be God’s man…If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.’’ The Message.

If anyone tries to say that anything other than faith in Christ will make a person a Christian, we also need to resist those ‘added ingredients’ that heretics want to toss into the mixing bowl. The truth sets free. Error ties people up in chains.

It is the case that some people opposed Paul’s teaching of justification by faith. It seems they deliberately misunderstood it (17) arguing that Paul was saying, ‘It doesn’t matter how you live so long as you have faith in Jesus.’ They said that he (and ultimately Jesus Himself) was promoting sin. Anyone who still thinks like that should read Romans 6. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, please expose to my own heart any lurking hypocrisy, that I may turn from it and glorify you in a crucified life of faith in you.