Galatians for beginners,
The name of the series, this is lesson number five in that series. Title of this
lesson, Paul Confronts Peter. Paul Confronts Peter. We're going to be
looking at Galatians chapter 2, if you want to follow along in your Bibles.
Galatians chapter 2, that's where we'll be. And as always, we'll be putting up the
scriptures on the screen. So far in this epistle, Paul the Apostle,
who's the author of the Epistle, is defending himself against accusations
that somehow he has changed the gospel in order to make it more palatable to
Gentiles, by removing certain commands concerning, specifically, circumcision.
That's the accusation he's facing. And that's what he's
defending against. His accusers, the Judaizers. Remember those people, the
Judaizers? They were charging that they and the true apostles, like Peter in
Jerusalem, they were teaching the original gospel, which included
circumcision and certain law keeping. In describing his past association with Peter and the other apostles, Paul demonstrates that
they have always been supportive and in agreement with the gospel that he
preaches, not the one that is promoted by the Judaizers. And, of course, in this day
and age you couldn't get away with this kind of business here, because one phone
call, right? One phone call. Hello, Peter, is Paul - is that what he's
doing? Let me text you, is this what - But in those days news traveled slowly and so
they could promote something like this. I mean, they're in the province of
Galatia, way far from Jerusalem. And they seemed honest. They seemed educated, these men. They
were knowledgeable of the Word and so on and so forth. So if
they were discrediting Paul and saying at the same time, a thousand
miles from home, well Peter, back in Jerusalem, he agrees with us. There was no
way to fact-check that. And so they were getting away with this. And then that
word was spreading from one congregation to another. Imagine for a moment,
put yourself in the position of Paul having to defend against this type of
thing, right? He couldn't get on a plane and fly out and visit three or
four of those congregations during a weekend. Solve the problem. Have called a video conference. Get all the people involved. It's pretty slow going
in those days. So he does something. He writes a letter. And that's the letter
that we're studying. In chapter 2 of this letter, verse 11 to 21,
Paul even goes further to recount a time when even Peter himself was untrue to
the gospel and Paul had to correct him in defense of the pure message of
salvation in Christ Jesus by faith. The point being, he's saying, you people
are saying Peter agrees with you and this is how you are
confirming your teaching. And I'm telling you that Peter always agreed with my
teaching every time I met with him and the Apostles; as a matter of fact, even
when Peter, the one that you people are putting all your chips on, even when that
Peter was not acting properly, in accordance to the gospel, I, Paul,
confronted him about this. So that's the context of why he's telling the
story about the time that he confronted Peter. So let's look at verse 11. He
says, chapter 2:11, he says, "But when Cephas," right, we know that's Peter, "when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood
condemned." Paul establishes the place and the seriousness of the problem,
because of his error in judgment on the matter of the gospel, even Peter - I mean,
Peter, stood condemned. Now, in an incident which Paul is going to describe a
little bit later on here, he said that he opposed Peter publicly. Now, let me make
just a little side commentary here, the very fact that in the Bible, an
inspired writer explains and tells a story where Peter, himself, was in error
concerning the gospel - that passage and this story alone should disqualify all
others who depend on this idea of apostolic succession and the
infallibility of the Pope. See what I'm saying? There's no basis in the New
Testament for the, first of all, succession of one Bishop to
another all the way down to Peter. And even less for the argument that the Pope,
when he speaks, as they say in ex cathedra, meaning from the chair of Peter,
there's no basis in the Bible to support the idea that when the Pope speaks in
this way, that he is infallible. I mean, Peter, himself, made a mistake concerning the most important thing, which was the gospel. All right, just a little aside
there. Verse 12, it says, "For prior to the coming of certain men from James, he"
meaning Peter, "he used to eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he began to
withdraw and hold himself aloof, fearing the party of the circumcision." That was
the other term referring to these people. The Judaizers who taught this and the
people who agreed and promoted this idea; that you had to become a Jew first,
before you could become a Christian. So Peter visited Antioch. The thing about
Antioch, it was a congregation where you had both Jewish and Gentile individuals in one congregation. And this letter is being
sent to these people, among others. While there, Peter mingled and he ate with
Gentiles, which Christians were free to do, but unconverted Jews were not.
Remember when Peter went to Cornelius's home to preach the gospel to
him? He even said, we're not allowed to be in your home, but I had a
vision. I had - God spoke to me and sent me to you. Otherwise I wouldn't
have entered your house, you're a Gentile. Peter had contact with Gentiles
before. He was the first one to bring the gospel to the Gentiles. And so when he
goes to Antioch he has no problem mingling, sitting at the same table,
eating with Gentiles. Now, Paul mentions certain men from James. Probably means
Jewish Christians from Jerusalem who were associates of James, who also were
going to visit Antioch after Peter had arrived. So when Peter finds this out
he's afraid that they might report to the church in Jerusalem that he was
associating with Gentiles in Antioch and he was afraid that when Judaizers
learned of this they would cause problems for Peter when he returned.
The last thing I need - I'm now just imagining - last thing I need is to go back to Jerusalem and have this big headache with these Judaizers, making
accusations, and causing trouble. Peter feels, well, maybe I should just be
discreet, pull back while these people are here. Peter's reaction was to withdraw from the Gentiles, not to eat or mingle with
them anymore, especially while these people from Jerusalem were there.
Let's keep going, verse 13, "The rest of the Jews joined him in hypocrisy, with
the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy." So his
action prompted other Jewish Christians to do the very same thing, and even Barnabas - Now here's the really
strange thing about Barnabas, I mean, Barnabas was the one who helped Paul
establish churches among the Gentiles in Galatia. He's like the last
person in the world who ought to fall into this trap. Into this
hypocrisy. This - what Peter and the others was were doing was
very dangerous, for a number of reasons. Number one, it gave power to the
Judaizers who were promoting this false gospel. It was legitimizing their issue, their question. Also, it was building up a wall between
Jew and Gentile in the church. A division. And this was a wall that Christ tore
down, so that everyone could be one in Christ. Neither Jew nor Greek,
nor slave nor free, nor male nor female - everybody, God, Jesus
came to knock those walls down so that we can all be united, equally valuable,
equally saved in exactly the same way in Christ Jesus. And then thirdly, a
respected leader takes the first step back into legalism, and what does he do?
Well, he draws others back with him. So in verse 14, Paul says, "But when I saw that
they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in
the presence of all, "If you, being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the
Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?" when he says,
"live like Jews" he means keeping the law and the rituals, the food laws, all that
stuff. He's saying, you don't do this. You don't do this anymore, and by your
actions you're forcing these people to carry a burden that you've
just you've taken off of yourself. Paul confronts Peter publicly
about his hypocrisy. Peter was condemning what he, himself, practiced because of
fear of criticism. Peter was not bound by law and traditions being promoted by the
Judaizers, but by his separation from the Gentiles, he was
supporting the idea that the Gentiles should. I don't have to do it, but you
people have to do it. No. Paul reviews the basis of the argument that he made
to Peter and the rest of the church at Antioch at that confrontation. In verse
15 and 16 he says, "We are Jews by nature and not sinners from among the Gentiles;
nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law, but
through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus so that we
may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since by the
works of the Law no flesh will be justified." Here he's making a
parenthetical statement. He's explaining why this is hypocrisy. He begins by
explaining that even the Jews, who were the chosen people of God, unlike the
Gentiles, who were in total darkness, even the Jews recognized that salvation was
obtained through Christ and not through law. So what was the ideological conflict
between Paul and the Judaizers concerning the law, what was it? Well, Paul
believed and taught the true purpose of the Law, meaning the commandments, the Ten Commandments, including the ceremonial and the sacrificial laws, he
was explaining that all of these laws were there to reveal sin and how God
dealt with sin. And his reference here is something he wrote in Romans chapter 3,
verse 20. He says, "Because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in
His sight; for through the Law comes knowledge of sin." So the giving of the
Law by God was not an end unto itself, but rather a step in God's overall plan
to save man. Here is where the Law fitted in. God created man righteous. In other
words, when Adam was created, he was good, he was acceptable to God. Man then sinned
and became unrighteous, which caused ignorance of God, among other things, and
physical death. God then planned to save man from ignorance and death, but before
this could happen the Lord had to bring man to a certain point of understanding,
because you see, because of his sin, man, his mind was darkened. He didn't have
the relationship with God. He didn't understand who God was anymore. You even
see it in the garden immediately after the sin, they hid from God. They were
afraid, they blamed each other, they completely lost contact with who
God was. So God has to reintroduce Himself back to man. Mankind is sinful, becomes unrighteous, causes him to be blinded as to who God really is. So God
plans to save man from his ignorance and his death. Again, before this could
happen, he had to bring man to a certain point of understanding. And what was that
understanding? Well, first of all, He had to reintroduce Himself to man. In other
words, who God really is, because after the fall man went into idolatry. He was
worshipping rocks and trees and the Sun and whatever. Secondly, he had to reveal
to man why he was in the condition of ignorance and death that he experienced.
He had to show man what sin was and how it had affected him. And
then, of course, he had to reveal to man who He was going to send and how He was
going to save him. We're looking - hindsight. We have all this
information. Most of us here have been taught this from an early age, but
imagine you don't have this information at all. You don't know who God is. You
don't know why you're in the condition you're in. You have no idea what hope you
have. God has to do all these things slowly. God begins this
process of education by first revealing Himself to just a few men: Noah, Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob. Just a few men. And then He reveals himself through - to an
entire nation, through Moses. See how He's expanding the amount of people
who begin to know Him. From the patriarchs, to Moses, to the nation. Next,
He began to reveal to man the reason and the result of his condition. That's where
the Law comes in. That's where the commandments come in. That's where the
sacrificial system comes in. That's where the ceremonies come in. This is where the
Law came in to reveal and to demonstrate what sin was, what sin did, and how God
was going to deal with it. How was God going to deal with it? Well, through a
sacrificial system that pointed eventually to a sacrifice once for all.
So once man had learned from the Law that sin causes spiritual blindness and
death, once man learned from the Law that God deals with sin through the method of
atonement, meaning a life exchanged for another life - for centuries it was animal
life. Don't you think the Jews kind of understood, finally, how God was going to
deal with sin. Well, apparently not because they rejected the Savior, but
some believed, some understood, right. And then he was prepared, man was, prepared to recognize two very important things, once
he understood all of this. Number one, he was ready to understand that he was a
sinner and it was his own sins that condemned him. And number two, the final
sacrifice for sin was going to be the perfect life of Jesus. Not a perfect
animal sacrifice. The perfect life of His son. So the righteousness that man had at
creation in Adam, was recreated again in Jesus. And just as all shared in Adam's
fallen nature, because we were all physical descendants of Adam, all could
now share in the righteous nature of Jesus Christ, through union with Him by
faith. if I want to kind of summarize that, I would do it this way. We were
connected to Adam by flesh and therefore we shared his sin. We are now connected
to Jesus by faith and now we share His perfection. So Paul taught that man was
saved because he shared in the righteousness of Christ, through faith.
And the Law served to reveal our unrighteousness and the way that Jesus
would deal with it - death on the cross. Atonement. That's what Paul was teaching. That's the essence of the gospel. The Pharisees, when
they use the term Law, they included all of the man-made traditions that had
grown up around the Law. Remember, I told you last time, the hedge around
the law, there was the Law and then there are these six hundred and odd rules
around the law, to help you not break the Law. When they said the Law, they included
all, everything. The law given by God plus all the rules and regulations
created by the scribes over the centuries. Now in many instances they used
their watered-down perverted view of the Law to establish their own righteousness.
This is very important, this point. I want you to really kind of grasp this. The key point in Romans 10:3, let me just show you that one, it says, "For not
knowing about God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own," "they"
meaning the Jews, "they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God."
How do you subject yourself to the righteousness of God? Well, by being -
having faith in Christ. You become righteous through faith. So he's talking
about - in Romans 10 - he's talking about, why didn't the Jews make it? Why did
these Gentiles, that didn't have the law, didn't have the prophets, nothing, they
got it. They understood. Why didn't the Jews, who had the law, who had the
prophets, who had the father's - the Messiah was a Jew. They had everything
going for them. Why did they miss the boat? Well, in Romans 10:3 he explains, "For
not knowing about God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own." How
did they establish their own righteousness? They watered-down the Law.
They didn't see the Law as something to reveal sin, they saw it as
something that would help them conquer sin. They claimed that they already were
righteous in God's eyes for two reasons. One, they were the chosen people of God.
Come on. And number two, they obeyed the Law. The problem with this self-view was
that in reality they were chosen to be the people through whom Christ would
come, in order to deal with sin, but they were not simply chosen arbitrarily as
saved people. They had to believe too. And then the second false
notion they had, was that they obeyed their version of the law, but Jesus
showed how shallow their concept of the law really was. That's what the Sermon on
the Mount is all about. For example, adultery for the Jew at that time,
adultery was "thou shalt not commit adultery" right, there's the
commandment. In their minds adultery was sex with the legitimate wife of a fellow
Jew. That was adultery. If you had sex with a single woman, that wasn't adultery. If
you had sex with a slave, that was not adultery. That's what - or you
divorced without cause, that wasn't adultery. Some even went so far as to say it's
adultery if I have sex with the legitimate wife of another Jew in my
tribe. Really? And so a man would say to a Pharisee or one of these individuals
would say, I keep the law, I keep the commandment. I was getting tired
of my wife, so I just, I divorced her. I gave her the piece of paper. Moses said,
give her the piece of paper, and I just married myself another one. And I
didn't like her, I got rid of her, and I got myself a third one. I'm good, I gave
the paper. I have sex with a slave, that's okay, she's not the wife of a fellow Jew.
So there was this self-righteousness based on an obedience of a watered-down
version of the law. So Jesus comes along, don't ask why they hated him, and Jesus
comes along and he says all you have heard that it has been said, thou shalt
not commit adultery, oh and they go yeah, sure, the Law, absolutely; but I say to you,
even if you look at a woman and lust after her in your heart, you've already
committed adultery. Whoa, that's a much tougher law to obey for your whole life.
Right? So every time you see Jesus say, you have heard that -
have heard that it was said, such and such, He's challenging them. Okay, here's
your Law, now here's how to really obey that law. This is why they despised Him.
He was blowing up their false self-righteousness according to the law.
And so the Pharisees and now the Judaizers, who were Pharisees who had
become Christians, they wanted to introduce a system whereby a man could
achieve righteousness by obeying certain laws. And the main one, the kickoff law,
the point - the tipping point, if you wish, was the law about
circumcision. If you could get one of these people to receive circumcision,
than it was nothing to get them to take the food laws, no pork and the
whole rest of it. So for these Judaizers Christ was like Moses. He just gave a
different set of laws. They saw the Sermon on the Mount like laws. Paul
maintained that in living a perfect life and offering it on the cross, Jesus
obeyed the entire law on our behalf. That's how it works. Brothers and sisters,
that's why they call it good news. Once you realize the absolute demands of
God's law and how woefully short we come no matter how hard we try to obey it,
then the gospel really is good news. Wait a minute, Jesus came and He perfectly
obeyed the law on our behalf, that's good news. We become obedient to that law in
the same way, not by keeping every command, because we can't. We become
obedient completely to the law by being united to Jesus by faith. Yeah, no room
for boasting there. No room for bragging there. Nobody can brag. So both Paul and the Judaizers, they had the same objective: to
be perfect and thus saved. Their method was obeying the commands one by one by
one by one, until you obeyed all of them perfectly. That was their method. Paul's
method or God's method, was sharing Jesus's perfection by faith. That was the
Gospel's way. And trust me, when you understand and accept that, it's a
very humbling thing. Why do you think Isaiah says, "Their righteousness
are like filthy rags". Meaning, if we put forth before God our goodness, our
righteousness, our puny attempts to obey the law, and claim some sort of
righteousness, Isaiah is saying, that's like, those are like dirty rags. So in
verse 17 he says, "But if, while seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have
also been found sinners, is Christ then a minister of sin? May it never be!" And so
in defending this way, Paul asks the questions: do we sin by trying to be
justified through faith, rather than through law? Is that wrong? Because in the
end, this is what the Judaizers were saying. The Judaizers are saying, all you
people are - you're obeying some watered-down type of gospel, too easy.
It's too easy. It's too easy. People will abuse that. I've heard that even in
the church. People say, that Gospel is way too easy. That's cheap grace. It's not
cheap grace, by its very nature grace is free. So if this is so, he says, we make Christ
to be the one who leads us into sin, because He's the one who says to believe
in Him. And Paul says, well, heaven forbid. In other words, Jesus's way to be saved,
through faith, we're not sinning if we follow that way. It's the Judaizers who
are sinning by taking us in the other direction. Verse 18, how are we on time?
Good. It says, "For if I rebuild what I have once destroyed, I prove myself to be
a transgressor." In other words, if he reestablishes the system of salvation by
works of the law that he removed when he accepted Christ, two things automatically
happen. Number one, he will be condemned by the very laws that he is
reestablishing. This system only condemns. It cannot save. And number two, Christ
will also condemn him for abandoning the true way of salvation, which is by faith
in Christ. I not only believe intellectually as true the things that
Jesus says, that He's the son of God and so on and so forth. I also believe in the
sense that I trust, I have confidence that He saves me through union with Him
by faith. I trust you, Lord. You've told me that you have lived up to the law
perfectly and you give to me freely that type of righteousness, as if I have also
lived up to the law. I trust you, that this is true. That when I come before God
in judgment, I shall not be judged because I have Your perfection given
freely to me through faith. Either way, if I leave that system, I'll be a
transgressor. Verse 19, "For through the Law I die to the Law, so that I might live to Christ." So Paul declares that when he
understood the true purpose of the Law, which was to reveal sin, and saw his true
sinfulness and condemnation under the Law, he stopped trying to use the Law as
a means of saving himself. In other words, he died to the Law. That's what that
expression means. And so he says he did this so he could be saved by Christ. So
this is a, what's called parallelism. It's a literary device,
used mainly in the Psalms, but in other places. An idea is stated
in one line, and then in the next line the same idea is stated, but in different
words. And then other types of other types of parallelism, you have one idea
in this line and then you have the opposite idea in the second line.
So it was a literary device that was used in that time, okay.
He uses this literary device. So the imagery of him dying to the Law and then
living to God. He's talking about the same thing, except he's using,
he's comparing them. A wonderful parallel to what he says in the next verse, where
he repeats the very same idea, but now he uses different imagery. This time his
death is on the cross, and his life is the resurrected one with Jesus. He
says, "I've been crucified with Christ," well, there's his death to the Law, "and it
is not no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now
live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God," in other words, I'm able to
live and breathe, not just physically, my heart pumping the blood, I'm able to live
before God and not feel worthless, and sinful, and a failure. I am Alive in front
of Him. Why? Because I know that through faith He accepts me as perfect. "but
Christ lives in me; in the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in
the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me." What's he doing? Well,
the gospel, he's just repeating the gospel in another way. So the new Paul -
righteous, perfect, saved has Christ's presence in himself experienced in the
indwelling of the Holy Spirit, Acts 2:38. We received the indwelling of the
Spirit at baptism. You die in baptism and then you resurrect with Christ
living in you. Everything now done with his flesh is not done to earn
righteousness through law-keeping, but rather a response of trusting faith in a
Savior who loved and died in his place in order to give him perfection and thus
saved him. So there's the parallelism. Died with Christ, Christ now lives with me, within
me. There's the other example of parallelism. Previous acts done as works of
Law, they were burdens. They were discouraging, they produced false pride.
Now, however, the very same things done as a response of faith are acceptable to
God. And joyful to do. And they produce humility. Very same actions, very same
things. I try to - I, a man, try to have a sexually pure mind and heart, as
every Christian man should, Right? If I'm under the law, I'm making an attempt
and I see that sometimes I win, and sometimes I lose, and sometimes I win, and
then three other times I lose, that's pretty discouraging. I got to keep trying,
I got to keep trying, because the Law has a - thou shalt not
commit adultery. No impurities. I gotta keep trying, but
it's so discouraging. If I'm in Christ, I have the same responsibilities as a
Christian man, to have a pure mind and heart, except now I'm doing it as an act
of faith. Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I don't; but everything I do is
a way to say to God, I believe. I keep trying, why? Because I believe. I keep
trying, why? Because I love you, Lord. I failed five times out of seven, well, the two
times I've succeeded, Lord, here it is, because you're not going to
judge me based on my perfection, you're going to judge me
based on my faith, but my faith continues to push me forward in making an effort
to live a righteous life. To tell the truth, not to grumble at others who get on my nerves. Some of people in this very room, you know who you are,
Steve. So in verse 21 he says, "I do not nullify the grace of God, for if
righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly." Paul is not the
one eliminating the grace of God, Peter and the Judaizers, they're the ones that
are eliminating the grace of God. Why? They're trying to go back to the old
system. If righteousness could be had this way, then Christ died for nothing. In
other words, If you could be righteous by obeying the Law, then Jesus died for
nothing. Why should he come? God did not send Him to die for some sins, He came
for all the sins of everyone. So His death pays for all sin or no sin. It's
one or the other. You either accept perfection through union with Christ
based on faith, or you pursue it through perfect Law-keeping. Those are the only
choices that you have. The only choices that you have.
It's one or the other, but it cannot be both. The problem here and in all
churches since, is that many people try to mix these two systems and we end up
with various forms of legalism, even to this day. So Paul mentions nothing more
of Peter here, or anywhere else as a matter of fact. We assume that Peter
received the correction, he adjusted his position, and his later letters seemed to
confirm this. Imagine, one apostle rebuking another, and the other receiving
the rebuke, changing his attitude. So next time we're going to look
righteousness not comes by faith, but next time we're also going to look at
other things that he talks about, that also come with faith. Not just
righteousness, other things, too, are based on faith. All right, that's it for this
particular lesson. Thank you very much.
