The book of Jonah has some very unusual features. There is Jonah himself, who does not seem to be fit to be a prophet. He is disobedient to the Lord’s call to preach. He then puts on one of the most spectacular displays of pouting in recorded history. Jonah is miserable and angry the whole time, even after God shows him a lot of mercy.
Perhaps even more surprising than God’s mercy to an angry prophet is God’s mercy to the city of Nineveh. These are pagan peoples who worshiped idols and not the living God. God had no covenant with these people and He owed them absolutely nothing. They were actually enemies of Israel and were the same Assyrians who carried the Northern tribes away into captivity and then threatened Judah and Jerusalem before God worked a miraculous deliverance in behalf of the prayers of King Hezekiah.
Perhaps now you see why Jonah did not want to preach there. He may have feared for his life. The Assyrians were known for their cruelty. And Jonah really did not want God to be merciful to the city of Nineveh. Most people really don’t want to see their enemies get blessed. We want to see our enemies get what we think they deserve!
Another big surprise in this book is that the city of Nineveh actually listens to Jonah and repents! We are ready for these pagans to simply laugh at Jonah, or maybe even stone him for annoying them. But they put on sackcloth and ashes – an ancient sign of mourning – showing even more contrition than any of the Jews did when God sent them prophets. God had sent prophet after prophet to the people of Israel and they had never listened. God sent one prophet to these pagans and they immediately repent! Throughout this strange little book, the pagans are consistently behaving better than we would expect, even better than the angry prophet God sent to them. Jonah is running and hiding from his God, while the pagan sailors are praying to their gods. The people of Nineveh want to live, and so they repent earnestly, but Jonah is angry and just wants to die.
How strange! What are we supposed to do with a book of the Bible that portrays pagans in a better light than a Jewish prophet? Maybe human beings are really not that different from each other, when we strip away all of the superficial elements of life. Perhaps the Jews had forgotten that, even though they had a special calling from God, they were not inherently better than the Gentiles.
The book of Jonah anticipates God’s inclusion of the Gentiles and was perhaps written as a way of reminding the Jews that they were not the only people God was concerned about. Sometimes people who have had a lot of grace forget why they needed grace in the first place.
It all begins with a call to preach to Nineveh. Jonah runs away, leaving the land of Israel behind.
Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.”
But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.
He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish.
So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD. (Jonah 1:1-3 ESV)
So we see that Jonah’s troubles are really self-inflicted. He would have been much better off just obeying the voice of the Lord. Does this sound like a familiar scenario? What troubles have you brought on yourself because you simply refused to do what God clearly commanded?
Jonah represents one of the most common responses of men and women to God. Even Adam and Eve attempted to hide from God in the shame of their nakedness. But God pursued Adam and Eve and God pursued Jonah. This Divine pursuit is one of the great themes of the Bible. I don’t mean man’s search for God but God’s seeking of man. We do not seek after God. We are on the run. If God had not come to seek and to save us we would have been lost forever. The impetus always belongs to God, not to man. If we have found God it is only because He really found us first. And we love Him because He first loved us.
And so George Matheson penned the words of his hymn:
“O love that will not let me go
I rest my weary soul in Thee
I give thee back the life I owe
That in Thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.”
If we forget that God is the one who kept seeking us then we may become proud and think that our relationship with God is based on something we did out of our own righteousness. Those pagans were not seeking God and so God rejected them. But we were seeking God and so God had to accept us. How wrong we are for thinking this way!
Jonah was wrong for thinking he could successfully run from God. In the minds of ancient peoples there were many gods who were attached to certain places and nations. If you wanted to get away from the God of Israel, all you had to do was leave the land of Israel. Out on the sea you would be subject to a different god.
The problem with this plan is that Jonah is dealing with the living God who is the maker of heaven and earth and all that is in it! This is no local, tribal deity like the petty gods of the nations. Our problem is that our view of God is sometimes too small. We think there may be certain areas of life into which God does not or even cannot venture. So we can escape there and be safe from God’s meddling in our affairs. Wrong! If God is God, then there is no place we can god to escape His presence.
David wrote a Psalm about this very reality.
Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. (Psalm 139:7-12 ESV)
The presence of God should be a comforting thing, unless you are alienated from Him. Then there is perhaps nothing more terrifying to know that God knows everything about you and everything you do. We will all have to give an account. You cannot hide from God.
So why do we try to hide from God?
There may be something God has commanded that we don’t want to do. Why should we obey God? How bad can it be? We enjoy our freedom and our independence. Americans don’t like to be told what to do. Religion is all about rules. Who wants to have a lot of rules to obey? That’s no fun! So God is just a cosmic killjoy who is out to spoil our fun. It is one of Satan’s oldest deceptions about God. “God is trying to keep you down. The only way to really enjoy life is to break free and do your own thing! What’s so bad about self-expression? What’s the worst thing that could happen? You won’t die!”
Jonah may have thought the people of Nineveh would kill him. He was worried about his own skin. Or, it may have been simple hatred for the city of Nineveh. His own prejudice and personal feelings were more important than the Word of the Lord.
We have to remember that Jonah is a Jew and a Prophet of God and he is behaving like a pagan unbeliever. Sometimes the people of God fail miserably. The failure of Jonah is really a picture of the failure of the people of Israel to obey God. Have we done any better? No. The Church has been just like Jonah. The whole human race has been like Jonah running from God.
Jonah paid the price for his disobedience. He began a downward descent that would take him places he never dreamed of having to go. Someone has said that sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay. Jonah was supposed to preach to the wicked city of Nineveh and he is being wicked himself. He is in the same condition as those to whom he is sent to preach! God is preparing his messenger. Before you can preach to others you have to experience the grace of God. God was being gracious to Nineveh and to His prophet. Everyone needs grace!
Jonah is forced to confess his sins to these pagan sailors, who actually try to avoid Jonah’s demise. They are being more merciful to Jonah then he will be to the city of Nineveh! These pagan sailors are being more spiritually sensitive than the prophet of God! They are at least praying to the gods they know while Jonah is hiding in the bottom of the boat. What do we do with the fact that pagans are often more sincere than religious people? Hypocrisy is a huge problem for the Church today and pagans can see it! They are often more consistent in their beliefs than professed Christians.
These unusually moral sailors try to spare Jonah. But they have run out of options.
So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging.
Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows.
And the LORD appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.
And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. (Jonah 1:15-17 ESV)
So Jonah descends into the abyss. He has no reason to think at this point that he will survive this ordeal. Jonah’s experience in the belly of this great fish is like being buried alive. He is in darkness and without any hope. That is, any hope apart from the Lord. Jonah has no place else to go but back to God. Jonah is like many people who turn to the Lord when they have finally hit the bottom. Unfortunately, having our back against the wall is often what it takes to cause us to be humble enough to turn to God. Sometimes God has to break our will and take away all of our props that held us up, removing all of our false hopes that we can succeed in getting our way.
So finally, the prophet who had been zealously running from the presence of the Lord begins to pray. In the belly of the fish Jonah has to turn to the Lord for salvation.
The prophet of God needed the same thing the pagans in Nineveh needed – salvation. Before he was ready to offer salvation to the city of Nineveh, Jonah had to experience God’s salvation himself. Before we can be used by God to bring salvation to anyone else we have to experience it for ourselves. Those who preach the Gospel are themselves being saved by it. This is why angels are not sent to preach the Gospel to men. This would not have the same power because no angel has ever experienced salvation or the grace of God. Men are being used by God to teach angels about His grace. Angels long to look into the things concerning salvation! We are seeing new aspects of God’s nature on display through the salvation of sinners.
But sinners like Jonah may not know or admit that they need salvation. As long as we remain proud and self-sufficient we will never appreciate grace. Jonah had to learn about his need for grace in the belly of a fish. It is best for us to learn about grace without having to be brought down so low.
We should learn about our need for grace through the Law. Through the Law comes the knowledge of sin (Rom. 3.20). We have to listen to what the Law and the Prophets teach us or the Gospel of Christ will not make sense. Being under the instruction of the Law is like Jonah being in the belly of the fish – we are being prepared to receive the salvation of God. If a person refused to believe the Law and the Prophets he will not believe the Gospel either.
Remember the conversation between father Abraham and the rich man who was in hell:
And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him (Lazarus) to my father's house—for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’
But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’
And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’
He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’” (Luke 16:27-31 ESV)
People should not think that if they reject what God has already revealed that God will give them some additional help or revelation. God does not have to give anyone a second chance. God was being especially gracious to Jonah in order to instruct us. Jonah deserved to die for his insolence. In fact, Jonah’s descent into the belly of the fish is meant to be a kind of death. Jonah’s plight is the same one faced by the entire human race!
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Ephesians 2:1-3 ESV)
We were all dead in sin. And there is only one hope for a dead man – the salvation of God! Only God can save from death. And so when Jonah finally prays in humble dependence on God that “salvation belongs to the Lord” – he is brought back to the land of the living. Jonah’s salvation is like a resurrection.
“…out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice…” (Jonah 2.2)
“…you brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God.” (Jonah 2.6)
In the same way, our salvation is dying, being buried, and being raised – all of which is depicted in the watery grave of baptism (Rom. 6.1-4). That old, selfish, sinful life has to die with Jesus so we can be raised to walk in the newness of life in Christ. Salvation is a death and a resurrection to a new kind of life.
“Salvation belongs to the Lord” (Jonah 2.9)! That is the theological center of the book of Jonah and it is also at the very heart of the message of the entire Bible. God is a savior. And this salvation comes from God through pure grace.
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9 ESV)
Now that Jonah has been saved he is ready to serve. He has been humbled. He finally sets out for the city of Nineveh. Obedience and service are always the signs that accompany someone who has experienced God’s gracious salvation.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10 ESV)
Jonah was ready to walk to Nineveh and do that good work God had prepared for him to do. How about you? Are you willing to go where He wants you to go? What work is God calling us to do? Where is our Nineveh?
After the fish vomited Jonah onto dry land again, the call of God came to Jonah yet again, giving him a second chance to obey the Lord.
Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.”
So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD.
Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth.
Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey.
And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”
And the people of Nineveh believed God.
They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them. (Jonah 3:1-5 ESV)
We are perhaps surprised that the city repents at the preaching of Jonah. Jonah may have been surprised too! Prophets were not usually received by the people. We should take note that these people did not know the God of Israel and had probably never heard any of God’s prophets before. Jonah only preached a negative message without any good news whatsoever. Jonah did not even promise the people of Nineveh that God would spare them if they repented. But the people did believe the message and they repented. It is a myth that people need a long period of time to respond to God’s Word.
Repentance is a major them in the book of Jonah. Jonah had to first repent and go to Nineveh. The city of Nineveh was given the opportunity to repent, which itself is a commentary on the mercy of God. God does not have to give Nineveh, or any of us, space to repent. There is no salvation without repentance, even though some Christian teachers say you can be saved even if you don’t repent. That is like saying you can turn to God without turning to God (C.S. Lewis). Nonsense! “Christianity is a religion of repentance” (Martin Luther). When we turn to God we must also turn away from all of the worthless idols, or false gods, that we have set up in our hearts as functional saviors. Paul said that the Christians in the city of Thessalonica“turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Thessalonians 1:9 ESV).
Repentance always accompanies true faith and conversion. If there is no repentance there is no faith. And if there is no faith there is no salvation. Only open hands can receive a gift.
Jonah did not preach the love of God to the city of Nineveh. He preached a message of wrath and judgment. Most people today see some kind of discrepancy between God’s wrath and God’s love, as if these attributes of God are somehow in opposition to one another. That would mean God is at war with Himself or that God has a good side and a bad side, like a man with a quick temper. But God is not a man. God’s wrath and mercy are both at work in the story of Jonah and God’s wrath and mercy are both revealed in the Gospel. The thing that makes the Gospel good news is the fact that God sent His Son to save us from the wrath that will one day break forth upon this world. So the Gospel contains both a warning and a promise, while Jonah’s message was only a warning. We have a much better message to preach than what Jonah was given to preach in the city of Nineveh!
Jonah must have been surprised that the city repented. The Jews had a habit of rejecting all the prophets God sent to them. Even when God sent His Son, His own people mostly rejected Him. The religious leaders asked Jesus for a sign in their unbelief, something even the pagan city of Nineveh did not do to Jonah!
But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.
For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. (Matthew 12:39-41 ESV)
The sign of Jonah was Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection. Jonah was a sign to the city of Nineveh that God had visited them in mercy and given them space to repent and be saved from God’s wrath. Jesus was like Jonah to the city of Jerusalem, but they refused to repent and be saved and the judgment fell like a hammer when the Romans later destroyed the city of Jerusalem. That’s why Jesus wept over the city. But Jesus is also Jonah to the entire world. Now, Jesus did not preach to the entire world. But He sent His Church into the world to preach the Gospel to all the nations before the End comes. The Church is Jonah, sent to the wicked City of Man.
Jonah did not weep over Nineveh. He was angry that God showed them mercy. God’s prophet did not reflect the compassion of the God who sent him.
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country?
That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.
Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
And the LORD said, “Do you do well to be angry?” (Jonah 4:1-4 ESV)
How strange it is that Jonah begrudged the people of Nineveh receiving the very mercy from the Lord that he himself had previously experienced in the belly of the fish! There is something in human nature that desires mercy for ourselves, but justice for others. Did Jonah have a right to be angry that God was being merciful? Do we have the right to accept God’s grace for ourselves and not be gracious to others who need that grace as we did, and still do?
Jonah pouts because the city was not destroyed, as he had apparently wanted to see. Jonah wanted to see these pagans get what they deserved, forgetting that God had not given him what he deserved. But other people’s sins are always worse than our own sins! Jonah pouts like the elder brother in Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son. Elder brother types are those who ask “why should other people get grace when we have worked so hard doing our religious duties faithfully?” Legalists are offended by grace.
As if the incident with the fish were not enough, God tries to teach His prophet one more lesson about His grace and compassion. Jonah sat outside the city of Nineveh, pouting that God had not destroyed it and feeling sorry for himself.
Now the LORD God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort.
So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant.
But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered.
When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint.
And he asked that he might die and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”
But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.”
And the LORD said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night.
And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”(Jonah 4:6-11 ESV)
Jonah had more care for a plant than for the people of Nineveh. This plant represents Nineveh. That great city had grown up under the care and the watchful eyes of the God who has created “from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us…” (Acts 17:26-28 ESV)
Paul spoke those words to the pagans in the city of Athens. We can compare and contrast Jonah’s lack of compassion for the city of Nineveh with Paul’s concern for the idolatrous city of Athens (Acts 17.16). Are we more like Jonah or Paul? We have no right to call ourselves the people of God unless we care about the things God cares about.
Monday, July 21, 2014
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Out of Step with the Gospel (Galatians 2.11-21)
There is only one Gospel! A different Gospel is not the Gospel at all. The Church is built on a single, solid foundation of apostolic doctrine. This single, unified revelation can be summarized in the Gospel, which trumps all other messages, opinions, or agendas. The Church has always been subject to the Gospel and to being corrected by that Divine revelation.
Even the behavior of an apostle is not above correction by the Gospel, which is what we find Paul recounting to the Galatians. The apostle Paul had to correct the apostle Peter because Peter was not in step with the Gospel! Paul does not recount this confrontation to exalt himself or embarrass Peter but to bolster his case to the Galatians. The Galatians needed to pay attention to what had been revealed to them in the Gospel, as delivered by the apostle Paul, because even someone like the apostle Peter was also subject to this same message and bound by its truth.
Peter and Cornelius
To better understand the issues involved we must go back to a couple of key events in the history of the early Church. The first event involved Peter and his call to preach to Cornelius and his household. Cornelius was a Gentile. The Jews had separated themselves from contact with Gentiles, lest this make the Jews ceremonially unclean in some way. The first Christians were devout Jews who saw no reason to suddenly forget all of their traditions that they had kept for centuries and which had been commanded by God.
But something was about to change and it would start with Peter and Cornelius. We may not realize that God’s call to preach to Cornelius was a revolutionary event that literally changed the course of human history! God prepared both Cornelius and Peter beforehand. Both men received visions.
Cornelius was commanded by an angel to send for Peter.
And Peter received a vision of a giant sheet let down from heaven which was filled with all kinds of animals. Peter was invited by a voice to kill and eat some meat. But Peter refused to touch any animal that was unclean according to the Law of Moses. Finally the voice said to Peter, “What God has made clean, do not call common” (Acts 10:15 ESV). It was immediately after this that Peter was visited by men from Cornelius.
And Peter had learned from the vision. He went with them to Cornelius’ house and he said to them,
“You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean” (Acts 10:28 ESV).
Clearly the vision of the sheet let down from heaven was about more than just food, it was also to be applied to people!
After Peter preached Christ to this Gentile household the Holy Spirit came on them. This was an important event for Peter and the other Jews with him to witness.
“And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles” (Acts 10.45).
It was like a Gentile Pentecost! God had accepted even the Gentiles!!
But there was some backlash for Peter. He was called on the carpet back in Jerusalem.
“So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him, saying, ‘You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them’” (Acts 11:2-3 ESV).
At this point Peter stood up to these men and stood by what he knew the Lord had revealed to him.
“If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God's way” (Acts 11:17 ESV)?
The Jerusalem Council
But this issue did not go away. Now Paul comes on the scene and has been preaching and establishing churches out in the Gentile world. One family of Gentiles is perhaps tolerable, but not a whole movement of Gentile churches! Before too long the Gentiles will outnumber the Jewish Christians! Then what will become of Christianity and the Church? So goes the paranoia of all bigotry and prejudice right up to our times! What should we do with the Gentiles who are coming into the Church?
“But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved’” (Acts 15:1 ESV).
We may not be able to keep the Gentiles out completely, but we can at least clean them up a little!
And so the first ecumenical council of the Church convened to debate this issue. Paul went first, giving a report of what the Lord was doing among the Gentiles through his ministry, which included the Galatians.
But the Circumcision Group had not gone away.
“But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, ‘It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the Law of Moses’” (Acts 15:5 ESV).
(Notice that the men who said these things were themselves Christians.)
Now Peter took his turn.
“Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will” (Acts 15:7-11 ESV).
Beautiful! Peter is right on target, in perfect agreement with Paul, and is standing up to these legalists!
Paul Confronts Peter
But after this something happened that caused Peter to lapse back into the old ways. Peter had been participating in full fellowship with the Gentile Christians. The Circumcision Group was still lurking in the background, still clinging to their position. And they somehow convinced Peter to withdraw from full fellowship with the Gentiles. I don’t want to be too hard on Peter here. I don’t think he changed his mind about the Gentiles. I don’t think Peter abandoned the Gospel himself, at least not intellectually.
But in his behavior toward the Gentile believers Peter was out of step with the Gospel. And Paul called him on it publicly! Some Biblical scholars have taken the position that this encounter was symptomatic of a deep division in the early Church between Peter and those who followed him and Paul and his disciples. But there is no evidence that Peter and Paul were ever divided either before or after this brief conflict. I think Peter immediately made the necessary correction and the unity of the Church was intact.
But this issue between Peter and Paul was not primarily a doctrinal issue. Peter was not in danger of becoming a heretic and denying the basic tenets of the Faith. The problem was with Peter’s orthopraxy (practice), not his orthodoxy (doctrine). Peter was not denying the Gospel with his lips, but his actions were in opposition to the Gospel. There is a kind of behavior that is out of step with the Gospel. Something made Peter change his walk, or his conduct, so that he was no longer walking in step with the Gospel.
If it happened to Peter could it not happen to any of us today? What caused Peter to get out of step with the Gospel?
Fear is out of step with the Gospel.
Peter was afraid of the men from the Circumcision Party. He was intimidated by them for some reason, which is a form of fear. We don’t know why Peter was intimidated by these men. Perhaps Peter thought that offending them would undermine his ministry to the Jews. Peter was the primary apostle sent to the Jewish people, as Paul was to the Gentiles.
The Fear of Man
We don’t know why Peter was afraid, but we do know that we are warned in Scripture about the fear of man. And I think I know why we often become intimidated by other people.
•Sometimes we are just afraid of conflict. So to keep the peace, or some semblance of peace, we compromise what we know to be true. God’s people are peacemakers but not at the expense of the truth of the Gospel.
•We may also be overly concerned about our reputation, or what people think about us. This seems innocent, or sometimes even legitimate, but it can also mask a love for the praise of men (John 12.42-43). Many people deny God in order to be accepted by other people – a serious sin!
•We may be intimidated by men because we don’t know how to defend the truth and argue our position effectively. Sometimes we know something is wrong, but we don’t know why and we don’t know what to say. So we just go along with it.
•We may compromise the truth in order to maintain our position or status in the group. Some of the most evil deeds that have been done were done for the sake of being accepted by peers.
•We are intimidated by people we deem to be important and worthy of honor. But sometimes the people we choose to honor are not really worthy of honor. There are some people whose opinion of us should not carry very much weight.
•And sometimes we are afraid because we are thinking only of ourselves instead of the Kingdom of God. We tend to live in the moment instead of thinking of the bigger picture.
The Gospel is the Remedy for Fear
When we are tempted to fear man we should remember that God is infinitely greater than man and God is the one we should fear (Luke 12.4-5). Fear of man makes us weak, but the fear of God will make us strong. If God be for us, who can be against us (Rom. 8.31)? We learn that God is for us through the Gospel.
The Gospel is the source of our confidence and will drive out our fear. So if we are afraid it is because our faith in the Gospel is weak.
Our sun is a powerful source of light, being many times larger than the earth itself. But to block out the light from the sun all we have to do is shut our eyes and we won’t be able to see its glory. The same is true of the light of the Gospel and unbelief. If we close our eyes in unbelief we won’t be able to see the glory of the Gospel and we will walk in the darkness and in fear.
Unfortunately, it is possible even for believers to have times of weak faith. Having weak faith is not the same as having no faith at all. But we are capable of highs and lows in our Christian walk. Peter himself is an excellent illustration of this. Peter walked on water, but then began to sink. Peter would follow Jesus to the death, but denied he even knew Christ when pressed by a little servant girl. Peter preached on Pentecost, and opened the door of faith to the Gentiles, but then withdrew from fellowship with the Gentiles when pressed by the Circumcision Group. We are also capable of these extremes, if our faith is weak.
Faith is dynamic, not static. So we need to continue to grow in grace and in our knowledge of the Gospel (2 Peter 3.18). And when we make mistakes we repent. That’s what Peter did. The ministry of the Body of Christ is to help us be strong in faith and to recognize where and when we have failed to live by faith.
Favoritism is out of step with the Gospel.
Peter was practicing favoritism by withdrawing from fellowship with the Gentiles in favor of his Jewish brethren. There was no other legitimate reason for Peter not to fellowship with the Gentiles other than the fact that they were Gentiles! These were Brethren and Peter refused to fellowship with them based purely on their race and nationality.
To show favoritism is to judge a person based purely on external criteria. The Greek word is to literally “regard the face.”
You can’t judge a book by its cover and you can’t judge the value of a person based on their appearance, race, age, gender, nationality, dress, or wealth.
God Does Not Show Favoritism
Peter had previously learned not to show favoritism when he was called to preach to Cornelius and his household.
“Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34-35 ESV).
God does not show favoritism. God looks at the heart, not at the outward appearance of a person (1 Sam. 16.7). (This seems to contradict the fact that God clearly chose and favored Israel over other nations. But there were some of the people of Israel who were rejected because of unbelief. Not all who are descended physically from Israel actually belong to the People of God.)
Since God does not show favoritism, God’s people should not show favoritism either.
“My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, ‘You sit here in a good place,’ while you say to the poor man, ‘You stand over there,’ or, ‘Sit down at my feet,’ have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts” (James 2:1-4 ESV)?
God accepts people on the basis of faith (Heb. 11.6) and no other criteria. God may even accept people that you don’t particularly like!
Who are you to reject people God has accepted? You will find yourself fighting against God if you do (Acts 11.17).
Learning to Accept People
We tend to judge people externally based on criteria that are either personal preferences or cultural baggage rather than Biblical absolutes – truth that transcends opinions and culture. We have no right to withdraw from fellowship with Brethren based on favoritism. But old ways of thinking can die hard. There are things we will have to unlearn when we learn the Gospel.
We do have to be able to make a distinction between brethren and false brethren. We should not fellowship with a person who claims to be a Christian yet is immoral or embraces and teaches false doctrine. But a person might be a brother yet be in error and need correction. We should not be looking for any and every reason to reject people. God does not do that or He would have already rejected us all!
Accepting brethren may mean that we have to accept people that we disagree with on disputable matters (Rom. 14). Otherwise we are in danger of drawing our circle of fellowship smaller and smaller, which is what the cults do. Don’t either accept or reject whole groups of people as if everyone is the same because of the group they belong to. That is sectarianism and it is another form of favoritism. If you don’t like it when people judge and reject you before they even know you, then don’t do that to others! Practice the Golden Rule! Divisions begin with an attitude problem that can be traced back to pride. I feel free to reject the people that I feel are inferior to me.
But God has the final word on who is in and who is out of His Kingdom. The tax collectors and prostitutes got in while the Pharisees stood outside the door. And who would have thought that any of the Gentiles could ever be included in the family of God (Eph. 2.11-13)? You and I got in by grace through faith.
And we should extend the same grace to those who also want to enter in and not make it harder for them by showing favoritism.
Hypocrisy is out of step with the Gospel.
Paul said that Peter’s behavior was hypocritical, even influencing Barnabas, who had previously been known for accepting people. Hypocrisy spreads like a disease in the Church. When influential people are hypocritical it creates a culture of pretense and bad behavior is rewarded instead of shamed. A Church infected by hypocrisy becomes something akin to a religious theater where people come to watch a slick production put on by professional actors.
Who is a Hypocrite?
We often hear this word “hypocrite” used pejoratively by people criticizing Christians and the Church, but do we really know what the term means? I have heard people say that we are all hypocrites. We all may have behaved hypocritically at some point, but this is a serious sin that cannot be a part of our lives at all.
•Hypocrisy is to be insincere, acting differently from how you really feel or believe. In this case, Peter knew that there was nothing wrong with eating with the Gentiles, yet he withdrew. Imagine someone being your friend in one context and then refusing to even be next to you in another context!
•When you know something is wrong and you do it anyway, that is hypocrisy.
•In public you may take a certain position on an issue. But in private you may do something entirely different. That is hypocrisy.
•Hypocrites live by convenience. They will do what they feel to be personally advantageous to them at the time. Religion can be turned off or on when it is convenient to do so.
•Hypocrites seem especially good at avoiding suffering for what they believe.
Jesus condemned hypocrisy in the strongest of terms (Matt. 5.20; 6.1-2, 5; 23.1-3, 5-6). God hates religious sin most of all. Jesus was angry with the Pharisees but not with the woman at the well or the woman caught in adultery. But He made a whip of cords to drive out the money-changers in the Temple!
Why do People Become Hypocrites?
The main source of hypocrisy seems to be trying to please other people. We selfishly want to look good and have others praise us, even if we have to compromise and lie to get approval. In extreme cases this is a form of idolatry.
Our beliefs and our actions have to match. If these do not match then we may not really believe what we say we believe. We may have embraced another Gospel. Or, we may be compromising what we believe because of some outside influence. There may be a need to confess sin and come into the Light (1 John 1.5-10). God’s people are to be truth-tellers and not liars (Eph. 4.25; Col 3.9).
Hypocrisy is the most common reason people give for avoiding the professed Church. Christians publicly condemn sin, yet the Church is filled with sin even among the leadership. Many Churches seem to have ulterior motives, like money, and are not genuinely interested in the welfare of people.
We are the only Jesus people in the world can see. People have a right to inspect the lives of professed believers to see if our lifestyle matches the claims we make. People would not be as quick to dismiss the truth of the Gospel if our lives adorned the doctrine (Titus 2.10).
Legalism is out of step with the Gospel.
The heart of the problem with Peter’s behavior was that it was based on a legalistic approach to God being propagated by the Circumcision Group. Even though the Law of Moses was given by revelation of God and was to be obeyed, no one was made righteous by keeping the Law. The Law was given to teach us about sin and our need for an imputed righteousness that comes through faith. This is a major thrust of Paul’s letter to the Galatians (See chapter 3-4).
How to Identify Legalism
I don’t think legalism is as easy to identify as some people think it is. It can be a subtle error. Legalism may be based on the Bible, legalists often use the Bible more than others, yet their conclusions are wrong because their starting-point is wrong. Legalists have the wrong hermeneutic (method of interpretation). God had commanded circumcision and many other things. If we are legalists we could also conclude that the food laws and all of the feasts also must be kept. The legalists in the early Church thought this meant that God received people on the basis of doing these things. But the Gospel said that God accepts people on the basis of faith and nothing else.
Here are some of the characteristics of legalism and legalists:
•Legalism is an approach to God that believes we can be righteous based on what we do. All religion tends toward legalism and attempting to establish our own righteousness before God.
•So legalists actually add to the Gospel, putting additional burdens on people (Matt. 23.4; Acts 11.10). The Gospel sets us free, but legalism enslaves. Everyone who wants to be justified by law is in bondage and under a curse (Gal. 3.10).
•Legalists are never content to keep their views to themselves but always want to bind their additional requirements on others, while condemning anyone who does not meet their standards.
•Legalism always leads to arrogance. But anyone who knows the Gospel cannot be proud because we know that we are not justified by our works. The Gospel calls us to trust in the work of God, not in our works. A Christian does good works but does not trust in those works.
Legalism is not Faith
We are justified like Abraham was justified, by faith in the promise of God (Gen. 15.6). God preached the Gospel to Abraham (Gal 3.9; Gen. 12.1-3). This was many years before the Law. The Promise came first! This means the Promise is superior to the Law.
The Circumcision Group had neglected to consider the fact that Abraham was already justified by faith before he was circumcised. Circumcision was the sign and seal of God’s covenant but could not have been the basis for his justification (See Romans 4.9-12). Powerful reasoning on the Scriptures by Paul!
If we have Abraham’s faith then we are his children and are blessed like Abraham. The Gospel is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham, which included a blessing for both Jews and Gentiles who have faith in Jesus, the Seed of Abraham.
We all get in the same way, through the same message, by the same faith. There are no second-class people in the Body of Christ. Everyone who has faith in Jesus is accepted and there are no additional requirements. This means we must also then accept one another without conditions or reservations. If the Gospel is compromised then the very fabric of Christian fellowship also begins to unravel.
Conclusion
Peter’s behavior proves that simply embracing the right doctrine intellectually does not mean that our behavior will automatically be right and good. Our behavior may be out of step with the truth of the Gospel.
If we do find our conduct at variance with the Gospel that does not mean that the Gospel is a flawed message or that it encourages and justifies our sin. Being justified by faith does not mean we are free to continue in sin. Instead we are to walk in the Spirit (Gal 5.18). But Christians still struggle with the Flesh and that may mean that true believers will sometimes stumble.
The Gospel will teach us how to walk. The Gospel will teach us to die to selfish desires through the Cross and walk by faith in the Son of God. The Gospel will teach us how to walk in love, accepting those who have also been accepted by God through faith in Jesus Christ.
Even the behavior of an apostle is not above correction by the Gospel, which is what we find Paul recounting to the Galatians. The apostle Paul had to correct the apostle Peter because Peter was not in step with the Gospel! Paul does not recount this confrontation to exalt himself or embarrass Peter but to bolster his case to the Galatians. The Galatians needed to pay attention to what had been revealed to them in the Gospel, as delivered by the apostle Paul, because even someone like the apostle Peter was also subject to this same message and bound by its truth.
Peter and Cornelius
To better understand the issues involved we must go back to a couple of key events in the history of the early Church. The first event involved Peter and his call to preach to Cornelius and his household. Cornelius was a Gentile. The Jews had separated themselves from contact with Gentiles, lest this make the Jews ceremonially unclean in some way. The first Christians were devout Jews who saw no reason to suddenly forget all of their traditions that they had kept for centuries and which had been commanded by God.
But something was about to change and it would start with Peter and Cornelius. We may not realize that God’s call to preach to Cornelius was a revolutionary event that literally changed the course of human history! God prepared both Cornelius and Peter beforehand. Both men received visions.
Cornelius was commanded by an angel to send for Peter.
And Peter received a vision of a giant sheet let down from heaven which was filled with all kinds of animals. Peter was invited by a voice to kill and eat some meat. But Peter refused to touch any animal that was unclean according to the Law of Moses. Finally the voice said to Peter, “What God has made clean, do not call common” (Acts 10:15 ESV). It was immediately after this that Peter was visited by men from Cornelius.
And Peter had learned from the vision. He went with them to Cornelius’ house and he said to them,
“You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean” (Acts 10:28 ESV).
Clearly the vision of the sheet let down from heaven was about more than just food, it was also to be applied to people!
After Peter preached Christ to this Gentile household the Holy Spirit came on them. This was an important event for Peter and the other Jews with him to witness.
“And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles” (Acts 10.45).
It was like a Gentile Pentecost! God had accepted even the Gentiles!!
But there was some backlash for Peter. He was called on the carpet back in Jerusalem.
“So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him, saying, ‘You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them’” (Acts 11:2-3 ESV).
At this point Peter stood up to these men and stood by what he knew the Lord had revealed to him.
“If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God's way” (Acts 11:17 ESV)?
The Jerusalem Council
But this issue did not go away. Now Paul comes on the scene and has been preaching and establishing churches out in the Gentile world. One family of Gentiles is perhaps tolerable, but not a whole movement of Gentile churches! Before too long the Gentiles will outnumber the Jewish Christians! Then what will become of Christianity and the Church? So goes the paranoia of all bigotry and prejudice right up to our times! What should we do with the Gentiles who are coming into the Church?
“But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved’” (Acts 15:1 ESV).
We may not be able to keep the Gentiles out completely, but we can at least clean them up a little!
And so the first ecumenical council of the Church convened to debate this issue. Paul went first, giving a report of what the Lord was doing among the Gentiles through his ministry, which included the Galatians.
But the Circumcision Group had not gone away.
“But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, ‘It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the Law of Moses’” (Acts 15:5 ESV).
(Notice that the men who said these things were themselves Christians.)
Now Peter took his turn.
“Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will” (Acts 15:7-11 ESV).
Beautiful! Peter is right on target, in perfect agreement with Paul, and is standing up to these legalists!
Paul Confronts Peter
But after this something happened that caused Peter to lapse back into the old ways. Peter had been participating in full fellowship with the Gentile Christians. The Circumcision Group was still lurking in the background, still clinging to their position. And they somehow convinced Peter to withdraw from full fellowship with the Gentiles. I don’t want to be too hard on Peter here. I don’t think he changed his mind about the Gentiles. I don’t think Peter abandoned the Gospel himself, at least not intellectually.
But in his behavior toward the Gentile believers Peter was out of step with the Gospel. And Paul called him on it publicly! Some Biblical scholars have taken the position that this encounter was symptomatic of a deep division in the early Church between Peter and those who followed him and Paul and his disciples. But there is no evidence that Peter and Paul were ever divided either before or after this brief conflict. I think Peter immediately made the necessary correction and the unity of the Church was intact.
But this issue between Peter and Paul was not primarily a doctrinal issue. Peter was not in danger of becoming a heretic and denying the basic tenets of the Faith. The problem was with Peter’s orthopraxy (practice), not his orthodoxy (doctrine). Peter was not denying the Gospel with his lips, but his actions were in opposition to the Gospel. There is a kind of behavior that is out of step with the Gospel. Something made Peter change his walk, or his conduct, so that he was no longer walking in step with the Gospel.
If it happened to Peter could it not happen to any of us today? What caused Peter to get out of step with the Gospel?
Fear is out of step with the Gospel.
Peter was afraid of the men from the Circumcision Party. He was intimidated by them for some reason, which is a form of fear. We don’t know why Peter was intimidated by these men. Perhaps Peter thought that offending them would undermine his ministry to the Jews. Peter was the primary apostle sent to the Jewish people, as Paul was to the Gentiles.
The Fear of Man
We don’t know why Peter was afraid, but we do know that we are warned in Scripture about the fear of man. And I think I know why we often become intimidated by other people.
•Sometimes we are just afraid of conflict. So to keep the peace, or some semblance of peace, we compromise what we know to be true. God’s people are peacemakers but not at the expense of the truth of the Gospel.
•We may also be overly concerned about our reputation, or what people think about us. This seems innocent, or sometimes even legitimate, but it can also mask a love for the praise of men (John 12.42-43). Many people deny God in order to be accepted by other people – a serious sin!
•We may be intimidated by men because we don’t know how to defend the truth and argue our position effectively. Sometimes we know something is wrong, but we don’t know why and we don’t know what to say. So we just go along with it.
•We may compromise the truth in order to maintain our position or status in the group. Some of the most evil deeds that have been done were done for the sake of being accepted by peers.
•We are intimidated by people we deem to be important and worthy of honor. But sometimes the people we choose to honor are not really worthy of honor. There are some people whose opinion of us should not carry very much weight.
•And sometimes we are afraid because we are thinking only of ourselves instead of the Kingdom of God. We tend to live in the moment instead of thinking of the bigger picture.
The Gospel is the Remedy for Fear
When we are tempted to fear man we should remember that God is infinitely greater than man and God is the one we should fear (Luke 12.4-5). Fear of man makes us weak, but the fear of God will make us strong. If God be for us, who can be against us (Rom. 8.31)? We learn that God is for us through the Gospel.
The Gospel is the source of our confidence and will drive out our fear. So if we are afraid it is because our faith in the Gospel is weak.
Our sun is a powerful source of light, being many times larger than the earth itself. But to block out the light from the sun all we have to do is shut our eyes and we won’t be able to see its glory. The same is true of the light of the Gospel and unbelief. If we close our eyes in unbelief we won’t be able to see the glory of the Gospel and we will walk in the darkness and in fear.
Unfortunately, it is possible even for believers to have times of weak faith. Having weak faith is not the same as having no faith at all. But we are capable of highs and lows in our Christian walk. Peter himself is an excellent illustration of this. Peter walked on water, but then began to sink. Peter would follow Jesus to the death, but denied he even knew Christ when pressed by a little servant girl. Peter preached on Pentecost, and opened the door of faith to the Gentiles, but then withdrew from fellowship with the Gentiles when pressed by the Circumcision Group. We are also capable of these extremes, if our faith is weak.
Faith is dynamic, not static. So we need to continue to grow in grace and in our knowledge of the Gospel (2 Peter 3.18). And when we make mistakes we repent. That’s what Peter did. The ministry of the Body of Christ is to help us be strong in faith and to recognize where and when we have failed to live by faith.
Favoritism is out of step with the Gospel.
Peter was practicing favoritism by withdrawing from fellowship with the Gentiles in favor of his Jewish brethren. There was no other legitimate reason for Peter not to fellowship with the Gentiles other than the fact that they were Gentiles! These were Brethren and Peter refused to fellowship with them based purely on their race and nationality.
To show favoritism is to judge a person based purely on external criteria. The Greek word is to literally “regard the face.”
You can’t judge a book by its cover and you can’t judge the value of a person based on their appearance, race, age, gender, nationality, dress, or wealth.
God Does Not Show Favoritism
Peter had previously learned not to show favoritism when he was called to preach to Cornelius and his household.
“Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34-35 ESV).
God does not show favoritism. God looks at the heart, not at the outward appearance of a person (1 Sam. 16.7). (This seems to contradict the fact that God clearly chose and favored Israel over other nations. But there were some of the people of Israel who were rejected because of unbelief. Not all who are descended physically from Israel actually belong to the People of God.)
Since God does not show favoritism, God’s people should not show favoritism either.
“My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, ‘You sit here in a good place,’ while you say to the poor man, ‘You stand over there,’ or, ‘Sit down at my feet,’ have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts” (James 2:1-4 ESV)?
God accepts people on the basis of faith (Heb. 11.6) and no other criteria. God may even accept people that you don’t particularly like!
Who are you to reject people God has accepted? You will find yourself fighting against God if you do (Acts 11.17).
Learning to Accept People
We tend to judge people externally based on criteria that are either personal preferences or cultural baggage rather than Biblical absolutes – truth that transcends opinions and culture. We have no right to withdraw from fellowship with Brethren based on favoritism. But old ways of thinking can die hard. There are things we will have to unlearn when we learn the Gospel.
We do have to be able to make a distinction between brethren and false brethren. We should not fellowship with a person who claims to be a Christian yet is immoral or embraces and teaches false doctrine. But a person might be a brother yet be in error and need correction. We should not be looking for any and every reason to reject people. God does not do that or He would have already rejected us all!
Accepting brethren may mean that we have to accept people that we disagree with on disputable matters (Rom. 14). Otherwise we are in danger of drawing our circle of fellowship smaller and smaller, which is what the cults do. Don’t either accept or reject whole groups of people as if everyone is the same because of the group they belong to. That is sectarianism and it is another form of favoritism. If you don’t like it when people judge and reject you before they even know you, then don’t do that to others! Practice the Golden Rule! Divisions begin with an attitude problem that can be traced back to pride. I feel free to reject the people that I feel are inferior to me.
But God has the final word on who is in and who is out of His Kingdom. The tax collectors and prostitutes got in while the Pharisees stood outside the door. And who would have thought that any of the Gentiles could ever be included in the family of God (Eph. 2.11-13)? You and I got in by grace through faith.
And we should extend the same grace to those who also want to enter in and not make it harder for them by showing favoritism.
Hypocrisy is out of step with the Gospel.
Paul said that Peter’s behavior was hypocritical, even influencing Barnabas, who had previously been known for accepting people. Hypocrisy spreads like a disease in the Church. When influential people are hypocritical it creates a culture of pretense and bad behavior is rewarded instead of shamed. A Church infected by hypocrisy becomes something akin to a religious theater where people come to watch a slick production put on by professional actors.
Who is a Hypocrite?
We often hear this word “hypocrite” used pejoratively by people criticizing Christians and the Church, but do we really know what the term means? I have heard people say that we are all hypocrites. We all may have behaved hypocritically at some point, but this is a serious sin that cannot be a part of our lives at all.
•Hypocrisy is to be insincere, acting differently from how you really feel or believe. In this case, Peter knew that there was nothing wrong with eating with the Gentiles, yet he withdrew. Imagine someone being your friend in one context and then refusing to even be next to you in another context!
•When you know something is wrong and you do it anyway, that is hypocrisy.
•In public you may take a certain position on an issue. But in private you may do something entirely different. That is hypocrisy.
•Hypocrites live by convenience. They will do what they feel to be personally advantageous to them at the time. Religion can be turned off or on when it is convenient to do so.
•Hypocrites seem especially good at avoiding suffering for what they believe.
Jesus condemned hypocrisy in the strongest of terms (Matt. 5.20; 6.1-2, 5; 23.1-3, 5-6). God hates religious sin most of all. Jesus was angry with the Pharisees but not with the woman at the well or the woman caught in adultery. But He made a whip of cords to drive out the money-changers in the Temple!
Why do People Become Hypocrites?
The main source of hypocrisy seems to be trying to please other people. We selfishly want to look good and have others praise us, even if we have to compromise and lie to get approval. In extreme cases this is a form of idolatry.
Our beliefs and our actions have to match. If these do not match then we may not really believe what we say we believe. We may have embraced another Gospel. Or, we may be compromising what we believe because of some outside influence. There may be a need to confess sin and come into the Light (1 John 1.5-10). God’s people are to be truth-tellers and not liars (Eph. 4.25; Col 3.9).
Hypocrisy is the most common reason people give for avoiding the professed Church. Christians publicly condemn sin, yet the Church is filled with sin even among the leadership. Many Churches seem to have ulterior motives, like money, and are not genuinely interested in the welfare of people.
We are the only Jesus people in the world can see. People have a right to inspect the lives of professed believers to see if our lifestyle matches the claims we make. People would not be as quick to dismiss the truth of the Gospel if our lives adorned the doctrine (Titus 2.10).
Legalism is out of step with the Gospel.
The heart of the problem with Peter’s behavior was that it was based on a legalistic approach to God being propagated by the Circumcision Group. Even though the Law of Moses was given by revelation of God and was to be obeyed, no one was made righteous by keeping the Law. The Law was given to teach us about sin and our need for an imputed righteousness that comes through faith. This is a major thrust of Paul’s letter to the Galatians (See chapter 3-4).
How to Identify Legalism
I don’t think legalism is as easy to identify as some people think it is. It can be a subtle error. Legalism may be based on the Bible, legalists often use the Bible more than others, yet their conclusions are wrong because their starting-point is wrong. Legalists have the wrong hermeneutic (method of interpretation). God had commanded circumcision and many other things. If we are legalists we could also conclude that the food laws and all of the feasts also must be kept. The legalists in the early Church thought this meant that God received people on the basis of doing these things. But the Gospel said that God accepts people on the basis of faith and nothing else.
Here are some of the characteristics of legalism and legalists:
•Legalism is an approach to God that believes we can be righteous based on what we do. All religion tends toward legalism and attempting to establish our own righteousness before God.
•So legalists actually add to the Gospel, putting additional burdens on people (Matt. 23.4; Acts 11.10). The Gospel sets us free, but legalism enslaves. Everyone who wants to be justified by law is in bondage and under a curse (Gal. 3.10).
•Legalists are never content to keep their views to themselves but always want to bind their additional requirements on others, while condemning anyone who does not meet their standards.
•Legalism always leads to arrogance. But anyone who knows the Gospel cannot be proud because we know that we are not justified by our works. The Gospel calls us to trust in the work of God, not in our works. A Christian does good works but does not trust in those works.
Legalism is not Faith
We are justified like Abraham was justified, by faith in the promise of God (Gen. 15.6). God preached the Gospel to Abraham (Gal 3.9; Gen. 12.1-3). This was many years before the Law. The Promise came first! This means the Promise is superior to the Law.
The Circumcision Group had neglected to consider the fact that Abraham was already justified by faith before he was circumcised. Circumcision was the sign and seal of God’s covenant but could not have been the basis for his justification (See Romans 4.9-12). Powerful reasoning on the Scriptures by Paul!
If we have Abraham’s faith then we are his children and are blessed like Abraham. The Gospel is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham, which included a blessing for both Jews and Gentiles who have faith in Jesus, the Seed of Abraham.
We all get in the same way, through the same message, by the same faith. There are no second-class people in the Body of Christ. Everyone who has faith in Jesus is accepted and there are no additional requirements. This means we must also then accept one another without conditions or reservations. If the Gospel is compromised then the very fabric of Christian fellowship also begins to unravel.
Conclusion
Peter’s behavior proves that simply embracing the right doctrine intellectually does not mean that our behavior will automatically be right and good. Our behavior may be out of step with the truth of the Gospel.
If we do find our conduct at variance with the Gospel that does not mean that the Gospel is a flawed message or that it encourages and justifies our sin. Being justified by faith does not mean we are free to continue in sin. Instead we are to walk in the Spirit (Gal 5.18). But Christians still struggle with the Flesh and that may mean that true believers will sometimes stumble.
The Gospel will teach us how to walk. The Gospel will teach us to die to selfish desires through the Cross and walk by faith in the Son of God. The Gospel will teach us how to walk in love, accepting those who have also been accepted by God through faith in Jesus Christ.
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