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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