The Caring Away of Hypocrisy
When Paul visited Jerusalem, Peter (and others) gave him “the right hand of fellowship”; but when Peter visited Antioch, Paul opposed him to his face. The time of Peter’s trip to Antioch is not known. There is no reference to it in the Book of Acts, but perhaps the visit occurred soon after Paul, Barnabas, and Titus returned to Antioch from Jerusalem. At any rate Peter’s conduct in Antioch produced a tense face-to-face confrontation between two Christian leaders. Paul felt compelled to rebuke and condemn Peter for his actions, thus defending the gospel and demonstrating again his own independence and equality as an apostle.
2:12. On arrival at Antioch, Peter found Jewish and Gentile Christians fellowshiping together at mealtimes without regard to Jewish dietary laws. Because of the vision Peter had received at the house of Simon the tanner (Acts 10:9–15, 28), he felt free to eat with the Gentiles, and did so on a regular basis. While it lasted, this was a beautiful demonstration of the unity of Jew and Gentile in Christ. But a breach occurred when some arrived from Jerusalem who were shocked at Peter’s conduct. These emissaries came from James and belonged to the circumcision party, but it is doubtful that they had James’ endorsement. Nonetheless Peter was influenced by their presence and slowly but surely began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles. The verb tenses (imperf.) indicate a gradual withdrawal, perhaps from one joint meal a day, and then two; or it may be that he began a meal with Gentiles but finished it with only Jewish Christians. By such actions Peter in effect was teaching that there were two bodies of Christ, Jewish and Gentile. And that was heresy. But why did Peter create this breach? Not because of any change in theology, but simply out of fear. Once, after preaching to Gentile Cornelius, Peter courageously defended himself before the Jerusalem leaders (cf. Acts 11:18); but this time he capitulated to some Jewish friends.
2:13. Like falling dominoes the defection of Peter brought the defection of the other Jews and finally even Barnabas. The pressure must have been great for Barnabas to succumb because he was from Cyprus, a Gentile center, and was involved in a missionary program with Paul to reach Gentiles with the gospel. All of them—Peter, the other Jewish Christians, and Barnabas—were guilty of hypocrisy because while confessing and teaching that they were one in Christ with Gentiles, they were denying this truth by their conduct.
The Caring Away of Hypocrisy
They were repelled, as often as not, however, by the self-righteous arrogance of many Jews, by their hypocrisy, and by their contemptuous attitude toward all things Gentile. They were insulted by Jewish dietary laws that closed the door on all ordinary social intercourse, and the idea of circumcision as the only way to acceptance into the Jewish faith repelled them. When the Christians offered them salvation by grace through faith in Christ, free from all of the hindrances of Judaism, they flocked into the church. Soon, the Gentiles far outnumbered the Jews in the Antioch church. Soon, Gentiles would far outnumber Jews in the church everywhere.
The Jerusalem church viewed this reality with some alarm. They sent Barnabas to Antioch to see what was going on. Barnabas had been thrilled to the very core of his being and had stayed on to help. Moreover, he had brought Paul into the work. Paul’s vision, zeal, drive, and anointing gave even greater impetus to the growth of the Antioch church. No wonder the Judaizers tried to curb what was going on and sought to reduce the Gentile church to subservience to the Jerusalem church. They felt threatened. Paul now recounts an incident, relevant to the whole issue of Gentile freedom from the Law, that had taken place at the church at Antioch and in which both Peter and Barnabas had been involved. He concentrates, first, on Peter’s conduct.
I The Calling out of Peter -
As we shall see, Peter played a two-faced game at Antioch and drew down on his head the righteous indignation of the apostle Paul, who was a respecter of no man’s person.
We can imagine Peter’s popularity when he first arrived at Antioch. Here was the man who had spent three and a half years with Jesus. People were thrilled. They flocked to his meetings. The buildings where they met couldn’t contain the crowds. Every Christian home in Antioch was open to him. People would be awed if even so much as Peter’s shadow fell upon them. They hung upon his words. They couldn’t hear enough from him. As soon as the service was over, instead of going home, they would flock around the warmhearted apostle with a thousand questions about Jesus, the disciples, the birthday of the church, and Peter’s visit to Cornelius. And Peter loved every minute of it.
We can well imagine that, as Paul and Barnabas had said their final good-byes upon leaving Jerusalem, Paul would look Peter in the eye and grip his hand and say, “Come and see us, Peter. Come on up to Antioch. Come and see for yourself.” And so Peter had come, and he had been an instant success. And how he loved that Gentile hospitality! He even developed, perhaps, a taste for Gentile food. Certainly, he did not refuse a single invitation—at first that is.
Then something had happened, and everything had turned sour. Peter compromised himself, and Paul heard about it. He “let Peter have it straight between the eyes,” as we would say today. Paul, aroused, angry, and defending his beloved Gentile converts against Judaistic shibboleths, was a man to be feared. He was like a bear robbed of her whelps. We can well imagine that Peter must have quailed before the fire in Paul’s eye, the blistering eloquence of his tongue, the driving force of his will, and the irresistible logic of his words. Peter’s critic was Paul, and Paul was full of the Holy Spirit and fire. “He was to be blamed,” Paul says. The word is kataginōskō, meaning “condemned.” He stood accused by his own conscience and in the sight of the whole Gentile church.
II The Consequences - Gal 2:13-15
That Peter should have been so hypocritical was disastrous. That Barnabas should have been party to it was well nigh incredible. If Paul was disappointed in Peter, he was utterly dismayed by Barnabas. Perhaps at this point he began to entertain some first small doubts about dear Barnabas; he had expected better things of him.
We can well imagine the hurt and confusion in the Gentile camp. They had virtually idolized Peter, and now their idol proved to have feet of clay. The rift between Jew and Gentile might have rapidly become “a great gulf fixed” had not Paul come striding boldly in. “I withstood him [Peter] to the face,” Paul says (v. 11). “He was to be blamed.” The word dissimulation here is hupokrisis, from which we get our word hypocrite. It simply means “playacting.” Paul couldn’t stand that. Peter must have spent a very uncomfortable half hour with Paul. By the time Paul was finished with him—weeping, pleading, arguing, and praying—Peter would be far more afraid of Paul than he ever was of James. It speaks volumes for both Paul’s powers of persuasion and Peter’s honest repentance and fair-mindedness that he never held his well-deserved chastisement at Paul’s hands against him (2 Peter 3:15–16).
2:14. The response of Paul was electric. What Peter had initiated created a public scandal and therefore deserved a public rebuke. Further, the defectors were not acting according to the truth of the gospel, that is, they were denying by their actions the truth that on the basis of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection Jews and Gentiles who believe are accepted equally by God. Paul therefore asked Peter before them all, “If you, who are a Jew, do not live like a Jew but like a Gentile, why on earth do you try to make Gentiles live like Jews?” (PH) It was a stinging rebuke. Peter’s response is not recorded. He stood condemned. He was acting contrary to his own convictions, was betraying Christian liberty, and was casting a slur on fellow believers. Such behavior needed this severe reprimand.
2:15. But how far did the rebuke extend? Considerable discussion has centered on the question as to whether Paul’s direct remarks to Peter were limited to verse 14 or whether, as in the NIV, they continued to the end of the chapter. While it is impossible to determine, it would seem that Paul uttered more than one sentence in reproving Peter. The remaining verses of the chapter develop, then, the inconsistency between Peter’s behavior and his beliefs. At the same time they form a superb transition and introduction to chapters 3 and 4 in which Paul defended the key doctrine of justification by faith.
Paul’s argument was addressed to those who were Jews by birth, including Peter and himself, who in spite of their superior advantages were saved by faith. Why then bind the Law on Gentile sinners (said in irony because of Peter’s actions), who likewise were saved by faith in Christ?
III The Discernment of the Problem
In this verse, one of the most important in the epistle, the word justified occurs for the first time. It is a legal term, borrowed from the law courts and means “to declare righteous.” Its opposite is “to condemn.” But since people are condemned sinners and God is holy, how can people be justified? In answer, the apostle made a general declaration that negatively man is not justified by observing the Law, but positively, justification is by faith in Jesus Christ. This is a strong affirmation of Paul, Peter, and the rest—introduced by We … know. It is followed by a statement in which Paul explained that he had put this doctrine to the test and validated it in his own experience (v. 16b). Finally, in verse 16c the apostle reaffirmed that justification is by faith and not by works (cf. Gen. 15:6).
2:17–18. Paul’s opponents argued, however, that since justification by faith eliminated the Law, it encouraged sinful living. A person could believe in Christ for salvation and then do as he pleased, having no need to do good works. Paul hotly denied the charge, especially noting that this made Christ the promoter of sin. On the contrary, if a believer would return to the Law after trusting Christ alone for salvation, that Law would only demonstrate that he was a sinner, a lawbreaker. Though Paul used the first person here, he clearly had in mind Peter, who by his act of withdrawing from Gentile fellowship was returning to the Law.
2:19–20. Paul then distinguished himself from Peter, contrasting what he did with the Law with what Peter did with the Law. Paul described the transformation in a person who has come to God by faith in Christ in terms of a death and a resurrection. The concept is repeated in both verses and the reference in both cases is to a believer’s union with Christ in His death and resurrection. First, Paul stated that through the Law he died to the Law. The Law demanded death for those who broke it, but Christ paid that death penalty for all sinners. Thus the Law killed Him and those joined to Him by faith, freeing them to be joined to another, to live for God (cf. Rom. 7:4).
In Galatians 2:20 Paul enlarged on the meaning of verse 19. He “died to the Law” because he was crucified with Christ; he was able “to live for God” because Christ lived in him. Basic to an understanding of this verse is the meaning of union with Christ. This doctrine is based on such passages as Romans 6:1–6 and 1 Corinthians 12:13, which explain that believers have been baptized by the Holy Spirit into Christ and into the church, the body of all true believers. Having been thus united to Christ, believers share in His death, burial, and resurrection. Paul could therefore write, I have been “crucified with Christ” (lit., “I have been and am now crucified with Christ”). This brought death to the Law. It also brought a change in regard to one’s self: and I no longer live. The self-righteous, self-centered Saul died. Further, death with Christ ended Paul’s enthronement of self; he yielded the throne of his life to Another, to Christ. But it was not in his own strength that Paul was able to live the Christian life; the living Christ Himself took up His abode in Paul’s heart: Christ lives in me. Yet Christ does not operate automatically in a believer’s life; it is a matter of living the new life by faith in the Son of God. It is then faith and not works or legal obedience that releases divine power to live a Christian life. This faith, stated Paul, builds on the sacrifice of Christ who loved us and gave Himself for us. In essence Paul affirmed, “If He loved me enough to give Himself for me, then He loves me enough to live out His life in me.”
2:21. Summing up his case against Peter, Paul declared, I do not set aside the grace of God. The clear implication is that Peter and the others who followed him were setting aside God’s grace. The essence of grace is for God to give people what they have not worked for (cf. Rom. 4:4). To insist on justification or sanctification by works is to nullify the grace of God. Further, such insistence on legal obedience also means Christ died for nothing. If righteousness comes by keeping the Law, the Cross was a futile gesture, the biggest mistake in the universe.
The problem is that the Law condemns us. Elsewhere, Paul wrote, “By the law is the knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20). Paul’s personal testimony was clear: “I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet” (Rom. 7:7). He adds, “I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death … the law is holy … but I am carnal, sold under sin” (Rom. 7:9–10, 12, 14). The Law does not justify; it condemns. We cannot keep the Law—not in its letter, let alone in its spirit. So the Law cannot justify.
When a person is arraigned in court, he can leave condemned, forgiven, or justified. The Law can only condemn. The judge might issue a pardon, but, given the fact that we have all broken the Law of God, it cannot justify.
Years ago, back before the days of warranties, a wealthy Englishman purchased a Rolls Royce car and took it on his vacation to the south of France, where it broke down. He wired back to the factory, and the company flew a mechanic, long before flying was commonplace, to the south of France to diagnose the problem. After doing so, the mechanic flew back to the factory, picked up the part he needed, flew back to the south of France, repaired the car, and sent the customer on his way. The man expected to get a sizable bill, but time passed, and no bill came. He finally wrote a letter to the Rolls Royce factory, thanking them for the excellent service they had given him when his car broke down and asking them to send him his bill. After all, he was a wealthy man and could certainly afford to pay for services rendered.
He received a letter from the company, reading, “Dear Sir: We have no record of anything ever having gone wrong with your car.”
That is exactly what it means to be justified. The word itself is sometimes paraphrased “just-as-if-I’d” never sinned. To be justified means that God has no record of anything having gone wrong in one’s life! Justified! The Law cannot justify a guilty man, but Jesus can and does! The Law cannot bring us to redemption ground, but Jesus can and does.
Therefore, the position of the Jewish Christian was clear. The works of the Law could not save him. He was shut up to Christ for salvation. “By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.” The Jew and the Gentile stood on the same ground before God—lost and in need of Christ.