Sinners Justified in Christ Alone
Galatians 2:11-16
Jonathan Swift, the satirical author of Gulliver’s Travels, said: “A man should never be ashamed to admit he has been in the wrong; which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.” And everybody who ever made a mistake, said “Amen!”
I know somewhere in heaven, the apostle Peter must be shouting “Amen” as well. Most of us relate to Peter with a smile. One of the reasons we love to identify with Peter is that we can see so much of ourselves in his failings. Peter’s blunders were human frailties in the context of a high and holy calling. He made some of the greatest statements of any of the disciples in the Gospels; but he also made some of the greatest mistakes.
In one scene, Peter confesses, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!” to hear Jesus affirm, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar Jonah, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.” Jesus told Peter that his confession would be the rock upon which He would build His church and the very gates of hell would not prevail against it.” What a moment!
Then a few minutes later, he rebukes Jesus, to hear Him say, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.” Always burning hot or freezing cold, Peter was never guilty of lukewarmness. As one of my professors said, “He was never in doubt, but often in error.” This is the Peter we have come to love and admire as one of us. We smile to realize that God can use a man like Peter, mistakes and all. He even used Peter under divine inspiration to convey His inerrant Word to the early church.
He had been broken by the Master to minister to the multitudes. On one cold night around a charcoal fire, Peter denied he even knew Jesus at the laughter of a little girl. As the interrogation continued, Peter uttered some obscenities and slouched into the long, dark shadows of night. He wept bitterly over that. Jesus restored him around another charcoal fire. Three months later, Peter was the fearless preacher of Pentecost, where 3,000 souls were added to the church. When it came to being the point man in the early church, he was “the man”. But then along came Paul. The same Jesus who called Peter also called Paul. Peter would preach to the Jews, Paul would preach to the Gentiles.
But Peter was still Peter. He was still prone to wander, just like we are. And when Peter, the noted preacher of Pentecost stepped out of line, he was still subject to being rebuked. This time it wasn’t Jesus, but a man appointed by Jesus and filled with His Spirit, who spoke and acted with the same spiritual authority. It was the same authority Peter had witnessed in the Master Himself. Paul had to rebuke Peter because his behavior was contradicting his confession and undermining the gospel. What happens when a Christian’s behavior contradicts their confession? Let’s see.
Our Scripture text is Galatians 2:11-16. In honor of God and His inerrant Word, I invite you to stand for the reading of these emotional words.
11 When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. 12 Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. 13 The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.
14 When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?
15 “We who are Jews by birth and not ‘Gentile sinners’ 16 know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified. [NIV]
[Prayer] Have you ever felt pressured to act less than Christ-like because of the people you were with? Maybe you were just embarrassed; or perhaps you didn’t want people to think you were a religious fanatic… you just wanted to fit in and be like everybody else?
Whatever they talked about, you talked about;
Whatever they drank, you drank;
Whatever they laughed at, so did you.
If they were prejudiced, you went along with it.
You did everything you could to blend in… and it worked. Not one person would have associated you with Jesus. If you’ve ever yielded to that temptation, this passage is for you.
Peter was a great man of faith who yielded to the temptation to “just blend in”. Without fully realizing it, his behavior was contradicting his confession and all he knew to be true about Jesus.
In this passage from Galatians, I want to highlight three timeless principles illustrated by Paul’s confrontation of Peter. Let’s begin with verses 11 through 13… and then develop the point.
11 When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. 12 Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. 13 The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.
Here’s the first timeless principle taught in these verses—
I. When fear of people becomes greater than fear of God, you will always go astray (11-13).
In the natural world there are physical laws governing the way materials interact with one another. People learn this in basic science and in physics classes. But there are also certain spiritual laws that function according to rules of interaction as well. One of those laws is this: Fear of God displaces fear of man; or fear of man displaces fear of God. The two cannot co-exist at the same time, in the same person, or to the same degree. When fear of what other people think displaces your fear of God, then you are already going aside. That’s what happened to Peter at Antioch. He was afraid of the Jewish visitors who were associated with James.
Some of these men believed you had to keep the ceremonial laws of Moses, even as a Christian. And part of the ceremonial laws of Moses restricted Jews from eating with Gentiles. So Peter saw these strict Jewish legalists and jumped up from the Gentile table where he used to eat. He didn’t want to be seen with Gentiles in the presence of the legalists. He was afraid of these men! But Paul saw what he was doing, and he knew what it meant concerning the essence of the gospel. Fear of people had displaced Peter’s fear of God… and it started a chain reaction.
That’s what Paul said in verse 12: “Before certain men came from James, Peter used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.” The reason that Peter’s eating with Gentiles was important was because it made a sharp distinction between the Law of Moses, which forbid it, and the Law of the gospel of Grace which compelled it. By withdrawing from the Gentiles, Peter was watering down the contrast between law and grace.
Oswald Chambers wrote: “The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God, you fear nothing else.” (Pause) Is God big in your life? How big are your thoughts of God when you compare them to your problems, or to people who don’t understand you? Have you ever been tempted to live beneath the high calling of Jesus Christ rather than standing up to make the gospel dazzlingly apparent? The fact is, being a Christian makes you live differently from the unsaved world around you. When you live differently, you will undoubtedly begin to feel the pressure to conform, to just go along. But if you fear God more than people, you will stand firm.
The second timeless principle arises when we don’t stand firm. Plainly stated…
II. When a Christian acts contrary to an essential truth of Scripture, they need to be confronted (14).
Whenever a strong believer acts in a way that is sinful (that is, a way that does not glorify God), then he or she provides an excuse for weaker Christians to lapse into greater sin. That’s what happened at Antioch. Peter’s hypocrisy led the other Jews, including Barnabas, to act in a way that compromised the truth of the gospel. Notice two things about all sin: (1) all sin is destruct-tive; and (2) personal sin always has public consequences if not dealt with at the root.
When Paul noticed that the truth of the gospel was being compromised by Peter’s actions, he had to confront him publicly. The reason this required a public confrontation is because Peter was a public representative of what the gospel meant to Jews and Gentiles alike, namely, freedom from the law through faith in Jesus.
In the 1st century Judeo-Christian context, the gospel was most clearly seen in its distinctiveness from traditional Judaism. So much so, that to blur those distinctions was to deny the very essence of the gospel of grace. Traditional Judaism said “You must be circumcised in the flesh to be right with God”; but the gospel says “Circumcise your heart by living out the grace of God.”
Now Peter had known nothing but traditional Judaism from the day he was born, up to the day he met Jesus. And even though he let Jesus change those traditions, old habits die hard. The pressure to fit in and be like everybody else was a strong force in Peter’s life. This was true even after he had walked with Christ for many years and was a mighty preacher of the Word.
The truth is, Jesus wants to change our dependence on traditions and early childhood rituals with a dependence upon Him. This is still true even when the methods and the forms around us are changing with each new generation. It’s human nature to cling to the familiar. It’s true for all of us—we like what we’re familiar with. But what Jesus wants to know from His followers is this: “Are you willing to hold the non-essentials loosely in order to strengthen your grip on the unchanging truth of the gospel.”
That’s an important question because for many Christians, their traditions have become their gospel. And when Christians make added requirements a part of what it means to be a Christian, they are practicing the error of the Judaizers. The great lesson from Peter’s mistake is that we come perilously close to denying the gospel when our traditions become more compelling than the simple message of grace through faith.
When we fear people more than God, we go astray; when we go astray, we need to be confronted, and third…
III. When a person is justified by faith in Christ, they must also live by faith in Christ (15-16).
This may sound automatic. You would think a person justified by faith in Christ would automatically live by faith in Christ. But like Peter, we struggle in the tension between belief and practice. The great truth in these verses is that when a person has Jesus Christ, they have everything that law-observing could never give. In Jesus Christ, we have kept the law; He is our law-keeper. In Jesus Christ, we have met the ceremonial requirements, He is our sufficiency. In Jesus Christ, we have satisfied God more than all the blood of bulls and goats and sheep could ever satisfy, for He has satisfied the Father on our behalf. To add to the sufficiency of Christ is to say that Jesus is not enough to save me… I need to add something more.
But the root of justification must also produce the fruit of sanctification. Having been justified by faith, you must also live out this faith, being conformed to the likeness of Jesus. This sanctific-ation isn’t what saves us; instead, it is the evidence that we have been justified through faith in Christ Jesus. The same faith that justifies is also the faith that sanctifies. They go together. Growing in sanctification is what it means to live by faith in Christ.
My goal is to keep preaching a bigger and greater view of God… so that we may become a stronger, more faithful people of God for our church, our neighborhoods, our country, and our world.
(c) Charles Kevin Grant
2003