Hitched Part 3
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· 4 viewsWe build a great community around our new identity not authenticity.
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Transcript
Turn it, and turn it, everything you need is in it.
Reflect on it, grow old and gray with it.
Do not turn from it.
The Messiah is in it.
Introduction
Introduction
Review:
Overview: This series is about what should unite us and how to overcome what divides us.
Week 1: We don’t demand our way, we make a way for others. (Acts 15:1-12).
Now then, why are you testing God by putting a yoke on the disciples’ necks that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? On the contrary, we believe we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus in the same way they are.”
Week 2: We make it as easy as possible to do life together. (Acts 15:13-31).
“It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood.
Week 3: We build a great community around our new Messiah shaped identity not your personal authenticity.
Google Books has 15,900,000 books on Authenticity.
If you look up Workshops on Authenticity there are around 32 million listings.
How often it appears in business press it has trippled in the last ten years.
I was brought in a time when the the Holy Trinity of leadership theory was based on:
Credibility - keep your promises to others
Authenticity - tell the truth on yourself and live your truth
Humility - admit when you are wrong
In my opinion, culture has shifted and made Authenticity the gold standard.
Authenticity - behavior that we have freely chosen and which allows us to express who we are.
In other words, authentic people act in ways that reflect their values and identity
Authenticity - be sincere; saying what you mean and meaning what you say.
The word sincere comes from two latin roots sine cera “without wax” this word comes from world of art where sculptors would hide the problems in their sculptures with wax. So some sculptors held a sign that said sine cera.
Authenticity - my feelings about the world and desires outweigh rational decision making, reigning norms, and social values.
This is why Professor Christopher Lasch (1979) pointed out similarities between the clinical disorder referred to as Narcissistic Personality Disorder and authenticity. According to Lasch, narcissism and authenticity are both characterized by deficient empathic skills, self-indulgence and self-absorbed behavior.
He understood authenticity in its original Greek form that meant
Authentiko - one acting on one's own authority
Let me explain, what I mean it is something that most of us in the room can relate or perhaps one day will be able to relate to. 21 years and 5 months ago, I married the girl of my dreams. Everything was perfect and we only had one small little problem. We had always led are lives as two independent people before we got married. I had never been married before, Lauren had never been married before. The most “authentic” me felt very certain that I could make 90% of all decision without talking to Lauren and Lauren felt very sure that she could make 90% of all decisions without talking to me. That was until her 90% and my 90% led us to an evening dinner of oatmeal mixed with eggs. We had no money for groceries because neither of us had been talking about financial purchases we were making though we only had one checking account. Initially, we both were very authentic and said things like “It’s your fault! This is the way I have always done it.” And then we thought we would get two checking accounts and just avoid all this mess. We were being authentic just doing things the way we had always done them.
This is what is called the authenticity paradox. What got you here, the most authentic you, won’t get you there. We could not just keeping being married and acting like two independent people sharing a bed. Living a life where we both just acted on our own authority and when things did not go right we just retreated to that moral high ground.
We wanted something deeper, better, more intimate than that. Perhaps we wanted something that was going to feel, very inauthentic. It was not going to feel or work the way we were used to but it was the right thing to do to form our family as two people becoming one in unity.
Career
Relationships
Life Transitions
Church
This is why some people never get a promotion or loose the promotion after they get it, this is why some people can get married but not stay married, this is why some people do not handle the transitions of life well, and this is why some churches will just die.
We build a great community around our new Messiah shaped identity not your personal authenticity.
This is where we find ourselves at this point in our message series, Hitched. The Jerusalem council was finished. Paul and Barnabas had handed the letter to the congregations in Antioch. Everyone was encouraged by what they read. Remember, the letter basically said that “The Jewish Christians wanted to make it easy for the Gentiles to be in community together with them.” This was a big moment.
But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned.
First, you might be wondering who is Cephas? This is how Paul like’s to refer to Peter sometimes. Cephas is how you would translate Peter (which is Greek meaning “little rock”) into Aramaic which means a stone.
Why call him Cephas instead of Peter? One can only speculate but it might be because of the tension in the relationship. See in ancient Rome most roman citizens had three names:
Praenomen, personal name: Shimon
Nomen, gentile name: Peter
Cognomen, linked you to your heredity or a behavior: Cephas. They were not normally chosen by the persons who bore them, but were earned or bestowed by others, which may account for the wide variety of unflattering names that were used as cognomina. Doubtless some cognomina were used ironically, while others continued in use largely because, whatever their origin, they were useful for distinguishing among individuals and between branches of large families. - See, Oxford Classical Dictionary, “Personal Names.”
Second, we should expect that this is going to be a great trip. But it is anything be a good visit.
But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned.
Wait, you opposed Peter! You can’t do that, that is Jesus right hand man. And if that is not enough to make you push back, come on, the guy has a bad boy reputation for being good with a knife to the ear.
But Paul “opposed” him. This is a serious moment. The verb “opposed” ἀντέστην was originally a military and political term, but came to be used more broadly of any deliberative situation where opposition to actions or beliefs were involved. Elsewhere in the NT it is used to refer to action against heretics or charlatans. (cf., e.g., Acts 13:8; 2 Tim. 3:8).
In other words, this is a face off and someone will lose face and someone will gain face.
And wait Paul, I thought you said in Romans 8:1 “there is no condemnation” for those in the Messiah Jesus for the Spirit has set us from the law of sin and death. The Spirit has set us free from the Law of Sin and death but if you go back to the Law for righteousness then it is no longer the Law that condemns you but the Gospel. I hate to jump to the end of the story but I feel like I must because you need to see what I mean when I say the Gospel condemns Gal 2:14
But when I saw that they were deviating from the truth of the gospel, I told Cephas in front of everyone, “If you, who are a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel Gentiles to live like Jews?”
The Gospel condemns him first as a hypocrite. But I need to jump down further to the second ending the thing that is even worse.
I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.
It was not just behavior hypocrisy it was nullifying the message of the Gospel through his hypocrisy.
But let’s look at the whole story, the whole situation to really understand what led to this clash of the titans.
For he regularly ate with the Gentiles before certain men came from James. However, when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, because he feared those from the circumcision party. Then the rest of the Jews joined his hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy.
So let’s set the scene. Peter comes to Antioch and he is hanging with the Gentiles. And according to the Acts Jerusalem Council we know these Gentiles are abiding by the four decrees: no idolatry, no strangled meat, no blood, no sexual immorality.
Here are a few other things we can tease out. Cephas must have been there long enough for: (1) him to have established a pattern of ‘living like a Gentile’ including eating with Gentiles in Antioch; (2) the church in Jerusalem to have heard about this and sent some representatives to speak with Cephas directly about the matter; (3) that encounter to have led to a gradual (cf. below) pulling back by Peter, and then others, from table fellowship with Gentiles in Antioch; and (4) for Paul to have confronted Peter in a public assembly about the matter.
Here is the real rub in this situation. Peter had eaten with Gentiles before in Acts 10-11 with Cornelius. He had been given a vision from God where God said to him, “Don’t you call unclean what I have made clean.” The real rub here is that Paul knows Peter knows better and like knows better because God spoke to him about this.
When Paul says he “withdrew” himself and “separated” himself he is being very cheeky with his Greek. The word withdrew ὑποστέλλω is a military word that means to retreat and “separated” himself is a play on the word Pharisee which means separatist. So what Paul is saying is “Cephas retreated from the battle field and joined the other side.” He became a traitor.
Why did he do it? He was scared of the circumcision party and everyone else who was Jewish joined with Peter.
Here is the problem:
The authentic Peter was destroying the community of Jesus followers, Jews and Gentiles.
This was the authentic Perer. The one who was brought up never eating with Gentiles in the Galilee.
This was the authentic Peter who told God when he received the vision of the unclean animals and was told to eat (Acts 10:14)
“No, Lord!” Peter said. “For I have never eaten anything common and ritually unclean!”
Acts 10:28
Peter said to them, “You know it’s forbidden for a Jewish man to associate with or visit a foreigner. But God has shown me that I must not call any person common or unclean.
Peter leas with what really represents him, it is forbidden for a Jewish man…and I am not here because I want to be but because God is making me.
This is how Peter authentically feels about being around Gentiles. It is a moral sin “forbidden.” Not like a “bad idea” but something I should repent of. Why? Because Gentiles touched bad stuff, ate bad stuff, believed bad stuff, prayed to bad gods, and all that stuff could make Peter unclean.
For he regularly ate with the Gentiles before certain men came from James. However, when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, because he feared those from the circumcision party.
The fear that that circumcision party drew out of Peter was simply a fear related to self-doubt about this new identity as a Jewish Christian. Maybe he had gotten it wrong. Was this really what God meant. Come one Jesus said, “He only came for the lost house of Israel.”
Self-doubt occurs when we lack confidence or feel incapable of doing things we need to do so we just retreat to what we always do: be authentically you.
Remember, who you are, the authentic you, will not get you where you need to go especially if where you need to go is new or different. So Paul now says that we are hitched together in community based on our new identity not authenticity.
We who are Jews by birth and not “Gentile sinners” know that no one is justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ. And we have believed in Christ Jesus so that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no human being will be justified.
This is a new Messiah shaped, Messiah defined identity. It is not authentic you and it’s not the “new you” this is the Messiah’s life in you and as the goal for you.
But if we ourselves are also found to be “sinners” while seeking to be justified by Christ, is Christ then a promoter of sin? Absolutely not! If I rebuild the system I tore down, I show myself to be a lawbreaker.
Paul is saying something amazing here, something so liberating about you and me and you and He. Here it is:
Even though you may feel like not being authentically you is sinful and some people will say it is (1) it is not and (2) it’s retreating back to that old you, that you that has always been that is the real problem.
The new identity we are given and pursue will not always feel like it is authentically you.
For through the law I have died to the law, so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Paul knew Peter’s struggle. He too once got his sense of his best self through the Law bu the said he had to die to that to live for God.
It’s not my best me, it’s Messiah in me that is the new identity.
It’s not my aspirational self that I am chasing after but I am chasing after Jesus.
Here is what I know, all of this feels very “inauthentic.”
Inauthentic - does not feel true to me, not me seeking my own way, not me putting my feelings, thoughts, and agenda ahead of everyone and anything else.
I am not freely choosing my desires but the Spirit’s desire.
I am not feely choosing my Kingdom but I am asking for God’s Kingdom.
I am not freely choosing my will but I am asking “let your will be done.”
D.L. Moody, the founder of my Bible College that I got my degree in Jewish studies at said this:
“I know of nothing that speaks louder for Christ and Christianity than to see a man or woman giving up what they call their rights for others, and ‘in honor preferring one another.’”
Do you hear what he is saying, “giving up what you feel you have a right to, in order to honor other people.”
That is accepting a new identity not the best you, nor your most authentic you.
I want to read to you the Message translation of our Passage in closing.
Later, when Peter came to Antioch, I had a face-to-face confrontation with him because he was clearly out of line.
Here’s the situation. Earlier, before certain persons had come from James, Peter regularly ate with the non-Jews. But when that conservative group came from Jerusalem, he cautiously pulled back and put as much distance as he could manage between himself and his non-Jewish friends. That’s how fearful he was of the conservative Jewish clique that’s been pushing the old system of circumcision.
Unfortunately, the rest of the Jews in the Antioch church joined in that hypocrisy so that even Barnabas was swept along in the charade.
But when I saw that they were not maintaining a steady, straight course according to the Message, I spoke up to Peter in front of them all: “If you, a Jew, live like a non-Jew when you’re not being observed by the watchdogs from Jerusalem, what right do you have to require non-Jews to conform to Jewish customs just to make a favorable impression on your old Jerusalem cronies?”
We Jews know that we have no advantage of birth over “non-Jewish sinners.”
We know very well that we are not set right with God by rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. How do we know? We tried it—and we had the best system of rules the world has ever seen! Convinced that no human being can please God by self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as the Messiah so that we might be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to be good.
Have some of you noticed that we are not yet perfect? (No great surprise, right?) And are you ready to make the accusation that since people like me, who go through Christ in order to get things right with God, aren’t perfectly virtuous, Christ must therefore be an accessory to sin? The accusation is frivolous.
If I was “trying to be good,” I would be rebuilding the same old barn that I tore down. I would be acting as a charlatan.
What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work. So I quit being a “law man” so that I could be God’s man.
Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
I am not going to go back on that. Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God’s grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.
And I also “I am not going to go back on that.”
We build a great community around our new Messiah shaped identity not your personal authenticity.