Paul Opposes Peter
11When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. 12Before 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. 13The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.
14When 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?
Dig Deeper
It was one of the coldest and snowiest days of my life (at least that’s what my six-year-old memory tells me). I distinctly remember standing inside looking out our front picture window at, what was to me, an incredible sight. We were in the tail-end of a blizzard and the snow was still blowing and swirling, and I knew it was bitterly cold. Yet, out in the midst of it all, digging out of a knee-high snow was my dad with his shovel, with the snow swirling and blowing all around him. He was wearing his fatigue jacket, that I believe he had kept from his days at the Air Force Academy, and a ski mask. I recall staring out the window, watching him and believing that my dad was the strongest man in the universe. He was even better than Superman. That memory has always, and will always stick in my mind, but as I have grown up, I have learned that my dad isn’t superhuman. He’s a regular guy with regular faults and weaknesses. For some people, this type of realization is crushing; it devalues the person in their eyes. It should not be that way, however. The more I realized how regular my dad was, the more I realized how extraordinary he was. Here’s a guy who sacrificed for us constantly (whether it be waking up at 4:00 AM for thirty years to go to work or many of the other ways), who trained us well, who constantly taught us valuable lessons about life, and who most of all loved us selflessly. He didn’t do all that because he was Superman and it came naturally. He did those things because he was determined to rise above his normal human fallen nature for our benefit.
When we read passages like our reading today, we can tend to really lose our respect for men like Peter. How could he blow it so spectacularly? How could an apostle, Jesus’ right hand man, continue to make obvious mistakes like this? Rather than having our faith shaken or being disturbed by such an account, though, we should realize all the more that Peter is a man worthy of respect. He was a fallen sinner, like anyone else. Being an apostle didn’t make him superhuman. Quite the opposite. He had more challenges and more temptations to face. Yet, rather than his occasional failures forever diminishing our opinion of Peter and the others, it should make us glorify God all the more for the incredible things that he did through Peter. Peter was a man who, in Christ, was determined to rise above his normal human fallen nature for the benefit of others. His faults don’t define him, his location in Christ does.
We should start by noting that we have no idea when or why Peter came to Antioch or for how long, but we can safely assume that it was at least long enough for him to develop a habit of eating with Gentile Christians and then to reject that when the men from Jerusalem came. Antioch had become, however, a center of the Christian community during the fierce persecutions in Jerusalem, so it’s not a major surprise that we would find Peter there for a period of time.
To truly understand the depth of this situation, we have to understand that table-fellowship in the ancient world was one of the most powerful symbols they had. Whether you accepted or denied table-fellowship with certain groups of people said everything about whether you accepted them as equal to you or not. This is probably not the message that Peter intended to send, but he was sending it nonetheless. The common meal may have taken place for the entire church or it may have been solely for those who were supported by the church to be in the ministry. When Peter refused to have table-fellowship with them at a regular meal, he also would have done so at the Lord’s Supper. Thus, this passage is directly related to previous passage dealing with circumcision. The conservative Jews who came from James (this does not imply that James sent them, as in fact James seems to deny in Acts 15:24) felt that the Gentiles were not fully Christian because they had not become Jews and had not been circumcised. Peter’s hypocrisy would have sent the message to the Judaizers that they were right: The Gentiles were second-class Christians at best that did indeed need to follow the whole law.
What galls Paul the most is not that Peter did this due to considerations of conscience or even trying to be all things to all men, he did it because he was afraid of the ‘circumcisers’. Even worse than that, the other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, to the point that even Barnabas was led astray. Even nearly two thousand years later we can feel the particular sting of the words "even Barnabas," the man who had stood by Paul’s side so many times. Paul had to act quickly and decisively or the great message of the unity of the gospel in Christ would be for naught. There would be two communions in Antioch and eventually two different Christian communities, one Jew and one Gentile. Perhaps some thought that this was just a small sacrifice for peace with the men from Jerusalem and they could go back to normal once they left. But this was not a sacrifice that Paul was willing to make. There are certainly times and places for Christians to limit their freedoms for the sake of the conscience of other Christians, but this was not one of those times. This was an issue that was central to the whole message of the gospel. Was being in Christ enough, or were there more requirements than that. This is not something that could be played around with.
Up to this point, the discussions concerning this topic had been privately but Paul knows that this is serious and must be dealt with publicly. He shows incredible conviction and courage in standing up to the man who was, in the minds of many, the preeminent apostle. He was, after all, Jesus’ right hand man. Yet Paul did not fear man, he feared God and knew that when the true gospel was being compromised, he had to stand up and speak out. Regardless of his motives, Peter’s actions were playing directly into the hands of those who would divide the body of Christ. Paul needed to shock Peter into a realization of that. No doubt, Peter would not say that the Gentile Christians were not as good as Jewish Christians, but he had failed to see that this is what his actions were saying. The man who had done so many wonderful things, but had also taken his eyes off of Jesus while walking on water, and had denied Christ on the night of his crucifixion, was taking his eye off Christ one more time and needed to be corrected. He needed to be shocked out of the play-acting Peter and back to the real Peter who knew in his soul that in Christ, God had created a new family of Jews and Gentiles. Peter had spent a lifetime looking at the Gentiles as barely human but all that had changed in Christ. When hard-line Jewish Christians came, Peter blinked for a moment and held up a mask of Jewish respectability, to the point that the other Jewish Christians followed suit. Paul will go on to theologically develop this point further in the verses to come, but his primary point is clear. Once you have entered into Christ, that’s all there is to it. There are no divisions and certainly no masks are required in the body of Christ.
Devotional Thought
When others make mistakes do you focus on the disappointment or do you choose to look at the glory of God in the other areas of their life? In 2 Corinthians 3:18 Paul says that the power of the gospel is that we begin to recognize the glory of God in the faces of other Christians. Do you make an effort to see the power of God in other Christians despite their moments of weaknesses; do you allow yourself to focus on the power of God in their life?
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