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Outside In: Opening the Door to Christ in Conflict

Galatians 2
 
Galatians 2:1-10—A Little Background
 
2 Then after fourteen years, I went up again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along also. 2 I went in response to a revelation and, meeting privately with those esteemed as leaders, I presented to them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. I wanted to be sure I was not running and had not been running my race in vain. 3 Yet not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek. 4 This matter arose because some false believers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves. 5 We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.
 
6 As for those who were held in high esteem—whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not show favoritism—they added nothing to my message. 7 On the contrary, they recognized that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised. 8 For God, who was at work in Peter as an apostle to the circumcised, was also at work in me as an apostle to the Gentiles. 9 James, Cephas and John, those esteemed as pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised. 10 All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.

  • The central point of this passage is found in verse 9. Those who were viewed as practically carrying the entire church upon their shoulders (styloi means “pillars” or “columns”) gave “the right hand of fellowship” to Paul and Barnabas. 
  • Paul is extremely careful not to omit any details of the meeting. Therefore, he mentions the words concerning “the poor” (2:10), who probably refers to the poor saints in Jerusalem (Acts 12:25; 24:17; Romans 15:26). But even here the Jerusalem apostles added nothing to Paul. He and his coworkers were already taking care of the poor and would continue to do so (1 Corinthians 16:1-4; 2 Corinthians 8:1-15). In any case, the church’s care of the poor had nothing to do with how one becomes saved. The leadership in Jerusalem added no requirements for the Gentiles.
  • Paul’s words in this section contain main practical lessons for the Christian life and ministry today. (1) To be spiritual is not to be naïve. There were many problems in the early church, and Paul was fully aware of them. He developed strategies to deal with these problems and knew where to go to get them resolved. (2) Paul knew when to confront and when to cooperate. He confronted the Judaizers because the integrity of the gospel was at stake (2:5), but he fully cooperated with the leadership of the church. He acknowledged respective fields of ministry and was eager to advance programs for the common good (2:7-10). (3) In summary, Paul provides us with a model for grappling with thorny issues in the church. The model is dynamic and multifaceted. It combines flexibility with firmness and authority with submission.

Galatians 2:11-14—Paul’s Confrontation of Peter
 
11 When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12 For 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 Cephas 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?

  • Paul does not want the Galatians to misunderstand the points just made. He clearly welcomes the affirmation of the Jerusalem apostles. Yet he will not compromise the integrity of the gospel to remain in their good graces. If is for this reason that Paul includes his confrontation with Peter in Antioch. His willingness to confront a chief apostle proves that he will not give in to pressure when the truth of the gospel is at stake.
  • Exactly when this confrontation occurred is difficult to determine, but is likely the “Famine Visit” of Acts 11:27-30 rather than the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15. Paul’s confrontation with Peter may have occurred between the famine visit and the Jerusalem council. This scenario still places the defection of Peter in Antioch after the Cornelius event of Acts 10. So Peter would have known that Jews and Gentiles were saved by grace. Nonetheless, he may have been confused about how Gentiles should relate to Jews in the church.  Indeed, the Gentiles are saved by grace through faith, but does this mean that they can simply ignore the religious customs of their Jewish brothers?
  • Regardless of where we place the incident in Antioch, there can be no doubt that Paul strongly disagreed with Peter’s actions. When Peter arrived in Antioch, Paul “opposed him to his face” (2:11). The conflict was in the open, and the Galatians could check on the accuracy of Paul’s account. Paul uses strong language to get his point across. He employs the language of the law court to reveal Peter’s error. In a juridical sense, Peter “was clearly in the wrong.” Paul does not say that he condemned Peter, nor that God condemned him. It was Peter’s own actions that condemned him before the church and the Lord.
  • The basis for Peter’s guilt was threefold. (1) Prior to the arrival of the men from James (2:12), both Jews and Gentiles enjoyed unrestricted table fellowship. The Gentiles were not required to follow any of the dietary laws of the Old Testament. Furthermore, there is no evidence that the Jewish Christians in Antioch were observing such practices either. Peter himself ate freely with uncircumcised Gentiles. (2) But when the men from James arrived, Peter withdrew himself from the Gentiles and associated only with the Jews. (3) Peter’s poor example led others to act similarly, thus dividing the church in Antioch into Jewish and Gentile factions. He was guilty of hypocrisy and instigating division in the church (2:13).
  • The identity of the “men…from James” is uncertain. They do not seem to be the same troublemakers found in Acts 15:1-6, or at least they are not making the same demands. The Judaizers there were pressuring the Gentiles to be circumcised, and nothing is said about circumcision in Galatians 2:11-14. More than likely these men are the same as the “false brothers” mentioned in 2:4.
  • But why does Paul associate these agitators with James? (1) Perhaps Paul is not using the name “James” as a personal designation. “From James” may simply refer to the jurisdiction of the apostle James. If so, Paul is simply noting that the troublemakers came from James’s jurisdiction, that is, from Jerusalem. (2) “James” may be shorthand for the conservative Jewish sector of the church that James represented. In this sense, the false brothers were “from James” in that they identified with the conservative, Palestinian, Hebrew-speaking portion of the church (cf. Acts 6). If this is so, it must be granted that the troublemakers were more radical than James himself, for he fully accepted uncircumcised Gentiles into the church. Note that Paul never directly implicates James with the trouble at Antioch. If he had actually been at the heart of the problem, Paul would not have hesitated to blame him as well. (3) Perhaps the agitators were actually sent by James, but misrepresented his intentions once they arrived in Antioch. Since Paul clearly states that they were from James but does not implicated him in the trouble, this final option seems most probable (cf. also Acts 15:24).
  • What exactly did the “men…from James” require? Unlike Acts 15:1-6, we do not have a record of their words, so we cannot be sure of their message. Paul only describes the negative consequences of their arrival, but does not relate what they said. Presumably they felt that Peter’s table fellowship with Gentiles expressed a lack of respect for Jewish dietary laws. Since Jewish nationalism was on the rise, freely associating with Gentiles in Antioch may have been disturbing to some conservative Jewish Christians. Also, non-Christian Jews, being zealous to preserve the traditions and identity of Israel, may have pressured Christian Jews to separate themselves from Gentiles. In short, Christian Jews may have felt obliged to emulate the social and political concerns of their Jewish friends. Thus, social and political factors may have led the men from James to interpret the agreement of Galatians 2:8-10 in a literal way: Paul was permitted to associate with Gentiles, but Peter was only to have fellowship with Jews.
  • Regardless of the exact identity of the men from James and their message, one thing is clear: Peter feared “those who belonged to the circumcision group” (2:12). Again the identity of “the circumcision group” is problematic. Are they the Judaizers so frequently attacked by Paul in Galatians and elsewhere in the New Testament (Acts 11:2; Titus 1:10)? Or do they represent all Jewish Christians in the church? Or does the term simply stand for all non-Christian Jews?
  • In addressing these issues the following should be noted. “The circumcision group” cannot refer to Christian Jews in general. Paul was circumcised, but he was certainly not a part of that group. Also, Peter was circumcised and eventually became a part of the problem in Antioch. Yet Paul does not identify him with “the circumcision group.” Remember that prior to the arrival of the men from James, Peter and other Christian Jews ate with the Gentiles in Antioch. So the Christian Jews in Antioch were not the cause of the problem. It was “the circumcision group” who first terrorized the church here, not Peter and his fellow Jewish Christians. It is tempting to identify “the circumcision group” with “the men…from James.” But this would be a mistake. Paul appears to have viewed the men from James as being part of the church, although “the circumcision group” are consistently addressed as non-Christians (Philippians 3:2-6).
  • It may well be that at this early stage in the church, such fine distinctions between various groups is not possible. The early chapters of Acts lend ample evidence that the Jewish Christian church was struggling with its identity vis-à-vis Judaism. If Acts 15 tells us anything, it tells us of this kind of struggle. For example, one sector of the Jewish church embraced a new identity in Christ that made not distinction between Jews and Gentiles. Paul and his coworkers belonged to this group. But another sector of the church accepted Jesus as the Messiah, yet was still significantly associated with historic Judaism. This group no doubt experienced considerable tension between their new-found faith in Christ and their previous life in Judaism. This kind of tension may be reflected in the ambivalent behavior of Peter and “the men…from James.” It is this group that was particularly vulnerable to the pressure of Jewish nationalists.
  • Indeed, Josephus records that by AD 40, Jewish freedom fighters were stepping up their campaign against the Romans (Jewish War 2:118; Antiquities 18:23). In the eyes of such militant Jews, any Israelite who associated with Gentiles, especially anyone who ate with them, was a traitor. Table fellowship was viewed as collaborating with the enemy because it undermined the distinct identity of the Jews. Within this particular context, the “men…from James” may gave judged fellowship with Gentiles to be too inflammatory to an already tense situation. So just as Saul the Pharisee had persecuted Jewish Christians for not requiring Gentiles to be circumcised, “the circumcision group” are now pressuring Jewish believers to separate themselves from Gentiles.
  • For all of these reasons Paul clearly states that Peter is guilty of “hypocrisy” (2:13). The word hypokrisis, borrowed from the Greek theater, literally means “to speak from beneath the mask.” It describes how actors would converse with each other between scenes. Often the nature of their conversation did not match the expressions on the mask they wore. So the essential meaning of “hypocrisy” denotes an inconsistency between one’s internal convictions and one’s external expression.
  • With regard to Peter in Antioch, his actions were inconsistent with his theological convictions. The grammar of 2:12 supports Paul’s charge of hypocrisy. The verbs “draw back” and “separate” are both in the imperfect tense, which speaks of continuous action in past time. So Peter was gradually, yet continuously separating himself from the Gentiles, with whom he had previously dined. He was fully conscious of what he was doing. In a subtle yet unmistakable way, he was saying that the Gentiles were unacceptable.
  • The special context of table fellowship made Peter’s hypocrisy even more serious. For the Jew table fellowship meant acceptance in the name of God. That is, even a common meal was understood to have some sacramental significance. Thus Peter’s refusal to eat with the Gentiles strongly implied that the Gentiles were not accepted by God. He was saying that in order for the Gentiles to be a part of the people of God, they had to Judaize—become Jews and seek their salvation by observing all the works of the law.
  • Peter’s cowardly compromise had devastating consequences for the church in Antioch. It stated a chain reaction that affects “the other Jews” (2:13). Paul notes that even Barnabas was caught up with Peter’s hypocrisy (2:13). Now, Barnabas was the one who introduced Paul to the Gentile mission in Antioch (Acts 11:25-26). It is difficult to understand how he could have given in to such behavior. He surely knew better. Only Peter’s role as the apostle to the Jews can serve as an explanation. In some way Barnabas interpreted Peter’s example as setting policy, and he felt duty-bound to follow that policy.
  • The public nature of the confrontation is reiterated in 2:14. Paul addressed Peter “in front of them all.” Paul’s aggressive response to Peter is due to the serious issues at stake. He recognizes that  Peter is “not acting in line with the truth of the gospel.” These words can only mean that Peter’s behavior violated the central principles of the faith, in that he was strongly implying that God’s covenant grace was restricted to the people of Israel. Uncircumcised Gentiles were sinners and thus deserved exclusion from the commonwealth of Israel.
  • Paul exposes Peter’s hypocrisy by asking, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile….How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs [i.e., to Judaize]?” In other words, if Peter (a Jew by race and culture) does not live by the letter of Jewish law, why is he trying to force Gentiles to become law-observant Jews?
  • It is important to note the inferences that Paul makes in 2:14. He begins by moving from the particular to the universal. Peter’s action as an individual has substantial implications for all Gentiles. Paul then affirms the essential unity of the law. To fail in one part of the law is to fail the entire law as an integrated system. In other words, Peter cannot pick and choose which laws he will observe. If he transgresses one law, then he becomes a lawbreaker. As a transgressor, he has failed the law as a whole. On the other hand, if the Gentiles are forced to submit to the dietary laws of the Torah, this means that they are obligated to keep all the precepts of the law. Although Peter may not have realized it at the time, he was forcing the Gentiles to convert to Judaism (cf. 5:3). The Gentiles at Antioch would have had to become circumcised and obey the entire law of Moses.
  • The contemporary implications of this passage are apparent, yet weighty. The public confrontation of two major leaders of the church is a sure sign that there is trouble in the camp. The spiritual stature and experience of the persons involved (Paul and Peter) ensures that the issues at stake are great. On the one hand, such open conflict is disturbing and possibly even discouraging to those who are new to the faith. Nevertheless, at times critical problems require radical methods. For when the head is confused, the body cannot function. Peter was confused about central principles of the faith and was indeed disrupting the body of believers in Antioch. He established a dangerous precedent, which would certainly destroy the unity of the church. Paul could not permit this kind of dissension to spread beyond the walls of the church in Antioch. He had to confront Peter, and he had to do it now.
  • We must be careful to observe that 2:11-14 is not about power; it is about principle. The lesson here is not really about conflict, it is about conviction. Paul had the spiritual discernment to understand that there were issues at stake that transcended personalities and politics. And he had the moral courage to act on his convictions regardless of the cost. This is the mark of true spiritual leadership. And this is the only kind of leadership that can keep the church tuned to the perfect will of God.

Galatians 2:15-21
15 “We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles 16 know that a person is not justified by the works of 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 the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.
 
17 “But if, in seeking to be justified in Christ, we Jews find ourselves also among the sinners, doesn’t that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! 18 If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker.

19 “For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. 20 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. 21 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”

Questions
  • Where do we see divisions in the church today?
  • How does your understanding of the cross affect your view of God and your relationship with others? What temptations do you face in resisting the lure of relying on “Law” instead of grace?
  • What examples of unity do you see when your church family comes together in worship? How has your church helped open the door for such inclusion?
  • How do you deal with conflict? What does this passage teach us about conflict in the church?
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