Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-june-4-2024
Galatians 2:11-21
11 When Peter 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 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 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!”
Some historians and scholars of world religion describe the apostle Paul as the “co-founder” with Jesus of the Christian faith. I think both Jesus and Paul would say that’s not quite right, but it’s not a ridiculous idea. Jesus handed down a body of teaching and died on the cross to save us. And of course, Jesus rose from the dead in a great sign of the truth of his teachings and of God’s love for us.
But Paul was then drafted into the movement to go into the world and build the global movement we know as the church of Jesus Christ. And when you’re given an assignment like that, sometimes you have to lead quietly and gently. But other times call for “tough love,” as we would say – for straightening things out with direct correction.
And there’s probably no book of the Bible that communicates Paul’s brand of tough love better than his Letter to the Galatians. There are some parts of Galatians where Paul gets wound up to the point of being almost gruesome in his rhetoric. Today’s passage is more restrained than those parts, but in this reading, Paul says he had given Peter a public tongue-lashing. Which is saying something, because Peter was apparently one of the apostles that Paul most held in high regard. Maybe even a friend.
The issue of this passage – and in fact, it’s the main issue of the whole Letter to the Galatians – was the question of whether or not gentiles who had become followers of Jesus were obliged to keep all the traditional Jewish laws about circumcision and eating kosher foods and so on. It seems that Paul himself generally observed those laws, but he taught his gentile converts that they didn’t need to. The Acts of the Apostles tells us there was a big meeting of church leaders in Jerusalem on this question. It was decided at the meeting that with a few exceptions, gentile followers of Jesus were not obliged to keep the Hebrew ritual laws and customs.
It seems that Peter had bought into this decision, and when he was doing ministry in the gentile world, he was living according to the customs of that gentile world. But then some Jewish Christians arrived from Jerusalem, and apparently Peter reverted to living by traditional Hebrew law. And also he told the gentile converts – either in his teaching or by his example – that they should observe traditional Jewish law, too. That’s what caused Paul to publicly read Peter the riot act.
The problem with keeping all those rules and regulations is that they represented an earlier stage of God’s relationship with humankind. It wasn’t that there was anything evil about eating kosher foods or having your boy babies circumcised or keeping the Sabbath or doing purification rituals. In fact, you could probably make an argument that if they were done in the right frame of mind, those rituals could probably be helpful spiritual disciplines.
The problem was that in the minds of Jews, these practices had become important “cultural markers.” They were practices that marked the Hebrew people as a distinct culture separated from all others. But in God’s mind, Paul says, our identity is to come from our relationship with Jesus – not from keeping those old cultural practices. So to insist that gentile converts keep those old customs amounted to requiring that they become Jews if they wanted to be Christians. And in Paul’s mind, that wouldn’t do at all.
Of course, Paul had once been one of the guys who had been a fanatic about keeping those old laws. And Paul knew that his fanatical obedience to the ritual laws had led him to become an enemy of the church. As Paul saw it, he had even been, an enemy of God himself!
So you can see why Paul was so adamant about the foolishness of teaching gentile converts to act like Jews. He knew from personal experience that even the best Jews couldn’t keep the Jewish laws all that faithfully. As far as Paul was concerned, turning gentile Christians into bad Jews was a waste of time. Much better to build them up in their relationship with Jesus – to help them open their hearts to allow Jesus to ‘live in them.’ That way it would be the teachings and the example of Jesus that would mark their lives. And “How can I be more faithful to Jesus?” is a much better principle for living than “How can I keep the law of Moses better?”
This might seem like a dead issue that’s been settled for 2,000 years, but the truth is that it’s all too common for followers of Jesus today to fall into the habit of thinking that certain cultural practices mark the ‘real Christians.’ Whether or not you drink. How you dress. Whether or not your church ordains women. What kind of music you sing in worship. How you administer the sacraments. Even how you vote. All of these things are markers we use to show our identity in the Christian spectrum.
But Paul says it’s our relationship with Jesus that matters. It’s our willingness to die to our old way of life and live a new life organized around his example and teachings. Since Jesus himself died to his worldly life to rescue us from sin and give us a new and more vibrant life, then a wise person would let Jesus be the organizing principle for that new and more vibrant life.
And that new life does not always fit well into the framework of the old Laws of Moses.
Let’s pray. Lord, protect us from thinking that we can somehow gain your special favor by keeping elaborate religious rules and performing special rituals. Remind us each day that it is by our relationship with Jesus that we are reconciled to you, adopted as your children, and transformed into faithful servants of your kingdom. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
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