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
buddies?”
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 pretender.
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.
This is a long scripture reading
today, I know. However, I find it quite
compelling reading. The
late-to-the-gospel-party Paul is calling out is, of all people, Peter the
Rock. Peter’s reverting to Torah
practices only when his Jewish friends are around and shunning his now-Jewish
friends is hypocrisy and Paul calls it as he sees it. Furthermore, Paul argues that Peter makes it
even worse by then turning around and requiring non-Jewish Christians to
observe Jewish laws and customs. Paul
rightly judges this to be totally contrary to the Gospel of Jesus.
Here’s the core of that Gospel that
Paul is defending. You (or I) will never
have a right relationship with God by following rules, even good rules:
“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.”
As soon as you set up a rule that “good people” follow and
“bad people” don’t, you have set up an unholy division among Christ’s
people. No matter what you’ve done or
not done, no matter what anyone has done or not done, our standing before God
based on our works is the same; that
standing based on works is sinner. The
only thing that changes that standing is the freely given grace of God for
people who place their faith in Christ.
This freely accepted grace unites us and when we use rules that separate
us, that unity is shattered. This is why
Paul is willing to confront even the almighty Peter. He is calling Peter back to the grace that
Peter knows in his heart of hearts is the only basis for right relationships.
The revolutionary point that Paul
is making is that the grace that is the basis for our right relationship with
God is also the basis for right relationship with each other. That is what Paul means when he says, “Christ
lives in me.” The gracious Christ in me
is the same gracious Christ in you. Our
shared faith in this gracious Christ forms the basis for our relationship as
well and NOT anything we do or don’t do.
Paul has much more to say about this
in this brilliant letter to the Galatian churches, but for today, let’s be
challenged by this difficult word we’ve encountered so far. As soon as you or I put someone in a “lower”
category because of what they do or don’t do, we’ve departed from the Gospel of
Jesus Christ. Furthermore, when we hold onto those categories, we negate the
possibility of right relationship with them because we have left grace
behind.
Question: Take some
time to reflect on a “broken” relationship you have with a fellow Christian. Have you (or they) placed the other in a
lower category? How might the Christ in
you be reconnected with the Christ in them?
Prayer: Glorious God,
help us connect not just with the grace you have for us, but also with the
grace you have for all people – even the people to which we would rather not
have your grace extended. Amen.
Prayer Focus: Pray
for healing of the divisions in the Jesus’s Church everywhere.
Song: Grace Greater
Than Our Sin - Nathan Drake
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