Galatians 2:11-14 When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 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. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray. 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’s confrontation with Peter in Antioch came after the council meeting in Jerusalem where Paul had gathered with the leadership of the Christian church and proclaimed to them his ministry of grace and mercy to the Gentiles. The council confirmed that what Paul was doing in the Greek communities, winning Gentiles for the Lord, was a move of the Holy Spirit. Peter had convinced some of the Jewish skeptics in the Jerusalem church by reminding them of his contact with the Gentile Cornelius and how the Holy Spirit had filled Cornelius’ whole household with the Holy Spirit, evidenced by them speaking in tongues. Now we see Peter in Antioch on a visitation there, dining exclusively with the Jews when they sat down to eat. This act disturbed Paul because Peter was bringing division within the Antioch fellowship of believers, both Greeks and Jews. Paul knew how Peter helped to encourage the Jerusalem believers to accept his ministry to the Gentiles by exposing the hypocrisy of the Jewish believers. Peter reminded the church leaders that they themselves have fallen short of obeying the law completely and that God had already revealed his acceptance of the Gentiles who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ by infilling them with the Holy Spirit. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are. (Acts 15:8-11) Peter had a good understanding of Gentiles and Jews being one in the body of believers because God had given him a heavenly vision to accept all people who God has validated as clean. God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean. (Acts 10:29) Because of this vision, Peter was comfortable with entering the house of Cornelius, a Gentile, a forbidden act of Jewish orthodoxy. Not only to enter, but to minister to the household of Jesus grace and mercy to all people. He then stayed with them for a few days longer after the Holy Spirit fell upon them. He was completely obedient to the vision God had shown him before he went to Cornelius’ house. However, now in Antioch, we see Peter disobeying the vision that God had shown him that there was no division between Gentiles and Jews. When dining he gathered with the Jews. Paul knew this act was dangerous to the church’s unity, so he confronts Peter directly about his act of divisiveness.
We see Jesus also interacting with someone outside of the Jewish group when He talks with a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well in Samaria, a forbidden act by orthodox Jews. The Samaritans were a despised people in Israel. In fact, some Jewish people avoided traveling through Samaria. The direct route between Judea and Galilee was through Samaria, but many Jews would detour around Samaria when traveling either way. But we find Jesus, tarrying at the well of Jacob because He was tired. He does something rather unthinkable by asking this woman at the well for a drink of water. Will you give me a drink? (John 4:7) She is surprised by him addressing her, a Jewish man talking to a Samaritan woman. You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink? (John 4:9) As with Peter in Cornelius house, this is a forbidden act. The Samaritan’s are considered as half-breeds, not fully Jewish. They have their own place of worship; they have distorted the purity of the law, and they have been enemies to the Jewish people in the past. Otherwise, they were the worse kind of people, cultish in worship and lifestyle. Yet, Jesus not only talks with her but ministers to her, just as Peter did in the household of Cornelius. She questions Jesus about him asking her for water. He responds, If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. (John 4:10) This confounds her, Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock? (John 4:12) She asks, Are you greater than the one who has given us water that sustains us on earth? He says, Yes, I am greater than the patriarch who has blessed you with this water. Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life. (John 4:13-14) We find in this scene, Jesus talking to someone who should never know God. She was as the Greeks, outside of God’s grace and mercy as far as the law was concerned. Jesus never should have been talking to her. The disciples questioned him about doing such a thing as talking to a Samaritan woman. But Jesus as Peter knew the Samaritans were people God wanted to include in his Kingdom. As with Peter, Jesus stayed with them two more days, And because of his words many more became believers. They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” (John 4:41-42) Jesus unites the Samaritans with the Jews. The promise to bless all people through father Abraham would be fulfilled in Jesus. Peter went to Antioch, but confused this message of oneness by dividing people into groups of acceptable and not acceptable. But Paul knew God had come for all people, to make all Children of God. He would not tolerate this division.
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:4-6) We see in Peter’s reaction to the Gentiles in Antioch how hard it is for him to leave his Judaism behind. The majority of the church in Antioch were Greek people. Consequently, when Jewish Christians from Jerusalem came to Antioch to observe what is going on in that city, Peter decides to eat with them rather than with the Greeks with whom he previously ate with before the Jerusalem Jews arrived. Paul was not happy with Peter’s diversion toward the Jews during mealtime, for he knew Peter himself understood that God was no respecter of persons or groups of people. When Peter met with the Roman Cornelius he said, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right. You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, announcing the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.” (Acts 10:34-36) God is ready to bless all people with the redemptive power of Jesus Christ and his work on the cross. Now Peter in his actions seems to ally himself to a different message of oneness, maybe because of ethnicity. Paul is not having any of this division in the body of believers. He knows Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. (Colossians 1:15-16) Jesus alone creates newborn children of God from every nation. These newborn will forever be with God because of one work: Jesus’ death on the cross. He makes all things new. As God is one in Jesus, Jesus is one in God and we who are alive IN CHRIST are one with the eternal Father. Paul could not allow this oneness to be broken by any division at all: determining who is good and who is not. Who is following the law and its regulations and who is not. Who is perfect and who is not. Who we should associate with and who we should not in the family of God. Judaism measured people to be right with God based on the law and its regulations. But the law had no redemptive power. Jesus came to deliver mankind from his failures to please a righteous God. He came not to condemn people, but to rescue all people from their hopeless condition of sinfulness. Paul knew the cross paid the full price for man’s redemption. In Peter’s actions of sitting down only with the Jews in Antioch, he was preferring one group of people above others. Peter was discriminating between believers, breaking up the oneness in Christ. We who are alive IN CHRIST MUST HOLD THE ONENESS OF CHRIST ABOVE OUR OWN REGULATIONS OF HOW TO PLEASE GOD. If we have the Peter syndrome in us, let God reveal it to our hearts. For eternal life with God without one fault comes through the Faultless One, Jesus Christ. He alone is our righteousness, and He offers that gift to all who call upon his name.
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