There is so much that is communicated over a meal. A shocking fact is that businessmen do not schedule so many appointments in restaurants simply because they prefer mass produced food over their wives’ home cooking. The reason lies in the fact that eating together with their clients has proven time and time again a very effective way to conduct business. Through common meals, friendships are solidified, romances are ignited and barriers are broken down. To eat together is to treat one another as an equal. This is the reason that throughout history slaves have been forbidden to eat with their masters. That is also why, in the first century, no self respecting orthodox Jew would be caught dead eating with a Gentile. According to the Jewish mindset, Gentiles were not equals. Our text details a conflict that arose between Peter and Paul over this issue. Peter had been a Jew much longer than he had been a Christian, and he was prone to allow the traditions with which he was raised to cloud his thinking. In this instance Peter gets himself in trouble with Paul when he allowed his Jewish prejudice to override his Christian convictions.
I. Peter’s problem was whether or not he should eat with Gentiles.
A. In the fast-food culture of modern Western civilization, it is difficult to appreciate the religious significance ancient peoples associated with the simple act of eating.
1. When Peter came to Antioch, he found Jewish and Gentile believers eating together at the same table, and he freely joined them in this practice.
2. We do not know the precise nature of these meals, but they very likely included the agapē, or Christian love, feast, of which the celebration of the Lord’s Supper was an integral part.
3. Jesus drew sharp criticism because of His practice of eating with tax collectors and sinners.
4. By freely associating with notorious sinners and Gentile “dogs” in the fellowship of a shared meal, Jesus was in effect announcing the arrival of the kingdom of God in his own person. By this radical act he also was saying that the basis of one’s true standing before God could no longer be measured in terms of obedience to the law.
5. Jesus’ disciples did not immediately grasp the full implications of his practice of open table fellowship, nor did they easily imitate him in this regard.
6. The crucial point for understanding Peter’s action at Antioch is the fact that he himself had pioneered the sharing of the gospel with the Gentiles and had already worked through to a position of Christian liberty concerning unbroken table-fellowship within the body of Christ.
B. Three interrelated events precipitated the confrontation between Peter and Paul.
1. The arrival of the delegation from Jerusalem.
2. Peter withdrawing from the common table fellowship.
3. The defection of Barnabas and other Jewish Christians.
4. Peter had learned as early as the rooftop vision which led him to preach to Cornelius (Acts 10:28) that he was free to eat whatever God has called clean. It is not surprising that after some initial reluctance a person should begin to enjoy exercising freedom in Christ.
5. The “old-line” Christians from Jerusalem arrived, and Peter apparently felt he was caught in the act. In military terms he “beat a hasty retreat”; in naval terms he “headed for shelter”; in animal terms he slunk back “like a dog with its tail between its legs.”
C. In separating from the Gentile believers, Peter was guilty of straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.
1. To avoid a possible ceremonial contamination with what was “unclean,” he committed a very grievous sin before God. He set aside brothers for whom Christ died.
2. The old Peter, who had once denied his Lord to a young girl in the high priest’s courtyard, was coming to the surface.
3. Although he had previously decided that eating with Gentiles was right in the sight of God, he was now fearful how it might look in the sight of men.
4. The example of Peter soon led the other Jewish believers of Antioch to withdraw from fellowshipping with Gentiles.
5. They were not doing so because they actually thought it was wrong to eat with Gentile brethren, but because they were afraid what others—the Jewish believers from Jerusalem—might think.
6. Anytime someone does not act on the basis of convictions, but on the basis of what people might think, it is hypocrisy.
II. Paul’s reprimand was based on the fact that we are saved by grace.
A. Observing the law cannot make you right with God.
1. To be “justified” is to be pronounced legally innocent and “in the clear” by God.
2. The question is, how does a person get to be “justified”? One approach is to keep God’s law so carefully and completely that we earn God’s approval (and admiration!). Three times in this verse, however, Paul denies that this is the way it happens.
3. Paul’s point was that no one could find salvation by keeping the law simply because no one can keep the law.
4. Observing the law so flawlessly as to earn salvation has never been accomplished by anyone but Jesus.
5. The other approach to seeking to be right with God is “by faith in Jesus Christ.” A person stops relying on his own ability to keep the rules, and throws himself at the foot of the cross.
6. Biblical faith is trusting Jesus so much that we throw ourselves into his arms, confident that his blood can cleanse us and give us right standing with God.
7. If salvation could be obtained by keeping law (whatever law that might be), then it would be a man’s own accomplishment and not the work of God.
B. Freedom in Christ does not promote sinfulness.
1. The Judaizers main fear seems to be that granting freedom to Gentiles would lead to lawlessness among them.
2. Paul stresses the fact that since Jewish Christians now share table fellowship with Gentile believers does not make us sinners. Rather it is an expression of the Christian freedom that is ours through the righteousness of faith.
3. Paul said that to go back on this fundamental commitment would be, in effect, to build back the old structures of repression and slavery, structures that have been once and for all shattered by Christ’s death on the cross and the pouring out of his Spirit upon his people.
4. To yield on this point would be like trying to put the plan of salvation into reverse! The very thought was no less blasphemous than imagining Christ as the agent of sin. May it never be! God forbid!
III. This is more than a freedom issue; it is the fact that our relationship with God is based on faith and not law.
A. Rebuilding the law is something Paul must not do, for the law has already done its work.
1. The holy demands of the law had exposed Paul’s sinfulness. He deserved to die—and in Christ he did!
2. Having been crushed under the demands of the law and convinced of his inability to save himself, Paul found life in Christ.
3. Christ met the demands of the law, and paid the penalty incurred by Paul. Now Paul is free to live for God.
4. Paul says we are also put to death. When Jesus died, we died. The law carried out on Jesus it’s just demands against us, and having killed him could do nothing more to him or to us!
5. Paul “no longer lives” in the sense that he controls his life. He has taken up his cross; he has denied himself; and he now lives only by the permission of his King, Jesus Christ.
6. The sacrifice of Christ is the foundation of the gospel and of Christian faith. It is pivotal in Paul’s letter to the Galatian churches, for it is that atoning sacrifice they are losing sight of.
7. Either they must honor that sacrifice and trust it for their salvation, or they must abandon it and try to earn their own way through legalism.
B. The Galatians were in grave danger of nullifying grace by returning to law.
1. We can learn from the Galatians that to nullify the grace of God does not require a formal statement that it is worthless—just an underlying fear that it is not quite enough.
2. Paul defended himself against the charge that by displacing the law as a means of salvation he himself had thwarted God’s grace.
3. The exact opposite was true, Paul said. If it were possible to obtain a right standing by God through the works of the law, then Christ had no business dying!
4. Paul said that if we persist in building again the wall that Christ has torn down, if we try to climb up to heaven “by some other way,” if we add works of the law to the sacrifice of the cross, then indeed we make a mockery of Jesus’ death.
5. Christ certainly did not die for nothing, and a man simply cannot gain right standing with God through keeping the law.
Commissioned in 1936, the RMS Queen Mary was the most awe-inspiring ocean-going vessel in the world.
She was 1,019 feet long, at 81,237 tons displaced twice the tonnage of the Titanic, had 12 decks (the promenade deck was 724 feet long), and carried 1,957 passengers attended by a crew of 1,174. Transformed from a luxury liner to a troop transport in World War II she carried 765,429 members of the military to and from the European war zones. The Queen Mary was retired from regular passenger service in 1967 after making 1,001 Atlantic Ocean crossings, and is presently harbored in the port of Long Beach, California. Even today, her magnificent and gleaming exterior cuts a beautiful profile against the blue waters of the Long Beach harbor. But when the Queen Mary was retired from active passenger service, it was discovered that part of her gleaming exterior was hiding something far less attractive and substantial.
The Queen Mary’s three elliptical smoke stacks 36 feet long, 23 feet wide, and ranging from 70 down to 62 feet in height were made of sheets of steel over an inch thick. During her decades of service, at least 30 coats of paint had been applied to the massive smokestacks, forming a shell around the steel interior. But when the smokestacks were removed for maintenance after her decommissioning, it was discovered that they were nothing but shells. When lifted off the liner and placed on the docks, they crumbled! Over the years, the thick steel of which they had been made had turned to rust from long exposure to heat and moisture. The beautiful exteriors of the smokestacks revealed a rusty, crumbly interior that spoke not of beauty and elegance but of deterioration and decay. The external appearance was hiding the internal reality. . . .
