Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Is Your Life In Line With the Gospel? | New Testament | Galatians 2

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

Keith discusses Paul's confrontation to Peter in Galatians 2. Where in your life do you see the same patterns that Peter is confronted for? Hypocrisy? Favoritism? Learn more on today's episode. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Galatians 2

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. When I became a Christian and started following Jesus in college, I adopted what I now call the Nike version of Christianity. Nike slogan is Just Do It. And that's the same slogan my Christian faith had. Just don't commit that sin. Just do the right thing.

Just choose to read your Bible. Just choose to pray. Just do it. Sometimes this approach to the Christian life has been associated with Nancy Reagan. She's the late first lady and wife of Ronald Reagan. When he was in office, she wanted to encourage kids to stay away from illegal drugs. So she led the Just Say No campaign. It has a lot in common with the just do it slogan.

Just say no to sin. These approaches to the Christian life can kind of work in some sense in the short term, but they aren't genuinely Christian because they put the individual person at the center and act as if we can do the right thing on our own. We will see in Galatians too that Paul has a completely different perspective on how to grow as a Christian. He doesn't tell us to just do it. Let's start with verse 11 in which we read about Paul confronting Peter. Paul writes this, when Seifis, that's just another name for Peter, when Seifus came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. Now, this is pretty crazy that Paul is publicly confronting Peter

and then telling the church about it in this letter. We'll get to the reason for the confrontation in a second, but before we do, can we just appreciate the way that this is handled? Paul goes directly to Peter and addresses his concern. There's no gossip behind Peter's back. Today, so many people refuse to talk to the person who's done wrong, but instead talk to everyone else about it. And also, it's a pretty big deal that the New Testament acknowledges that one of the leading apostles, that's Peter, one of the apostles that wrote part of the New Testament, got something so wrong he had to be publicly confronted. If Peter got things wrong, then I probably get things wrong too. Okay, so what did Peter get wrong? Well, Paul tells us in verse 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. Now, to a first century Jew, far more surprising than Peter stopping eating food with the Gentiles would have been the fact that he had even started eating with them in the first place. That's because the Old Testament law called certain foods unclean. and God's people were forbidden to eat them. These food laws, along with other kinds of ceremonial laws,

were designed to teach the people that God is holy and they just can't waltz into his presence without cleansing. Jesus explained in Mark chapter 7 that those food laws and those ceremonial laws were all fulfilled in him. So now all foods are clean. After Jesus' resurrection, God gave Peter a vision to show him, that all food is permissible to eat.

In Acts chapter 10, it says that after Peter has had this vision, after he is interacted with a Gentile who is coming to faith in Christ, he finally realizes that God does not show favoritism, but accepts men from every nation who fear him. God had shown Peter that he was for Jews and Gentiles. But now Peter is in Galatia, and he's refusing to eat with Gentiles. Do you see that this is a serious issue?

This issue threatens to divide the church and thwart God's plan to bring the nations into a relationship with him. Verse 13. The other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy so that by their hypocrisy, even Barnabas was led astray. A lot of nine Christians get turned off to Christianity because of the hypocrisy of Christian. But here's the deal. God hates hypocrisy too. Verse 14, Paul says, 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? I mean, there's so much in that verse. Notice that Paul calls out

Peter for not following all the Jewish customs, but expecting other people to follow them. It's the classic double standard. And this kind of hypocrisy is contagious. Even Barnabas, who is one of the influential leaders in the early church, has been led astray by Peter. This is a great reminder that when we go astray from God, we usually take other people along with us. But what caused Peter's hypocrisy? Well, back in verse 12, it said that Peter was afraid of the circumcision group. See, there were people in the church that said to be a Christian, you had to believe in Jesus and be circumcised, believe in Jesus and follow the food laws. Peter was afraid of their rejection, so he capitulated on what he knew to be true.

But there's probably more going on, too. All of Peter's life, he'd grown up hearing Jews are good, Gentiles are bad. Jews are clean, Gentiles are unclean. As a group, the Jews looked down on the Gentiles. So now there's probably some racial pride at stake, some ethnic and racial superiority. Now, what would you do in this situation if you believed in the Nike version of Christianity. You know, the just do it approach to obeying God. What would you say to Peter? Maybe you'd say something like this. Hey, Peter, you broke the no hypocrisy rule. You broke the no

racism rule. Stop doing that. Do the right thing. But that's not what Paul said. Instead, he told Peter that he was not acting in line with the truth of the gospel. See, when you believe the good news that Jesus is your saving king, it changes. the way you live. The gospel is truth that impacts how you live your life. So growing as a Christian means we bring every area of our life in line with the truth of the gospel. Peter's version of hypocrisy isn't in line with the gospel because it denied that we are saved by Jesus alone, not by Jesus plus something else. And racism and nationalism are not in line with the gospel because those sins tell us that we are better than others. But the gospel says that we all need God's

grace. We should all see ourselves the way Paul saw himself, and that is the chief of sinners. When we believe the gospel, it breaks down walls between races, or it breaks down walls between generations, or between male and female, or it breaks down walls between rich and poor, the educated, the uneducated. See, the gospel uneducates Christians around Jesus. And then remember that Peter withdrew from the Gentiles because he was afraid of what others would think of him. Fear of others isn't in line with the truth of the gospel, because the gospel means that we are fully loved and accepted by God so we don't have to live for the approval of other people. The grace of the gospel replaces Nike Christianity. It's not about us just doing it.

It's not about us just doing the right thing. It's about us putting our hope in Jesus who enables us to choose the right thing. So the goal in our life is to bring everything in our life in line with the truth of the gospel. How would that affect something like worry in your life? Like what are you worrying about? Maybe you're worrying about finances or your kids or your health. Whatever it is that you're worried about, perhaps it's consuming you. Like your mind keeps racing, you can't sleep, you're obsessing over it.

Now, what are you going to do? Just say, stop worrying? Well, does that work for you? It doesn't for me. So good luck with that if that's your strategy. But instead, maybe you want to ask, how is worry not in line with the truth of the gospel? How is it out of step with the gospel? Well, worry isn't in line with the truth of the gospel because the gospel says that God loves us,

that God watches over us, that God will meet all of our needs in Christ Jesus, that God sent his son to die for us. So he's not going to withhold anything good from us, that our future, our life, everything important to us is in God's hands and that we can trust that he always wants the best for us. So you fight worry by preaching those biblical truths to yourself, not by telling yourself to just stop worrying. Our goal as a Christian then is to do what Paul said to Peter, bring every part of our life in line with the truth of the gospel. Amen. Hey, thanks for listening. If you want to go deeper, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talk newsletter.

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