(Regarding Galatians 2:11-21)
In this part of his letter to the Galatian churches Paul is doing at least two things. First, he continues with the point we looked at last week that this gospel is something that is NOT of human origin, but of divine origin. Because of that, as the preceding verses tell us, this gospel is proclaimed consistently by all of Christ’s apostles throughout the church, as all received it directly from Christ, without collaboration. Nevertheless when they DID get together they were unanimous in their confession.
BUT also because this gospel is from Christ it is the standard that governs all practice in the church, and when the practice falls short of the gospel as Peter’s practice did, the divinely given gospel MUST be upheld even to the point of rebuking an apostle. While the apostles did not err in their inspired preaching they were still sinners and might still err in their practice from time to time.
As with Peter, pastors tend to like people and be influenced by what people think of them. In this case, Peter was afraid of what the Jews, the people with whom he had identified all his life, would think of them. He therefore acted as though they were more pleasing to God because of their retention of Jewish practices.
That idea leads inevitably to salvation depending upon our obedience. We must bind our pastors to preach and practice only according to the God-given gospel.
The second thing going on here is Paul’s restatement of the gospel before Peter, and in light of Peter’s hypocrisy. This raises the question of how THE SAVED-BY-GRACE CHRISTIAN DEALS WITH SIN. This is what we will cover in this week's sermon.