A Dangerous Message

Galatians 2

The Apostle Peter was the boldest, most outgoing, say-what-you-think disciple of them all.  He would probably be the last person we would expect to struggle with the fear of man.  (This problem is in the hearts of the bold and the timid).

How then is it that Peter could he have denied Jesus three times?

He had seen the miracles.  It had been revealed to him the Jesus was the Christ.  He was the rock.  He witnessed the transfiguration.  He loved Jesus.  He claimed confidently that he would stick by Jesus’ side.

Denial was unthinkable, but he too was like us.  He too could exalt people so that they seemed bigger than Jesus himself.

On a cold early morning while it was still dark Peter was outside the house of the high priest while Jesus was being questioned inside.  He was standing close to a fire with a group of officials and servants.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said when told he’d been seen with Jesus.

For Peter to make such a denial, we would assume that his confronter must have been a centurion, a Pharisee, or someone who could have executed him on the spot.  His life must have been in great danger.

It was a girl however, not a centurion or Pharasee.

Not a woman of great influence, but a servant girl.  Yes, she was a servant of the high priest, but the high priest was busy with his inquisition of Jesus.  He certainly had no time for Peter.  Another disciple, probably John, was even in the house during Jesus’ questioning.  If they’d wanted to string up a disciple, the one inside would have been the obvious choice.

It would be gracious to think that Peter’s life was in danger, but that wouldn’t be true.  He needed very little baiting to deny Christ.

A second time he was questioned, perhaps by the same servant girl, and he gave a similar response.  But it was not a timid, don’t-look-them-in-the-eye response.  It was an adamant denial, punctuated with an oath.

Surely Peter knew the seriousness of an oath, didn’t he?  He’d heard Jesus’ teaching from the Sermon on the Mount, “Let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’, your ‘no’ ‘no’, hadn’t he?

Sin, saddly made truth irrelevant at that moment.

The third denial was even worse.  “He began to call down curses on himself and he swore to them, ‘I don’t know the man’.”

In other words, “May God almighty curse me and my family if I am not speaking the truth.”

Isn’t it good God doesn’t always answer us according to our prayer?  The fear of man is a treacherous, enslaving snare.

His timing couldn’t have been worse.  For at that moment, Jesus was able to see Peter, most likely as he was being taken from the High Priest’s house to the Sanhedrin.  Jesus “looked straight at Peter.”

For Peter, it was as if he was the first Adam.  He felt the gaze of the holy and couldn’t have felt more naked.  There was no place to hide.  As for Jesus, we can only guess what he was thinking.

What we know is that when Jesus appeared to his disciples, after his resurrection, he delighted in demonstrating his awesome forgiveness to Peter.

“Tell his disciples and Peter,” the angel announced after his resurrection.  Then, perhaps on another cool morning around a fire, Jesus countered Peter’s three denials with three invitations to feed the flock, and he finished by saying, “Follow me”.

Having experienced the curse of the fear of man, having felt the gaze of the holy God, and having known such a rich, forgiving love, Peter surely had learned his lesson.  Hadn’t he?

Just a few weeks ago we saw in Acts 4 how Peter spoke with boldness before the Sanhedrin about Jesus, and when he was told to be quiet it he replied, “We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”

Now here’s a fellow who’s conquered the fear of man.

Well this remarkable man was humbled at least one more time because of his fear of other people.

This time, the occasion for his people-pleasing was a meal with a group of Christians.

¹¹ But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. ¹² For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles;

Peter knew that Gentiles were included in the gospel.  After his vision in Acts 10, he spent time with Gentiles like Cornelius.

Peter had been experiencing the freedom of the gospel as a Jew and was crossing the ethnic and religious barriers to eat with Gentiles.  He was eating with them.  Just hanging out and eating with them.

That was a good thing.  That is what we want to happen across ethnic lines in this church.  It’s not staged.  It’s not artificial or programmed.  These are simple, free, natural relationships.

They were eating together.  There should be huge amounts of eating together in this church and in the process we should enjoy gospel freedom in forgetting all ethnic limitations.  In fact, I think there can be and should be a natural, joyful, spontaneous mixing it up in our table fellowship.

Peter knew that Gentiles didn’t have to become Jewish to be saved.  When Paul brought Titus to Jerusalem, Peter didn’t say Titus had to be circumcised.

However, v12, but when [these certain men came from James] came, (these were Jerusalem conservatives who believed that Gentiles—because of their uncircumcision and their non-kosher (non- Jewish) dietary habits and their failure to keep the holy days—were off limits, even as Christians)he drew back and separated himself from his Gentile brothers and sisters.

That is, he treated them according to Jewish custom rather than the Lord’s command.

Why did he do this?

Perhaps fearing the circumcision party?

And the result wasn’t just Peter, but the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.

Peter was governed by fear and not by the gospel.  Fear of what I wonder?  He wasn’t afraid of the Gentiles.  He was afraid of his own ethnic group.  Why?

Here are some possibilities:

1) He was afraid of conflict.  The people from James were going to cause a scene.  It’s going to be very awkward.  Perhaps they were capable of violence.

Maybe we can just avoid a scene and they will be satisfied that we don’t hang out together and go home, and we can return to normal.  Paul calls that fearful behaviour hypocrisy, and says it is not in step with the gospel.

Of course, we’d never act out of a desire to always avoid conflict, would we?

2) Or maybe Peter was afraid that his convictions were not well-founded and that the people from James might get the best of him in an argument.  Perhaps Peter fears he may not be able to give a good enough rationale for his freedom and will look foolish.

Of course, we’d never act out of fear of looking foolish, would we?

3) Or perhaps he fears falling into disfavour among the conservatives in Jerusalem and losing his prestigious standing as the leader.  Maybe Peter was afraid that his reputation would be tarnished due to his association with this radical Paul character.

Of course, we’d never act out of fear of losing reputation, would we?

We are not told why he feared, but he did and in a moment of weakness he cut off the fellowship with his Gentile brothers and sisters.  When he did it as the leader, so did Barnabas and all the other Jews.

Put yourself in the place of a Christian Gentile in Antioch and imagine what that would have meant!

No wonder Paul opposed him to his face.

V14, But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

How much of what we do is motivated by what others think of us, or what we think others might think of us?

How much are we motivated by what the Bible calls “fear of man”?  When you’re a teenager you call it “peer-pressure”.  When you’re an adult you call it “people-pleasing”.

Either way, it’s the fear of man.  How much does that drive us?

Let me ask:

• Do you ever feel as if you might be exposed as an imposter?
• Do you find it hard to say “no” even when wisdom dictates you should?
• Are you always second-guessing decisions because of what other people might think?
• How often do you use the I-could-have-done-better-if-I-really-tried strategy?
• Do you ever lie, especially the little white lies?
• Are you jealous of other people?
• Do you feel good when you compare yourself to other people?
• Do you avoid people?
• Are you more concerned about looking stupid than you are about acting sinfully?
• How different is your private life from your public life?
• Do you need people (for yourself) more than you love them (for the glory of God)?

As someone once said, “Fear of man is such a part of our human fabric that we should check for a pulse if someone denies it.”

So what enabled Paul not to be a people-pleaser?

What enabled him to be the sort of person he described himself to be in 1:10, if I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of God?

How could he go to Jerusalem, 2:6, to those who seemed to be influential and say, ‘What they were makes no difference to me’?

How could he go up to Peter of all people and say, ‘Mate, what you’re doing is not in step with the gospel’?

No doubt Paul had feelings like everyone else but for Paul, Jesus was bigger to him than people were – much bigger.

The love of Jesus was more important, more real, and more significant to him than the approval of man.

And so he says in v20, the life I now live in the flesh (i.e. not being controlled by people’s opinions of me like I used to be, as one example) I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me.

What is this love that frees us from the slavery of the fear of man?

How can we minimise the fear of man?

That love is demonstrated in two ways

He died for me

There’s been a lot of talk about budgets lately, and budget surpluses and budget deficits.

And it has been a real blight on our governments over the past decade that there’s been more spending than we can afford so there’s now national debt of $600 billion dollars.

Some have rightly called it intergenerational theft.  Our kids and grandkids can pay, so we can keep the lifestyle we want now.

There’s another debt, however, with which all of us are burdened.  The debt is due to our sin and it’s one in which you can never pay off.  It’s one in which the indebtedness, and the penalty incurred for not being able to pay off the debt, extends into all eternity.

What is the penalty for non-payment?  It’s not just a bad credit record.  It’s not the repossession of property.  It’s not merely imprisonment.  The penalty is death.

This is not something your children or grandchildren can pay for.  You must pay for it.

Any serious thought given to that ought to be absolutely crippling, psychologically devastating – unless you belong to Jesus, who has paid it all in full.

That debt from our sin, which was infinitely beyond our capacity to pay, Jesus has paid completely, for all of his people.

He did it when he, v20, loved me and gave himself for me.

That phrase, gave himself, is a loaded term in the NT.  It refers to Jesus’ death, the giving up his life.

In fact, we’ve seen the phrase already in 1:4, speaking about Jesus, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age.

God didn’t deal with our sin by simply saying, “Hey, don’t worry about it.  We’ll just let bygones be bygones.”  He didn’t just make our guilt and his wrath disappear by waving a magical wand.

No, the infinitely righteous one cannot pretend that our indebtedness never existed.

Instead, he cancelled our debt by nailing it to the cross.

In verse21 makes it clear that we’re talking about the death of Jesus.

For if justification were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

In other words, Christ died in order to justify his people.

Justification is what a judge does in a court room.  It is a declaration that a defendant is found innocent, because there is real innocence.  The defendant is declared to be just, because he is found to be just.

For us, we can never be declared innocent or just in ourselves.  We have all sinned.  We are guilty as charged.  We deserve the full sentence of condemnation.  Works of the law cannot save us.  We have broken God’s law.  Now the law condemns us.

So how can we be justified?  How can God, the judge, declare us righteous and innocent?

There was a transfer.  The debt, the sin, the wrath deserving guilt, was transferred from my record to his record.

Jesus took my debt, my sin, my guilt, and when he died he said, “Paid for.  All of it.  Every sin, past, present and future, all paid for, gone, done away with, wiped out forever.”

The payment has been paid, the sacrifice has been made.  You don’t need the Pope.  You don’t need the priest.  You don’t need to be circumcised.  You don’t need to keep any OT law – or any law for that matter.

In fact any attempt to do so just diminishes the work of Jesus.

It’s done.

He was obedient for me

If that was all that happened, you would never be justified.  If all that happened was that Jesus took my sins that would not get me into the kingdom of God.

If that’s all that was necessary, to put it crudely, Jesus could’ve just come down Good Friday and been back home by Monday.

Not only did Jesus die on our behalf, Jesus lived on our behalf.  He was obedient on our behalf.

Let me try and imperfectly illustrate.

I imagine that at least in some families this morning there were one or two discussions about clothing before you left the house.

Some child announces that he’s finished his breakfast and now he’s ready to go to church.  It’s then that it becomes apparent that “finished” means spilt half of it down my front.  His mother takes one look at him and says, you’re not going like that.  You can’t go to church wearing those clothes.

So the kid toddles off to his room, removes the dirty clothes and returns in the buff and re-announces “I’m ready for church”.

It’s good that the dirty clothes are gone, but you also need to be fitted with the right clothes.

It’s not just the removal of sin that gets me into God’s kingdom.  It’s not innocence that gets me into the kingdom of God, its righteousness.

God says, “Not only do I want to see no sin, but I also want to see a life full of obedience, full of faithfulness.”

Where does that faithfulness come from?

The answer is the life of Jesus and Jesus alone.

V16, we know that a person is not justified by works of the law (by our ability to obey God’s law – which is good news because no one comes close) but…

Here is where I believe there is a better translation than what we have in the ESV– a reading that other translations have and others say it should be as well …

A person is not justified, declared to be right with God,by works of the law but through the faith of Jesus Christ

I believe that’s the best reading of v16, the faith, or faithfulness, of Jesus Christ.

The “faith” here is actually talking about Jesus’ faith, not our faith.

So if we keep reading, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by, again,the faithfulness of Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.

The faith here is the faithfulness of Jesus, the perfectly obedient life that Jesus lived.  The perfectly faithful life that Jesus lived.  The perfectly righteous life that Jesus lived.

So we might ask again, how could a holy God possibly justify sinners?

As we said, he can’t just sweep things under the carpet.  It’s certainly not by waiting for us to become righteous ourselves.

The bottom-line reason why God can justify sinners is not because I have faith, because my faith’s not perfect, and God requires perfect obedience, and perfect obedience includes a perfect trust in him.

I don’t trust God perfectly, I don’t love the Lord Jesus with all my heart, soul, strength, mind all the time.

My faith in Jesus is all over the shop.  I’m controlled by the fear of man much more than I care to admit.

Praise be to God that the bottom-line reason why God justifies sinners is because, not only has Jesus transferred to his account all of our sin, but his has also transferred to our account all of his faithfulness.

There’s a double transfer.

My faith in Jesus is incredibly important.  Thank God that there’s something even more important than my faith in Jesus, and that’s the faithfulness of Jesus for me.

What difference does this make?

Well it changes your whole life.  V20.

the life I now live in the flesh (i.e. not my old, proud self that loved people to think highly of me, as one example) I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me.

Amongst many other things, I don’t need to be controlled by people’s opinions of me.

You don’t have to measure up to the standards of others’ opinions because God’s opinion of you is rooted in the finished work of Jesus.

Even though you’re a sinner, Jesus loves you and gave himself for you – so who cares what other people think?

You’re free to serve others and serve Jesus and live for him with great purpose and passion and delight.