Even though Paul has given the community the authority to speak into his life, ministry, and calling, he is far from rolling over and thinking they are anything more than humans themselves. The ability of Paul to be a mature and well-balanced human being is astounding here. He not only submits to the authority of the church leaders and community of the early church, but he is also adamant about standing for truth and confronting inappropriate behavior when he finds it. Apparently Peter, the great leader of the church, is far from perfect and infallible. Paul tells the Galatians about an encounter he had with Peter in Antioch.
And remember Peter is the guy who had the first experience with these “outsiders” being welcomed into the community of faith. He was the one who had to fight for their place within the world of the gospel and help pave the way for their entrance into the family of God.
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.
The leaders in this early Jesus movement remind me a lot myself at times — full of mistakes and a concern for self. These leaders know what the gospel calls them to do; there are times when they don’t have any problem living up to the call of the gospel. When it is these leaders and the Gentiles, they are gracious and hospitable companions. However, when some of the folks from Judea showed up — those from James and the “circumcision group” — Peter and even Barnabas sought to keep the peace by switching to the traditions and practices of the Torah-observant Jews.
What is often missing from the conversation surrounding this passage is a proper treatment of Jewish halachah, or oral tradition. Halachah is the set of oral interpretations that surround the written law; in a more poetic sense, halachah is “how you walk.” After God gave you commandments, you needed to understand how you would walk these commandments out. The oral tradition provided that framework, but in the new way Jesus is inviting us to live (and even during his own ministry, I believe Jesus made this clear), some of these understandings were going to get in the way of the truth of the gospel. One in particular would be the restrictions of eating with Gentiles. While God never commanded this in Torah, the halachah of the Jewish world had deemed it inappropriate to eat with Gentiles as an issue of ‘cleanliness’ and remaining distinct.
The belief of those in the ‘circumcision group’ was that this distinction needed to remain intact. So Peter and Barnabas find it hard to shake the halachah they had lived with for their entire lives (you can see Peter reference this to Cornelius in Acts 10). But Paul sees this as inconsistent with the gospel of Jesus and he calls them on it.
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?”
“Jewish customs” is the reference to halachah. While Peter and Barnabas are not asking the Gentiles to be bound by these commandments (or even the miqsat ma’asay haTorah), they are having a hard time not playing the role of Judean when the “good ol’ boys” come to town. Paul confronts Peter publicly and makes it quite clear he no longer lives by this halachah, so why does he hold people (including Gentiles) to it when the folks from Judea are here? Peter is putting on a show for the Judeans; he’s acting like he is somebody else who believes something other than what he believes.
I believe the NIV is correct in keeping the quotations marks through the rest of the chapter, indicating it is part of Paul’s address to Peter:
“We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.”
First, the old NIV (copyright 1984) put “sinful Gentiles” in quotes. I believe this is the correct move, as it helped communicate the nature of the statement. It is not a derogatory dig on Gentiles as being a bunch of sinners. The Jews understood the “nations” of the Old Testament to be the pagan people groups; it was their mission to remain distinct from them and display God to them. The phrase refers to their status as pagans and not their nature (or value) as human beings.
Second, notice Paul’s direct reference to the rabbinic argument surrounding the idea of justification. We have referenced multiple times in this series the debate that existed between the schools of Shammai and Hillel on whether or not a Jew was justified by faith or by the “works of the law.” The “works of the law” are referenced directly in the passage above (ergu nomu in the Greek). We said Shammai believed a person was justified or “declared righteous” (my favorite expression, like Lancaster, is “exonerated”) by following the miqsat ma’asay haTorah (the “works of the law”); Hillel disagreed and said that, just like Abraham, they are justified by faith and simply believing in the promises of God. The New Testament community decided the way of Jesus (almost always) sided with Hillel. Paul reminds Peter of this decision — a decision that those of the “circumcision group” disagreed with.
“But if, in seeking to be justified in Christ, we Jews find ourselves also among the sinners, doesn’t that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker.
Paul mentions that “through the law I died to the law.” What he means by this is NOT that he stopped following the law; this is quite clear by simply examining the other arguments, assumptions, and behaviors of Paul in the New Testament. Paul is still observing Jewish festivals, worshipping at the Temple, and the taking of Nazarite vows. Paul is certainly still living according to kosher law. However, he is also saying it is through Torah itself that he learned he is not justified by following Torah. He agrees with Hillel and states that Torah itself testified to justification by faith. It is through the Law that he died to the need to be justified by the Law. This will be seen when Paul, in the next chapter, uses the books of Genesis and Leviticus to argue for the gospel and justification by faith.
Paul is looking at great leaders like Peter (and Barnabas) and claiming that if they — in these moments, with people who disagree — rebuild what the community of Jesus has worked so hard to tear down, then the gospel would be stripped of its power. If they rebuild what others worked so hard to tear down, then people don’t see the story God has been telling since Genesis. If they rebuild what others worked so hard to tear down, they will actually be lawbreakers — people who are abolishing the teaching of Torah itself!
“For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”
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