Derek Thomas

And then in 15 to the end of the chapter, he gives us a theological reflection on why this event happened and why it happened in the way that it happened.

And the issue involves Peter and the church in Antioch.

The church in Antioch was the mission center once established.

persecution had come to Jerusalem and some of the Christians fled from Jerusalem, and some of them end up in Antioch and to the north.

And it's from Antioch that the first missionary journey gets sent from and so on, and it's to Antioch that Paul will report after each of the missionary journeys.

So Jerusalem is no longer the center of Christendom, but Antioch and eventually Rome will become more and more of the sort of base from which Christianity will see itself.

And the Antioch church was much more Gentile than, of course, the Jerusalem church, and the Jerusalem church was almost exclusively Jewish, Jewish Christian.

And therefore, the issues that we saw in the previous lesson with Titus and Titus' circumcision was of particular significance in the Jerusalem church.

In Antioch, it's a little different.

It's not the issue of circumcision.

It's the issue of food.

Peter is in Antioch and he's becoming all things to all men and he's eating shellfish and prawns and ham sandwiches and bacon along with his Gentile buddies until...

the heavyweights from Jerusalem, people like James and so on, until they come up from Jerusalem to investigate what's going on in the Antioch church and whether the Antioch church has become too liberal or whether the Antioch church has lost touch with its Jewish

roots and base, and so there's almost like an inspection committee coming up to Antioch.

And as soon as the men of James, as Paul refers to them here, come from Jerusalem, all of a sudden Peter isn't eating with the Gentiles.

He's only eating at the tables with his fellow Jewish Christians, and it's all kosher food and so on.

And

Paul sees, once again, like Titus, he sees this.

This is not just a matter of Christian liberty, whether you should eat bacon or not eat bacon, or whether you should just eat kosher food or not kosher food.

Does it really matter?