Chapter 1: What led to Paul's confrontation with Peter?
In the book of Galatians, Paul confronts Peter, and it's not a personality conflict.
It's been brought about by Peter's refusal to allow Gentiles who weren't obeying the Jewish kosher laws to be included within the family of God. And he's introduced a damnable plus. It's faith in Jesus plus obedience to the law. And Paul is now explaining that theologically. And he's saying it's never about our obedience.
Chapter 2: What was the significance of Peter's actions in Antioch?
Our justification can never be about our obedience.
When it came to the gospel, the Apostle Paul didn't back down. God's plan of salvation was worth fighting for, even if it meant confronting a brother in Christ and one of the leaders of the church in Jerusalem. That kind of approach makes 21st century Christians nervous. Would you, would I, be that bold? Welcome to this Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm Nathan W. Bingham.
Today we come to the end of our time in the book of Galatians. On Saturdays you've been hearing messages from Derek Thomas' series, No Other Gospel. So for the final time, not to be repeated next Saturday, we'll send you the complete series on DVD, along with digital access to the messages and study guide, plus a hardcover copy of R.C.
Sproul's commentary on Galatians, when you donate in support of Renewing Your Mind at renewingyourmind.org before midnight tonight. I'll be sure to remind you again at the end of today's message so you don't miss this resource offer on its final day. Well, here's Ligonier Teaching Fellow, Dr. Thomas, to show us why it's critical that we defend the one true gospel.
Welcome back. This is session number four, and we are in the second half of chapter two from verses 11 through 21. And as I was saying at the end of the previous session, this is like a Pistols at Dawn moment between Paul and Peter. There was a sci-fi series when I was young, many years ago. And it was called Doctor Who, and it's been revamped since then.
And it has a time machine, the so-called TARDIS. It's a police box you enter in, and you can go back in time and so on. And I often wondered if I could go back somewhere to a certain point, and of course, excluding
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Chapter 3: How does Paul define justification in relation to law and faith?
Meeting Jesus, let's put that out of it. Where would you go? What event would you like to sort of see? And I think I would love to be a fly on the wall in Antioch when there was a showdown between Paul and Peter. And he tells us here that he withstood Peter to the face. Let's look at this, and Paul tells us in the first half, 11 to 14, he gives us the historical narrative of what went down.
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? It's up to each individual to do whatever's right in his own conscience. It's gone way beyond that.
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Chapter 4: What theological principles are at stake in Paul's argument?
that there can be 64 different categories of identity, and young people and teenagers are supposed to find their identity, and no wonder they're lost, and no wonder they're in a mess, because it's impossible to know what your identity is if it's based on whims and fancies and not on the solid truth of God and the principles, say, of creation, and God creates as male and female.
Well, into that culture, Paul is addressing, what is a Christian? And a Christian is somebody who is no longer in union with Adam. That Adamic self is gone. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live. That old I, that old me is gone. But Christ who lives in me. Union with Christ. I am a man in Christ. That's who I am.
I am somebody who is in union and communion with the risen, ascended Christ. It is at the heart of Pauline theology. He uses that little phrase, en Christo, in Christ, 67, 68 times in the course of his writings. I sometimes think if we were to find, for example, one of the lost epistles that Paul wrote to the Corinthians.
in between 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, he mentions another letter that isn't 1 Corinthians, and we don't have that letter. And I sometimes wonder, how would you know if that letter were to be discovered? Say, archaeologists would uncover this scroll, and it's the lost letter of Paul to the Corinthians, and there may be more than one. Some scholars say there are
two last letters to the Corinthians. Some say there are more than that. How would you know? And one of the things that you would look for is in Christo, in Christ, because it's at the heart. Paul can't write. Paul can't think. He can't move. He can't breathe. He can't preach without mentioning the fact that he was once in Adam, but now he is in Christ. He's a new man in Christ.
That's his identity. We ended, I think, the last session by saying we should preach the gospel to ourselves every day, and part of that gospel is to remind ourselves of who we are. You go into the bathroom in the morning, you look in the mirror, mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? And you say, Jesus is.
And when you look into that mirror, you see Jesus, because you are in union and communion with Jesus. That's who you are. That's your identity. and you shouldn't be in doubt as to your identity. Well, that's the first thing, I have been crucified. And then go back a verse to verse 19, I died to the law, for through the law I died to the law so that I might live to God.
Now, we could read this verse and interpret this in a way that Paul didn't intend for it to be interpreted. Paul isn't saying here everything that one can possibly say about the law. He's speaking about the law in the context of a discussion about justification, in a context of a discussion about how a person can be right with God.
And the answer to the question, how can I be right with God, is not through my obedience to the law. Now, if you were asking a different question on a different occasion in a different context, are Christians meant to obey the law? Yes, the Christians are meant to obey the moral law, the Ten Commandments. Not in order to be justified, but because we are justified.
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Chapter 5: How does Paul's encounter with Peter reflect on Christian identity?
I didn't bring to God any of my obedience, any of my attempted ways of obeying the demands of the law. What is the function of the law? Well, one of its functions is a pedagogic function. It's to teach you, to show you, to reveal to you that you are a sinner. that you have fallen short of God's glory, that you've broken His commandments. That's what the law did.
So that the law, Paul says in Romans 7, makes me out to be exceeding sinful. It exacerbates the sense of sin that I have about myself. Well, this is all very counter-cultural, of course, because those who are theists in our culture—let's ignore those who are non-theists, they have other problems—but those who are theists think that, you know, God is nice. That's the prevailing view.
Surveys will reveal again and again that people's view of God is that He's nice and that He wants us to be nice and everything will be nice. and everything will be peaceful. And so just don't get too worked up about it. And here Paul is saying, no, our very salvation is at stake, and in order to be saved, the law has to be obeyed. You can't obey it. I can't obey it. But Jesus obeyed it.
And so Paul is saying, how do I view myself as a Christian? Well, I view myself as someone who who is in union with Christ. I view myself as someone who has died. There's been a death in my existence, and it's the death of my Adamic self. I've come to understand that through the doings and works of the law, there is no justification. There is no salvation. So I died to the law.
I died to its demands. I died to its threats. Through the law I died to the law so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
You remember that that's how Paul began the epistle to the Romans in the very opening verses when he says that Jesus was somebody who was given for us. given in death, given as a substitute, given as someone who met the law's demands in all of its fullness where we could not. And then in verse 19 again, and go back to the second half, through the law I died to the law so that I might live to God.
We're asking the question, how should you think of yourself as a Christian? It's been brought about by Peter's incident with bacon in Antioch and his refusal to allow Gentiles who weren't obeying the Jewish kosher laws to be included within the family of God. And he's introduced then a damnable plus. It's faith in Jesus plus obedience to the law. And Paul is now explaining that theologically.
And he's saying, it's never about our obedience. Our justification can never be about our obedience. But I live to God, he says at the end of verse 19. Yes, as gratitude for the grace that has been displayed to me in the gospel. The law showed me that I could never make myself acceptable to God, so I quit trying.
But now that I have been justified, now that I'm in a right standing and relationship with God, now I live for God. I live to obey Him, not in order to be justified, but because I know that I am already justified. I'm a child of God and an heir of God and a joint heir with Jesus Christ. He loved me, He gave Himself for me, He lives in me, and I, in response, live for Him.
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