Sunday 22nd June – Free People Living Free – Pastor Adrian Kitson

22-06-2025, Free People Living Free, Galatians 2:11-21, Set Free to Live Free

Galatians 2:1-11

¹¹When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. ¹²For 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. ¹³The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.

¹⁴When 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?

¹⁵“We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles ¹⁶know 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^[^a^] Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.

¹⁷“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! ¹⁸If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker.

We have probably been in situations where two respected people in the church or organisation or club or family have had a barney in full view of everyone. It is not at all comfortable, but it can clarify things for everyone.

Pauls tells us that this is what happened in the Gentile mission base at Antioch – Paul and Peter had a disagreement in full public view.

The barney was not about the colour of the carpet but about that old ‘gospel +’ something; adding in something more for any of us to be free in the undeservedly acceptance and love of God in Jesus.

Paul is pressing home that Jesus’ cross and resurrection for life is enough to be a full ‘card-carrying’ Christian. He was doing this because this beautiful gift was under threat from a movement led by people sent up from the city to teach that pagans need more than the gospel – they need gospel + Old Testament law to be really right with God. To be a ‘real’ follower of Christ, you need to be circumcised and follow some dietary and ceremonial laws of the old covenant.

Surely Peter knew the gospel, because he certainly knew the loving acceptance of Jesus! Peter had learnt first-hand that all foods were now clean (Mark 7:9-23) and that God had included pagan gentiles in his mission plan to restore the world to peace with him (Acts 9:36 -10:44).

But, how easy is it when under pressure to return to what you know? Peter left the new life in Jesus’ way to returned to what he had been brought up in all his life.

This happened while Peter was in pagan Antioch. Peter was happily living in this new found freedom of Jesus with the local pagans converts when no Jewish leaders were around, but then pulled back from eating and sharing life with them when they turned up from Jerusalem headquarters

Paul calls it out. It is hypocrisy. Being scared enough to not walk your talk.

It is not surprising. Peter had been taught all his life by everyone he knew, “Keep away from pagan gentiles! Don’t eat with them. They are all unclean before the Lord. Eating with them makes you unclean; unacceptable to the Lord”.

Luther makes the point that Paul calls Peter out not for eating or not eating. It was about the heart. It was wrong for Peter to;

“Withhold his fellowship and put on a different face … [which could easily be seen by others that] Peter abstains from meats prohibited by law; therefore, if you do not abstain, you cannot be saved” (Martin Luther’s commentary on Galatians, Lecture 8).

Luther concludes:

Paul could not merely wink his eye at this fault because the truth of the gospel was at risk. (Martin Luther’s commentary on Galatians, Lecture 8).

It is easy to act hypocritically.

When your church-going friend constantly talks about his goal of making lots of money and ticking off his bucket list with place and things etc and find yourself joining in rather than saying something about God’s future for us and his calling on our lives now.

When someone who prides themselves on being a ‘good Lutheran’ waxes lyrical about the brilliance of some new diet or guru or group or product or faith way more than her faith in the goodness and completeness of Jesus’ presence and plans for us and you ask find yourself asking for the website.

When all your church friend seems to talk about and lean on for being OK is winning at the football or achieving at work or how they always try and ‘do the right thing’ as if Jesus’ work for us never really happened or does not mean much now, and you find yourself leaving him out of life too.

Deep down you know that our only life and hope is in the good news of God’s grace given to us in Jesus. You know that leaning too much on anything or anyone else for our identity, our security, our hope while saying you are a Christian is hypocritical.

Of course, let he or she who has not been a hypocrite when it comes to living as a Christian ‘throw the first stone’! Physician, heal thyself!

We are all more than capable and quite practiced at saying one thing and living another.

If this was only an individual thing – a matter of personal choice, that would be one thing. But Paul does not see it that way here.

What Peter does and does not do at Antioch really matters. Think it through …

What if this Apostle ( one of The Twelve) Peter, goes back to keeping the Law of God, be it in ceremonies, dietary rules or moral expectations (10 Commandments) as a means of earning life, blessing and peace with God?

That would say to these first Christians that we all need the gospel + something or someone else. We need Jesus’ forgiveness and love plus some rules to be Christians. The first church could lose the truth that Paul speaks here; That;

a person is not justified[with the Lord] by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ … because by the works of the law no one will be justified. (2:16)

So, this ‘gospel +’ way is very contagious. Paul says even Barnabas, his great companion and encourager, started to withhold fellowship from the locals.

Why is this so contagious? Because it suits this performance, winner/loser/ idol chasing heart of ours. It comes naturally to us. Our whole bent is performing, achieving, earning, working for, looking good, being good to ‘make our life better’, or find hope within and feel OK about ourselves.

Friends, whatever we add to this wonderful; good news of life by grace in Jesus, be it nationality, language, adherence to customs and rules of varying kinds, replaces Jesus with us – our behaviour, our nationality, our behaviour as the foundation of our identity and hope.

Then everything comes back to us having to perform, achievement, be good enough to earn God’s favour and blessing, which we can never do enough or be sure we have ever done enough.

What do have trouble with? What do we find ourselves adding to the gospel?

Tim Keller suggests a few possibilities.

Sectarian: Every church has its distinctive beliefs, and not all those beliefs are about the gospel, but about convictions to do with behaviour or church organisation. It is very easy to fall into stressing those distinctions in order to tell ourselves and others that our church is the best one. You need the gospel plus these beliefs, ceremonies, stories to be a ‘real’ Christian.

Worldly distinctions: We all have our views about various classes, nationalities and races and we can bring them into our living of the gospel so that the gospel takes second place. Working class people might not think much about wealthier Christians and vice-versa. Christians on the other side of political fence might be upset with each other’s presence in the church. Very gifted Christians might feel unhappy that people who they consider a bit mediocre and treated equally in the church.

Personal Preferences: It is easy to take our own personal preferences way to seriously and make them the benchmark for living when they are in fact only cultural/personal things. If you are Christian who has been part of churches with an emotional expressiveness and more emotive music you may feel superior to those in churches who have an emotional reserve and love for classical music, and vice versa.

Sure, we might politely sit with those ‘other people’ but can’t bring ourselves to ‘eat’ with them. We pull back our fellowship from each other for various reasons.

But when we add anything to the gospel of Jesus as our peace with the Lord and each other we have to manufacture our self-respect, self-esteem and etc by comparing ourselves to others.

Friends, there is a better way for us.

We don’t need the comparisons between classes, nations, or races. All these are just forms of making ourselves righteous in our own eyes to find a way to feel better, forgetting that we are all equally bad, and our only life is God being continually good.

Paul nails it when he sees the only way back to love, back to unity, back to God’s purposes, God’s promises and God’s future in Jesus for anyone is that wonderful gospel that has done and still does its work in our hearts.

Luther is great here. He points us where to go with our differences, comparisons, need to be OK, worries and conflicts and fears…

When the conscience is extremely stressed by the law and struggles against the judgement of God, do not seek advice from either [human] reason or law. Rest only in grace as the word of comfort. Stay and hold your ground there, as if you had never heard at all from the law. Rise up to the crystal of faith, where there is confidence that we are saved outside of the law, in Christ alone. (Martin Luther’s commentary on Galatians, Lecture 8).

Friend, with the freedom of Jesus’ forgiveness and love we can do way more than only sit together at a judgemental distance!

We don’t need to be a holy huddle believing ourselves to be better than other Christians. We are gospel people.
We don’t need to bring all the comparisons, distinctions and judgements of the culture in here. We are gospel people.
We don’t need to judge ourselves to be a little ‘more Christian’ than the person sitting over there. I am a gospel person.

We are set free to live free.

So, let’s sit. Let’s eat. Let’s live. Let’s serve. Let’s love together.

It is how free people live free.