Paul’s Letter to the Gauls (Galatians) – Chapter 2

Now, we’re going to come back here tomorrow morning, and we’re going to come back to this verse, and we’re going to find all the things that are in it. But right now, I want you to know that the life you live in Christ, you live by His faith. Do you ever get disgusted with yourself as a Christian? Do you ever really get disgusted with yourself as a Christian? Say yes. Well, so do I, but I shouldn’t. It only proves that I’m putting my faith in my walk with the Lord, and that’s pretty pitiful faith. I have no hope or faith in Gene Edwards being able to make it as a Christian. I’ve given up any thought of trying to maintain my Christian walk with the Lord by external things. I do read my Bible. I don’t pray very much, very little, but I fellowship with the Lord. I’ll take that over praying anytime. You go ahead and pray. I’ll have fun.

I’m not going to be forced into any Christian standard of what he thinks I ought to do. My hope is built on Jesus Christ. Sometimes, I really don’t feel too highly about Gene Edwards. I get a little discouraged about Gene Edwards, and I don’t get guilty. Doggone it, I will not allow myself the privilege of feeling guilty. It’s a luxury I cannot afford. Sometimes I get a little discouraged about Gene Edwards as a Christian, but Lord, I remember eventually that I do not live by Gene Edwards’ faith in Gene Edwards, and I don’t live by Gene Edwards’ faith in Jesus Christ. I live by Christ’s faith in me, and there’s a world of difference. Dear child of God, there’s a world of difference. In one, there is weakness, and in one, there is triumph. Do you not understand? He would not have saved you. You would be among the heathen, the unbeliever, the unredeemed. He would not have saved you, but what His “eternal God faith” was placed in you. It is, in fact, His own faith and His own work and His own self and His own life. It’s Jesus Christ believing that He can live in you, and not only believing it, but knowing it, because He has seen the beginning from the end.

You live your life and walk by His faith. Not by works, not by law, not by standards, and not even by your faith, but here, it is all of Christ and none of me. It is all of Christ and none of you. Would you go back to your room tonight, would you? Sit down on that sofa there in the middle room, or pull up that nice big thick comfortable chair, stick your feet up on your bed, and talk to the Lord, would you? And don’t say anything to Him about how pitiful you are. If you want to get some sin out of your life, fine, get it out of your life, but I’d like to ask you to sit there and tell Jesus Christ just how much confidence He’s got in you. That will please Him. If you want to gain merit in your Lord, tell Him how much faith He’s got in you.

Lord, You went and got me and crucified me, put me inside of You and took me on in death, and I’m dead. Somebody is breathing in this room. It is Christ. It is Christ. It is Christ, and I know it’s Christ because Christ says it’s Christ. You have established it by an omnipotent faith. I live only in that, Christ my Lord, You live in me. You live in me because of Your total and absolute assurance, Your fate in Your own work on the cross in eternity past. You’re living in me in Your final glorification. You, Lord, know, and I live by Your faith. Would you talk to Him that way? It would really do your soul good to take your mouth and to declare to Him what He has done for you and how He feels toward you. The verse ends: who loved me and gave Himself up for me. Praise His name. Do you know who Christ is? Jesus Christ is somebody big enough to give somebody like me assurance. That’s who He is. I assure you, if He can do that in me, you’ve got it made. You cannot go home. You cannot go home. I won’t let you; I’m going to put you under law here. You cannot leave this meeting tonight without spending some time before you sleep, sitting down to talk to the Lord. And don’t come dragging in like some pitiful sinner. Walk in there, where you are, and tell Him who He is and what He’s done and what He’s doing.

We are getting all this from the perspective of how it happened. Simon Peter walked into a room, a banquet hall in Antioch. Lots of people are eating. The Jews have moved over to a table; they will not touch the uncircumcised, unclean Gentiles. Other Jews in the room, probably Jews who have lived there in the church in Antioch for years. Maybe some of them started it, for it was started by Jews; they moved over there. Peter walks in, and this old weakness of his, being a man pleaser, he walks over and sits down with them. Barnabas, in utter confusion, perhaps trying to keep harmony, not realizing what’s at stake here, walks over and sits down there, too. Now, one of those men is this fictitious… not a fictitious character, but a fictitious name…Blastinius. He’s very happy with what’s going on. Now then, we have talked about what the Jews are thinking about. They’re thinking about dirt. Peter is thinking about getting along and about the pressure he’s feeling, and he sits down. I want to drive this point home to you again. You cannot really live under the law and, very well, walk in a broadening spiritual life. It’ll just stop. The law, any kind of law, does that to the Christian experience, and it will eventually end your Christian walk with the Lord in an ongoing way, and it will eventually end your church in the reality of Christ.

The Gentiles are in confusion, and Paul of Tarsus walks in. It’s a very dramatic moment. Paul doesn’t have a very good reputation among Christians. Did you know that, as much as we love him, we all have a rather low opinion of the brother? I cannot help but feel that most of us in feeling that what he did, even though it was right, he did it because he is a bombastic intense human being, and what he did was actually rude and he created a crisis right there in that room of the greatest magnitude; actually brought into existence the possibility of total disunity in the Christian church of the first century. He has created a major crisis here, saints. There’s no question about it. The Christian church could split right down the middle. He has done something ill-mannered and discourteous to a guest. He is totally right, but is he wrong in what he did or how he did it?

You’re going to be surprised at my own feelings about this, but I guess I’m always going to wonder about Paul doing that. He’s always been made the hero of this. I don’t want you to get the impression that I know. I don’t know, but I’ll tell you this: he felt very strongly that what he was doing was correct. And perhaps it was. But I want to say this to you and to all the preachers who’ve ever lived or ever will live. If you’re going to hold to a really strong conviction that would cause you to do such a daring thing, I hope you will confine it to one thing and one thing only, and that is the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, redemption by grace alone as over against grace and works. Will you not do it, please, on whether the Bible is inspired? Please don’t waste your time on people who don’t believe it is inspired. Why do you want to fuss about that? Please don’t do it over whether you are a premillennialist or an amillennialist. Please don’t do it over dress, modes, methods, manners, theology. If you’re going to do it, do it in the only place in the New Testament that you’re given the right to do it, and that’s over against salvation by works as over against salvation by grace.

Now, I’ve said this before, and I know it’s going to shock you. We have a tendency, whenever we find a Bible character doing something he ought to do, to get very self-righteous. Have you ever watched the story of Peter sinking in the water, for instance, and Peter stepped out there so boldly, and then he took his eyes off the Lord, and Peter sank from unbelief. Shoot man. Look what he did. He walked on water. He didn’t put him down. I have never felt comfortable about putting a Bible character down because of some weakness he had at a certain moment. Man, they look better than me at any given moment of any day of their life. Peter denied the Lord only once; how many times have you and I denied the Lord in ways? I don’t have anything against Peter for anything going on here. I really don’t. Now, I’m going to make a surprising statement. Saints, the hero in this story is Simon Peter. There absolutely is no question about it. That brother was as wrong as he could be when he walked over to that table and sat down, but saints, something of Christ emerged in that man. He did not defend his actions. He did not dig in with pride. Simon Peter, we will find in a moment, came to his senses later, and he saved the unity of the church.

I have nothing against Simon Peter for what he did. I am grateful for what Paul did, but I want to take heroism out of anybody’s life here. I want to look at it the way it happened. Paul of Tarsus does an incredible thing. Today, you and I look at him as a great man of God, but on that day, he was the most junior of any church planter or worker in the Christian faith, almost totally unknown. The only thing they knew about him was the orphans in the church, the scars on his back, the widows, and the grave of Stephen. For this unknown to come and do what he did to Peter was an outrageous thing. He was in every way an underling. He had never known the Lord Jesus. He was not one of the 12, and yet here he is claiming to be a sent one. He is definitely a disciple of Barnabas.

These people don’t know this man yet. They’ve never read the book of Galatians. It’s never been written, and they don’t know the story of what he did in the planting of your church and the other three gentile churches—just trying to put it in perspective a little bit. Nonetheless, Paul of Tarsus does go over and rebuke Peter, a very terrifying thing for anyone to do. I heard a dear gentleman, a Chinese Christian, say, “We hear the word ‘rebuke’ a lot: rebuking this man, rebuking this, and rebuking that.” He said, “I want you to know that in my youth and even in my later ministry, I have on occasion rebuked someone.” And he said, “I have never rebuked anyone in my life, but I have totally and utterly lost their friendship and their fellowship, and they have left because of my rebuke of them 100%.” I’m trying to pull some teeth here. Can you understand? I wouldn’t want you to fashion your life after this incident. It is Peter who’s being embarrassed. It is Peter who is being shamed. It is Peter who is being called a hypocrite, and God loves him. He was every one of those things. He had a way of bouncing back and admitting he was wrong that we ought to really be grateful for. I think that’s one of the reasons the Lord Jesus Christ chose him. He would have been one of those people who said, “Lord, I will not go out and plow the field,” and then would go out and plow it, after he thought about it for a while. I’d rather work with a Christian like that than the one who’s going to do everything and never does anything.

Now then, I’m going to come back to this passage in just a moment because it’s what Paul said to Peter, but I want to finish the story. When Blastinius came to your church, he told this story of this junior worker rebuking the greatest Christian. He also told you that Paul had never been to Jerusalem, never sat under the apostles, and had no one’s approval. Jerusalem, the Mother church. Just a minute. I want you to say that to me: The Mother church. Would you say that to me? The Mother church. This is a big issue. Now, when Paul hears this, he really gets irritated, and this is why he has all these things written in the book of Galatians. He answers, and he’s telling them what happened. And here is his story. After Peter is rebuked, Paul says to them, “All, we’ve got a problem. It’s a major crisis. It came from Jerusalem; to Jerusalem it’s going.” The Lord spoke to him and said, “Get down to Jerusalem.” At this point, Paul is trying to explain his relationship to the city of Jerusalem. He has been a Christian for at least 14 years. Why has he never been seen by the church in Jerusalem? I mentioned it the other night. Paul, Peter, Blastinius, everybody loads up. Paul takes Titus, and they all go down to Jerusalem, I suppose, together. They send a message ahead of time, and they say, “James, John, Thomas, all of you fellas. We’re coming. We have a big problem. Get the big guns together. Get the important men together. We’ve got to face an issue here. You came up and disturbed us. We’ve got an issue to settle. It’s got to be settled.” Are the Antioch Christians supposed to be circumcised?

When Paul of Tarsus walks into that town, a question might well be asked. Why has he never come to this city? And you know he was in Jerusalem persecuting the church. You know that he was converted in Damascus. You know that he later came back to Jerusalem. But because his life was in danger, he spent 15 days with Simon Peter, the two of them alone and hiding in a house together. Praise the Lord for that. That’s 15 really good days…in the city of Jerusalem. On his way out the door under the cloak of darkness, he meets the brother of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s the only two people he ever met in that city who are Christians. Nobody else knows him by face. He wants very much to meet the church in Jerusalem. They’ve never seen his face. He goes back to Arabia. Then he moves to his hometown, Tarsus. Barnabas comes to get him. They go to Antioch. The church is built, and then after the church is built, they go out and preach the gospel to four churches way up in the land of the Gauls. They come home. They have this crisis. In the meantime, on one occasion, Paul did go to Jerusalem with donkeys, packing grain, but on that occasion, the Apostle James had just been beheaded, and all the apostles were in hiding. Again, Paul sees no one. He leaves the grain there and comes back home.