In this sermon, D. A. Carson examines the profound statement in Galatians 2:20 within the context of Paul’s confrontation with Peter over his behavior towards Gentile Christians. Carson explores the implications of this statement for understanding the depth of Christ’s love and the meaning of living by faith, set against a backdrop of apostolic rebuke and the complexities of justifying faith over adherence to the law.
This evening I would like to begin by reading Galatians, chapter 2, verse 11 to the end of the chapter. Galatians 2:11–21. This is the passage in which the title of tonight’s address is embedded. Toward the end of this section, Paul writes, “I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Galatians, chapter 2, verses 11–21:
“When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain people 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. 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?’
We who are Jews by birth and not ‘sinful Gentiles’ know that a person is not justified by observing 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 observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified. But if, in seeking to be justified in Christ, we Jews find ourselves also among the sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not!
If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker. For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for Christ. 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!”
This is the Word of the Lord.
Embedded in these verses is the clause, he loved me and gave himself for me. The thought is not an uncommon one in the Bible, of course, with reference either to God or to God’s Son. We are told hundreds and hundreds of times that God loves us, that Christ loves us. Did we not hear this evening, “For his love endures forever,” repeated again and again and again in the Psalms?
Until about 20 or 30 years ago, the best known verse in the Bible was John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his Son.” Nowadays that’s not the best verse. The best-known verse today is, “Judge not that you be not judged,” but it used to be the case that John 3:16 was the best-known verse.
So there is a sense in which this clause in verse 20 is not rare. What is so very interesting here is the context of this exclamation, for this is not set in a context where there is abounding praise. It is set, rather, in a context of apostolic controversy (one apostle telling another apostle that he’s wrong, that he’s a hypocrite, that he’s doing damage to the gospel) followed by theological disputation (reasons for such a charge).
Of all the passages we will look at together this week, this one is the most condensed. This is the one where you’re going to have to think the hardest to follow the argument. There is a complex treatment of justification here. Yet, in the midst of it all, Paul breaks out, “Jesus, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Why? What’s the connection? This is not for Paul some incidental formula that drips off his tongue now and then. Every time he mentions Jesus or Son of God, he throws in a little bit of adoration. What I want to do in this first part is to explain the portrait of an apostolic rebuke and then outline the rationale of the apostolic rebuke. In other words, to follow the flow of the argument. Then we’ll be set up to understand the pastoral wisdom bound up with Paul’s aside, which is more than an aside.
1. The portrait of an apostolic rebuke
Verses 11 to 14: “When Cephas came to Antioch …” Cephas is simply another name for Peter. “… I [Paul] opposed Cephas to his face.” Now Paul at this point was ministering in the church in Antioch along with Barnabas and others, and the church in Antioch was mixed race (lots of Jews, lots of Gentiles).
They had learned to focus on the gospel and not be too enchained by the Jewish heritage that would have preserved kosher food, for example, or distinctive eating implements and other ritual distinctions. Now Cephas comes. He’s down in Jerusalem. He comes to Antioch, and at some point, Paul opposed him, we’re told, to his face because he stood condemned. It’s very strong language.
How would you like me to get up and say, “Tonight I would like to rebuke Ray Ortlund because he stands condemned, and I want to talk about Jesus who loved me and gave himself for me”? Do you see the incongruity of it all? It just feels strange, doesn’t it? I’m assuming there could be no conceivable reason for me ever to rebuke Ray. I’m just saying supposing, but that’s the context in which Paul offers his praise.
What is the nature of this rebuke? To understand it, you have to think through the identity of two groups that are mentioned in verses 11 to 14. “When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain people came from James …” That’s the first group. “… before certain people came from James …” That is, James the elder, the half-brother of Jesus down in Jerusalem who, by this point, is already chief elder, chief pastor down in the Jerusalem congregation.
“Before certain people came from James, Peter used to eat with the Gentiles.” That is, this takes place after the scene in Acts 10 and 11, when you will recall Peter had this strange vision of a sheet that came down from heaven with clean and unclean animals in it, and a voice from heaven said in his vision, “Rise, Peter. Kill and eat,” and he says, “Oh, no, Lord. I’m kosher. I don’t eat snails. I don’t do that. I’m not French. Besides, this is condemned. I can’t eat pork. I’m sure it a very nice rasher of bacon, but just the same, I’m kosher. You want me to slaughter that pig?”
Three times the vision comes down, and each time God says that what he has made clean, Peter is not to call unclean. That becomes the preparation for Peter going to a Gentile house and preaching the gospel, which is the conversion of Cornelius and his household, so that there is the first recorded instance of a full-blooded Gentile (not a proselyte, not some sort of half-breed) embracing the Christian faith under apostolic witness.
This so shocks the church in Jerusalem that Peter has to go through the whole thing again in chapter 11 and explain how the Holy Spirit came upon them and how Jesus had promised the gospel would go to Gentiles as well as to Jews. There is a major theological controversy in which eventually the church comes to grips with the understanding that the gospel has extended outside a Jewish framework of practicing observation of kosher regulations and is extended even to Gentiles.
Peter has gone through that. He has already handled all of that, so what is going on now here in this text is strange. “He used to eat with the Gentiles.” In Antioch, he managed to eat both kosher food and non-kosher food in the congregation. “But when these certain people from James came …” This first group, certain people from James. “… he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of …” The second group. “… those who belonged to the circumcision group.”
There are two ways of envisaging what happened here. It’s possible that this second group (those who belonged to the circumcision group) refers to those who came from James. That is, the two ways of speaking are referring to one group. That is the way the passage is commonly understood.
Then what you are supposed to envisage is that Peter comes for a visit to the church in Antioch. He has been through the vision of the sheet experience. He has been through theological controversy in Jerusalem. He knows the Jews and Gentiles are alike, accepted by grace through faith alone because of Christ’s finished cross work. He knows all of that, so putting away his own cultural sensitivities, he manages to muck in with Jews and Gentiles alike in the Antioch church, eating with Jews, some of whom might have had some sensitivities eating with Gentiles.
He’s quite free to do all of that. Then certain people from James come, and James and the people around him are known to be culturally pretty conservative. Maybe when the church ate together they set up some special tables over in the corner where the food was kosher just to protect their sensitivity, or something like that.
Peter begins to eat with them, maybe just once, and then more regularly, and then exclusively, causing some other Jews in the Antioch church to start saying, “You know, if Peter thinks it’s important to eat with those from James, those from the circumcision group, then maybe that’s what we should do, too,” and they begin to go over, and eventually, the church is now divided between the Jews who are kosher and the Gentiles who are not.
Undoubtedly, Paul had some words with Peter in private, but he didn’t get anywhere apparently, and now he rebukes him to his face. That’s the way the passage is commonly understood. I think it’s a mistake partly because this is late enough in Peter’s experience where he has this matter sorted out. If this had taken place before Acts 10 and 11, when Peter hadn’t had his vision of the sheet experience and all of that unclean food, you could imagine Peter being inconsistent again.
Yes, yes, you could, but Peter has not only been through that experience, he has seen Gentiles converted, seen the Holy Spirit fall on them, and defended it with great erudition in Jerusalem, and the Jerusalem church has gone along with it, which means these people from James would also understand that.
Maybe they’d have their own sensitivities and would prefer to eat kosher over in the corner, but there’s no way you’re going to demand that of an apostle. I don’t think that’s what’s going on here at all. I just don’t think it makes any sense. Moreover, this expression, the circumcision group, the second of the two expressions, is used quite often in the New Testament, and it’s used to refer to three different groups, depending on the context.
Sometimes it refers simply to Jews who are not Christians. That is, unconverted Jews, those of the circumcision group. Sometimes it just refers to Jewish Christians in a non-partisan sense. They’re just Jewish Christians. It’s just labeling them. In a couple of instances, it refers to Jewish Christians who actually think the Gentiles have to obey the Mosaic law. I won’t give you all my reasons and all the references here, but I think in this context it’s referring to unconverted Jews in Jerusalem.
Just a bit before this book was written, there was a wave of persecution breaking out in Jerusalem. Later on, all the persecution came from the Romans, but in the earliest stages some of the persecution came from Jews to other Jews who had become Christians, especially if those Jews who had become Christians were no longer observing the kosher rules and were welcoming in Gentiles. It just seemed like such a betrayal of the heritage of Jewish faith, of the Old Testament itself.
Because this outbreak of violence in Jerusalem was decimating the church down there, something Paul understood because he himself had participated in an early wave of it.… He had persecuted Christians down in Jerusalem. He understood that. Now another wave was going through.
Perhaps what James did was send up some people to Antioch and say, “Peter, Peter, you have to understand how important your name is down here. You’re the Peter of the day of Pentecost. You’re the Peter who has, in some sense, been a public spokesperson for the apostolic band. You have to understand that Christians down here in Jerusalem are on the edge of persecution all the time.
One of the things people are saying is, ‘Yeah, even your prince of the apostles, even Peter himself.… We hear reports coming down from Antioch that he’s eating with Gentiles. You guys are so compromised. You’re abandoning the Old Testament Scriptures. You’re defying Yahweh himself. You are really a despicable bunch of blasphemers,’ and they’re saying it because of your public profile.
We’re not telling you to reverse the gospel. We know people are saved by grace alone and through faith alone, but Peter, couldn’t you just be a little more discreet, a little more careful? Down here your brothers and sisters in the faith are being terrorized, imprisoned, and sometimes killed because you’re not being quite careful. Couldn’t you just slack off just a wee bit?”
Now I can’t prove all of that took place. I can’t prove it. I can prove that this expression, those of the circumcision group, refers to different people in different contexts. There’s no particular reason to think this group, the circumcision group, refers to those from James. In fact, even the expression, those from James, is very interesting.
It doesn’t just say “those from Jerusalem” but “those from James.” It sounds as if James actually sent them, which immediately raises questions in your mind. Why did he send them? What was he saying? Why did he send this particular group? Then you remember the external history of what was going on at the time, and I think this reconstruction makes a whole lot more sense.
Peter thinks he is sparing the Jewish Christians down in Jerusalem. Paul thinks he’s compromising the gospel. This is the portrait of an apostolic rebuke. Peter is operating, I think, with the best of motives. Paul is concerned not with Peter’s motives but with the outcome. What is it signaling about who is on the inside track and who is not? Who is really acceptable to God and who is not?
This is dividing the whole church. It is suggesting there is a special inside track if you keep kosher food. You’re dividing Jews from Gentiles right within the church. You can’t do that! What’s that saying about what the gospel is and what the gospel does? So now you have the rebuke.
“When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel …” For Paul, this is a gospel issue. We’ll see why in a moment. “… I said to Cephas in front of them all, ‘You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile.’ ” That is, “Sometimes you do eat non-kosher food. You did it with us. You’ve had your experience of the sheets. You know full well that you’re not more holy before God because you don’t eat pork. Sometimes you do live like a Gentile.”
“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?” That is, “You force them by the sheer power of your personal authority, of your example, of what you’re doing.” It now means even Barnabas, this son of encouragement who was so careful with intercultural relationships, is snookered and is only siding up now with Peter. The church is on the very knife edge of a massive split. That’s the portrait of an apostolic rebuke, and this is the context, remember, where Paul talks about the love of God.
2. The rationale of this apostolic rebuke
Verses 15 to 21 give us the reasons why Paul is so strong on this point. Don’t forget that even though Paul and Peter may have had good motives in all of this, in the infinite wisdom of God who gives us the Bible, it’s Galatians that is included. It’s Paul’s argument that is included.
However good the motives of the pair might be, that is a way of saying from God’s point of view that Paul has it right. What is it that he has right? Verse 15: “We who are Jews by birth …” “By birth and heritage, therefore, we have received the law. Therefore, by tradition we have observed all of these things.”
“We who are Jews by birth and not ‘sinful Gentiles …’ ” That’s the way Jews commonly referred to Gentiles. You throw the adjective sinful in front of the word Gentile in principle. “We who are Jews by birth and not ‘sinful Gentiles …’ ” We Christians. We Christian Jews. We who are Christian Jews by birth and not “sinful Gentiles.”
“We know that a person is not justified by observing the law.” After all, Paul is talking to Peter, to the other Christians with him who have been Jews, who are Jews by race, and they have abandoned any sort of reliance on the law. Even they have abandoned some observance features of the law, including kosher food distinctions. They’ve abandoned these things. They’ve come to realize food doesn’t make them more pure or less pure.
Didn’t Jesus teach as much all the way back in Mark, chapter 7, and Matthew, chapter 15? It’s not what goes into you down your food canal that makes you impure, he says. That has a symbol-laden function and under the old covenant you did have to observe those sorts of distinctions. What really makes you impure, he says, is not what you put in your tummy; it’s what comes out of your mouth. “For out of the heart, out of the very core of your personality, come blasphemies and anger and mockery and slander and gossip and lies and hate.”
It’s what comes out from inside of your very personality through your mouth that contaminates you, not the food that goes inside. That’s the real contamination. Jesus had already taught that, and it had been reinforced in Peter in the vision of the sheets. It had been accepted after debate in the church in Jerusalem, so he reminds them of all of this.
“We, Christians, who are Jews by birth and not ‘sinful Gentiles’ know that a person is not justified by observing the law.” You’re not declared just before God because you’ve tried so hard to observe the law. No. “We are justified by faith in Jesus Christ.” Some want that to read “by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ,” which is a true enough thought, but in my judgment, it really does mean “by faith in Jesus Christ.” That’s how we are justified.
It’s made even clearer in the next line. “So we, too, we Jews have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ.” That is, “Our confidence that God declares us just is not because we are still eating kosher food but because Christ died for us, bore our sins in his own body on the tree. Out of sheer grace, God has done this in Christ, and we have received it by faith. We know that. We who are Jews know that.”
“So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified.” That’s a dominant theme, both in Romans and in Galatians. Paul says, “But if, in seeking to be justified in Christ …” That is, “We Christian Jews, we want to be justified by Christ so we put our faith in him.”
“But if, in seeking to be justified in Christ, we Jews find ourselves also among the sinners …” That is, “If after we have put our confidence in Christ, we now go back and say, ‘But you really do have to eat kosher food,’ then what we’re really saying is, ‘When we stopped eating kosher food, we were sinning.’
So putting our faith in Christ and saying, ‘You don’t have to eat kosher food,’ we then turn around afterward and say, ‘You do have to eat kosher food,’ then all that means is when we turned to Christ, we were fostering sin, and Christ, then, becomes a messenger of sin. All that Christ has done is just multiplied your sin.
The food laws have never been backed off. You still have to obey them. You’re still under the law. You must obey the circumcision law. You must obey the food laws. You must obey the Sabbath laws. You must obey the adultery laws. All the laws all together, completely, the whole Old Testament law package, you must still obey that or you cannot be saved.
If, in fact, you’ve made some distinctions based on what Christ has taught and put your faith in Christ and then come back afterward and say, ‘We have to put them all back in there after all,’ then you can’t avoid the logic that Christ has become an agent of sin. He snookered you into sinning so that you’d put your faith in him, and now, after the fact, you have to go back to all of those laws again. Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“But if, in seeking to be justified in Christ, we Jews find ourselves also among the sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin?” Paul is shocked at such an arrangement of things. He says, “Absolutely not! If I rebuild what I destroyed …” That is, “If I rebuild the totality of the law covenant as something we must all continue to obey, even though I destroyed it by my own practices, for example, in not observing the kosher laws when I trusted Christ, then I really would be a lawbreaker. All this becoming a Christian business is is becoming a horrible lawbreaker.”
Then the three verses at the end of the chapter which we cite most often. The first clause is the hardest one. Paul says, “For through the law I died to the law.” What does he mean by that? “For through the law I died to the law.” This is built on his argument a little further on in chapter 3, verse 13.
In chapter 3, verse 13, Paul writes, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.’ ” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law. In other words, Christ by his death in accordance with the law bore its curse but not for himself. For us. He didn’t deserve the curse. By his death in accordance with the law, he bore the law’s curse for us.
Thus, if Christ died for me and I am now free from the law’s curse because he bore it for me, then the law has nothing on me. I’m dead with respect to the law. As far as the law is concerned, I’m dead, because the curse has already been paid. Christ has already paid it, and this through the law, because Christ died in accordance with the law.
That’s what Paul means by saying, “For through the law, the law which brought Jesus to death to bear our curse in our place, I died to the law. The law has no claim on me, so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ …” That is, when Christ died on the cross, bearing my sin and guilt, because it was my sin and guilt that he bore there and paid my penalty, then although he was crucified, there is a profound sense in which I was crucified with him.
God looks at me and my shame and my guilt and my rebellion and my idolatry and my mediocrity and my inconsistency and my horrible rebellion against him, and do you know what he sees? He sees Christ crucified. By the plan of God himself, he sees Christ crucified. The curse of the law has been paid (my curse!) because he bore my curse in his own body on the tree. In that sense, I’m dead to the law. I was crucified just as he was crucified, not because I literally hung on a cross but because he was crucified in my place.
He says, “I am crucified with Christ and I no longer live.” There’s a sense, of course, in which he lives. He’s about to go on and say, “The life I now live in the body …” Of course, he lives, but he doesn’t live with respect to anything the law demands of him. He doesn’t live with respect to any way of appealing before God to make himself acceptable before the Holy Almighty One.
I don’t live anymore. I’m dead. I was crucified. That’s what Christ accomplished by dying in my place. “I was crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” There are many passages in the New Testament where we’re told that Christ lives within us or by his Spirit he takes up residence within us.
For example, in John 14, verses 15 and 16, Jesus keeps saying he’ll send his Holy Spirit to take up residence within us, and so on, so the notion of Christ in some sense by his Spirit living within us is a common one in the New Testament, but there’s a little tricky bit here we have to understand.
The expression in me in Greek.… I tell my students all the time, “If you ever say, ‘The Greek says,’ to your congregation in the first five years of your ministry, I will personally throttle you.” I have threatened throttling many, many times. You don’t want young ministers to go out saying, “The Greek says,” and seem terribly luminous and deep, but I’ve been in the ministry for more than five years. Besides, in this particular case, I think it will help you to understand what the expression is.
It’s literally in Greek en emoi. That’s what the Greek is. It’s often translated, in me. Now read the last verse of chapter 1. There the apostle Paul, after his conversion, went back to Jerusalem and many, many Jews in Jerusalem and the Judea area “… heard the report: ‘The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.’ And they praised God [en emoi].”
They praised God in me? No. All of our translations say something like, “They praised God because of me,” or “They praised God with reference to me,” or something like that, because the expression en emoi, in about one-third of its New Testament instances, means in relation to me. Not in me in terms of location (the Holy Spirit taking up residence in me), but in reference to me. That’s clearly what is meant in verses 23 and 24 of chapter 1.
“ ‘The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.’ And they praised God with reference to me.” Or we say more idiomatically in English, “Because of me.” They praised God for his conversion. “In reference to me.” I think that’s the way it is to be taken at the end of chapter 2, as well.
In other words, we read (verse 20), “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live …” We understood that. “… but now Christ lives with reference to me.” Not simply in me, although that’s true, but just as his death is my death, so his life is my life. His life is with reference to me. When God looks at me, he does not see my sin and guilt, as it were. He sees all of that paid by Christ dying in my place, and in that sense I have been crucified with Christ.
Where’s my righteousness? Where’s my life, then? If I’m dead with Christ.… But God also sees Christ’s life with reference to me. Not only his death with reference to me but his life with reference to me. He looks at me and sees my sin has been cancelled because of Christ’s death. He sees my life perfect in his eyes, declared just before him because of Christ’s life.
Here is the complete exchange. This does not mean I’m literally dead, of course. It’s the way God has arranged things so that he declares me guiltless even though I’m guilty because he sees that Christ has died my death and I’ve been crucified with him. He sees that I live Christ’s life. Christ lives with reference to me.
Therefore, he says, “The life I now live in the flesh …” The life he’s actually living because, after all, Paul is still writing and living and breathing and rebuking apostles even as he pencils this line. Of course, he’s still alive. “The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God.” That’s what he had said earlier. You trust him for his death offered up on your behalf, his life that now stands in for yours.
“… by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God.” That is, if the death and life of Christ are not enough, then the grace of God and the death and life of Christ don’t see me through. The grace of God isn’t enough. I have to set it aside and add something else.
No. Paul says, “If righteousness could be gained through merely trying hard, through being obedient, through conformity to the law, by being as good as you can be in conformity with all that God has revealed, well then, Christ died for nothing. The core of the Christian gospel is just a joke.” Christ plus something as a requirement for salvation destroys the cross. It destroys grace. That’s what he says. Now then, it’s within this framework that Paul refers to the Son of God and adds, “… who loved me and gave himself for me.”
3. The pastoral wisdom bound up with Paul’s aside
I’ll outline some pastoral reflections, and you’ll see the point in a moment.
A) When the heart of the gospel is at stake, nothing else is more important, not even apostolic unity.
You must not think Paul is simply blowing up here out of a bit of whim. He had a bad hair day. He lost his cool. Personal rivalries. The issue for Paul concerns the protection of the gospel. In fact, earlier on in chapter 1, verses 8 and 9, he says, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let that person be under God’s curse.” Let him be anathema. Let him be damned.
“As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let that person be under God’s curse!” Paul is not saying this because he’s saying, “I’m right; you’re wrong.” He says, “Now if I change my mind and preach something else, then I’m wrong. I’m damned.”
The gospel is so important that it even exceeds apostolic status. It’s more important even than apostolic unity because without this gospel we are not saved. Without this gospel we do not have sins forgiven. Without this gospel we are not reconciled to God. That’s the first observation. When the heart of the gospel is at stake, nothing else is more important, not even apostolic unity, for all that elsewhere the New Testament prizes unity in the church.
B) On the face of it, it is essential to see that biblical truth is, in some sense, hierarchical.
I don’t know another way of saying that. I mean, there are some truths that are more important than other truths. Truths are in a kind of hierarchy. Some truths you die for; some truths you don’t die for.
I’m not making that up. Elsewhere, Paul writes to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 15 that he is now going to present to them “the matters of first importance.” Then he starts talking about Christ and Christ crucified and the resurrection. They are matters of first importance, such that if you lose those, you don’t have the gospel anymore.
Paul can be remarkably flexible with people who disagree with him. When he writes to the Philippians, he says, “If you disagree in any of these other matters, God will lead you in the right way in due course. God will reveal these matters to you.” That’s very different from his tone here. Truth, in the New Testament, is hierarchical, and the integrity of the gospel takes a certain pride of place.
C) It follows that the most dangerous errors in any generation are those that many Christian leaders do not see.
Paul saw this one. Peter did not. Peter, if the reconstruction I’ve given you is right, is actually trying to be very sensitive, but Paul sees the gospel itself is at stake. By being sensitive to one group of Christians, he is in terrible danger of denying the gospel itself.
If this means some Christians in Jerusalem will be persecuted, then you pay the price of persecution, but you don’t jeopardize the gospel. Paul had gotten that far in his thinking; Peter had not. Not yet. Later on, when he writes his first and second epistle, he has gotten that far, but at this point, Peter hasn’t gotten that far which reminds us the most dangerous errors in any generation are those that many Christian leaders do not see.
I don’t think broad-based evangelicalism today is in any great danger of turning back the clock and begging to get into classic 1920s liberalism. I don’t think so. We see that one because it’s in the past. The question every generation has to ask itself is, “What dangers are around us that I’m not seeing?” Always.
You don’t want to get paranoid over all of this. Christ still builds his church, and we’re all blind somewhere; nevertheless, we should not be naÔve that everybody witnesses the same dangers at the same time. It wasn’t even so in the New Testament. One apostle saw things faster than another apostle. Walk humbly.
D) The Bible intimately connects the propositional world of doctrine, of teaching, with the emotional world of adoration and consciousness of God’s love.
Do you hear that? That’s what’s going on in this passage. The Bible intimately connects the propositional world of doctrine, of teaching, with the emotional world of adoration and consciousness of God’s love.
There are many Christians who want to put those two in different camps. Over here are the sober intellectuals expounding doctrine, wanting to make sure all the prepositions get into the right slots. You must say it the right way with the right Bible version with the right fidelity. “Obviously, they don’t love God.” It’s all propositions. It’s all truth. Boring. This is a generation that doesn’t go for that.
In the other corner, according to the first few, over here they’re just so sentimental. They want to be happy and clappy and sing loud and get their emotions all turned up, but they don’t even understand the rudiments of the gospel. All emotional but not grounded anywhere. Wrap it all up with more enthusiasm.
Well, you can be a Jihadist and enthusiastic, too, or just go to a football game or decide who has won the Ashes and knock the Australians. You can have lots of enthusiasm that way, too. It’s all part of the same thing. Fervor. “Don’t worry about doctrine; just be relational and full of emotional heat.”
Once you get rid of that dichotomy and laugh at it, then you start reflecting on the passages in the Bible that wells together profound theological truth and the most unrestrained adoration. In fact, in the Bible quite commonly it’s a deeper grasp of what God has done that we can talk about and preach in the gospel propositionally that actually calls forth and evokes renewed depths of adoration, renewed insight into just how much God has loved us.
Reject with your whole being a dichotomy between the two. If temperamentally you are more on the sentimental, emotional side, God bless you. Make sure you read some doctrine! If instead, you are more on the doctrinal stiffness and fidelity side, make sure you learn how to sing! Make sure you know how to adore with unfettered joy in the Lord.
Otherwise, what is it for? Just so you can feel good about your intellectual, theological prowess? No. The Bible intimately connects the propositional world of doctrine with the emotional world of adoration and the consciousness of God’s love. We speak the truth in love.
E) In this case, the connection is particularly tight and focuses on the cross.
It’s particularly tight. It focuses on the cross. It’s when Paul is expounding the cross, the great exchange, how his death is my death and his life is my life, such that I live now before God by faith in the Son of God, that Paul says, “… who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Do you remember how Jesus tells a parable? I’m not quite certain if it’s a parable or if it’s merely an extension of what’s going on his life at the moment between two people, one who seems to be very self-righteous and one a broken-down sinner. He likens it to two people who owe debt. One person owes $40 billion and somebody owes 50p. Both debts are forgiven. Who will be more grateful?
Do you want to increase in your appreciation of God’s love for you? Do you? Ask God for a renewed vision of how ugly you are, of how much you owe, of what sin looks like to God, of how deep and slippery is our rebellion, and with it a renewed deeper grasp of what it cost the eternal Son to bear our sin in his own body on the tree.
In all of our striving to defend substitutionary atonement, which is to be defended (it’s biblically taught), let it never be merely an intellectual debate, though it can never be less than that. Let it be the seedbed of contrition and repentance and joy and thanksgiving and a sense of release and hope in the prospect of heaven because he loved me and gave himself for me. The apostle had written this and can elsewhere say that he views himself as the chief of sinners. The chief of sinners knows how to be grateful for the grace of God.
F) Elsewhere, Paul further perceives that being awash in God’s love for us is necessary for Christian maturity.
At the end of Ephesians 3, when Paul is writing to the Ephesians, one of his petitions is (Ephesians 3:17), “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
Do you hear that last expression? “… that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” That’s an apostolic way of saying, “… that you may be thoroughly mature.” This is not a prayer that we may love God more. That’s a good prayer, but it’s not this prayer. Paul does not say, “And I pray that you may love God,” or “… that your love may abound more and more.” Those prayers are found elsewhere in the Bible. That’s not this prayer. Listen again. “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power now.”
You have already been rooted and established in love by virtue of the fact that you’re Christians. “… may have power, together with all the Lord’s people …” Not just you as a privatized spiritual experience, but the whole church. “… may have power, together with all the Lord’s people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of God.”
How are you going to measure love? Three tons? Four miles? Six bushels? He uses measurement as a kind of metaphor. “… how wide and long and high and deep …” Then he uses paradox. “… and to know this love that surpasses knowledge …” To know what is not quite knowable, what is not quite reducible merely to propositions, that you may know it in your life so profoundly that you become mature. “… that you may be filled to all the measure of the fullness of God.”
For I tell you the truth. It’s those who most clearly think through, feel, respond to, and who know in the depths of their beings more and more of the love of God that they are so awash in grace, who are genuinely mature Christians. Part of our problem is some of us have a truncated view of the gospel. We think the gospel is that bit of doctrine which sort of tips us into the kingdom. You just sort of receive Jesus. You get sort of tipped in. “Okay. Now you’re in.”
After that, comes not the gospel but a whole lot of preaching of discipleship and special courses on maturation and how to obey better. The gospel gets you in (that forgives you), and after that, all of your incentive for conformity and for strength and for power and for maturation and so on comes afterwards with our discipleship training courses.
I understand the motives behind that, but I have to tell you it is profoundly unbiblical because in the New Testament.… Find out for yourself. Take a concordance and look up every instance of the word gospel. Gospel is the big category under which discipleship comes. It’s not the little category at the beginning to which discipleship is added. The gospel is the big category which saves us, which transforms us, which empowers us.
If you get people in and then after that all you give them are moral rules and moral rules and moral rules, then what you really are doing is returning to the law. Somehow, you’re going to be sufficiently acceptable before God if you do your devotions and look after the poor and make sure you preach once in a while and, of course, make sure you give your testimony and witness once in a while.
I’m certainly insisting all of those things are mandated in the New Testament, but they are not mandated out of a motive somehow to become a little more acceptable to God. They are mandated, rather, out of the overpowering sense of joyful indebtedness that we’re already acceptable to God in the first place because it’s the gospel that transforms.
I know some of you are addicted to porn. Deeply addicted. I have a friend who likes to say, “You worship your way into porn, and you will not break it unless you worship your way out.” Until worship of Christ becomes so precious to you that anything that is mediocre, that is disgusting, that is degrading is something abominable to you, because you worship someone better, something higher, Christ, the gospel.
It’s the gospel that transforms. Don’t you see? We are always debtors to grace, and as soon as discipleship becomes something added to the gospel that is essentially based on law, you destroy the gospel. It’s no longer the power of God to salvation; it’s merely the justification. It’s merely the legal status, but it is not the power that transforms.
But where you see that this gospel, this good news of Christ dying for us and in consequence his pouring out his Spirit on us and enabling us and ennobling us and transforming us in new birth and sanctification, all the fruit of the cross and all the fruit of the gospel, then everything you do that you offer up to Christ is never with a sense of, “Okay. I’ll do this so I have to be a little more sanctified.” You’re doing it because, “Christ loved me and gave himself for me.” Play back in your mind what we sang tonight.
I stand amazed in the presence
of Jesus the Nazarene,
and wonder how he could love me,
a sinner, condemned, unclean.
How marvelous! How wonderful!
And my song shall ever be:
How marvelous! How wonderful
is my Savior’s love for me!
Live in grace. Live awash in the growing consciousness of the love of God manifested supremely in the cross. Let us pray.
We confess, Lord God, that sometimes we have begun in grace and ended in law, and we are ashamed. Help us to see that every incentive toward good, every incentive toward obedience is itself grounded in the unfathomable love you have shown us in Christ Jesus: vast, unmeasured, as shoreless as eternity, and meeting our need on a little hill outside Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.
We repent, and as Paul prayed for the Ephesians, so we pray for one another and for ourselves that in your great mercy by showing us Christ and him crucified we may have power together with all the Lord’s people to grasp how long and wide and high and deep is the love of Christ, to know this love that surpasses that we may be filled with all the measure of the fullness of God. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Involved in Women’s Ministry? Add This to Your Discipleship Tool Kit.
We need one another. Yet we don’t always know how to develop deep relationships to help us grow in the Christian life. Younger believers benefit from the guidance and wisdom of more mature saints as their faith deepens. But too often, potential mentors lack clarity and training on how to engage in discipling those they can influence.
Whether you’re longing to find a spiritual mentor or hoping to serve as a guide for someone else, we have a FREE resource to encourage and equip you. In Growing Together: Taking Mentoring Beyond Small Talk and Prayer Requests, Melissa Kruger, TGC’s vice president of discipleship programming, offers encouraging lessons to guide conversations that promote spiritual growth in both the mentee and mentor.
