Galatians 2:11-21. "Why Are There Christian Denominations?"

In this episode, Tim discusses the story of Peter’s denial and Paul's confrontation to him. When Jesus was arrested on Maundy Thursday, Peter denied knowing Him three times out of fear for his own life.

Fast forward twenty years to Antioch, where Paul rebukes Peter publicly for his hypocrisy. Paul says, "I have been crucified with Christ," highlighting Peter's fear of standing alongside Jesus and his failure to fully embrace the Gentile Christians.

This disagreement was crucial for the early church. After being miraculously freed from prison, Peter initially embraced the Gentile Christians in Antioch but later withdrew under pressure from Jewish Christians, leading to division. Paul confronted Peter, emphasizing that justification comes through faith in Jesus Christ, not by observing the law.

Tim then points out Peter's eventual acceptance of Paul's correction which helped the church address broader issues about the role of Jewish Law in Christianity, leading to a united front in proclaiming the Gospel.

 This Sunday sermon, based on Galatians 2 verses 11-21, was preached at Grace of God Lutheran Church on June 30, 2024.  This sermon is preached by Pastor Timothy J. Walsh, a member of WELS (Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod). Scripture selections come from the New International Version.

Our services are at 9:30am every Sunday morning, at our campus in Dix Hills on Long Island. Visit our website for more information, at www.graceofgod.church 

Intro Music "On the Way" by Vlad Gluschenko https://soundcloud.com/vgl9
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0

Outro Music "Divenire" by Ludovico Einaudi
copyright (℗) by: Ludovico Einaudi (in 2006)              

Transcript

Peace to you from Jesus the Son of God, who loved you and gave himself for you. Amen.

Most of you know the story of Peter’s denial. When Jesus was arrested on the day we now call Maundy Thursday, Peter followed to see how Jesus’ trial would play out. While he was hanging around the court, people came up to him and asked if he was one of Jesus’ disciples. Three times, he swore he’d never even met Jesus. His lies were understandable; it looked like Jesus was heading to a cross, and Peter didn’t want to end up on one alongside him! 

Fast forward twenty years to the event we read about in our second reading. Peter, before the whole congregation of Christians in the city of Antioch, is being rebuked by Paul. Paul says one very pointed thing in his rebuke of Peter, verse twenty of that reading: “I have been crucified with Christ.” And Peter, once again, realizes that he is afraid to stand up alongside Jesus. He is, once again, trying to avoid the cross. 

Peter and Paul had an important disagreement. Peter would admit that. And Peter would later admit that he was wrong. He needed Paul to rebuke him. Their disagreement needed to be dealt with in the open, so that the church could be united again. What was the disagreement? 

Around 48 AD, Paul was traveling all around the Mediterranean region planting churches. He had already met Peter a couple years before, when Paul and some other missionaries brought a special offering to the church in Jerusalem from their mission churches. Paul sat down with Peter and the other leaders of the church there, to explain to them what he’d been doing and what he’d been teaching. They loved it. They thanked God for the incredible growth which God was bringing about through Paul’s ministry. They recognized him as an apostle, like the twelve. And they sent him back to his home base in Antioch with God’s blessings. 

A little while later, Peter was arrested in Jerusalem for preaching the Gospel. God miraculously delivered Peter from prison by sending an angel to break his chains and guide him out. Peter went to the home of some Christians in Jerusalem, let them know that he had escaped, and then, we’re simply told, “he he left for another place,” Acts twelve seventeen.

Where did Peter go? It seems that he decided to take refuge where he knew he would find other Christians, far from King Herod, who was looking for the escaped apostle. It seems that Peter hid out for some time in Antioch. This would have been an incredible thing. The church in Antioch was growing by leaps and bounds, and for this growing church to have one of Jesus’ own apostles visit after miraculously escaping from prison? WOW! 

Paul would have also been thrilled. Here was someone with experience and authority, who could help him shepherd this growing church. Paul spent a lot of time training new leaders; finally, he could share the work with someone he didn’t need to supervise.

But then, sometime around 48 or 49 AD, some men came from Jerusalem to Antioch. They may have been escaping persecution by Herod, just like Peter. They knew Peter, and Peter welcomed them. In Antioch, Peter had apparently thrown himself into the largely Gentile church community. He was known for eating and drinking with the Gentiles. That would have been anathema for Jews. Jesus, though, had taught his disciples that the Law’s purpose in keeping the people of God separate had been fulfilled in him.

Not everyone readily received that teaching from Jesus. On various occasions, one group or another popped up inside the young Christian church, pushing for the Jewish Law to take a greater place in the lives of believers. These men from Jerusalem, whoever they were, taught those ideas. And Peter, to his shame, didn’t correct them. Instead, he fell in line with them! He stopped fellowshipping with the Gentile Christians. His example led the other Jewish Christians of Antioch into the same hypocrisy, including Paul’s fellow missionary Barnabas. Very quickly, as far as we know, Paul was the only one of the Jewish Christians in Antioch still fellowshipping with the Gentiles. The church was divided.

Paul did not let the situation stand for long. How exactly this happened we aren’t told. Did this take place when the church was gathering for worship? Did Paul call a special meeting? Unclear. What is clear is Paul’s message. “Cephas” - Peter - “how is it that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs? We who are Jews by birth and not ‘sinful Gentiles’” - Paul is using the words of the men from Jerusalem there - “we know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.” His final words are the clearest. “If righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” 

Paul doesn’t say that Peter ever explicitly taught that righteousness comes through the Law. Paul’s accusation is based not on Peter’s teaching from the pulpit, but on Peter’s teaching in his life. Peter’s life teaches a different doctrine than Peter’s sermons, and this is what Paul labels as his “hypocrisy.” And with that line about being “crucified with Christ,” Paul jabs this thought in about Peter’s hypocrisy. “Peter, you may talk a fine talk about Jesus and what he did, but your life shows that you think Christianity is all about us and what we do.” 

Thanks be to God that Peter heard Paul out. Peter recognized his error. Our first reading, from Acts fifteen, takes place about two years later. It turned out that this wasn’t a problem just in Antioch. The church as a whole needed to come together and discuss the role of the Jewish Law in the life of the Christian Church. And at that meeting, Peter now, with Paul in the room, gets up and offers this strong rebuke to those of the circumcision party. “Brothers, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.”

The church is united. Peter and Paul, now side by side, not face to face, proclaiming the Gospel, the good news message of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. But for this beautiful unity to come about, the disagreement between these men had to be dealt with.

Why are there denominations within the Christian Church? For the same reason that Peter and Paul were divided in Antioch. Not everyone who claims to be a Christian teacher holds the same beliefs. And not everyone reacts to correction as Peter did, with humility and fear of God.

In America, churches have often divided over foolish things. People want a big church with more programs, so they leave the small church they grew up in. To be clear, that’s a church dividing. We act as if belonging to the Christian Church was something like a membership to a warehouse store. “Yeah, we used to go to BJ’s, but then we got a Costco membership when the gas station opened.” Fine. “Yeah, we were Lutheran, but now we go to a church where there’s a youth group.” Foolish! And we reap the results of dividing over these foolish things. Do we really think that what will keep our children in the Christian faith is occasional pizza nights in a church gym? Do we really so doubt the power of the Holy Spirit at work through the Gospel? Do we read the Gospels and hear Jesus have the disciples pull the kids for children’s church, so the grownups can catch all of the Sermon on the Mount? Foolishness! And yet we divide our churches for such things. That’s what it is when we leave a church; we’re dividing it.

That’s not how people look at it. And I’ve talked to enough people who’ve made that kind of church move to understand that they don’t look at it that way. In fact, they see the real division as coming from pastors who insist on correct teaching. “It’s pretty much the same, after all! We still read the Bible. We still worship Jesus.” 

Yes, this is true. And we ought to remember this, whenever we interact with other Christians. We ought to recognize the presence of what C. S. Lewis would call “Mere Christianity,” the central, most important beliefs of our faith. God as Creator of all things. Jesus, God’s own Son, living a perfect human life and dying an innocent death to reconcile us to God. Jesus’ physical resurrection guaranteeing our own. The Holy Spirit’s presence in and among us, bringing us to faith and keeping our faith alive through God’s Word. At minimum, when someone recognizes these truths, we speak to them as Peter spoke to the men of the Jerusalem Council. We speak of one another as “brothers and sisters.” 

But we don’t settle for “pretty much the same” when it comes to what we hear from our pulpits. We want to hear the truth of God’s Word, with nothing else mixed in. That doesn’t mean we want every preacher to sound exactly the same. It is a blessing to have preachers from different backgrounds, with different personalities, able to shine the light of God’s Word into our lives in different ways. Next week Pastor Mark Birkholz will preach from our pulpit here; that will be a good thing, to have someone else sharing God’s Word here. 

But while Pastor Birkholz and I preach with different styles - emphasize different things - we are both dedicated, with all our hearts, to sharing the same doctrine with you as the apostles shared with their congregations. We don’t settle in our preaching for “mere Christianity,” and neither should you! You should require those men whom you call to share God’s Word with you to plumb the depths of Scripture! You should demand that, to the best of our ability, we show you how wide and how long and how deep and how high is the love of God shown to you and me, shown to us Gentile sinners, shown in Christ Jesus our Lord.

One very simple application, when we’re shown the wide and long and deep and high love of God, is that we bear with one another in a measure of that love. We don’t divide from one another for foolish things. We don’t leave our churches because they don’t have a mens’ group, or because we got a new pastor who just doesn’t engage us like the last one. Those are the actions of selfish Americans raised on marketing and consumerism.

So when would we ever leave a church? Should we put up with anything? Whatever the first church we’re in is, we stick with that until it dies or we die? No. Division needs to take place when God’s love is compromised. That’s what Paul shows us Peter was compromising on with his hypocrisy. It wasn’t just a matter of dietary preferences. God’s love for the Gentiles brothers and sisters of this church was being hidden by Peter’s actions. Imagine, an apostle of the Lord Jesus himself, drawing away from fellowship with us! What heartache we would suffer! What anfechtung, what torment would strike our souls!

So too, when a modern American pastor tells his congregation that they should be rebaptized if they’ve fallen away, what soul-torment that brings! I stop looking to God’s promise of forgiveness, given to me personally through baptism; instead, I look to my actions. Just what Peter’s hypocrisy caused in Antioch! When a modern pastor tells his congregation that the Bible contains God’s Word, but is not itself God’s Word, then how can I be sure of any of what it says? When a pastor teaches that from eternity God determined some to admit to salvation, while it was his pleasure to doom others to destruction, shall Christians let such teachings stand without protest? In every place where such teachings arise, they serve only to divide.

The division always takes place in the same way that it took place in Antioch, even if the doctrine is different. One group always decides to take the stance that they are living properly as Christians, and another group within their church is not. They can tell themselves, “I must be one of God’s elect, but the guy in the next row definitely isn’t.” Or, “I definitely meant it when I got baptized, but she just did it because everyone else was that Sunday.” Or, “He’s certainly still a ‘carnal’ Christian, whereas I have the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which I can see in how much better I live my life.” Can we see our pride with such egos in the way?!  And all this foolishness comes from someone in a pulpit offering people something other than the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ in which to put their hope.

This is why there are denominations within Christianity. Either we should trust that in Jesus Christ alone, we have reason to expect reconciliation with God and life forever, or we should, in some way, trust in ourselves.

Denominations - different Christian churches - exist because someone, somewhere, said to a preacher, just as Paul said to Peter, “This isn’t right, brother.” And sadly, that brother didn’t listen. If Peter had rejected Paul’s words, we’d have had the first denominational split in Christianity right there. They could have set up shop across from one another there in Antioch, First Petrine Christian Church of Antioch and First Pauline Christian Church of Antioch.

Thanks be to God, Peter listened to his brother, and more importantly, he listened to his Lord.

Unity in the church matters. Doctrine of the church matters. These two concerns have to stand side by side. Peter and Paul would tell you the same thing. Peter and Paul would also urge preachers, teachers, pastors, to work to overcome division. Not by deciding that some teachings are more or less important than others, but by studying the Bible together, so that there can be unity in the love of God, proclaimed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A blessed feast of Saints Peter and Paul to you, brothers and sisters. Amen.