Galatians 2:11-14, Peter’s Hypocrisy

Is it surprising to us that a trusted spiritual leader could experience a deep failing? We’ve seen it many times, have we not. But could an Apostle, particularly the Apostle Peter, mess up royally? Paul tells us he did, and he messed up in the most condemnatory way possible. He erred with respect to the gospel.

2:11 Now when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he deserved condemnation. 12 For before some representatives from James arrived, he was eating with the Gentiles. But when they came, he withdrew and separated himself from them for fear of the circumcision party. 13 And the rest of the Jews joined him in this hypocrisy so that even Barnabas was led astray with them in hypocrisy. 14 But when I saw that they did not hold themselves to the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of all of them, “If you who are a Jew live like a Gentile and not a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews? (Galatians 2:11-14)

Paul and Barnabas had gone to Jerusalem from Antioch, because a revelation from a prophet had told of the deep financial need of the believers in Jerusalem and the church at Antioch had raised funds for them. While there, Paul presented his view of the gospel to Peter (Cephas) and John and James, the “pillars” of the church, and these pillars confirmed that this was the gospel, that one is saved by grace through faith alone, not by works, even Jewish law-keeping works. But when Peter later comes to Antioch to minister in the church, something shifts in his commitment to this gospel and Paul has to confront him.

Peter, prior to some representatives of the Apostle James arriving in Antioch, had been ministering to the believers, even the Gentile believers, by eating with them, which meant, in the case of the Gentiles, eating non-kosher food. When Peter had a vision from God of a great sheet come down from heaven with unclean animals inside it, and God told him to eat, he had refused (Acts 10). God told him that whatever God declared clean was clean. This vision was to prepare Peter to preach the gospel to the Gentile Cornelius and his household. Peter was now, in Antioch, living “like a Gentile” without regard to Jewish dietary laws, acknowledging that these believers were “clean” before God, saved by grace through faith and not required to obey Jewish law.

But some men from James came, and whether they were accurately representing James or not, they were reacting against this type of behavior on Peter’s part, on the part of any Jew, for that matter. Paul calls them “the circumcision party” so they must have also believed that male Gentile converts needed to be circumcised according to the Law of Moses and become law-keepers, become, in effect, Jews. Peter stopped eating with these Gentile converts and began compelling them to “live like Jews.” Even Barnabas got caught up in this hypocrisy. Some think it might have been only by his new behavior that Peter compelled the Gentiles to change their behaviors, while others think Peter began teaching and commanding them to change.

Paul found this new behavior of Peter’s hypocritical and worthy of condemnation. Peter was acting like a heretic. He was controverting the truth of the gospel. He was now saying that salvation required law-keeping, a clear contradiction of what he had preached before. This was a desperate situation. If an Apostle altered his view of the gospel in this way it could be disastrous for the church and for the cause of the gospel itself. So Paul had to confront his hypocrisy, and confront it publicly, because it had been done publicly.

Paul is telling the Galatians this, not because he wants to show up Peter or Barnabas, but because they need to see how easy it is to stray from the gospel. And they need to see that even a respected Christian leader can stray from the gospel. The teachers who have come to them teaching “another” gospel may say they are representing the Jerusalem leadership, but even the Jerusalem leadership can mess up.

Did Peter repent? Paul does not tell us, though we must believe that he did. His subsequent life and ministry, as represented in his letters, are evidence that he confessed this sin and did an about face. He writes, in 2 Peter 3:15,16,

Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.