Act IV: The Standoff.
Paul says, “I opposed him to his face because he was clearly in the wrong for doing this and because the truth of the Gospel was at stake.” There are some things on which you cannot compromise. There are some things that are matters of deep, abiding, biblical Gospel principles. You cannot compromise on them and be faithful to Jesus Christ, and this is one of them. The truth of the Gospel, Paul says — he uses this expression twice in Galatians 2 — the truth of the Gospel led him to oppose Peter to his face.
There was a standoff! There was a shootout, if you will, between these two great apostles of the early church. The one thing this tells us is: great people, famous people, God-called people, even Christ-appointed apostles, can be dead wrong. Peter was wrong! Clearly, Paul says, he was in the wrong. And this was not the sort of thing that he could call Peter back in the backroom and say, “Listen here, brother Peter. Now don’t you remember Cornelius?” This situation required a face-to-face confrontation, not a backroom conversation, because Peter had led so many others astray with his disobedient behavior; the church had to be given a signal that could not be misunderstood. Thus, there was a standoff between the great two apostles.
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Now is this just a matter of Jews and Gentiles, what you eat and with whom you eat and this, that and the other? Is it just days and diet and body piercing? No. The truth of the Gospel is at stake here. Look at Galatians 2:16 — this is where this entire passage is moving. This is the culmination of it all: “We know that a man 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 might be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law because by observing the law, no one will be justified.”
That is why this question of racial reconciliation is a matter of the Gospel. It is not just a matter of: are you socially enlightened? Have you had the right sociological training? Which side of the political divide do you come down on? This is not about that. This is about the Gospel. We are not justified by anything or anyone except by Jesus Christ. And when we divide from one another because of ethnicity or racial distinction or any of these other artificial categories Paul talks about, then we are putting that in the place of the Gospel. We are making that a substitute for grace. We are saying, “That counts before God,” as a way of our being justified in his sight. We are saying that by our actions, whether we say it with our lips or not, and that is a blatant denial of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That is why racism is not just an error; it is a heresy. It will send a person to hell. Now where do you get that preacher?