November 22

Galatians 2:20 (NIV84) — 20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

This is the point! We and all of our preconceived notions about how things should be done are dead. We aren’t living anymore without Christ, or more properly it is Christ who is living through us. We live a life of faith and not law.

Paul confronted Peter, which is interesting as to why the Holy Spirit included it in the scripture. What has happened is that people and ministries have now been built on the premise of open confrontation. Never mind what the rest of the Word says, (doing it in love, in person and so on), the practice of public vilification seems to be growing. Here is the issue, Paul confronted Peter because he was being legalistic, applying an old religion to the new life of the New Covenant, and shunning people publicly. That was the egregious thing that Peter did to deserve a write up. Are you getting this? Peter was acting as though he believed he was ABOVE those other people and thereby he shunned them publicly. Isn’t that what is happening today by the people who are publicly calling out others by name? We put rules on how people preach and minister and we can barely find anything wrong with their doctrine, and when we have a point of disagreement, they are called out and made to be akin to the devil.

Jesus and Paul strongly resisted the religious people of the day because of the death that religion causes through the pride of “being good”, and through the guilt of “being bad”. Let’s not use this instance as a pretext to call people out, but rather guard ourselves against drowning in guilt or thinking we are better than we ought.