Shepherd the Flock

Tonight I had the pleasure of attending the final evening session of the F.I.R.E national conference here in Atlanta, GA. Phil Johnson from TeamPyro was the featured speaker this evening, and hopefully my ‘live blogging’ notes below will provide a sufficient summary of his excellent and timely message (this post is very long, but very much worth the read if you missed the sermon).

During the session, I was fortunate to be sitting right behind Phil’s wife Darleen. Since I had explained to her before the service that I would be live-blogging, she made sure that I was properly informed when the jokes started coming, like one about Phil possibly coloring his hair to hide the gray. She confirmed that he doesn’t, and she would know! (That’s certainly amazing considering all the things that he has eaten, as it’s amazing he has any hair left! Just kidding, brother.)

To begin with, Phil gave a title of sorts over at his own blog:

…it’s impossible to make a clean dichotomy between orthodoxy and orthopraxy, and neither one is either primary or optional. Defending the faith and getting the truth right is part of holy living (Titus 2:7), and holy living is the proper and necessary dress for sound doctrine (vv. 1, 10).

Phil’s essential point in this message was how inextricably linked sound doctrine is with right behavior –no aspect of that equation is expendable: neither the sound doctrine nor the righteous behavior. He goes on to use two specific passages to teach this truth. First, he briefly touched on Titus chapter 2, and then he spent the majority of his time in Galatians chapter 2 where he examined the very public conflict between Peter and Paul in Antioch.

Ultimately, there are three main points of Phil’s message:

1) It’s not enough to know the truth; you have to practice what you believe.

2) It’s not enough to speak positively about the truth; you also have to confront error.

3) It’s not enough to be on guard for yourself; you have to be concerned for the safety for all the flock.

As an introduction, here are a few notes from Titus chapter 2:

• Paul’s letter to Titus specifically instructs him to preach sound doctrine, but not to just preach it, but to preach the things that go with sound doctrine (2:1). Paul then goes on to give a list of practical duties for this. This list encompasses it all: older men, older women, young men, young women, and servants. Thus, sound doctrine without right living is worthless, for anyone.
• Be sure you preach this, says Paul. Stress right living alongside orthodox or right belief.
• Titus 2:7-8 is the heart of the passage, and is the main point for the pastor. In the middle of this list of practical duties, he adds in this personal word to Titus: “Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us.” In other words, don’t only preach about this, Titus, be an example of this.
• Sound doctrine is the first good work that Paul comes back to again in verse 7, ‘in your teaching (doctrine), show yourself…’
• The thing to notice is this: far from making a dichotomy (which we often do), between sound doctrine and good works, Paul is showing Titus again and again, and in several different ways, that those two things are inextricably linked -neither one is expendable! If you lose focus on one, you will fail in the other also. In other words, you cant be truly good unless you are also concerned about being right. Someone who isn’t concerned about being right isn’t concerned about being good no matter how he talks about good works. If you don’t care about being right you don’t care about being good -and vise versa.

The main portion: Galatians 2:11-14

• This is a usually straightforward account of a conflict between two Apostles. Paul is not telling this story to boast; Paul is making a point about doctrine, not people. He could have show Peter in a better light, but this was a deadly serious issue; he was being very blunt, and deliberately so. In telling this story Paul shows that he was concerned about one truth and one truth only, the gospel.

Before getting into the text, as an introduction, Phil mentioned a few other significant side notes here:

• This whole incident makes it clear that Peter had no superior authority over the rest of the apostles. Actually, in scripture, Peter is never even shown in the role of a pastor or elder in the local church. He claimed no authority over Paul when it came to the leadership at the church at Antioch. Thus, its pretty hard, really impossible actually, to fit the Roman Catholic notion of Papal supremacy into this passage and make any sense out of it.
• One major reason Paul tells this story is to debunk the claim that he had any less authority than the rest of the apostles. Paul makes it clear earlier in the letter that he received the gospel through revelation (11-12, 16-17), not by the teaching of the other Apostles. He is clear in that he is the equal of every other apostle, not superior or inferior. This story about this conflict reinforces that point. Here is living proof that Paul was not answerable to Peter, but that they were equally answerable to Christ.
• This clearly demonstrates that the Apostles of the early church had no idea of a Pope; the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church today has absolutely no basis in scripture -nowhere is that more obvious than right here in Galatians 2.

• The idea that Paul would rebuke Peter in public and then write about it so bluntly is amazing. This is something that no one would do in this post-modern age. This account is certainly out of step with the attitude of conflict resolution of the 21^st century.
• If this happened in a typical evangelical community today, I’m sure someone would take Paul aside and say, ‘You know, brother, was that really the loving thing to do? I mean, Matthew 18 here; you should go to Peter privately first.‘ -and that’s only what would happen at the best churches. In others he would really be roasted for rebuking Peter at all, and we might hear something like: ‘You’re going to shatter Peters self esteem here! What’s the big deal about the Judaizers anyway? They worship the same Lord you do; you really think it was right to curse them and say that they really aren’t authentic Christians? After all, all your differences with them are just doctrinal technicalities. These are just minor differences! Why don’t you be more tolerant? Didn’t Jesus say we’d be known by our love rather than the soundness of our doctrine?‘ There are always people who think showing kindness is more important than getting doctrine right.
• But this is not a pattern to follow every single time we have a conflict. The Bible warns of people who incessantly seek conflict, and it rebukes them sharply. We are to pursue peace with the people of God, but sometimes we do need to get militant. However if you want to divide up sound doctrine and righteous behavior into two categories and separate them, you can’t do that here. Because righteous behavior in cases like Paul is dealing with here, demands that we defend sound doctrine.
• No every point of doctrine is fine point. And sometimes the majority will follow the worst kind of error. Popular opinion is not a reliable gauge for how dangerous error is. And that is very clear here in Galatians 2, as you notice that Paul was the only one willing to confront this error. He knew this wasn’t an insignificant error, and he was absolutely right about that.

Now here’s the question the Judaizers’ doctrine was raising:

Is the message of salvation of what I must do for Christ, or for what He has done for me? And how you answer that reveals whether you are a true Christian or not. There is no more important issue than this. If you think any portion of salvation is earned by the merit of our works; if you think eternal life is required through the observance of rituals; or if you think you can do anything to pay for your own sins or to deserve God’s forgiveness, or to earn the right to stand before God, then you have in fact embraced a different gospel.

• Let me hasten to say this: Peter agreed with Paul as to the doctrine. In Acts 10:28 Peter saw that for himself. And in Acts 15, recounting that same event, Peter understood this vital lesson that God had taught him. There was no disagreement on this doctrine between Peter and Paul.
• While Peter and Paul had no disagreement on the doctrine, they disputed badly on how to respond to the Jews: Peter compromised instead of confronting the error.
• This same truth of the gospel is the same today, for the exact same reason, in regards to the Roman Catholic Church and their doctrine of salvation. For the same reason the Judaizers’ doctrine corrupted the gospel so badly, the Roman Catholic church inserts human works, etc….what you end up with is a false gospel.

That’s enough introduction, so I’d like to point out three main things we can learn from this passage:

1) It’s not enough to know the truth; you have to practice what you believe.

• Paul had no problem cursing the wrong doctrine of the Judaizers, or even pronouncing anathemas to them personally. But, he never accuses Peter of being a heretic. The problem with Peter wasn’t that he believed the wrong thing, for he understood the gospel perfectly. Peter’s sin here was hypocrisy, not heresy. So Paul deals with him differently than the Judaizers.
• Peter understood why the Judaizers were in error, we see that clearly in the book of Acts, but it seems as though he just didn’t have the stomach to fight this sort of error, at least at this point. It may have been that he knew these men personally; maybe they were friends with him and the Jerusalem church, and had an influence there, as they are said to have come from James.
• But whatever the reason, Scripture makes it clear here that Peter was acting like a hypocrite; he wasn’t a heretic. Peter’s problem wasn’t that he was denying the truth of the gospel; his problem was that he was failing to live it out. And how specifically was he failing to live it out? He wasn’t defending the truth with sufficient earnestness. Practical living and defending the truth are one in the same.
• Hypocrisy can undermine the truth of the gospel just as sure as false teaching can. Hypocrisy is no less dangerous than heresy. That’s exactly what happened here. Peter’s hypocrisy undermined the truth of the gospel.
• As we see, other people also followed Peter’s bad example: V13, Barnabas.
• He was treating the Gentiles with disdain. This was certainly undermining to their faith. When an apostle openly stayed away from their table as if they were ceremonially unclean, they really did have to wonder if they were some kind of second class Christian, and if they had really done enough to be fully justified -and that’s when the Judaizers doctrine began to make headway.
• When the error undermines the central core of the gospel, you cannot avoid conflict. It’s not enough to know the truth; you have to practice what you believe.

Paul’s response embodies lesson # 2 from this passage: It’s not enough to speak positively about the truth; you also have to confront error.

• Theirs always been people in the church who think that everything negative is automatically bad. First of all let me say that this is a better attitude than the opposite extreme. There are some people who pride on negativity. We need to use discernment and think critically. But the vast majority falls in the other category, where people just don’t want to discipline themselves to think critically. So millions have bought into the notion that we should always speak positively. This is a totally unbiblical point of view –it fits well with the Post-modernism movement. Post-modernism says that if you believe anything too strongly you are being arrogant.
• So even though Paul was the only one who felt this way, and Peter was the one he had to confront, the gospel was under attack. And in Paul’s mind that superseded any other danger, including a public rift between two Apostles. The gospel was more important than an external or artificial show of unity between the Apostles.
• Whatever else you get from this passage, I hope you understand that it utterly debunks the notion that the appearance of unity is always more important than the defense of the truth. Because you don’t have any real unity at all if you don’t agree on the truth.
• Peter and Paul agreed on the gospel, but Peter had muddied the gospel with his behavior. So we have to contend not only for the gospel itself, but the clarity and accuracy in which it is proclaimed. Peter is not teaching or preaching any error here, but his behavior is giving a false show of support to the Judaizers and their heresy. So Paul gave a rebuke to his face, V11, and publicly, V14.
• Paul is not reacting to Peter personally; it was clear in Paul’s mind what the issue was here, the truth of the gospel: “But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all…”

The 3^rd lesson we can learn from this passage: it’s not enough to be on guard for yourself; you have to be concerned for the safety for all the flock.

• That’s the message of Acts 20:28. Paul was simply following the same advice that he had given those Ephesian elders in Acts 20:28.
• It’s extremely significant that Paul rebuked Peter in front of everyone. This is rare in the New Testament. Personal offences and private sins are to be dealt with privately, per Matthew 18. But certain kinds of public sins require a public rebuke.
• In 1 Tim 5:20 we are told to rebuke elders and leaders in the presence of all so that the rest may also fear. In other words, because their sin has such far reaching effects on all who hear, turn it into a teaching opportunity. Paul’s concern for the whole flock’s welfare outweighed his concern for Peter’s personal feelings.
• Paul’s public rebuke here was appropriate, because Peter’s behavior had affected the entire church, including Barnabas.
• I confess that I have a hard time imagining an incident like this happening in the 21^st century climate church. There would be just far too much pressure today, to compromise with the Judaizers, to embrace them as co-belligerents of a greater moral crusade, and to tone down our differences with them over the gospel. Most evangelical leaders today would probably side with Peter, not with Paul, and they would argue that we need Judaizers, like the Roman Catholic Church, and even Judaism itself, and Mormons and what not, as our allies in the war against abortion and to fight the secularization of our culture –and that’s what is happening on a widespread scale in the church today. In order to achieve political alliances, people have allowed a lack of clarity on the gospel. So Paul would rebuke a lot of Christian leaders if he was around today.
• If you boil down Paul’s disagreement with the Judaizers, it is a very small point. There is no evidence that they rejected the deity of Christ, or questioned the Lordship of Christ, or anything unique about Christianity –except the doctrine of Justification by faith alone. This is the same point the Roman Catholic Church attacks.
• I would suggest that Paul’s approach to a conflict like this one is still the right approach. And if evangelicals in our generation don’t grasp the reality of that truth and understand that righteous behavior includes standing up for and defending the faith, we are going to totally lose our testimony before an unbelieving world –and on a large scale, that has already happened.
• My plea to each one of you, especially to you pastors on an individual level, is this: Be like Paul. Fight for the truth of the gospel. There isn’t any other truth more worth fighting for.

Thank you Phil for the encouraging word (and the TeamPryo stickers).