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Gal_2:14-21
He did so.
There seems to have been a meeting of both the parties in this question, perhaps specially convened for its consideration; or it may be that Paul went to a meeting of the Jewish converts, at which Peter was present. Paul’s expression “before them all,” or “before all,” may bear either meaning. At such a meeting, “before them all,” Paul says, “I withstood Peter to the face, because he was to be blamed;” and in a temperate, but closely reasoned and convincing speech, exposed the inconsistency and the dangerous tendency of the error of conduct into which he had fallen; ending with the emphatic words: “If righteousness came by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.” Many reasons are conceivable which must have rendered this public reproof of Peter a most trying and painful task, which, if he could have done so consistently with the duties of his supreme allegiance to the truth of the Gospel, he would gladly have avoided. But the error had been public; its consequences were of serious public concern, and a merely private remonstrance would no longer meet the grave demands of the case. Then perceiving the obligation that lay upon him of speaking out plainly, “Paul did not keep silent, as if he was afraid of Peter as a superior; he was not awed by the example of so great an apostle into the silent sanction of what he thought wrong; and he did not oppose Peter by secret insinuation by speaking evil of him when he was absent—he avowed to himself his dissatisfaction with his conduct.” Note: Dr. Brown—Expos. Discourses, p. 83.
The result of this transaction is not recorded; but we scarcely need hesitate to hope that Paul’s faithful remonstrance had its full effect upon Peter, and tended to heal this division in the church at Antioch. It is well remarked by Barnes Note: Notes, etc., on Gal_2:14. in this place—“Excitable as Peter was by nature, there is no evidence that he became angry here, or that he did not receive the admonitions of his brother Paul with perfect good temper, and with an acknowledgment that Paul was right, and he was wrong. Indeed the case was so plain—as it usually is if men would be honest—that he seems to have felt that it was right, and to have received the rebuke as became a Christian. Peter unhappily was accustomed to rebukes; but he was at heart too good a man to be offended when admonished that he had done wrong. A good man is willing to be reproved when he has erred; and it is usually a proof that there is much that is wrong, when we become excited or irritable if another admonishes us of our faults. It may be added here, that nothing is to be inferred from this with regard to the inspiration or apostolic authority of Peter. The fault was not that he taught error of doctrine, but that he sinned in conduct. Inspiration, though it kept the apostles from teaching error, did not keep them necessarily from sin. A man may always teach the truth, and yet be far from perfect in practice. The case here proves that Peter was not perfect—a fact proved by his whole life; it proves that he was sometimes timid, and even, for a period, time-serving; but it does not prove that what he wrote for our guidance is false or erroneous.”
It is well to have this point noticed—for between the fear that this affair might bring Peter’s inspired authority, or the authority of inspiration generally, into question, and the desire to relieve from this stain the character of one who came to be looked up to with mistaken reverence as the prince of the apostles, some curious explanations of the transaction were held by many teachers in the ancient, and particularly the Eastern Church. They represented the disagreement between the two apostles as merely apparent, and that the whole affair was got up by mutual agreement—a sham fight, in short, to serve a purpose—thus compromising the morality of two apostles to save the character of one. Clement of Alexandria found another resource. “Cephas,” instead of “Peter,” is, perhaps, the preferable reading in the record of the transaction; and Clement, to meet the exigencies of the case, extemporizes another Cephas than Peter, as the antagonist of Paul on this occasion. Some other ancient interpreters, and even some modern ones, give in their adhesion to this strange notion, so palpably refuted by all the circumstances of the case.
We are unwilling to close the review we have taken of this important and interesting circumstance without producing a passage, in which a recent writer endeavors, by the aid of ancient intimations, to realize the scene to the mind of the reader by a description of the personal appearance of the two apostles. “The scene, though slightly mentioned, is one of the most remarkable in sacred history; and the mind naturally labors to picture to itself the appearance of the two men. It is, therefore, at least allowable to mention here that general notion of the forms and features of the two apostles which has been handed down in tradition, and was represented by the early artists. St. Paul is set before us as having the strongly-marked and prominent features of a Jew, yet not without some of the finer lines indicative of a Greek thought. His stature was diminutive, and his body disfigured by some lameness or distortion, which may have provoked the contemptuous expressions of his enemies. His beard was long and thin. His head was bald. The characteristics of his face were a transparent complexion, which visibly betrayed the quick changes of his feelings, a bright gray eye under thickly overhanging united eyebrows, a cheerful and winning expression of countenance, which invited the approach, and inspired the confidence of strangers. It would be natural to infer from his continual journeys and manual labor, that he was possessed of great strength of constitution. But men of delicate health have often gone through the greatest exertions; and his own words on more than one occasion show that he suffered much from bodily infirmity. St. Peter is represented to us as a man of larger and stronger form, as his character was harsher and more abrupt. The quick impulses of his soul revealed themselves in the flashes of a dark eye. The complexion of his face was pale and sallow; and the short hair, which is described as entirely gray at the time of his death, curled black and thick round his temples and his chin, when the two apostles stood together at Antioch, twenty years before their martyrdom.” Note: Coneybeare and Howson—Life and Epistles of St. Paul, i. 240, 241.
It should be observed, that in the passage before us, Paul, after his direct rebuke of Peter, proceeded to declare the truth of the Gospel, which he feared might be obscured by the conduct of that apostle, and the rest; and in conclusion, he enforced by their operation in himself, the views he advocated, and would always maintain. The last passage is very emphatic and striking—“I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”
Of these important words a very intelligible and effective interpretation is given by Dr. Brown, in the form of a paraphrase, which we are glad to be able to adopt—“‘By the law having had its full course so as to be glorified in the obedience to death of Him in whom I am, I am completely delivered from the law. The law has no more to do with me, and I have no more to do with it in the matter of justification. And this freedom from law is at once necessary and effectual to my living a truly holy life—a life devoted to God.’ What follows is explanatory of this thought, which was ever present to the mind of the apostle—‘I consider myself as identified with the Lord Jesus Christ.’ ‘I am crucified with Christ.’ I view myself as so connected with Christ, as that when He was crucified I was, as it were, crucified; and I am as much interested in the effects of that crucifixion as if I had undergone it myself. He, in being crucified, endured the curse, and I in Him endured it; so that I am redeemed from the law and its curse, He having become a curse for me. ‘Nevertheless I live.’ Christ died, and in Him I died; Christ revived, and in Him I revived. I am a dead man with regard to the law, but I am a living man in regard to Christ. The law has killed me, and by doing so, it has set me free from itself. I have no more to do with the law. The life I have now, is not the life of a man under the law, but the life of a man delivered from the law; having died and risen again with Christ Jesus, Christ’s righteousness justifies me, Christ’s Spirit animates me. My relations to God are his relations. The influences under which I live are the influences under which He lives. Christ’s views are my views; Christ’s feelings my feelings. He is the soul of my soul, the life of my life. My state, my sentiments, my feelings, my conduct, are all Christian. ‘And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.’ ‘The life I live in the flesh’ is the life I live in this mortal body, this embodied state. The belief of the truth is the regulating principle of my conduct. It is, as it were, the soul of the new creature. I no longer think, or feel, or act like a Jew, or like a man born merely after the flesh. All my opinions, sentiments, and habits, are subject to the truth about Him ‘who loved me and gave himself for me;’ and I live devoted to Him who died devoted for me.”