Does anyone like conflict here? I remember a situation when we were working in the San Jacinto UMC when a member of the church who happened to live on our street and happened to have the best looking yard on that street, thought our yard looked terrible. At that point, it did actually look pretty bad but when compared to all the other yards in that neighborhood it was equal and better than many of them. However, this member thought our yard should look better since it was the church parsonage. Mind you, there was no sign that designated as the parsonage and it was a mile from the church. Still, she was irate over it.

So she took action: she began a letter writing campaign to the Pastor-Parish Relations Committee to lodge her complaint. She never signed a letter. They all came from a “concerned member of the San Jacinto Community”.

Now the Pastor Parish Relations Committee or as we have here the Staff Parish Relations Committee is a group of folk who are the Human Relations department in the local church. They are assigned the task to counsel the pastor in his or her ministry, assure they are taking proper care of themselves and their families, getting vacation time, days off, attending continuing education events to be re-tooled for the tasks of ministry in addition to mediating areas of conflict within the local setting. They can receive complaints and compliments and relay them to the committee and can mediate conversations to untangle communication issues between the pastor and those in the body.

However, an anonymous letter does not allow for anything but division. It is meant to create sides, to get others to “adopt” the writer’s opinion and then carry the torch on their behalf. So that committee in San Jacinto would not receive nor hear complaints from an anonymous source and made this decision known. This member of the church community was not pleased. She found many ways to continue her self-adopted campaign.

It seems the most difficult conflicts are often centered around the smallest of issues. It is when we as people “take sides” and “divide” in order to “conquer” one another that we end up “biting and devouring one another” as Paul will warn us about later in this book.

When a young Korean pastor arrived at his first appointment in this conference last July 1st he was met with a split within the body. Half the people wanted to build a new sanctuary and the other half hotly disagreed with this and instead wanted to remodel the old. Each side separately made their appeal to the new pastor, and met with astounding wisdom. “Since I am new here,” he said, “I do not know which way is best, however, I say we all must pray about this, pray together, and seek for God’s direction.”

His response uprooted the polarizing of the sides. They are still praying.

In Paul’s situation he found Peter behaving one way before certain men came from Jerusalem and then altering his behavior after they arrived. It was a response of fear in Peter, and his hypocrisy, as Paul points out began to lead others astray. What really captured Paul’s ire is that Peter and the others were not acting in line with the truth of the Gospel – in other words, although they “claimed” that they were all one happy family, in reality they were acting divided.

This was happening in public so Paul confronted Peter – the one who began it all—in public. The issue was a simple one really – the Jewish Christians were pulling away so that they would not be seen eating with the Gentile Christians. Paul’s question to Peter, found in v. 14, “how is it then that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?” is a springboard into the theme of this letter for that group that had infiltrated the believers’ lives in Galatia were seeking to force them to do the same.

The rest of what you heard Dave Burke read (vv 15-21) expounds on the question Paul raised to Peter. The situation with Peter is never resolved for us – it is just an illustration of how Paul approached this early conflict in the church in order to deal again with the question of what makes a Christian truly a follower of Jesus?

For this argument, you will need to help me. I need everyone on this, the right side, of the sanctuary to stand and move to the end of the pews and hold hands around this block of pews. I need you to make a “fence” around the pews. Could you do that? Yes I know a bit awkward, you have to stand and move when you are supposed to be able to take your nap at this point in worship! But, move you need to anyway.

Okay. These folk are the illustration of the Jewish Law – used here in the fullest sense of the commands of God given in the Torah, the first 5 books of our Bibles. This is not the moral law that Paul is speaking of, indeed he will be speaking to the need of obedience in the later part of this book, but this is the ceremonial law. The ceremonies you need to be a part of in order to “BE” Jewish, and in this case, Christian.

The Law was a fence – it produced the boundaries of the Jewish life. And the problem for the Jew in Paul’s time was this, that the Law had replaced God. You loved the law rather than God. This was where Paul had been – had he been advancing in Judaism beyond his companions not in service to God as much as in service to the High Priest and his own ambition. Yet as far as the law was concerned, Paul could say he was blameless.

So, you, Rex, go and sit on those pews. People believed that if you were “within” the law, if you are keeping the law, then you were all God wanted you to be. But did anything change about Rex in this case when he entered into this area? Did his clothing change? Did his heart change? Was a need met? No, nothing could change for the law was only external obedience which negated internal transformation. This is why Jesus had said to the Pharisees: “First clean the inside of the cup…” referring to the heart.

Paul therefore writes here that the Jews too knew that in the battle against this evil age, which was a familiar Jewish term and in the battle against sin, that the law does not solve anything. As Rex was under the rule and power of sin outside of the law, within the law he would still be under it and be all the more aware of it because the law makes sin more obvious in a person’s life for it declares what sin is.

It is not the law that gives a person access to become a part of God’s family, of God’s covenant. The law does not justify a person. The only thing that truly welcomes a person into the family God has for them is faith in Jesus Christ. This is Paul’s statement here.

Look at verse 16 with me:
“we too have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because, by observing the law no one will be justified.”

Say that with me: “No one will be justified”.

When we read the word “justified” think of it in this way, which is how Paul uses it here, as meaning brought into family relationship with God. It is not used here in a technical nor what we would think of as a theological way, but in contrast to how the law was viewed as the means to enter Judaism, so faith is entrance into Christ.

How might this look different?

Perhaps I could have all of you stand and hold hands, would you? Okay, this looks different than the fence, this is community, it is family; they are connected by hand here, but imagine that means a connection of heart, of lives as well. Now what happens if someone from the “other side” moves to this side?

Well, look, they will move, and they will become connected to this body of people, they will be incorporated into a family. Now we cannot see this, but in this realm, in Christ, a change is effected within them. They are set free from sin, just like Paul began the book by saying in verse 4. Set free so that they can be alive in Christ Jesus.

Thank you, you all can sit down.

So Paul asks, okay suppose one of us sins who are thus connected in this body, does this mean that Christ promotes sin? No, it simply means that I have sinned. So, Peter in the situation in Antioch “stood condemned” meaning he was in the wrong in this situation, he was sinning and it needed to be pointed out.

In v. 19 Paul says, “for through the law I died to the law” meaning, that he had to die to the old method of entering the family. He had to die to keeping the law as a means of entering into relationship with God. And he died so that he might live to God—over there with the family. Paul recognized that he could not both enter the family through law and through faith—they were and are mutually exclusive!

I died to life through the law, Paul is saying, I have been crucified with Christ.

In this way Paul is saying all of his own efforts died – crucifixion ends one way of life and opens up another. “It finishes a life in which the self is coddled and indulged and admired and begins a life that is offered to God and raised as a living sacrifice!” (Adapted from: Traveling Light: Reflections on the Free Life, by Eugene Peterson, Downers Grove, IL: IVP, p. 76, ubp)

Paul says he has been crucified with Christ, or co-crucified. The crucifixion of Jesus was not something that just happened a couple thousand years ago, but it is something that you and I participate in today as we again place our trust in Jesus.

Church conflicts – family conflicts – any conflicts are begun and fueled by us when we have not died – we have to die to the tendency within our hearts to earn our own way, we have to die to pride, to selfishness, to the making of ourselves “something” or “great”. We have to die.