Why did Paul confront Peter to his face?

In Galatians 2:11-21, the Apostle Paul publicly corrects the Apostle Peter. In this study, Dr. Toby Holt explains why Paul did it — and why it was about far more than a shared meal.

In the city of Antioch, Peter had been eating with Gentile, or non-Jewish, Christians as equals. But when a group of strict Jewish visitors arrived, Peter pulled back and stopped eating with them, afraid of what they would think. Even Barnabas followed his example. Paul saw that this was not just bad manners — it was a denial of the gospel itself, treating some believers as second-class. So Paul corrected Peter in front of everyone, because a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus, not by keeping rules.

Questions this study answers:

1. Why did Peter stop eating with Gentile Christians? Peter gave in to peer pressure. When strict visitors arrived, he was afraid of their disapproval, so he separated himself from the Gentile believers he had treated as equals.

2. Was this really worth a public rebuke? Yes. Paul saw that Peter’s actions sent the message that faith in Jesus was not enough, and that Gentiles were second-class. That is an attack on the gospel, so Paul addressed it openly.

3. How is a person made right with God? Only by faith in Jesus Christ, never by keeping the law. As Paul says, if we could be made right by our own law-keeping, then Christ died for nothing.

“I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain.” — Galatians 2:21 (NKJV)

Speaker: Dr. Toby Holt is the President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, a Reformed seminary in Colorado Springs. He is known for clear, down-to-earth Bible teaching, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio.

Listen and go deeper: This is Part 4 of the ten-part Galatians study. Find the whole series, along with verse-by-verse studies of other books of the Bible, at newgeneva.org. To support this teaching ministry, visit newgeneva.org/give.

[suspenseful music] In Galatians 2, the Apostle Paul had to rebuke Peter to his face. But do you remember why this rebuke was necessary? In today's study, we'll read about some of the growing pains that were occurring in the early church.

Over a century ago, there was an itinerant pastor who preached salvation to slaves in the fields. Now, on the one hand, this was good. On the one hand, it was good that this man would go and preach to those who were being oppressed. However, here's the thing. This particular man, although he would travel great distances to preach to those who were oppressed, sadly, ironically, he would not dine with them. He would not break bread with them. Now, in more recent years, there was a pastor who preached at a soup kitchen. He would go every week and go preach in the soup kitchen, but people noticed that as soon as he was done preaching, he would leave. That he had never once had sat down and enjoyed a meal with the broken men and women that he had just preached to. In both these cases, and other examples as well, some have taken the gospel to those in need and shared God's plan of redemption, shared the gospel, shared good news with folks who were dying, but sadly, they would not share themselves. They would not share fellowship. Now, that's a cruel irony, but scripturally, it's not unique. This happened even in the Bible. If you go back to the Old Testament, remember Jonah. Now, Jonah is most famous to us because that's the story of Jonah and the whale or Jonah and the great fish and the like. Well, you remember Jonah, he was a reluctant prophet. God sent Jonah to the Ninevites, to what you would call the Gentiles of the Old Testament. He sent Jonah to go preach to the Ninevites a message of repentance. Jonah didn't want to. And the reason he didn't want to is because he didn't like the Ninevites. He didn't think God should have anything to do or anything to say to those people, and so he tried to run the other direction. He got on a boat to go to Tarshish. God stopped him in the waters. The great fish, the whale, comes and swallows him up, spits him out. It's only then that Jonah gets the message, and he goes to do what he ought to have done. Now, what's fascinating about that story is that when Jonah got there, this reluctant prophet who didn't even want to be in Nineveh, when he got there, he preached one of most effective sermons ever preached. See, in Nineveh, this foreign place, in Nineveh, Jonah preached a simple message of repentance. And scripture says that overwhelmingly, the city turned and repented. From the king on down, the people wore sackcloth and ashes. There was widespread repentance among the Ninevites, the very people that Jonah thought God should have nothing to do with, people that didn't deserve God's grace. Jonah would go and share the message. He'd go and preach to them, but he hated them. He wanted nothing to do with them. That mentality, unfortunately, even continued. In the New Testament, we see this happen. In the New Testament, Jewish Christians who had perhaps known Christ, seen his miracles, heard his teaching, they had been encouraged to some extent to be given the Great Commission, to go and take the gospel to the nations. So on one hand, they understood, Jewish Christians understood that God's kingdom now included the very people that had previously been on the outside, so to speak. That it now included people from Corinth and Ephesus and Thessalonica and Philippi and the like. They understood it intellectually. They understood that that's what the call was, that the call was to go and make disciples of all the nations. However, here's the problem. They didn't like the other nations. They had very little interest in the very people that they were sent to minister to. They had very little interest in as basic a thing as dining with them. They might preach to them, they might send people to go somewhere else to go and share the word. Men like Paul can go off to Corinth and Antioch and the like. And yet so many Jewish Christians, especially the Judaizers, they didn't have any real compassion. Any real compassion, any real desire to sit with them, to dine with them, to fellowship with them. And so in Jerusalem or Antioch or other places, just like the itinerant circuit rider centuries ago in our country who didn't want to eat with those who were oppressed, or the pastor who wouldn't dine with folks in the soup kitchen, some Jewish Christians in the first century were okay with sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, were okay with welcoming people to Christ, but they would keep them at arm's distance from themselves. They wouldn't sit with them or dine with them or fellowship with them. Whether it's Jonah in the Old Testament, the Judaizers in the New, even Peter in today's text, even Peter would give in to this idea that the Gentile converts were somewhat lesser than he himself. And as we'll see in today's text, the Apostle Paul is going to put a stop to that. He's going to see what's going on. He's going to see that some of the Jewish Christians, even apostles, even men like Peter, even men like Barnabas, he's going to see what they're doing, and he's going to offer one of the most stinging public rebukes you will see in all the book, in all of Scripture. He's going to say the equivalent of, "This stops now." And then he's going to explain why, and that's what we're going to see in today's text. All right, if you would, return with me. I'm going to read verses 11 through 13. We'll look at that and then just kind of work our way through the balance. Verse 11. "Now when Peter had come to Antioch," this is Paul writing, remember, "when Peter came to Antioch, I withstood him to his face." "I withstood him to his face because he was to be blamed. For before certain men had come from James, he would eat with the Gentiles, but when they came, he withdrew. He separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision. And the rest of the Jews also played the hypocrite with him, so that even Barnabas was carried away with their hypocrisy." In our day and age, if you're to sit down for a meal, it's usually a fairly pragmatic institution in our day. We eat throughout the day. Maybe we eat lunch in one setting, dinner in a different setting. Maybe we have snacks at the vending machine and the like. When we eat is fairly practical. It's practical considerations that drive how we eat, when we eat, and who we eat with. That's not the way it worked in Israel in the first century. That's not the way. Eating was a profoundly cultural event.

Sitting down for a meal was a profoundly cultural event. Specifically, the people that you ate with and where they were seated around the table sent a messageTo everyone else at the table and everyone who saw who was at the table. Who you ate with, where they sat, sent a message. Dining was a profoundly cultural event. Now, if you remember Matthew 9. You remember Jesus? Now Jesus was traveling the countryside, and he was healing folks and healing the lepers and doing miracles and the like. Well, in Matthew 9, he sits down at a table to eat, and the people gathered around that table are identified in scripture as sinners and tax collectors. And a tax collector was at the very bottom rung of Jewish society. In Matthew 9, Jesus sought out personally, intentionally, deliberately, to sit down and to dine with those who were ostracized from the rest of Jewish society. Those considered unworthy to eat at such a meal are the very people that he ate with. Now remember what happened. He's sitting there, and he's dining with them, sending a message, a deliberate message that he wanted to be sent. He's doing this, and what do the Pharisees do? Well, remember the Pharisees, they pulled some of his disciples over, and they said, "Hey, hey, hey. What is he doing? Doesn't he know who he's eating with? Doesn't he know who he's dining with? What's he doing?" You see, if Jesus had just taught those same people out on a hillside somewhere, in the temple or a synagogue or what have you. If he had just taught them in a public setting, in the public market, that would've been all right. That was one thing. But to fellowship with them around a meal, that was to give them grace and credit that others thought they didn't deserve. It was to give them respect that others would withhold from them. As we said, meals were considered profoundly cultural events in Jewish society. You had to be careful who you ate with and the like, and if you ate with the wrong people, you were stigmatized by the others, stigmatized for those associations. Well, if you fast-forward from Matthew 9 to Galatians 2, Peter here is failing to do the very thing that Jesus did. Peter is separating from the people that were considered to be on the margins in the early church. Peter was okaying and validating the segregation, so to speak, that was occurring within the early church. In verse 12, we see that the Apostle Peter was sharing a meal. He started out doing something right. He started out doing the right thing. He was sharing a meal with Gentile converts. Remember that Christianity started within the Jewish context. In the upper room, the apostles, they were of Jewish stock. But in the Great Commission, after Christ's ascension into heaven, it was, "Go and make disciples of all nations." In the new covenant economy, the whole world, people and believers from the whole globe were engrafted into the tree of faith. So Peter, verse 12, he's doing the right thing. He's eating with Gentile converts, those who profess Jesus, but happen to be from Antioch or Corinth or what have you. He's doing what he should be doing. But then something happened. Then some men came in. Some men came in with James. They were the men that we call the Judaizers. They were Christians who clung to the Old Testament ceremonial law and who insisted that any converts to Christianity had to first recognize and accept Jewish practices, including circumcision, which was a major stumbling block. There was also other things like celebrating the feast days and the like. In essence, the Judaizers were trying to make you a Jew first before you became a Christian, and if you came from Athens and Corinth and Thessalonica and the like. So these men came, these Judaizers came. These men of the circumcision is how they're identified in the text. They came here, they came to Antioch, and Peter, when they showed up, he does the equivalent of getting up from the table of the Gentiles he was with because he didn't want to be seen with them. "I mean, when the Judaizers are here, I don't want to be seen with the Gentiles, or they're going to give me a bad time or worse." So he does the equivalent of getting up and separating himself from Gentile brothers and sisters, those who shared his profession. He separated himself. He instituted a segregation that was led by him, an apostle. This is profoundly wicked is what he was doing here, which is why it would earn such a profound rebuke from Paul. Now, why did he do it? Why did he separate? Why did he go, "Oh!" to the Judaizers, "Boy, I can't be seen here. I'll switch tables. I'll go in the other room. I'll separate myself." Why did he do that? Yeah. Fear, that's exactly right. Verse 12 says that when they came, when the Judaizers came, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision, fearing the Judaizers. It's amazing. You can have the best doctrine of theology in the world, and yet when push comes to shove, be unwilling to share it or profess it for fear of what others will say or do.

It happened to Peter more than once. Peter's the one who denied the Lord three times.

He knew better.

Fear can cause us to bottle up truth and to be scared to share it with a family member or a neighbor, to be scared to profess it when professing it may bring consequences.

Fear is what kept Peter silent when he knew that what he was doing was wrong. Whatever the case was, when the Apostle Paul got wind of this, or when he saw it with his own eyes, when he saw what was going on, when he saw segregation being instituted by no less than an apostle in front of everybody, Paul rebukes Peter. He says, "What you're doing is wrong. What you are doing is wrong." You can call it racism or prejudice or whatever you like. Paul said the Apostle Peter and Barnabas and anyone else who did this, anyone else who looked at Gentile converts and said, "You are second class," anyone who looked down their nose at a fellow brother and sister, he said, "This is wrong. This is wicked, evil, stupid, what have you. This is unacceptable." He rejected this, and he uses the term here that if you believe in Christ Jesus, if you believe in the Great Commission to take the gospel to all the nations, if you believe that, and yet you separate at dinner time, you're a hypocrite.You're a hypocrite, and that's the word he uses. To claim you value the souls and salvation of a Gentile and then to fail to sit down and have dinner with them, hypocrite.

Hypocrite. This is the word he uses.

Probably more gentle than perhaps [chuckles] what he was even thinking. Whatever the case is, Paul did this publicly. He didn't slip a sticky note to Peter, saying, "You might want to double-check your theology," or, "You might double-check what you're doing." No. He, in front of the group, in front of the masses, in front of those who were there, he publicly rebuked him to his face, in front of others. Scripture says he withstood him to his face. Now, don't forget who Peter was. Paul is rejecting Peter, but Peter, he's not of insignificant note here. This is Peter. This is the rock. This is Peter, named probably at least as often as Paul, but named on par with Paul throughout the epistles. Peter and Paul are two of the most well-known apostles that the early church had. With that said, given how important Peter was, this was a smackdown moment that was occurring here. Can you imagine being a fly on the wall and taking all this in? Furthermore, this is unique. This didn't happen often. There are very few occasions where you can see disagreement between apostles in scripture. Very rare. Very unique. With that said, what are we supposed to learn from it? What should our takeaway be all these centuries later? Well, let's consider that as we look at verses 14 through 16 now. Verse 14, "But when I saw that they," meaning Peter and Barnabas and the others, "when I saw that they were not being straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter before them all," remember, this is a public rebuke, "if you, being a Jew, live in the manner of Gentiles and not as the Jews, then why do you compel Gentiles to live as Jews?" Why are you listening to the Judaizers and trying to compel a Gentile convert from Antioch or Corinth or Ephesus to become a Jew first? "Why do you compel Gentiles to live as Jews? We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we've believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith." Faith in Christ, not by the works of the law. "For by the works of the law, no flesh shall be justified." As we said, this teaching was not new to Peter. This isn't the first time that Peter said, "Oh, [chuckles] faith alone, I see. Oh, mercy me." That's not the first time Peter heard that we're saved by faith alone, or we're saved by faith, or we're justified by faith, not the law. Peter knew it. Paul was reminding him of it. Peter knew what he was doing was wrong. He knew it because he had switched tracks. One moment when no one was looking, he did what he should do. The minute the pressure came upon him, he changed, and this was the hypocrisy that Paul calls him out on. But Paul says it's not just that you're being a hypocrite. Paul says you're taking the very gospel itself and bending it to the breaking point. He says you're not being straightforward with the truth of the gospel. He's saying what you're doing isn't just affecting dinnertime. Sometimes when we do the wrong thing, we see it as something small. Peter probably didn't fathom the consequences of what he was doing when he set aside or separated himself at dinnertime. Paul reminds him, he says, "This is a matter of the gospel. We've been sent to take this gospel to people in Antioch and Corinth and in Philippi and the like. And as the gospel, we're saved by faith. You have been listening to the Judaizers, who say that we're saved by faith plus

something else. Faith plus circumcision. Faith plus keeping the feast days. Faith plus becoming a Jew first. You know the people who've got your ear, Peter, and you know that they are not teaching the gospel." In fact, in Galatians 1, what did Paul say? Paul said, "Let such people be anathema." In Galatians 1, Paul says the sort of people that bend the gospel in this way and insert works into the equation, that think there's something you can do on top of what Jesus did on Calvary that gets you over the edge, that puts you in heaven, the people that do that, even if an angel from heaven were to come down and preach such a thing, let such a one be anathema. Let such a one be accursed. Paul's saying to Peter, "This is a message of the gospel. You are not being straightforward with it. You're bending it. And the direction you're bending it, it will break." Now, Peter, again, he knew better. He knew better. That's one problem. The second problem was that others were following his example. Those who lead, it's incumbent that they lead according to what the gospel has to say because others follow their example. And Paul says even Barnabas, who also should have known better, was doing the same thing that Peter was.

Now, Peter, let me point out something. To prove that Peter knew what he was doing now was wrong, to prove that he knew that the Gentiles really were the same value that he was, listen to Peter's own words in Acts 10. Listen to what Peter said there. Peter says this, "Truly I understand that God shows no partiality." That he doesn't raise up one believer ahead of another. "Truly I understand God shows no partiality. But in every nation, anyone who fears Him and does what is right is acceptable to Him." "Truly I understand that God shows no partiality." Peter knew better. He knew that we don't have a class system in Christianity. You don't have Christians who are a 10 out of 10 and other Christians that are an 8 out of 10. You don't have a deal where a Jewish Christian, Peter or Paul, where they were like a 10, but if you were a Gentile convert, like Titus was, remember last week? You were a Titus, and you were a Gentile, then maybe you were an eight. And if you were an uncircumcised

convert, you're a lower class in the life of the church. Well, again, the Judaizers were insisting on such a thing. They were saying that certain individuals, certain people, were less by virtue of where they came from or what they did, their background, something germane to their identity, their culture, their heritage, or what have you, that made them somewhat less. And Peter, when he got up from the tableThat was legitimatizing that horrible view. It was legitimatizing segregation, and it was unacceptable. This idea, this notion that certain believers were worth more than other believers, this is the exact thing that Paul routinely taught was wrong. Paul said this, Paul said that in Christ, there's neither Jew nor Greek. In Christ, there isn't the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians, and one is better or one is the worst. No. He says, in Christ, there's neither Jew nor Greek. There's neither slave nor free. There's neither male nor female. You are all one in Christ. Equality between brothers and sisters. At the wedding supper of the lamb, there's not going to be some table of super spiritual Christians who, based on their heritage, their ethnicity, their learning or something, it makes them inherently better than you. Some table for Christians of a higher rank who've leveled up in their Christianity. Not going to be such a thing. In Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, nor slave nor free, nor male nor female, you are all one in Christ. What was happening in Antioch, I guess to summarize this portion of the text, what was happening in Antioch was the first-century version of segregation. The first-century version of what we saw in the 19th and 20th century here, segregation in bathrooms, water faucets, beaches. It was inserting ungodly barriers between spiritual siblings, and it was wicked. It was wicked. It was inserting ungodly, artificial barriers between Christian brothers. And then not only inserting barriers between Christians, not only saying that one is better than the other, not only doing that, but then having the gall to say that that's the way God wants it.

That that's the way He's ordained it. People have made the exact same mistake, first century through modern times.

It was wrong then and it's wrong now. Judaizers were agents of division, and there is no division in the body of Christ. We are members of one another, not lesser members, not greater members. Members of one another. And that's the reason why Paul withstood Peter to his face and made such a big deal over who he ate dinner with. A seemingly small thing with infinitely significant consequences. Now let's look at verses 17 through 21. "But if while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is Christ therefore a minister of sin? Certainly not! For if I build again those things that I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor. For I through the law died to the law that I might live to God. I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain."

If I could be saved by just keeping enough laws, then why do I need Christ? That's the thrust of his argument here. Verses 17 through 21, the Apostle Paul is talking about a concept called justification. I'll ask you the same question I asked folks at nine o'clock. When you hear the word justification, how do you define it as you think it through? Let me encourage you, if you stumble on that a little bit, if you have to kind of think on that a little bit, let me encourage you, read through the epistles. Read through Paul's epistles. Read through the gospels. Justification is one of, if not the, most significant words in the entirety of the New Testament. Because justification deals with how we can ever hope to stand righteous, stand justly before God. You and I have sinned. We say this whenever we do the Lord's Supper. You and I have sinned more times than we can count. All right? We're sinners. If we're honest with ourselves, we know this is true. We're sinners. And as we also say at the Lord's table, the wages of sin is death. It's not a small problem. As problems go, to be a sinner as many times over as you and I are a sinner is a huge problem because the wages of sin is death just for one sin.

You and I are sinners, so what is then is our hope to be right with God? How can I be right with God if I have to pay the consequences for my sin, which is death? How will I ever hope to stand on God's golden shores? How can I ever hope to stand justly before Him if He is a just God and has to deal with my sin? Well, the answer is the gospel. The answer is that although that is a problem, God has a solution. And the solution is this, that Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, was sent. Jesus Christ lived the perfect life. He lived the life that you and I should have lived, that we were called to live, and then he died the death that we should have died on Calvary. And when he died on Calvary, the wrath of God was poured out upon Him. He who knew no sin became sin for us. Your sin was credited, placed, imputed upon Jesus. And on Calvary, God's wrath against your sin and mine, in its entirety, was poured out in its entirety on Him.

Jesus Christ took the punishment you and I deserve. So you and I, as we think about how we could ever hope to be right with God, the solution for many is that, well, I just have to try hard enough. I just have to try hard enough. But that's not what the gospel says. The gospel says your works will never be sufficient to save you. They're only enough to condemn you. But the work of Jesus, that's a different matter. The work of Jesus on Calvary is sufficient. You and I, if we go knocking on doors, if we ended the service, and in a few moments, we'll wrap up. If we were just to go out into the community, just knock on doors in Gulfport and try to determine if folks are saved or if they were to die and were to go to heaven, what would happen?

To the degree we got any answers at all, the answers would, generally speaking, fall into this category. Because I'm a pretty good person. I try really hard. God knows the challenges of my life. He knows how hard I try. He knows how I take care of my mom and dad. He knows how I help old ladies cross the street. He knows I don't kick the dog. He knows I don't steal at work. Sure, I've done things wrong. Haven't we all? Sure, I've done some things I'm not proud of. But when God looks at meSurely he sees all that I've done. I'm a pretty good person. I'm a good person. That's the answer. That's the reason most people view that they'll be saved by whatever they perceive to be God. Foreign pagan belief systems, almost all other religious systems fall into this category of seeing salvation as something you merit on the basis of simply being better than the person down the street, better than your neighbor, doing enough to offset good deeds versus bad. That's the basis that most people think that they're going to get into God's golden shores because they've earned it. Well, you know what Paul's response to that is?

His response, we just saw it. He said in verse 21, "If righteousness comes through the law," if righteousness comes because I do enough, if righteousness comes because I've earned it,

then Christ died in vain. Then what's the point of Jesus?

If you can get to heaven by building a ladder of your works, rung by rung, to get there, then why do you need Jesus?

Where does Jesus fit into that equation?

Well, Paul knows this is wrong. This is bad theology. The Judaizers had bad theology. They thought that faith was a good starting point, that, yes, we should have faith. They tipped their hat to faith in the same way Roman Catholicism tips its hat to faith. Roman Catholicism believes in faith. It's a misnomer, and in fact, it's slanderous to say the Roman Catholics believe they're saved by works. They wouldn't say that. They say that they're saved by faith. But the distinction is this, they would say it's faith plus. Faith plus something else or a handful of something else. In the case of the Judaizers, it was faith plus circumcision, faith plus certain ceremonial laws. Paul says, "Phooey. That's not the way that it works." Now, Paul, as you might remember, Paul, if anyone was ever going to get saved by his works, it was going to be Paul. Remember when back when he was Saul of Tarsus. If ever there was someone who surely had done enough to earn his way into God's pleasure, it would have been Saul. But this is what Paul says of that sort of thinking. He says, "If anyone thinks," this is in Philippians 3, "If anyone else thinks that he has reason to be confident in his work, confident in the flesh, I had more. I was circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, Hebrew of the Hebrews. As to the law, I was a Pharisee. As to zeal, a persecutor of the church. As to righteousness under the law, I was blameless." But despite having all that, "But whatever gain I had, I now count as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything," all of that, all the works, all the things I'd built up, all the rungs on my ladder to heaven, "I count it all as loss. Indeed, I count them all as rubbish." That's Paul's words in Philippians 3. Paul, at one point, had built that ladder to get to heaven. But then once he became a believer and he realized we're saved through faith alone and grace alone and Christ alone, he took the equivalent of a spiritual sledgehammer to that ladder and destroyed it because he knew he could never work his way up to heaven. He now counts all of it as rubbish because that's not the means of salvation. And he said in verse 18, which you just read, "If I were to build again those things that I destroyed, if I was to prop myself up by works again," he says, "I make myself a transgressor." If I start trusting in my works like the Judaizers are doing when they tell people you need to be circumcised to be sure you'll get in, if you start trusting in one work or a thousand works,

he says then again, what's the point of Christ? What's the point of saying we're saved by faith? If righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain. If righteousness comes by law keeping, if righteousness for you this morning comes because you think that you're better than your neighbor, or you've done enough, or you're good enough, or you're smart enough, or you're nice enough, or what have you. If you think you'll be saved on the basis of that, then why do you need Christ? All right, as we look to wrap up, let's just linger just briefly on this topic just for another moment. In Paul's day, the great theological challenge was explaining faith alone to his peers. He came out of a context. He was steeped in a context. The Pharisees had taught this concept that you had to do all these things in order to desperately hope that that was enough, that that would get you in. That was the common man's understanding. And so the theological challenge, both to Jews and Gentiles, of teaching faith alone through grace alone. It didn't change over the centuries. In Martin Luther's day, in the Reformation, this was the same issue. The same issue. People thought that you could save yourself or improve your salvation through all different things that you might do. People thought there were different classes, a tier system by which Christianity could be understood and established. People thought in the 1st century, in the 16th century, in Martin Luther's day, he had the same challenge. Again, our day is no different. We go knocking on doors, we'll find this mentality exists. People, broadly speaking, in our world, in our very community here in Gulfport, believe that they are saved principally because they are good people.

That's not the teaching of scripture.

You can believe it, okay. But you can't tell me it's biblical,

because it is not. That is not what we see in the book. People have become convinced by the simplistic, basic premise that if God exists, that he'll see all the good things that they've done. If God exists, he'll see how much better they are than the people to the right or the left. If God exists, he'll weigh their good works versus their bad works, and on that sliding scale, he'll let them in. Let me tell you this. Your coworker thinks that way.

Your neighbor thinks that way. Paul even thought that way for a season

until he encountered Christ, until he encountered the gospel. To all those who think they're saved by being good enough, Paul says if righteousness comes that way, if you can be right by God through keeping the law, then Christ died in vain. You see, your good works, they do matter in a sense. Your good works, they are important to God. God does value it when you show love and care and respect for the people around you. He does value it. He does value these things, and they are the fruit of your salvation, that you do good works. Absolutely. But those works were never the basis for your hope. And if they were, then Paul said, why would you need Jesus? This morning,

you aren't saved because you were baptized long ago. This morning, you aren't saved because you were circumcised. This morning, you aren't saved because once some day long ago, you walked forward at a revival. This morning, you're not saved because you're nicer than the guy down the street. This morning, you're not saved because of one thing or a thousand things that you may have done. You are saved only by this, faith alone through grace alone in Christ alone. This morning, do you have that kind of faith?

Have you stopped trusting in yourself? Have you stopped trusting in your works? And have you turned to the singular work of Jesus Christ on Calvary as the means, as the way, as the door that gives you access to heaven's golden shores? This morning, if you haven't, if you're still leaning on that rickety building of your works, stop. Stop. Stop trusting in works. Start trusting in Jesus Christ in full. Faith alone, grace alone, Christ alone. This is the means by which you are saved. This is the means by which you are being sanctified. This is the hope not just for you, but for our entire dying world around us. Let's pray.