Galatians 2:9, 11-14 “James, Peter and John, those esteemed as
pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they
recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the
Gentiles, and they to the circumcised….When Peter came to Antioch, I
opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before
certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But
when they arrived, he began to pull away and separate himself from the Gentiles
because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The
other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even
Barnabas was led astray.
"When I saw that they were not acting in
line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them
all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How
is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?"
I love this chapter in Galatians, although it also saddens
and disturbs me. In Galatians 2, Paul is laying out a timeline of his spiritual
conversion and his work as a Christian apostle, which provides helpful insight
into his transformation process from leading persecutor of believers to the
leader of the early Gentile Christian Church. Without Paul going out on a limb
for Gentiles who wanted to follow the Jewish Messiah, many of us would not be
believers today.
However, this passage shows the kind of peer pressure he had
to withstand from within “the Church” to plant churches among Gentile communities.
He already had the blessing of church leaders to disciple Gentiles into the
faith because they saw the supernatural miracles accompanying his ministry to
Gentile Christians, indicating the approval of God’s Spirit; but when highly visible figures in the Early Church (“certain men came from James”, “the circumcision group”) formed a
clique that judged Gentile believers as unequal to Jewish believers, the
Apostle Peter and even Barnabas were so intimidated that they “pulled away”
from associating with Gentile believers. These famous Christian leaders of the
Early Church withdrew from Gentile believers and stood by, passively, while
Gentiles were ostracized by the rest of “the Church” at that time.
This demonstrates how even famous spiritual leaders with an
impressive track record of ministry are vulnerable to being led astray by a
religious clique.
It reminds me of what is happening now in the Christian
community towards women believers. Despite the appearance of “Peace, peace” in
our modern day Christian congregations, female believers are pulled away from
in two ways: male believers keep women separate from men in service by not
choosing women preachers for pastoral positions along with men in equal numbers; and male believers keep women
separate from men by not attending to their needs.
If it were just an issue of doctrine regarding women’s
leadership of men that motivated these believers to pull away from female
preachers, it might severely limit women’s options for ministry- but it wouldn't stop male believers from at least ministering to women to attend to their needs thoroughly and well by creating domestic violence prevention ministries and
using gender-inclusive speech and thinking in Sunday sermons. The fact that
most Christian congregations practice neither the former nor the latter
indicates the same kind of “pulling away” from association with certain types
of believers that the apostle Paul witnessed from “the circumcision group”.
Paul called the behavior of his Christian peers in this
situation “hypocritical” for a reason.
When high-profile Christians “pull away” from female
believers out of fear of controversy, or rather condemnation, from their male
peers, they give other Christian disciples the impression that their lack of interest
in women’s inclusion is inspired by God, when it is really only inspired by the
social dynamics of a religious clique. This results in a “community norm” of
talking and behaving as if the women in the community are invisible and irrelevant
to the group.
Are women believers treated with as much inclusion and
consideration as male believers in your congregation? Are examples of Biblical
matriarchs and heroic women who served God in the Bible being cited regularly
in sermons as examples for us to follow? Is Women’s History Month celebrated in
your church right after Black History Month, and with the same amount of effort
to educate and edify believers? Is domestic violence prevention addressed by
the pastoral staff in ministry and sermons to the same degree as topics such as
forgiving a spouse for an act of betrayal? Are couples taught mutual submission
(Ephesians 5:21, 1 Corinthians 7:4)? Are words like “men”, “brothers”, and “mankind”
being carelessly used over the pulpit to refer to people groups that contain women?
Can you imagine if Paul had also responded to peer pressure
from his male colleagues by pulling away from Gentile Christians? He would not
have planted all those churches in Gentile communities, and as a result there
would likely be far fewer non-Jewish believers in the Christian community. Christian
beliefs and practices like circumcision would be restricted to Jewish synagogues.
And Gentile men would have to be circumcised as adults in order to join “the Church”.
The benefits of Paul’s zeal for equality of believers
between Greek and Jew are obvious to us now, but at the time he only had faith
and the knowledge of the Scriptures to stand on while out on his “limb” for Gentile
believers. Let’s follow his example and speak out on behalf of equal treatment
for female believers in our modern day Church.
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