Justified by Faith in Christ

Read aloud

Paul describes a confrontation with Cephas in Antioch. When Cephas first arrived, he ate with Gentile believers. But when certain men came from James, he drew back and separated himself because he feared those who belonged to the circumcision group.

Other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray. The problem was not a private preference about dinner. Their withdrawal told Gentile believers that fellowship with them was conditional and that Jewish identity gave some people a safer place at the table.

Paul saw that they were not walking in line with the truth of the gospel. He opposed Cephas publicly because the conduct affected the whole church. If a Jewish believer could live like a Gentile, Paul asked, how could he compel Gentiles to live like Jews?

Paul says people are not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. To be justified is to be counted righteous before God. Neither Jewish identity nor obeying the law can secure that verdict; we receive it through faith in Christ. That is why Paul and Cephas, both Jews, had believed in Him.

Paul refuses a conclusion that would make Christ a servant of sin. He says that if he rebuilds what he tore down, he proves himself a lawbreaker. Through the law he died to the law so that he might live to God. The law exposes and condemns sin, but Paul has died with Christ: he can no longer look to law-keeping for acceptance before God. Christ now lives in him, and his new life belongs to God. The life he lives in the body, he lives by faith in the Son of God, who loved him and gave Himself for him.

If righteousness could come through the law, Christ died for nothing. Paul makes the stakes unmistakable: adding human status or performance as the basis of acceptance empties the cross of its meaning.