¹¹But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned; ¹²for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. ¹³And the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. ¹⁴But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

¹⁵We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; ¹⁶yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law. ¹⁷But if, in our effort to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have been found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! ¹⁸But if I build up again the very things that I once tore down, then I demonstrate that I am a transgressor. ¹⁹For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; ²⁰and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. ²¹I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.

When I noted that Peter did this out of fear of the Judaizers it made me think of a conversation I had yesterday, when my colleague helped me identify that the team was afraid of someone. And we were acting on our fear.

Because this is a point where there is a need for balance. We need to be able to confront each other when we make mistakes — and then we need to also maintain a unity. If we over value maintaining a unity between us, we are leaving people in error, and that is not loving.

One of the besetting flaws among the reformers is our ability to split into hyper-Calvinistic groups that function, like the anabaptists, as a bunch of increasingly cranky individuals each convinced that they are most righteous. We forget that the church is catholic — universal — and Christ will call people from every group, We also forget that there is truth in the criticisms that other orthodox have of our flavour of Christianity.

I’m aware that, particularly on the Internet, there is now a series of networks of serious Christians. I think this is a good thing.  I can recall the newsletters, the cost of postage, and the smell of solvents my father used to print from carbon copies his newsletters.

But we need to put our pride on hold. If Peter and Paul fought, we will to. And at times we will be wrong, and at times right. To quote the proverb, Iron will sharpen Iron.

And this is a test, in fact, of our wish tor wisdom. The wise are happy to be corrected. The fools instead, are offended by words, and frequently have to be allowed to live with the consequences of their actions before they will change.

Be wise. Hard words hurt, but hard living hurts more.