Peter Changed Where He Sat When the Visitors Arrived

There are two of him and he knows it.

The one at home is fine. He swears occasionally and he means it when he does. He watches what he watches. He has opinions about things he would not say in a foyer. He is honest with his wife about what he actually thinks, mostly, and when a friend from work asks him a hard question about God he gives a real answer that has some I do not know in it.

The other one is the one who walks through the double doors on a Sunday, and he is a slightly different man, and the change happens somewhere in the parking lot without any decision being made.

It is not that the second one is lying. That is what makes this hard to see. The second one believes everything he says. He is just careful, and the careful has become a whole personality, and he has been running two of them for so long that he could not now tell you which is the real one.

The New Testament has a scene about this and the man in it is Peter.

What actually happened at the meal

Here it is, in the King James Version:

But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision. (Galatians 2:11-12)

He was eating with them. That is the first thing. This was his normal practice and he had a vision about it and he had defended it in front of a council.

But when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself.

He moved. Physically. He got up from one table and sat at another because a certain group of people had walked into the room.

And Paul gives the reason, and it is not the reason anybody would have expected from the lead apostle: fearing them which were of the circumcision.

Fear. Not conviction. Not a change of mind about the doctrine. Not a considered position. He was afraid of what a particular set of men would think of him, and the fear moved his body across a room.

You are not a fraud for having two versions and you were never the first man whose feet went one way while his convictions stayed put. Galatians 2:12 names fear rather than hypocrisy as what moved Peter, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a firmer resolve who reaches the thing underneath the moving.

The word Paul uses for it

The correction comes in verse 14 and the word chosen is precise.

But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews? (Galatians 2:14)

They walked not uprightly. The word carries the sense of walking a straight line, and the picture is of a man whose feet are not going where his stated position is going.

That is a better description of the two-versions problem than hypocrisy, which is too heavy a word and slides off. Nobody thinks of himself as a hypocrite. Everybody can recognize a walk that has bent slightly around a group of people.

And notice the consequence Paul names, which is the real damage: why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews. Peter did not preach anything. He moved chairs. And the chair-moving taught a room full of people a rule that nobody had ever spoken out loud.

That is how most of the unsourceable rules get made. Not from a pulpit. From a hundred small adjustments by careful men, watched by people who assume the adjustment means something.

You have been teaching a room without meaning to and you were never the author of the rule you have been passing on. Galatians 2:14 says the withdrawing compelled others, which is the text naming the mechanism, and it is His Spirit who makes seeing it a relief rather than an indictment.

The trap is named in the Proverbs

The whole thing rests on a mechanism the Old Testament already had a sentence for.

The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the LORD shall be safe. (Proverbs 29:25)

Bringeth a snare. A snare is a trap that holds an animal in place. It does not kill it. It stops it moving freely, and the animal usually cannot see what is holding it.

And Paul, in the same letter, one chapter earlier, puts the choice in a single question:

For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. (Galatians 1:10)

That is a hard verse and it is easy to weaponize, so read what it is not saying. It is not saying a man should be difficult, or blunt, or careless about how he lands on people. Paul was capable of enormous accommodation and says so a few chapters later.

It is about who the audience is. A man who is performing for a room has an audience of the room. That is the whole of it, and it is a question about direction rather than about manners.

You have one audience and you were never accountable to a room in the way you have been living as though you were. Galatians 1:10 asks whether it is men or God being persuaded, and Proverbs 29:25 calls the fear of man a snare, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than more courage who cuts the cord on a snare a man cannot see.

Where the single version comes from

And then, twenty verses into the same chapter, the sentence that resolves it, which is not about behavior at all.

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.

That is the answer to two versions, and it is not the answer anybody expects. The answer is not to work out which of the two is the real one and promote it. The answer is that neither of them is the source, and a life is being lived in a man that is not generated by either version.

Who loved me, and gave himself for me. Singular, personal, and past tense, said by the man who had just corrected the lead apostle in public.

You have Christ living in you and you were never left to arbitrate between your own two selves. Galatians 2:20 says not I, but Christ liveth in me twelve verses after the scene at the table, and it is His Spirit who makes that an experience rather than a slogan.