Avoiding Hypocrisy

 

Avoiding Hypocrisy

 

In Galatians 2:11-14 Paul confronts Peter over Peter’s hypocrisy. Peter had been fellowshipping with the Gentile Christians in Galatia, but when some Jewish Christians come, Peter withdraws & stops fellowship with the Gentile Christians. Peter’s hypocrisy led other Jewish Christians to withdraw from fellowshipping with Gentile Christians & even Barabas was led astray.

 

How do we apply what Paul did in confronting Peter’s hypocrisy with how we are to confront hypocrisy?

 

We follow Paul’s example by confronting hypocrisy in the church, not in the world. The world is fallen & has no ability to be anything but fallen. The church is not fallen. We are people that God has transformed from sinner to saint. We are to live differently than the world. Paul is confronting Peter, knowing that this is not how Jesus desires His people to relate to each other & knowing that Peter, through the Holy Spirit, had the power to change.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about speaking the truth in love to confront hypocrisy in the church.

 

We must see all followers of Jesus as our brothers & sisters. We cannot put labels on other believers & create human-based divisions. Paul says in Colossians 3:11, “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all, and in all.”

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about seeing all Christians as our brothers & sisters regardless of race or gender or language or nation.

 

We must reach out to others & when they come into the church by accepting them. In John 4 Jesus reaches out to an immoral Samaritan women & then to a whole Samaritan village & she & many in the village came to faith in Jesus. In James 2, James warns the church not to treat people differently based on wealth. We are not to welcome the wealthy & reject the poor; all are welcomed in God’s church.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about reaching out to all people to help them to come to faith in Jesus.

 

In Matthew 9 Jesus calls Matthew to follow Him & he does. Matthew then throws a party & invites his friends, tax collectors & sinners to meet Jesus. The religious leaders, the Pharisees got offended because Jesus was eating with sinners. Jesus told them that He had not come for those who saw themselves as righteous with no need for a savior, but He came for sinners who knew they needed a Savior. The church is not a club for the self-sanctified, but a healing place for the sinner.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about loving those who are sinners because that is who we were when Jesus saved us.

 

When people look at the church, they don’t need to see perfect people, but they do need to see people who love differently than the world. When the world sees a transformed church then they will start to listen to what the church says.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls,

Joe