Don’t Redraw the Boundary Lines Jesus Erased
The gospel is so much grander than individual salvation
God delights in reconciling estranged people. From the first pages of the Bible to the last, God repairs and restores broken relationships.
This theme of reconciling estranged groups, specifically ethnic ones, is so dominant in the New Testament, specifically in Paul’s letters, that I almost missed the forest for the trees.
For years I was taught the gospel message using the chapters of Romans that form what we called the “Romans Road.” Select verses from Paul’s letter to the Romans formed an easy-to-recall rubric to share the message of salvation with individuals.
For the longest time, I saw Paul’s letters almost exclusively as a tool for understanding how God saves individuals. Don’t get me wrong. They are useful for that, but Paul’s message of reconciliation is so much bigger than isolated individuals.
This elusive, more expansive theme, of reconciling groups of people came into clear view when I read about the time Paul took Peter to task for segregating himself from Gentiles. Paul framed this divisive act as an issue that was directly connected with his wide understanding of the gospel.
Pastor Tim Keller helped me nurture this line of thinking in his own teaching on Galatians. For Paul, the gospel had drawn wide, broad boundary lines that erased ancient, narrow ones. Groups that had been divided were now united because of the work of Jesus.
He writes in Galatians:
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28, NIV)
The gospel was far more for Paul than just a message of individual salvation. It was a herculean lift of bringing estranged people together in unity through Jesus.
The temptation is for humans to draw narrow boundary lines
People that are not reconciled keep their distance from each other. You might say they draw narrow boundary lines that welcome family and friends in, but keep particular people who are different from them on the outside at a safe distance. We welcome people that look like us, believe like us, and think like us and form tribes that differentiate us from other tribes.
This kind of tribal activity is a problem when it occurs in the Church.
Your boundary lines are likely more tribal and narrow than you think. I know from personal experience that it has taken significant work over the years for me to fully live out the kind of unity established by Jesus.
The gospel has pushed me to explore deeper relationships across racial and socioeconomic lines that have not always been easy to overcome.
Most of us are comfortable being comfortable. Had Jesus not pushed me out of my comfort zone, I would have missed years of rich and full relationships that have changed me. Thanks to Jesus, my tribe now is far more inclusive than it would have been without Him.
Peter was not living out his true identity
In Galatians, Paul publicly confronted Peter because he stood condemned. Peter was redrawing tribal boundary lines that Jesus had erased.
For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back 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. (Galatians 2:12, NIV)
Hypocrisy comes from a Greek word that means play-acting. To be a hypocrite is to pretend to be someone else, to wear a mask.
Peter was not being honest about his true self. Who was Peter’s true self? It is the same self every believer in Jesus shares. Paul writes in Galatians:
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20, NIV)
Jesus Christ desired to live His life through Peter. The apostle was united to the Savior by faith.
For those who belong to Jesus, their true self is united to Jesus Christ. He desires to live His life through each one of us.
Our union with Jesus by faith forms the most important core of our personal identities. There are many positive aspects of our humanity that we use to form our identity — gender, physical features, education, marital status, career, religion, and ethnic heritage.
All of these identity markers can be healthy and positive, but they can also be distorted as reasons to affiliate exclusively with tribes of people and to therefore segregate ourselves.
Peter’s boundary lines excluded the Gentiles
Peter was operating in violation of the direct revelation he had received in Acts. He recounts:
About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”
“Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”
The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” (Acts 10:9–15, NIV)
Jews considered Gentiles unclean. Therefore, Peter and his people did not eat with people that might defile them.
Peter, though, had been changed by this revelation. He discovered that unclean things have been declared clean by God because of Jesus. Explaining his revelation in Acts, Peter writes:
You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean. (Acts 10:28, NIV)
Jesus had revealed to Peter that God was no purveyor of favoritism among the nations. Peter declares:
I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right. (Acts 10:34–35, NIV)
It was this gospel truth that drove Peter to begin having table fellowship with the Gentiles. The tribal boundary lines he had been keeping had been erased by Jesus.
Eating together was an intimate act that showed friendship and fellowship. Through the gospel, God was drawing estranged Jews and Gentiles together into a family.
For a time, Peter was living in obedience to this glorious revelation.
Jesus plus nothing
And then the crowd from James in Jerusalem showed up in Galatia. These Judaizers were believers in Jesus, but they also taught that Gentiles must be circumcised and continue to follow the laws of Moses.
Peter caved to peer pressure from the Judaizers and began to draw back from the Gentiles. Barnabas and others joined in Peter’s hypocrisy.
Paul boldly confronted and condemned Peter’s behavior. He didn’t call him a racist. Paul didn’t defend the Gentiles' ethnicity. Instead, Paul did something far more impactful when he declared:
When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas 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?
“We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified. (Galatian 2:14–16, NIV)
Paul appealed to the gospel. The gospel says we are saved exclusively by faith in Jesus Christ. Peter, following the deception of the Judaizers, was adding back requirements like circumcision and law-keeping. Jesus had abolished and erased these boundary markers. There are no more tribes known as Jews and Gentiles because we are all one in Jesus!
The boundary lines of the gospel are cosmic in scope. John gives us an image of how broad the lines have been drawn in describing the worship ascribed to Jesus the Lamb in Revelation 5.
You are worthy to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
because you were slain,
and with your blood you purchased for God
persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. (Revelation 5:9, NIV)
Every tribe, language, people, and nation join the worship in heaven! The Good News of Jesus is that each of these is accepted by Jesus alone and not because of any other identity marker that is beyond our human control. The gospel is Jesus plus nothing. Thank God for that truth!
Peter stood condemned because he was guilty of reformulating the gospel equation to be Jesus plus circumcision.
Are my boundary lines too narrow?
A simple audit of my life will show how big and free the gospel is in my life. With whom do I freely affiliate? What groups do I consciously avoid? Are there races or classes of people with whom I don’t share table fellowship or welcome into my home?
We distort the gospel when, like Peter, we draw tribal boundary lines with the equation “Jesus +” and thereby limit our fellowship to like-minded people.
Jesus + my ethnic identity
Jesus + my denomination
Jesus + my political party
Jesus + my academic pedigree
The Gospel message is Jesus + nothing! Precious blood was spilled to purchase our unity. Paul reminds us:
For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. (Colossians 1:20, NIV)
When we add that + symbol after Jesus, we are telling the Savior of the world that His finished work on the cross is an insufficient means to accomplish our unity. It is literally as if we are saying, “Your work on the cross was not enough to make that person my brother or sister.”
What a sad way we cheapen the matchless grace of Jesus when we assume that God’s love is only for people with our particular pedigree.
We do not get to tell Jesus who is invited into His family.
If an audit were done on your relationships, what would it say about the boundary lines of your life? Who is welcomed in and who is segregated out?
How you live tells me everything I need to know about what you actually believe about the gospel.
The good news is that God loves reconciling estranged people to Himself. The Father welcomes you and me into His family out of the sheer grace and love that flows freely from His heart.
We are the recipients of individual salvation but we also inherit a universal family. Our narrow boundary lines have been radically widened. We have been welcomed into rich, transformative relationships with each other that make for a beautiful life. Let us be careful to never redraw those narrow tribal boundary lines that Jesus has forever erased.
