Page 22 - 《每日活水》靈修月刊7月號

7 傳講真理不畏懼
2:11~16

11 11-13 Later, when Peter came to Antioch, I
12 had a face-to-face confrontation with him
13 * because he was clearly out of line. Here’s
14 the situation. Earlier, before certain persons
had come from James, Peter regularly ate
15 with the non-Jews. But when that conserva-
16 tive group came from Jerusalem, he cau-
tiously pulled back and put as much dis-
tance as he could manage between himself
and his non-Jewish friends. That’s how fear-
ful he was of the conservative Jewish clique
that’s been pushing the old system of cir-
cumcision. Unfortunately, the rest of the
Jews in the Antioch church joined in that
hypocrisy so that even Barnabas was swept
along in the charade.

14 But when I saw that they were not main-
taining a steady, straight course according
to the Message, I spoke up to Peter in front
of them all: “If you, a Jew, live like a non-
Jew when you’re not being observed by the
watchdogs from Jerusalem, what right do
you have to require non-Jews to conform to
Jewish customs just to make a favorable
impression on your old Jerusalem cronies?”

15-16 We Jews know that we have no
advantage of birth over “non-Jewish sin-
ners.” We know very well that we are not set
right with God by rule-keeping but only
through personal faith in Jesus Christ. How
do we know? We tried it—and we had the
best system of rules the world has ever
seen! Convinced that no human being can
please God by self-improvement, we
believed in Jesus as the Messiah so that we
might be set right before God by trusting in
the Messiah, not by trying to be good.

44