11 But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12 For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party.
Here is a very striking thing a conflict between the two greatest apostles. It is something we must study with great care. Paul's point in mentioning it here is to show that, so far from needing to apologise for his faith, as one of lesser authority than the other apostles, he is so sure of his own authority that he can rebuke even Peter when he sees him to have slipped from the true message of the gospel. It is as if he had said, 'Does it look as if I were of less authority than Peter, when it is clear that I had right on my side in this issue?'. We have the clue to the situation in 12 and we need to get the situation and its background clear before we can see the force of the lesson it presents for us. It was the question of eating meats with the Gentiles - the old question of Jewish legalism and the gospel. The proper background for this is the Acts of the Apostles, where we see that in the early history of the Church all the converts to Christ were Jews. It did not seem to occur to them that any save those within the covenant should become heirs of God's blessing of salvation. And, in spite of Christ's commission to the disciples in Acts 1:8, there is no evidence that the Church thought in terms of an outward movement from Jerusalem until about chapter 8, when the disciples were forced out by persecution. It was one of the Holy Spirit's greatest tasks to teach the Church that the Gentiles were to be fellow heirs with them, and it was a lesson that the Church found exceedingly difficult to learn, and it was learned very slowly and unwillingly. This is the force of the lesson that Acts 10 teaches us, with the vision given to Peter with regard to Cornelius. In that chapter there are two points in particular to note: (i) the slowness with which Peter 'got the message' that Gentiles were to be included in the blessings of God's salvation. He needed a special vision from God to break through his spiritual obtuseness and bigotry; (ii) his unwillingness and 'grudgingness' in submitting to it when he did see it, as witness Acts 10:28. More of this in the next Note.