REFLECT: 
Acts 10 & 11 tells the story of how Peter, through God’s divine intervention and leading, learns that “even to the Gentiles God has granted forgiveness that leads to life” (Acts 11:18), and that Jews are not to call Gentiles “unclean” (Acts 10:15, 28). Evidently, Peter’s lesson didn’t “stick” fully, for Paul, known as the Apostle to the Gentiles, has to remind Peter/Cephas of these truths when the two meet in Antioch years later. What is it that angers Paul so much in this passage? How does he deal with his anger and handle the conflict he has with a brother in Christ?

RESPOND: 
How does Peter’s backsliding here compare or contrast with lessons in your own life God has taught you? Have you ever had a confrontation with another brother or sister in Christ like Peter and Paul had here? What can we learn about how church community is to relate to one another from this passage?  As you pray today, give thanks to God for His Church, asking that we would “consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds”, as Hebrews 10:24 encourages. 

READ: Galatians 2:11-16; 3:28
When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 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.

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.”

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.