This post is part of a short series on Christianity. To view the previous post, click here. To go to the first post in the series, click here.
Before continuing I want to add a quick disclaimer. Hopefully I'm not belaboring the point; but this is something I like to keep clear and emphasizing it here will prevent the need for me to repeat it later.
I give very little credence to the Bible; meaning, I think it is a largely unreliable document. In this series of blog posts I discuss happenings and accounts from the Bible based on how they are portrayed. As to whether I regard the accounts as fact is an entirely different matter. Usually, the answer is no – although many of the accounts are at least accurate enough to provide a vague sense of events.
Having said this, I think the Bible is vitally important to Christianity, and in some ways, quite good. The point being that there is no malice in my statement. In fact, I sometimes miss the days when I believed the Bible to be so much more than it is.
Perhaps the only remaining question then, is why bother? What is the point of discussing something I believe to have only marginal value, and questionable reliability? The short answer is that I happen to think there is a core component to Christianity, which is very compelling. I'll get to that eventually.
We must know that, not only is the Bible itself imperfect, it is also a record of the acts of imperfect people. It is critical that we distinguish between what constitutes the Gospel message itself, and the behavior of those who act on behalf of the Gospel.
Consider the Apostle Peter. He exemplifies one of the most critical lessons we can learn about the importance of understanding biblical errancy. He is clearly a central figure within Christianity, especially given that the Catholic church, if I am not mistaken, regards Peter as essentially the first Pope. All this started when Jesus called Peter the rock in Matthew 16, and went on to give him "the keys to the kingdom of heaven."
Peter was a charismatic character – vocal and quick to show excitement. When he witnessed the transfiguration of Jesus, he wanted to build a monument to commemorate the event (Matthew 17:4). When Jesus revealed what was soon to befall him at the hands of Judas and the religious leaders in Matthew 16, Peter tried to talk him out of it. He cut off the ear of Malchus, a servant of the high priest, when the soldiers came to arrest Jesus at Gethsemane (John 18:10). And, after Jesus' death, it was Peter who stood up to take center stage at Pentecost.
Yes, Peter certainly deserves notice, but if we look a little further into his life and deeds, we quickly see that he repeatedly demonstrated an inability to grasp the Gospel message – indeed, Jesus' message. Though he can certainly be forgiven for protesting when Jesus revealed the dark tides that were to come, which prompted Jesus' famous rebuke, “get thee behind me, Satan;” it also demonstrated that Peter did not grasp Jesus' larger agenda.
Hindsight is 20-20. Maybe Peter simply didn’t know enough about what Jesus was trying to accomplish to see the big picture at the time. That Jesus had to explain what was happening (and going to happen), seems to suggest this possibility. Not that it matters all that much, but I think all of this is perfectly forgivable. It shows only that Peter was human.
Peter's misconceptions, however, shortly began to have more serious consequences. Soon, he would begin to draw the entire Christian message off the track Jesus had set it on. Aside from the mistakes I mentioned above, Peter went on to make very serious blunders, which impact the Christian faith even today, two thousand years later.
Blunder at Pentecost
When Peter addressed the believers gathered at Pentecost, he proclaimed that the speaking in tongues, which everyone had just witnessed, was the fulfillment of the prophetic words of Joel.
But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words: For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel;Well, that must have been an exciting moment, but why didn’t the other parts of Joel’s vision happen? The moon turning to blood and all that? Because Peter was wrong. This event actually marked the coming of the Comforter that Jesus had told the disciples to expect after his death - it was a fulfilment of John 16:12-15, not Joel (c. 2). Of course, Peter did not have a New Testament Bible, but the event was what Jesus had spoken of, nonetheless.
And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy: And I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke: The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and notable day of the Lord come: And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Was this error important? It was. It encouraged the people of the day to believe that Jesus’ return was immanent, which it was not. It also caused the event to be interpreted by all as part of some end-time script, rather than in the correct terms of the continuing work of God among the people.
Jesus had gone to a fair amount of effort to make it clear to the disciples that the "Comforter" would appear after his death. If Jesus could somehow have seen Peter's address to the upper-room crowd, I think his response would have been something akin to a palm to the forehead.
Peter didn’t get it.
Salvation to the Gentiles
This one is well known. Eventually, Peter had something of a dispute with the Apostle Paul because, in Paul's opinion, he had begun to pull away from the teachings of an open Gospel – one that does not impose the requirements of the Law upon the Gentiles (Galatians 2:6-21). Paul adamantly believed that salvation and grace through Jesus Christ was the existential substitute and counterpart to the circumcision and observance of the Law (1 Corinthians 7:19; Galatians 3:1, 5:6).
In fact, this matter had been directly addressed by Paul and Barnabas with the Apostles at Jerusalem (Acts 15:1-2), being of such critical importance that they had left Antioch and returned to Jerusalem for the singular purpose of considering this question. At that time, Peter agreed that the observance of the Laws of Moses and the prophets were not a requirement for the Gentiles (v. 7-11), saying in his own words:
Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are. (Acts 15:10-11, NIV)Peter could have no doubt that this was correct since the Lord had emphasized this very point to
him in the vision of the cleansed food (Acts 11:4-18). Yet, Peter later began shying away from this
teaching. He had been meeting with Gentiles in Antioch (Acts 11:3), but later, when certain Jews came around who continued to hold to the belief that the Laws of Moses were still required for salvation, Peter seemed embarrassed to be seen with the Gentiles at all (Galatians 2:11-13).
Even in his vision, Peter was unwilling to let go of the traditions of acceptable foods despite being directly instructed to do so by the Lord, not once, but three times (Acts 10:9-16). In the end, Peter never ate the food as he was commanded, and only later understood that there was a broader lesson to be learned from it (Acts 11:1-18).
Peter didn’t get it.
Ananias and Sapphira
This one irks me a bit. Ananias and Sapphira were members of the church. They had apparently heard of another church member who had sold a plot of land and given the proceeds to the apostles (Acts 5:38). Since he also owned land, Ananias likewise sold a field with the intention of giving some of the money to the church.
However, unlike the other church member, Ananias and his wife agreed ahead of time to tell the apostles that they had sold the field for less money than they actually had. Their plan was to make the apostles believe that they were giving the full amount of money to the church, when in fact they had kept some of the money aside for themselves.
The entire ploy was to give the impression that they were giving completely sacrificially. Certainly, giving any sum is sacrificial, but their hope was to receive even more accolades and credit by pretending that they had kept nothing aside for themselves.
We are left to assume, according to Acts 5:4, that had Ananias and Sapphira simply been honest and told the apostles that they had decided to keep some of the money for themselves, that they probably would have been okay. Unfortunately for them, that is not what happened.
Anyway, in keeping to the story, when Ananias told Peter the incorrect sum, Peter recognized the deceit immediately and became extremely angry. He scolded Ananias and told him that by lying to him, he had effectively lied to God. Ananias immediately fell dead. It's too bad that someone wasn't there to reel Peter in a bit: "Uh, Peter, you're not God. Sorry."
About three hours later Sapphira also came to the church, where she was immediately confronted by Peter. Now, Peter didn't start by saying, "Sapphira, I have some really bad news. You way want to sit down." No, Peter was Peter - he set her up. Not knowing that her husband was already dead, she answered Peter's questions regarding the land as she and her husband had rehearsed. When Peter saw that she repeated the same untruthful story, and therefore knew that Ananias and Sapphira had conspired to deceive him, he scolded her as well and she also fell dead.
Harsh.
It seems fortunate for Peter that Jesus was more tolerant of his shortcomings when Peter denied knowing Jesus on the night he was taken (Luke 26:69-75). In fact, Jesus had even warned Peter ahead of time that he would do so (Luke 22:33-34). Yet, not long after these very events, Peter, upon being lied to by Ananias and Sapphira brought swift and immediate judgment upon both of them.
Under the Old Testament law such heavy-handed punishments seemed almost typical, but under a new covenant of grace and salvation, it seems that Peter had lost his way. He denied Ananias and Sapphira the redemptive love of Christ and hearkened back to a more absolute and unyielding posture of law that Jesus had come for the very purpose of bringing to an end. The sacrifice of Christ was meant to free people from deceit and sin, not through death, but through the opportunity to depart from it in life.
What Peter did couldn't be more at odds with the message of Salvation by Grace that Jesus gave his life to share. I can't say how many times I've heard this account used as the basis for sermons as a cautionary tale. This story has nothing to do with the Gospel, nothing to do with Salvation by Grace, and nothing to do with Jesus' teachings. It is an account of a misguided man, and another example of how critical it is to understand the difference between what the Bible says, and its overarching message.
Peter, being (unfortunately) a central figure within Christianity, greatly damaged the faith with his inability to understand the new message of Salvation. According to Luke, Jesus said that he had "not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them (Luke 9:56)."
Peter just didn't get it.
Simon
In Acts 8:17-24, a man called Simon saw Peter laying hands on individuals who then received the Holy Spirit. Simon wanted this power as well, and so offered money to Peter so that he may have it. At this, Peter rebuked him very harshly, and Simon did actually repent (v. 24). But, Peter's response demonstrated the ongoing, unwavering lack of kindness that permeated his life.
Maybe there is more to this story than what made it into the text, which could impact my thoughts on the matter, but Simon’s desire to receive the Holy Spirit, though spoken in the wrong terms, was a good one as far as I can tell.
When the mother of two of the disciples, James and John, the wife of Zebedee, approached Jesus and asked that her two sons have a place at his right and left hand in the Kingdom of God, Jesus responded by saying that she had asked for more than she knew, and that such a thing was not his to give (Matthew 20:20-24). But, Jesus took no offense at the request. Though bold, he found no fault in the desire that this woman had to see her sons elevated within the Kingdom of God. Yet, the other disciples were indignant (v. 24). These were the very same individuals who would later become apostles and form the early New Testament church. The parallels between the reactions of the other disciples and those of the brothers of Joseph upon seeing the favor he received from Jacob are difficult to deny (Genesis 37).
Peter didn’t get it.
The Impacts
Having said all of this, I must now say that none of it constitutes the largest negative impact that Peter had on the Christian faith. That will be the subject of my next post. In fact, it is one of the primary reasons for all of these posts.
To be continued.
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