Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour podcast, and everybody knows about the star-crossed lovers motif and storytelling. This is the Romeo and Juliet thing, super famous. It's the two people who are in love, but because of circumstances beyond their control, they can never be together. But only slightly less well known than that is, I don't know what the term is for it. I'm just making one up. The star-crossed friends motif. This is where you got two pals who like each other and they have history and they ought to be on the same side. But circumstances drive a wedge, or they should be pals, but they have this one big ideological difference, and you root for them to get along, and there's a tragedy to the fact that it isn't working out between them. Sometimes in these kinds of stories, things do work out in the end, and they are able to come together and pull in the same direction. Other times it's a tragedy. So thank Professor X versus Magneto. Thank Captain America versus Iron Man. Thank Crosshair versus the Bad Batch. Thank the Fox versus the Hound. Thank Julius Caesar versus his buddy Pompeii. Thank uh Jon Snow versus Egret. Thank Come on, I had one more before I turn on this mic. And it oh, it's the cringiest one. Jacob versus Edward from the Twilight saga. In all of these stories, these are people who you're rooting for to work it out and be on the same team. And sometimes that happens, and sometimes it doesn't. Well, we've been considering the star-crossed friendship between Peter and Paul. They're playing two different roles in the same story, and here in Galatians chapter two, they get into a fight. I mean, that minimizes it way too much. Paul rightly calls out Peter for being wrong about something. So for the last week or so, I've been making the case that I think one of the reasons that these two did not remain star-crossed friends and that they did work things out is because they hung out with totally the same crowd through the rest of their lives. Two, the message seems to be identical across the board between Peter and Paul. And both Peter and Paul throughout everything they touch in terms of the New Testament, they're both pulling in the same direction. The message would seem to be the same. And then the final reason that I think we can say with confidence that they worked it out and were not estranged long-term star-crossed friends who were on the opposite side of an issue, but rather allies fighting on different fronts and this grand battle together. The final reason is just the way their lives turned out and how parallel their lives turned out to be. Last time around, we were looking at 1 Peter. This time around I want to quickly glance at 2 Peter, which was probably written a year or two after his earlier letter. 1 Peter, the theme is sort of, hey, endure, and if you suffer as a Christian against the backdrop of the pagan world in which you live, let it be suffering because you're living right, you're living out the values of the kingdom of Christ. 2 Peter has a little more of the tone of Galatians, where it's like, hey, there are people who are wrong who are trying to influence you. Let them be condemned. Blow that stuff off. Ignore that. Don't give them a microphone. Don't listen to what they have to say. This is particularly evident in 2 Peter 2, where Peter is calling out false teachers, where he's calling out disruptors, who he calls bold and arrogant, men who are not afraid to slander celestial beings. Peter talks about God's judgment, like some of the key passages in the Old Testament where God's judgment is on display. And it's like, hey, this is what's going to happen to the people who are not passing along the gospel message that we have received and that we have passed along to you. So it sounds very different. I mean, you should go read 2 Peter. It doesn't sound like Paul. The language is bigger and more robust and bold and very, very confrontational, but it doesn't have the same ring as Paul. I don't know. When you read it, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. But the point is that even though these two guys turn phrases a little differently, all throughout the middle of 2 Peter, the point is the same as it is in Galatians. Let anybody who is putting forward this alternate gospel, which is no gospel at all, stand ready for condemnation because God will judge that. God will not tolerate it. Additionally, at the beginning of 2 Peter, there's a whole passage that kind of sounds like the whole life in the spirit, fruits of the spirit thing, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control that you get at the end of the book of Galatians. Sounds like Peter's saying almost the exact same thing in 2 Peter. He says, for this very reason, this is 2 Peter 1, verse 5, for this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness and to goodness knowledge, and to knowledge, self-control, and to self-control, perseverance, and to perseverance, godliness, and to godliness, brotherly kindness and to brotherly kindness love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And I totally understand how somebody could come at this and listen to what I'm saying and be like, well, I guess I sort of see the parallels between what Peter's saying and what Paul is saying, but those are just sort of allusions to each other. There isn't real strong evidence here that Peter and Paul patched it up and that Peter really is referencing back to Paul's stuff or treating it as authoritative, but aha! I am holding a verse in reserve because here, in the very final sentences that we ever get from Peter in the entire Bible, he says this, and I think this really wraps up the whole controversy. He says to his audience, this is Peter writing 2 Peter 2 15, bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. Well, dang, if there was any bad blood over the Antioch lunchroom incident, it is far downstream at this point. But there's even more. Peter's going to take it to the next level, verse 16. He, that is Paul, writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort as they do the other scriptures to their own destruction. Wow! What a wild passage where one author of the Bible is interacting critically with another part of the Bible and the author who wrote it. But what is he saying? Hey, guys, I fully acknowledge the Paul stuff. It can be a little heady. Well, uh Paul was really Greek-minded. He thought in those sort of logical categories, he wrote and thought differently than Peter. Paul's personality was way different than Peter. It looks to me like maybe there were people who came up to Peter from time to time and were like, Paul's an egghead, right? Oh my goodness, I'm I think he's right, but I just I can't track with him. It's just so much. I bet Peter heard that from time to time. And I bet people came to Paul and tempted Paul to denigrate Peter behind his back by being like, Yeah, Peter's so lowbrow. Everything's just emotions and big, blustery stuff, not like you, Paul. You're so logical and you make sense. You can almost kind of see these two guys appealing to different types of people, not just Jew and Gentile, but different types of people who would resonate with a little different way of saying it. But they're saying the same stuff, and that's Peter's point. It's kind of like a shot across the bow here at the end of Peter's life to be like, hey, anybody who wants to try to pit me against Paul, you can just stop it right now. And even the people who say, yo, Paul is off and he's a problem, these are not your allies. These are the people I said earlier in my letter here are going to be condemned. They're trying to drive a wedge, they're trying to do damage, they're trying to twist what Paul is saying to trick people and to distort this as they do with the other scriptures. Did you catch that? He thinks Galatians is scripture in the same way that the Old Testament is scripture. So I don't think Peter and Paul were in too big of a fight. I don't think there was much bad blood here that had lingered. In fact, I'd go all the way to the other end of the spectrum and say, I think they totally patched this thing up. I don't think we've got some tragic Caesar versus Pompeii Star-Crossed Friends tragedy situation here. I think we got something that looks a little bit more like Captain America and Iron Man, where they saw a thing different for a minute, but in the end, they were definitely on the same page and pulling in the same direction. Further, I kind of suspect, given how brash and big Peter was and what we see with him and Jesus, I kind of think this incident didn't linger very long at all. I kind of think what probably happened here was that Paul was like, Peter, what are you doing, dude? Also, here's some theology that I happen to know you agree with. And I bet Peter was like, Well, hang on a minute there, actually. You know what? You've got a really good point. Peter seems like he was one of these people who was really good at quickly admitting things when he knew he was wrong. I have said for a long time that one of the measurements of relational health is when the time between the moment you realize that you were wrong and the time that you admit you were wrong is very short, that's a good indicator that your relationship is healthy. If the amount of time that goes by between the moment you realize you were wrong and the moment you admit that you were wrong is very, very long, that indicates that something is pretty screwed up about your relationship and the thing probably needs attention. Look, you can say whatever you want about Peter. He gives you plenty of material throughout the Bible to try to act all superior and like you're better than him, like I'm better than him, but I think that's short-sighted and silly. This dude had a superpower that I want to emulate, that I want to have. And that is go big. If you're wrong, own it and move forward. This guy had great trust in the forgiveness and grace of Christ. And when Christ offered it to him, Peter was like, Yeah, okay, I believe that that's real. I accept it. Let's take another swing. I'm gonna keep trying. I admire him for it. I think he was very quick to admit that he was wrong and get back on track in other parts of the Bible, and I bet that's exactly what he did in Acts chapter two when confronted by Paul. In fact, I bet this incident isn't nearly as big a deal as I have even elevated it to be by the amount of time that we've taken on it. In the end, when both Peter and Paul were mere months away from being executed by the same crazed emperor, Nero, here you got Peter, maybe writing from a prison in Rome, saying, Paul is right about this stuff. And further, you Christians rightly acknowledge what Paul has written as scripture, confirmed by the Holy Spirit. Yeah, seems like this thing landed in a really good place. Now we could move on to Galatians chapter three tomorrow, but I've got one more really interesting post-Bible tidbit that I want to share with you that is encapsulated. It's a story that's told in pictures in a church in Palermo, Sicily, that dates back to the high Middle Ages. And I just think it's a really fun story, and I think it'll be a nice way to put a bow on this whole thing that we've done together here. So we'll do that tomorrow, then we're on to Galatians chapter three. All right, I think that's plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.