Who Are You Trying to Please?

What Paul's clash with Peter in Galatians teaches us about fear, approval and standing firm in the gospel.

Paul doesn't write Galatians calmly. In almost every other letter, he opens by thanking God for the people he's writing to. Not this time. After a brief greeting, he goes straight to the point:

"I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel." (Galatians 1:6)

Something was at stake that Paul refused to let go. And a few verses later, he asks a question every one of us needs to answer:

"Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ." (Galatians 1:10)

The gospel is not ours to edit. Paul stood unwavering on the truth, and he was deeply bothered by anything that distorted it, whether it came from false teachers deceiving people or from a respected apostle acting out of fear. We're called to stand the same way. But before we can defend the truth, we have to know it.

Unwavering on the truth (Galatians 1:6–10)

Teachers had come into the churches of Galatia telling Gentile believers that faith in Jesus wasn't enough. To fully belong to God, they said, you also had to keep the Jewish law, especially circumcision.

To Paul, that wasn't a small add-on. It was a different gospel, one that was leading people away from Christ. So he didn't soften it:

"Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God's curse!" (Galatians 1:8).

That can sound harsh to us. But Paul's anger isn't a flaw in his personality. It's what love looks like when people are being deceived. Indifference to a false gospel isn't kindness, and the truth doesn't bend to keep a room comfortable.

Reflect: Does it bother you when people are being led away by a "good news" that isn't the gospel, the way it bothered Paul? Or have you gotten comfortable with it?

When fear wins (Galatians 2:11–21)

The pressure didn't only come from false teachers. It came from inside the church too, from one of its most respected leaders.

Peter had been eating with Gentile believers, sharing the table as family in Christ. But when people from the circumcision group arrived, he pulled away. Verse 12 tells us why: "he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group." And it spread. The other Jewish believers followed him, and even Barnabas was led astray.

Peter wasn't confused about the truth. He knew it. He was afraid.

So Paul opposed him to his face, in front of everyone, because Peter's conduct was "not acting in line with the truth of the gospel" (Galatians 2:14). Then Paul explains what made him able to stand when even Peter couldn't:

"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2:20)

Fear of people is one of the quietest ways the gospel gets compromised. Nobody announces it. We just pull back from a table, stay quiet in a conversation, or adjust what we believe to fit the room. Paul stood firm because he wasn't living for himself anymore; Christ lived in him. Being unwavering isn't stubbornness. It's being settled about whose we are.

Reflect: If Christ lives in you, what power does people's approval still have over you?

Even Peter

Peter walked with Jesus for three years. He preached at Pentecost and was one of the pillars of the church. And he still gave in to fear.

That doesn't excuse our fear. It shows that no one outgrows the need to repent and come back to the truth.

And Peter did come back. Years later, he wrote to the churches: "This is the true grace of God. Stand fast in it" (1 Peter 5:12). The man who once pulled away from the table out of fear ended up calling others to stand firm.

But we can't stand fast in something we don't know. Before we can be rooted in the truth and defend it for the rest of our lives, we have to know it, which means opening the Bible for ourselves, daily, and letting it shape what we believe instead of the room we're in.

Reflect: If even Peter could be shaken, how well do you really know the truth you say you stand on?

Stand firm

Paul's whole letter builds to this:

"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." (Galatians 5:1)

Living for people's approval is its own kind of yoke. It's exhausting, and it never ends. Christ has already set us free from it. Our part is to stand firm in that freedom and in the truth that brought it.

Reflect: Where have you stayed silent, or bent the truth, because you were afraid of what people would think? What would it look like to stand firm this week?

Go deeper: read Galatians 1–2 and Galatians 5 this week, and write a SOAP on the verse that stops you.