What Was Peter’s Hypocrisy?

Galatians 2:14 ESV But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?

Galatians 2:14 is sometimes used as indication that Christians no longer need to keep the biblical law. However, that is not the case.

Notice that Paul does not rebuke Peter for teaching the Gentiles to live according to the biblical law, but for “forcing them to live like Jews”. The Greek word for “live like Jews” here is the verb ioudaizō, which means to behave like a Jew; i.e. living according to Jewish customs. This interpretation is further supported by the fact that, of all the things which Paul could have called the group that Peter feared, he referred to them specifically as “those from the circumcision” (v. 12).

How was Peter compelling the Gentiles to live like Jews? By withdrawing and separating himself from the Gentiles and sitting only with Jews, Peter was sending the wrong message. He was indicating that he approved of the Jew-Gentile divide; that the Gentiles were second-class Christians simply because they were not Jewish, and that the Gentiles had to change their status of “Gentile” by living like Jews according to Jewish customs and becoming Jews in order to enjoy equality in fellowship with the Jews.

The rest of the Book of Galatians was written to prove that Gentiles did not need to become Jews themselves, but could enter into the Kingdom of God on equal footing with Jews.