It's quite amazing how quickly we can become cowards. If someone frowns at us, we have the sense that we must do anything to take that frown away. As we are told by Paul that happened to Peter the apostle.
11 But when Cephas (aka Peter) came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.
12 For prior to the coming of certain men from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he began to withdraw and hold himself aloof, fearing the party of the circumcision.
13 And the rest of the Jews joined him in hypocrisy, with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy—(Gal 2:11-13).
Cephas or Peter the apostle was eating meals with the Gentile Christians in Antioch. When certain Jewish Christian men came down from Jerusalem, Peter quit eating with the Gentiles and would only eat with the Jews because the Jews believed that Gentiles were unclean and therefore their food was unclean. Paul maintained that Jesus is the only cleansing that anyone needs. So he boldly rebuked Peter for being a hypocrite and for rejecting by this act the cleansing of the Gentile Christians by Christ. We Christians have been cleansed forever by the blood of Christ and that is the basis and only basis for our relationship with God.
