People know what you teach as a Christian. People know what we tell them we believe. We believe the Bible is God’s Word. We believe that God created the universe. We believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God, died for our sins, was buried and rose from the dead on the third day. We believe that Jesus is the Christ, the promised Messiah. Therefore, He is the culmination of the prophecies and the fulfillment of God’s pan. We believe that God manifests grace through His gift of Jesus the Christ, through Him offering mankind the forgiveness of sin and an enteral home in heaven.  We believe that the Christ taught us what true love is and how to love others.

Or do we?

Paul shares an encounter he had with Peter (Cephas),

“But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. 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 2:11-14)

Peter’s actions call into questions his professed belief. Peter would say he believed that God called Gentiles to salvation, that God is not a respecter of  ethnicity, that we should not call unclean what God calls clean, and that we should not refuse whom God accepts (cf. Acts 10 – 11). But his actions in Antioch say just the opposite.  What does  Peter really believe?

Think about these statements:

• What we do as a Christian should come from what we believe.

• What we actually do demonstrates what we believe.

• What we do will change what others believe.

• What we do will ultimately change what we believe.

Take a look at your day to day actions. What do they say about what you believe?

-Scott