Becoming a Christian means death.

A Christian is a person who has died with Christ,

whose stiff neck has been broken,

whose brazen forehead has been smashed,

whose stony heart has been ground to smithereens,

and whose pride has been slain,

and who has been utterly mastered by the Lord Jesus Christ.

It's certainly good and wonderful to rejoice in the benefits of the gospel, justification, forgiveness, the hope of glory.

But it's harder to embrace death to self.

I'm Dan Kruver.

In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper opens Galatians 2, verses 15 to 21,

to show us that union with Christ means more than sharing in his life,

it also means sharing in his death.

This message was originally delivered at Bethlehem Baptist Church on March 6, 1983.

You remember last week now that when Peter and Barnabas and the other Jews in Antioch cut off table fellowship from the Gentile Christians because they weren't keeping the dietary laws,

Paul rebuked Peter to his face and said that that amounts to compelling the Gentile believers to become Jews or to keep the dietary laws in order

to be right with God and fully accepted in the church.

And that is neither in sync with the gospel, nor is it consistent with your own deeply held principles, Peter.

Now, verses 15 to 16 this week continues that argument with Peter a step further.

In a nutshell, what Paul does in verses 15 and 16 is show Peter how,

in fact, he and Peter are unified both theologically and experientially in faith.

And therefore, it's inconsistent of Peter to act in a way that both he and Paul would condemn as foisting a legalism onto the new Gentile believers in Antioch. Let's

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