As we continue to consider Peter, Paul, and Barnabas in Galatians 2:11 – 21, and Peter’s surrender to peer pressure, let’s remember that, as far as I know, we are all susceptible to peer pressure and to think that we aren’t puts us in a dangerous place. As Paul wrote, “Let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall” (1 Cor. 10:12).
Here are six things to consider regarding peer pressure:
1. Our identity is rooted in Jesus Christ. We belong to Him, He has purchased us with His blood and we are no longer our own. As we learn to live in Christ as our identity, as our All in all, we can better withstand peer pressure for we see it for what it is, a temptation to repudiate Jesus Christ and our identity in Him. Peer pressure says, “Identity yourself with us.” This is especially strong in the religious world, in the Christian world, where self-righteous conformity is strong. We all want to belong, and often to belong means to conform – we don’t really want a functioning Body of Christ, we want confinement and conformity.
Regarding the world, when our identity is in Jesus Christ, when we live this Way every day, saying “No” to the world is simply what we do. On the one hand we love the people in the world and are always seeking their good, on the other hand we refuse to drink the poison of the world and deny our Lord Jesus. This is simply who we are in Jesus. I write “simply” because it is a first – tier fact, a foundational reality. We live in unity with the Trinty, we are children of another world.
2. Peer pressure attacks the issue of security and insecurity, it seeks to make us insecure and to succumb to it to gain (temporary and illusive) security. Caving into peer pressure makes us perpetually insecure. When Christ is our identity, He is also our security. When David writes in Psalms that God is his refuge, rock, shelter, and hiding place, one of the things he is saying is that God is his security. A blessing in reading Psalms every day is to be reminded that God is indeed our security and identity. One of the great themes of the New Testament is that we are “in Christ.” Over and over we read that we are “in Christ.” These are precious statements and treasures in the Word that we tend to gloss over, but O the glory we can experience “in Christ” when we enter into them.
3. Peer pressure raises the issue of approval, whose approval are we seeking? This is another issue that ought to be foundational to daily life. It ought to be a “given.” Paul wrote, “For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ” (Gal. 1:10 NASB). Since we are all purchased by Jesus Christ, then we all should be living as His bondservants, and His approval ought to be what we are seeking, not the approval of others.
Jesus asked, “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God?” (John 5:44). Again, this has to do with how we live our daily lives – we are talking about a Way of Life, and that Way is Jesus Christ. This is how we think and feel and surrender our wills – every day is to be a New Day of koinonia with our dear Lord Jesus, a Day of abiding in the Vine. When we live in Christ we are better able to see peer pressure for what it is, it is the serpent asking, “Has God really said this?” It is also Jesus saying, “I Am your Good Sheperd, look to Me, hear My Voice, surrender to My care.”
The Lord willing, we’ll consider three other elements of peer pressure in the next post in this series.
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