We have now reached the very center of the book of Acts, not only in the obvious sense that with 28 chapters, we are halfway through, but also in the sense that this is the turning-point chapter of the book. The Jerusalem council, which we read about today, took place in approximately 49 AD, and was a critical turning point experience in the life of the early church. A little background:
• There is a recurring theme in the OT that Gentiles will share in the promises of God to Israel (much as Jews sometimes didn’t want to acknowledge it).
• Peter announced this in his Pentecost sermon (Acts 2).
• But the conviction that went along with this, on the part of the Jewish people, was that the Jews would remain God’s appointed agent for administering God’s blessings. In other words, Gentiles who came to God would have to come through Judaism first, was the belief.
• Jewish Christians at Jerusalem saw Christ as being the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises of God, but didn’t see any need to alter their understanding of themselves as being the “gateway to God”.
• Then, Paul and Barnabas come on the scene, and during their first missionary journey, which we’ve just finished studying, they take the gospel message directly to Gentiles, people who’ve had no prior connection to Judaism—and these people respond in faith!
Ernst Haenchen writes, this “episode…rounds off and justifies the past developments, and makes those to come intrinsically possible.” Before we get there, let’s take time to pray.
Saw it on a church sign this week: you’ve got to be baptized in water to be right with God. Now, I believe in baptism! I think it’s important, quite important. But do I have to get wet to get right? Got my dander up enough to title my sermon as I did: “The Salvation Equation”, or “Grace Plus Faith Plus Nothing!”
Grace is a difficult concept to really wrap our minds around, in part because so much of our society does not, indeed cannot, operate by grace. When I go to Kroger or Publix, I get what I pay for. When I work a job, I receive a wage for the work I do. These things aren’t “grace”; their rewards given in exchange for something that I do, or pay. Sometimes our lives are invaded by grace: we receive something which we did not in any way earn; sometimes we give things to others that they’ve not earned. But for the most part, we live in a world of “law”. God, however, doesn’t work that way, and He so doesn’t work that way that we are startled by it if we take the time to really consider grace.
The question being addressed in today’s text is, how did God intend for Gentiles to be incorporated into the body of Christ? Was “grace by faith alone” enough, or did some elements of Jewish law-keeping have to be added to the equation?
I. Two Incompatible Paths to Salvation:
:1-5 - Law or Grace
Verse 1 speaks of “some men”. “Judaizers” is the name that these folks came to be known by, for obvious reasons: their desire was to make people Jews first, prior to salvation. We said a couple of chapters back that John Mark had gone with Paul and Barnabas on their missionary journey, but turned back partway through to head back to Jerusalem. Had his reasons for leaving been, in part, because he disagreed with Paul’s direct approach to Gentiles? It’s If that’s the case, we can imagine him reporting his deep reservations to the Jerusalem church. Perhaps this was what incited these Judaizers to begin their legalistic work. In I Thessalonians 2, though, Paul demonstrates his understanding that behind the work of these Judaizers were unbelieving Jews. These Judaizers were professing Christians who wanted to be able to say to their unbelieving Jewish friends that Gentiles who came to Christ were being transferred over to the cause of Jews, because there was a widening cultural rift between the two. “Hey, these Gentiles who’ve become Christians are on our side now as Jews”, was the basic idea. In Galatians 6, Paul says that these Judaizers were trying to make a good show in the flesh, in order to avoid being persecuted by their non-believing Jewish friends.
Some in the Jerusalem church were certain that the need for the ritual of circumcision applied not only to Jews, but to Gentile converts to Christian faith, and if Paul and Barnabas weren’t going to insist upon this, some men from the Jerusalem church saw it as their duty to do so, and took it upon themselves, without the sanction of the church, to go to Antioch to set the situation right.
We read in Galatians that Peter was in residence at Antioch when these men came, and he made the terrible error of withdrawing from table fellowship with Gentile brothers, in an attempt to appease these Judaizers. Pious Jews understood the act of eating together with other people as signifying far more than just chowing down and satisfying physical appetites; when a Jew shared a meal with another person, it meant a close, unbroken fellowship with that person. The Gentile believers would eat together—soup and salad was the menu, I’m pretty sure—but when these Jews came, they not only taught that the Gentiles weren’t in the Kingdom, because they hadn’t been circumcised, but they also refused to eat with them as brothers in Christ. What devastating effects it would have on the fledgling church if there were to exist a massive cleavage between Jewish believers in Jesus and Gentile ones! This is why Paul says, in Galatians 2:11, that he got right in Peter’s face about his sin (and Peter, acknowledging his sin, backed down).
And the problem didn’t stop in Antioch; these Judaizers soon moved on to the churches of South Galatia that Paul and Barnabas had founded through their preaching. Paul addresses this clearly, even radically, in the book of Galatians, because he knew that left unchecked, the spread of this destructive teaching would cripple or kill the Christian movement.
:2 – Once again, we see the role of the local church appointing Paul and Barnabas to lead a delegation of representatives to plead their case to the “mother church” in Jerusalem. We can understand their concern: “are we really Christians?” There was concern on the part of the Jerusalem church as well: “is this new approach orthodox, or is it a dangerous, heretical departure from the truth?” And there was divided opinion within the church in Jerusalem as to the answer to the question.
:3-5 – On the way to Jerusalem, Paul and Barnabas made some stops in Samaria and Phoenicia, and their news of Gentile conversion was received well, but the church in Jerusalem gave them a much more reserved reception. And thus, when they gave their report, there were some who objected, Pharisees who’d become followers of Christ, but who by nature of their conservative commitment to the Scriptures, couldn’t wrap their minds around this whole thing. They looked at Old Testament prophets like Isaiah, who foretold that in the last days, Gentiles would flow to the house of the Lord. Were not the Gentiles now flowing away from the house of the Lord, if they weren’t compelled to follow the Law? It was a fair question, we should admit, and if we cannot sympathize with their concerns for doctrinal orthodoxy, we’re probably not being honest. We look at contemporary heresies today that have crept into the evangelical church in various ways and to various degrees, and our fundamental disposition ought to be to weigh carefully the things that are being taught, to see whether they stack up with Scripture. While there were some whose motives were undoubtedly not pure, the concern itself for doctrinal truth was certainly admirable. There were undoubtedly some in the Jerusalem church who feared that this movement might get out of hand; there would soon be more Gentile converts than Jews, and what then? Would the entire movement devolve from grace into lawlessness? Would freedom in Christ be understood to be freedom to live in a morally careless way? Paul understood this concern; read the book of I Corinthians, or read Romans 6, to see clear evidence of this.
But when it comes down to it, it’s either law or grace; the two cannot be mixed. If we attempt to mix in our obedience to rules, in order that God might see our good works and save us, then it’s no longer God’s grace that is in operation, but rather God is obliged to save us. We do enough, we work hard enough to please God, and then God “helps those who help themselves.” Amazing: the majority of Americans believe that “God helps those who help themselves” is found in the Bible, but it’s not; it’s found in Ben Franklin and, today, Joel Osteen…but not in the Bible! Grace means God helps those who cannot help themselves! There is no amount of obedience that I can render to God to make up for the wrong I’ve committed against Him.
II. Two Indispensable Parts to Salvation:
:6-11 - Grace and Faith
The debate began, and no doubt Paul and Barnabas told their stories, while some from the Jerusalem church presented their side. But the Bible says Peter came to the rescue. Remember that it had been Peter, and not Paul, who had had the groundbreaking experience of sharing the gospel of Christ directly with the household of Cornelius, had seen them experience the coming of the Holy Spirit, had baptized them as believers without any attempt at converting them to Judaism, of circumcising the men, of compelling them to submit to the Law of Moses. If God had sent His Holy Spirit into the hearts and lives of the household of Cornelius, and no submission to Old Testament law was a requirement, then how in the world could the Jerusalem church come back now, almost ten years later, and add on requirements that God Himself hadn’t seen as necessary? We must appreciate Peter’s humility, as well as his commitment to God and to the truth, in coming to the defense of Paul on this issue, since Paul had rebuked Peter to his face for his sin in ceasing to fellowship with Gentiles when the Judaizers came.
Notice the formula, the salvation equation: Peter says that it is “by faith” that the Holy Spirit has “cleansed the hearts” of both Jews and Gentiles (:9). Then, in verse 11, he says that it is “through the grace of the Lord Jesus” that both Jews and Gentiles are saved. Beautiful. Perfect. The salvation equation: God’s grace, meeting with our faith. Grace, God’s unmerited favor that looks at a sinful person like me, and a sinner like you, and says, “come on, take a seat at the banquet table. Let me get those stinking rags off you; I’ve got fresh, clean, shining-white clothes for you to wear. You’re not a filthy beggar, a miserable wretch, an outcast or a bum; you’re now My child. And you’re welcome in My house anytime.” Donald Trump might welcome me to dine with him, maybe once, if I am useful to him, if I’m a business associate from whom he can gain something, but he’s not in the habit of taking homeless folks in off the street and making them his own children, because Mr. Trump operates on the principle of works, but God operates on the principle of grace.
Peter says that even the Jews themselves had terrible difficulty with keeping the minute requirements of the law of Moses, and the testimony of Paul in Philippians was that he was as observant a Jew as there was, that he did everything in his power to keep the law, but that it brought him no peace; it offered him no comfort; he was restless in his attempts at legal obedience. Martin Luther found the same thing, that years of trying to keep all of the laws of God—and inevitably failing—left him fearful and dissatisfied, half-crazy, almost. Then, he found in searching the Scriptures that all that he’d been taught was wrong, that it wasn’t the keeping of rules to establish his own worthiness that would make him right with God, but rather his faith in the finished work of Christ. We are the theological heirs of the movement he unintentionally started, the Protestant Reformation. And it all turned on this: are we right with God by virtue of our own works, or by virtue of God’s grace met with our faith? Peter and his fellow disciples had learned that the words of Christ were true: the “yoke” of Christ was an easy one (Matthew 11:29-ff.), whereas the yoke of the law was life-sapping. The central theme of what Peter said was that God had made no distinction between Gentiles and Jews. And this was revolutionary to the hearers!
III. Two Compelling Witnesses for Salvation: :12-18 - Apostles &Prophets
Well, the words of ole Pete shut their mouths, and then Paul and Barnabas, having been supported so clearly and so publicly by Peter, boldly told of the miraculous signs and wonders that God had used to confirm their ministry. It wasn’t bragging of what they’d done, but a report that gave to God the glory due His name.
:13-14 – Here’s the clincher: James, the half-brother of Jesus (not of the famous “James and John”) had become the leader of the Jerusalem church, presiding over this important meeting. Here was a man with the respect of all, Christians and non-believing Jews alike, a scrupulous observer of the law of Moses, respected more for the seriousness of his faith even than for his blood relation to Jesus. The Judaizers no doubt would have considered him one of theirs. But his words threw them for a loop: He uses Peter’s Hebrew name, “Simeon”, and says, essentially, that he believes that the Gentiles are now “a people for God’s name”, a designation previously reserved for Jews alone. We can see in our minds’ eye the Judaizers beginning to squirm in their seats, as if Hillary Clinton, say, had suddenly cast her lot with Republicans!
“God first visited the Gentiles, to take from them a people for his name” – These words may not seem unusual to us, or stand out, but when we look at this more deeply, we understand that James is using language to speak of Gentiles that had been previously reserved for Jews. “People for God’s name”? Jews, of course! But now, “Gentiles”!
:15-17 – He starts quoting Scripture, marshalling Old Testament prophets Isaiah and Amos to make the central point that these non-Jews, by virtue of God’s grace and their faith, represented the fulfillment of God’s Word that the Gentiles would one day be called by His name, Gentiles as Gentiles, retaining their own identity as Gentiles without having to come through the door of Judaism first.
Here, for James, it became clear, because there was a correspondence between the Old Testament scriptures and the New Testament experience, between the words of the prophets and the witness of the apostles. God was bringing it all together now before their eyes.
IV. Two-Way Street of Fellowship:
:19-21 - Jews & Gentiles, Acting in Love
For James, this represented a clear proclamation of the salvation equation, and while he didn’t understand all that God was doing, he nonetheless was unwilling to stand in God’s way, even if it upset his apple cart and shifted his paradigms. If it was God’s grace that saved Jews when met with their response of faith, it must be God’s grace that saved believing Gentiles as well.
There was still the matter, though, of fellowship between Jews and Gentiles. Some look at these verses (:20-21), and conclude that James is backing off the gospel of grace, and adding a few elements of law-keeping into the equation, but nothing of the sort is true. The issues that James introduce are more sociological than theological in nature, concessions asked for the sake of harmony and unity within the church. There were customs held by the Gentiles that were offensive to the max to pious Jewish believers, ranging from differences of a moral nature to differences of a cultural one. Three of the four issues mentioned involved things that Gentiles felt freedom to eat, but that Jews found detestable. The other is a moral issue, sexual immorality, and thus is different, but the likelihood is that James and the Jerusalem church felt it important to mention this because of the prevalence of blatant sexual immorality in certain Gentile cultures, or possibly because many Gentiles allowed intermarriage to closer blood relatives than did Jews. Since there are Jewish synagogues in most of these Gentile communities, James says, it’s reasonable that the scruples of Jewish believers be respected, even if it means limiting, in some cases, the freedom that these Gentiles might otherwise have in Christ.
This isn’t surprising; Paul takes exactly the same tack elsewhere in his epistles, arguing that the “strong” in Christ must be willing to forego some of their freedom in Christ in order to bear with the weakness of the “weak”. It’s interesting that having a bond in Christ, while essential for Christian fellowship, must be attended by some mutual understanding on the part of everyone concerned. We were privileged to host our Haitian friends for several years in this building, but the differences in culture between Haitian and middle-class American proved challenging on occasion, and we had to work through some of those cultural differences and expectations. The differences between Haitian culture and American culture pale in comparison to the differences between the cultural mores of pious Jews and pagan Gentiles, and the words of James and the Jerusalem church were designed to smooth relations between these two radically diverse branches of Christian faith.
V. Two Heralds of Salvation:
:22-29 - Judas and Silas
A letter is drafted, and this letter makes it clear how the leaders of the church at Jerusalem feel: the address says it all, calling them “brothers who are of the Gentiles”. The letter, accompanied not only by Paul and Barnabas, but also by men named Judas and Silas, representatives of the Jerusalem church, reiterates the decision of the Jerusalem Council. It says that the men who had come attempting to make these Gentiles into Jews did not have the authorization of the church at Jerusalem that they had claimed. Though it doesn’t come out and say, “you guys are Christians without having to be circumcised and obey the law of Moses”, it doesn’t have to. The intent is very clear!
And then the words about the several moral concerns are given, preceded by the phrase that “it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us”. This emphasizes the important role of God the Holy Spirit in working in and through us, filling us with wisdom and power.
VI. Two Results of their Visit:
:30-35 - Encouragement and Strength
The leaders of the Jerusalem church didn’t just send a letter, as valuable as that would have been, but the living presence of their representatives, who furthered strengthened the force of the letter in the lives of these Gentile believers.
Points to Ponder
Many issues that could be raised by today’s text, but let’s focus in on two at the very center:
1. Maintaining the truth of the gospel is worth the fight.
“In all things, charity” is part of our ethos as a church. The Judaizers, false teachers that they were, were allowed to make their points, and we always speak the truth in love, but we always speak the truth, because truth is worth defending, the gospel is worth battling for. We call ourselves “Bible-Centered”, and so we must be; the Bible must define our understanding of the gospel, and the gospel message is one of grace.
We have “religious leaders” today, even those who claim to be “Christian”, who are doing their dead-level best to deny the gospel. Here are just a couple of the results of a 1998 survey done by researcher Jeffrey Haddon, a poll taken of over 7000 Protestant pastors. When asked, “do you doubt the virgin birth of Jesus Christ”, the “yes” responses were:
• Lutherans – 19%
• American Baptists (not Southern) – 34%
• Episcopalians – 44%
• Presbyterians – 49%
• Methodists – 60%
When the issue was the bodily resurrection of Christ, I guess you could say the results were a little better:
• Lutherans – 13%
• Presbyterians – 30%
• American Baptists – 33%
• Episcopalians – 35%
• Methodists – 51%
Over half our Methodist clergy friends doubt the virgin birth and bodily resurrection of Jesus. You’d better believe that truth is worth fighting for! Listen to the words of the former Episcopal Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, John Shelby Spong:
"Every image of God is mythological," he said. The resurrection and virgin birth of Jesus did not literally happen, but were just "interpreted" that way. Likewise, the disciple Judas, and Jesus’ earthly father, Joseph, were fictional characters whom the early church created. Spong called the Ten Commandments "immoral". Spong tells us that it us wrong for Christians to try to convert Muslims or Buddhists to the Christian faith. He bluntly states, "The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed. The words so central to Christian self-understanding, like "Jesus died for my sins," or "Jesus paid the price of sin on the cross of Calvary," or "I have been saved by the blood of Christ,"…are nothing short of ludicrous when we recognize what they mean.”
And this fellow still wants to call himself by the title “Christian”! No, truth matters, and as the Jerusalem Council demonstrates, getting the gospel right is worth the fight.
2. Grace is radical, but radically true.
There have always been people who have fought against grace. Grace is radical. The preaching of the cross is offensive, according to Paul in Galatians 5. We might even use the word “scandalous”, in that the preaching of salvation by God’s grace, through faith alone in Christ and His work on the cross, absent any need whatever to do anything whatever, was a scandal. And this is the scandalous truth: because God shows His amazing grace toward you, it does not matter what you have done with your life, He offers forgiveness, complete, total, no-strings-attached forgiveness, right now. You don’t have to do one thing, except trust Him to forgive you. You can walk in here with your life a total and absolute wreck, and walk out fully forgiven by God. How? Because Jesus, when He died on the cross in your place, took all your sin on Himself. He paid the whole price for it, lock, stock, and barrel. Not only is there nothing else you should do, there’s nothing else you can do. You say to God, “I believe that Jesus is God, Who came and died on the cross to pay the price for my sin. I place my faith, my trust in Jesus alone. I ask Jesus to forgive my sin, all the stuff I’ve done in my whole life that is wrong, and all I will do. Jesus, save me!” And He will! And that’s radical.
The salvation equation is this: God’s grace, plus my faith, plus nothing.
Table Talk
• Why do we so naturally rebel against the idea that God’s forgiveness comes through grace?
• Do we sometimes, even though we understand that salvation is by grace, sometimes try to live as Christians by rule-keeping? How does this demonstrate itself? And how can we remind ourselves that we are not only saved by God’s grace, but that we live by it as well?
