"we Can't Save Ourselves"

“We Can’t Save Ourselves”

Genesis 17:1-2, 9-15

Acts 15:1-21

Good Christian people, with the best of intentions, have been having disagreements from the very beginning.

Sometimes, a dispute can lead to new insight and understanding.

It happens in marriage.

Most of us have heard marriage counselors say that it is normal and even healthy for married people to have disagreements and maybe even arguments from time to time.

While these things are no fun and we don’t want to go through them, a disagreement, when it is honestly processed, can lead to greater clarity, and a stronger bond between two people who love one another.

And it’s also been said that it’s a good thing when people can agree to disagree and still be friends.

Some of my favorite people in the world, some of the people I love the most and respect the most think very differently than I do on all kinds of issues.

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church had a good rule of thumb.

He said, “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things charity.”

The church fight that happened in Acts 15 was over something essential.

It had to do with the nature of salvation.

There was a certain group of people, “believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees” who had heard a rumor that individuals were being baptized and welcomed into the Church without being circumcised.

This group believed that a person cannot be saved unless they are circumcised.

In other words, they believed that you cannot be a Christian unless you are a Jew.

If you don’t accept the law, Christ will not accept you.

It’s easy to demonize these Pharisaic Christians, but truth be told, as we read in Genesis, God’s Covenant with God’s people was based on circumcision.

It had always been this way.

And Christianity began as a Jewish sect.

Jesus was a circumcised Jew.

The first male disciples were circumcised Jews and the first people who made up the church were Jewish converts—all circumcised, except for the women of course.

For all their lives their very identity was framed by the rite of circumcision and the Mosaic Law, both of which were instituted by God.

Another thing is that the early Church didn’t have a New Testament to lean on as part of their Scriptures.

The early Church was the New Testament.

To make a long story short, these early leaders inherited a long-standing and deeply held religious system, and they had to discern, how this Old Testament system related to Christ’s death, Resurrection, and Ascension.

These were huge decisions.

Now, to make things even more complicated, something strange was happening.

Uncircumcised folks started to receive the message of Jesus Christ and they were being saved right and left.

What were the disciples to do about this?

What were the church leaders to do?

Did they need to force these uncircumcised male Christians to go under the knife to make their salvation legitimate, or was the grace of God in Christ enough for their salvation?

The Christian Pharisees believed in grace as did the other Jewish Christians.

They had accepted God’s grace in Christ.

But they were so bound to the Law that they were, understandably, confusing the non-essentials with the essentials.

And in doing so, they were making life more difficult for not only the Gentile Christians but for the Holy Spirit as well.

To figure out what to do, the church called a meeting--the Council at Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was the early Church headquarters where James, the brother of Jesus was the leader.

“The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses,” argued the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees.

The apostles and elders met to consider this huge question that had many implications for the future of the Church.

If what these Pharisaic Christians were saying is true, then the grace of God in Christ is not enough for salvation.

You have to add the law of Moses.

Finally, the Holy Spirit, working through Peter nudged him to stand up and address the group.

And what he said, was essentially this: “We believe that we are saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Period.

If we are going to rely on circumcision to save us then we are in big trouble.”

It’s a difficult thing to trust grace, sometimes.

I know I am continually trying to add rules and regulations to my life to justify my salvation or make it more secure.

I sometimes have a hard time believing that God loves me and accepts me, the sinner that I am.

My mind tells me, if I do this or don’t do this I might lose my salvation.

Do you ever do that?