Sunday, October 5, 2008: Christian Life

Christian Life
Acts 15: 1 – 21.

I. Introduction.

One of the things that separates the Christian faith from all other world religions is the difference between the two words “Do” and “Done.”

Most religions adopt a kind of worldview in which it is very important what you do for God. In other words, a person should live his or her life in such a way as to try to be good more often than bad. Be kind to people and animals. Don’t kill other people—even when you feel like it sometimes. Be faithful to your wife or husband. Spend a few moments in prayer every day. Hopefully, by the end of your life, all these good things will outweigh all the bad things you have done.

The Christian faith does not share this view of salvation. No. For Christians, salvation is not a matter of what we can do for God. Salvation is what God has done for us. Another way we can say this is to put it in terms of a search for God. After all, salvation is based on a proper relationship with God.

You can spend your entire life trying to do the right thing or to live a life that God will notice. Then, at the end of your life, you can still feel like you have not found God. That is because all of our efforts to search for God culminate in failure. You cannot work your way to God, no matter how good your life might be.

The Good News is that we don’t have to search for God. God is searching for us. John 3: 16 tells us, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”

God’s search for us culminated in the Incarnation. God came down to earth in the form of a human being—Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus lived a perfect and sinless life to set an example of how we should live. Jesus willingly gave his life to die on the cross. His crucifixion demonstrates the depth of God’s love and search for us. The death of Jesus is the sacrifice, the ransom, the payment for all our sins.

Salvation is not accomplished through the things we “do” for God. Salvation is accomplished by what God has “done” for us in the death of Jesus.

We don’t have to search for God. We simply have to open ourselves to God’s search for us.

This is the message of Good News and salvation Paul and Barnabas have been preaching in the book of Acts. They started out preaching this message to Jewish men and women. They told the Jews—in no uncertain terms—that Jesus is the fulfillment of all the Old Testament promises God made to Israel. God promised to send a Messiah, from the lineage of David, to be the eternal ruler over God’s people. Jesus fulfilled this promise in the least likely of ways: he gave his life as a sacrifice, a ransom, a payment for all our sins.

Some of the Jews accepted this message, but most did not. Therefore, Paul and Barnabas turned their attention to the Gentiles—men and women who were not Jews by race or religion. The Gentiles readily accepted the message of the Cross and salvation. There was a religious wildfire spreading across the Greco-Roman world. Of course, it is not easy to keep a wildfire from being noticed. Eventually, the Jerusalem Church noticed the way the Gentiles were coming to faith. So, Paul and Barnabas had to give an account to the Jerusalem Church about what was going on among the new churches.

Read Acts 15: 1 – 21.

This story falls at the center of the Book of Acts. Literally, it is the middle of the book. Symbolically, this is a turning point for the spread of the Good News about Jesus. The chapters leading up to this story focus primarily on the Jewish men and women who accepted Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel. The chapters following this story do not really mention what is going on in Jerusalem.

The Jewish Christians remained in Jerusalem. They had a kind of religious practice that we rarely see today. They followed Jesus as Lord, AND they continued to take seriously the teachings of the Old Testament.

Paul and Barnabas left Jerusalem and led a missionary movement outside of Jerusalem that literally turned the world upside down. This missionary movement took a significant turn away from what was taking place in Jerusalem. The Gentile people outside of Jerusalem did not know the Jewish Scriptures, and therefore did not know how Jesus had fulfilled God’s promises to Israel or how to live like a Jew.

It may surprise you to know that the Jewish religion of the First Century was also a missionary religion. The Jews understood themselves to be God’s chosen people. God had chosen them to tell the world about God and his offer of salvation. However, their missionary endeavors were based on adherence to the Jewish Law found in the Old Testament Scriptures.

The Jews had done a fair job of teaching and preaching their Scriptures to non-Jewish people. Jewish synagogues could be found in most major cities of the Roman Empire. As a result, many Gentiles had become proselytes to Judaism over the years. These proselytes were required to do two things. First, all men had to be circumcised. This was the outward mark that these men had become a member of the Jewish faith. Second, men and women had to submit themselves to the moral and ritual codes of the Law. They had to adopt the dietary rules as well as strictly maintain the ethical requirements of the Old Testament.

Since the Jewish Christians of Jerusalem were already familiar with doing missionary work and requiring new believers to adhere to the Jewish practices, they assumed new Christians would also have to go through similar steps. However, Paul and Barnabas had not preached about these kinds of practices. They simply preached about Jesus. And so began the conflict.

In simple terms, there were two opposite views of how Gentiles could become Christians. On one hand, Paul and Barnabas preached about Jesus. On the other hand, the Jerusalem Church preached Jesus and the practice of Jewish faith. In their view, a person had to clean up his or her life first by becoming a Jew. THEN, the person could accept Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish expectation.

Fortunately for Paul, he never had to defend himself. (That is the best way to win a debate or argument. Let someone else defend your side.) Peter spoke up and reminded the Jerusalem Church about the time God told him to preach to a Gentile soldier named Cornelius. The church should remember the story Pater is talking about, because they made him explain his actions. At the time, he only had one explanation: God told him to do it. After Peter shared the Good News with Cornelius, Cornelius and his entire family placed their lives in Jesus’ hands. They believed the message of salvation. Then, God confirmed their decision by giving them the Holy Spirit. It was obviously genuine faith, because God only gives his Spirit to those who place their faith in Jesus.


II. God Purified Their Hearts by Faith.

Peter’s testimony about Cornelius’ faith is significant, because he blames all this on God. And Peter was right. God was obviously involved in the spread of the Gospel. God told Peter to preach to non-Jewish people, and God confirmed this before Peter’s eyes by giving the Holy Spirit to Cornelius and his family.

Notice what Peter said in verse 9: “He (God) made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith.”

It was a big step for Peter to move outside the Jewish tradition to extend the message of salvation to Cornelius. The first lesson he learned was that God loves Jews and non-Jews alike. In God’s eyes, there was no distinction between Jews and non-Jews.

The second lesson Peter learned was that salvation is not about what we can “do” for God. Salvation is what God has “done” for us.

If salvation really was about what we can “do” for God, then Cornelius would have been required to do some purification first. Since Cornelius was not a Jew, he was considered unclean by Jewish standards. Since Cornelius was a Roman soldier, he was considered an enemy of God’s people.

God did not require Cornelius to “do” anything to be saved. God did all the purification Cornelius needed.

This is important for us today. We need to remember that God has called us to share the message of salvation with people who do not live like we live. We should never expect people to “clean up their lives” before coming to church. That is what God does. God accepts anyone who has faith, exactly like we are right now. Then, God begins the work of purifying our hearts.



III. God Showed that He Accepted Them by Giving the Holy Spirit.

Now, look at what Peter said in verse 8: “God, who knows the heart showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us.”

I think Peter got ahead of himself, because he started his argument with his conclusion. The Holy Spirit was confirmation that God accepted the faith of Cornelius and his family. BUT, the Holy Spirit did not come to Cornelius until after he placed his faith in Jesus.

This is the way God does the work of purification in our lives. On one hand, God does not expect us to “clean up our lives” before we have faith in Jesus. On the other hand, once God gives his Holy Spirit to us something changes in our lives. God accepts us the way we are. But God does not leave us the way we were. He changes us. He purifies us.



IV. We Should Not Make It Difficult for Gentiles who Are Turning to God.

The second person to speak in the church council was James the brother of Jesus. James was more than likely a Jewish Christian. He was not a disciple of Jesus during Jesus’ earthly life and ministry. But, James became a believer after the Resurrection. History tells us that James never left Jerusalem. He was an important figure in the Jerusalem church, but he was never a missionary. He continued to follow the practices of the Jewish faith while believing that Jesus was the promised Messiah.

James’ words in verses 19 – 20 are interesting: “It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead, we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood.”

On first glance, it seems that James is suggesting additional requirements for the new Gentile Christians. His suggestions come directly from Leviticus 17 – 18. These were God’s “minimal standards” for people living within the covenant with God. Since these suggestions come from the Old Testament, they sound like additional requirements.

However, I like to think of them differently. I interpret James’ suggestion to mean something like this: “Don’t live like the rest of the world.” The rest of the world constantly faced questions about idolatry and sexual morality. Christians should live by a standard different from the rest of the world.


V. Conclusion.

When we take Peter’s story and James’ suggestion together we get something like what Martin Luther taught about righteousness. A biblical understanding of righteousness does not mean that we ought to work our way to salvation by the way we live our lives. No. Biblical righteousness is basically being in a right relationship with God. A right relationship with God is not something we can accomplish for ourselves. It is something God offers us by Grace, through faith in Jesus.

One of Luther’s important writings was entitled “Two Kinds of Righteousness.” He described the first kind of righteousness as “Alien Righteousness.” It does not come from inside of us. It is alien, or foreign to us. In Peter’s words, God purifies our hearts through faith.

The second kind of righteousness is “Proper Righteousness.” This is the kind of clean living that we do AFTER we come to faith in Jesus. In other words, we respond to God’s Grace by living a new kind of life—a life that is different from the world around us. This life is only possible when the Holy Spirit is living within us.

This is the difference between “do” and “done.” God does not ask us to “do” anything to clean up our lives and achieve our own salvation. God purifies our hearts through faith in what he has already “done” for us in the death of Jesus. But, watch out. Once you give your life to Jesus in faith…The Holy Spirit will change your life to live by a different standard.