Tuesday, July 13, 2021
So why are you now trying to out-god God, loading these new believers down with rules that crushed our ancestors and crushed us, too? Don’t we believe that we are saved because the Master Jesus amazingly and out of sheer generosity moved to save us just as he did those from beyond our nation? So what are we arguing about? Acts 15:10-11 The Message
The Perfect Fulfillment of the Law
The first Jews that were converted to Christianity had come from a culture of rules. They were used to having to follow rules to measure up. They were not completely used to this concept of grace and when a new group of Gentile converts joined the community of believers, they decided they needed to follow some rules to earn God’s grace. It was very difficult for some Jewish Christians to accept that Gentiles could be brought into the church as equal members without first coming through the Law of Moses. They told the new Gentile believers that they could become Christians by submitting to some Jewish rituals, including circumcision. They were not even from the area - they came all the way from Judea to Antioch to get in their business and tell them how they could be saved. They told the members of this fellowship that Paul and Barnabas were wrong for telling them they could be saved by grace. They were trying to destroy the whole concept of "faith, not works" salvation. They believed their way was the only way, even though these rules had crushed their ancestors and them too.
These actions by the Jews caused such a problem in the fellowship that Paul and Barnabas left and went to Jerusalem to talk to the elders and apostles. Paul reminded them of how he was chosen by God to preach His good news, and many had believed and were saved. This faith-based salvation the God gives had already resulted in a harvest of new believers.
I love The Message version above because I think we might say something like that if it happened today. God had given the Gentile believers the Holy Spirit just as He had the Jewish believers and it was evident in so many ways that Paul and Barnabas were doing what God wanted them to do. God wanted His message of "faith not works" salvation spread and now the Jews were trying to undo what they had done. Paul asks them – "Why are you trying to tell them they have to do something that we couldn’t even do?" Generations had been crushed by the law and now Jesus’ sacrifice had fulfilled the requirement they never could, and bought their salvation.
I bet most of the men listening to Peter argue his case were now dumbfounded, slack-jawed with the realization that he’d just nailed them to the wall with his observation: the weight of the law almost broke your back, so why in the world are you so determined to strap it on
someone else’s shoulders? – Lisa Harper
It is true that there are certainly some “rules” to follow as a Christian, but they are not really rules as much as changes that occur naturally when we have a relationship with Jesus Christ. We can never do enough to earn the salvation that God gives us because He loves us. He loved us when we didn’t deserve it. Jesus is the only one who could bridge the gap between us and God. We never could and never will be able to. Perfection is required and we will never attain perfection. But Jesus was perfection in every way. He lived a perfect sinless life, and shed His perfect blood to make a perfect sacrifice for us.
