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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text for this morning comes from the Acts reading regarding the first council in Jerusalem. You may be seated.
So two weeks ago, we talked about a great pillar of faith in the Old Testament. Her name was Ruth, if you remember. Ruth. Last week we talked about another great pillar in the Old Testament. His name was Jacob. This morning it is very fitting to continue that discussion about really a man who stood not in the Old Testament, but in the transition between the Old and New Testament, as it were. It is James, the Lord’s brother.
Now there is no way of knowing whether James was born of Mary after Jesus was born or if James was from Joseph’s first wife. Either way, James was, as the text said in the works of James in the Gospel, he is the brother of our Lord. He was the first bishop of Jerusalem, meaning he was the first head of the church in the region surrounding and in Jerusalem. And as I said, he also wrote the epistle in the New Testament.
But James played a very important and critical role in resolving the first major church conflict that occurred in the early Christian church. This conflict came to a head and at this council around the year 50 AD. So less than 20 years after Christ had ascended into heaven did this conflict come to its head and was addressed in Jerusalem.
And the idea behind what James proposes is to bring about unity. Unity not only in practice, but also in confession. Confession meaning the scriptural truths about who Jesus is and what He did for us. Grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, found only in Scripture alone. The practice, how does that get practiced out in church life? This practice came to be a problem.
And here’s why. Throughout all the Old Testament, there are always examples of Gentiles who have been brought into the church. But it is in the New Testament era when the Gentiles now begin to outnumber the Jews who are Christians. So you have Gentile Christians and Jewish Christians, and they’re two different cultures. The Jewish Christians had the history and the tradition of the Old Testament as a part and fiber of their culture. The Gentile Christians did not. They had paganism and hedonism as part and parcel of their culture.
Just like the present-day unchurched people in this city and this state and country. We are not a Christian society. Christianity is probably the predominant religion in this country, but it is not practiced by the majority of the people. Therefore, the majority of the people who do not practice it regularly, though they may say they are Christian or though they may deny it, they are a lot like these Gentile Christians.
Now, where this came to be ahead, the city of Antioch was where Paul and Barnabas had been preaching. And the city of Antioch was predominantly a Gentile congregation, whereas where James was the bishop in Jerusalem, the majority of the congregations in and around Jerusalem were predominantly Jewish Christians. So Paul and Barnabas, two apostles who had been proclaiming Jesus all throughout other areas besides Antioch, were on their way back to Jerusalem, and in Antioch they came upon a problem.
The problem in Antioch was that the Jews who were Christians would not receive a Gentile into their congregation unless that Gentile underwent circumcision. They made circumcision a law to be saved. Now you know Paul got on to this when he specially writes to the Galatians. When Paul and Barnabas come down to Jerusalem to make their proclamation to the people of… well, who were the people of this council? The apostles, all the pastors or elders, lay leadership.
When Paul and Barnabas come to this council, they do not publicly denigrate them before the council. They do not moan and groan and gripe and gritch about the Judaizers in Antioch. They had the authority to do so because they were apostles, but they chose to take the high road out of love, not out of rightness or wrongness. Out of love did they serve the church in their proclamation.
So when they stand before the council, at which they could lay before the council the horrible things done by these Antiochian Christians, they don’t. All they do is talk about what God has done in and among the people of the Gentiles. In the congregation of Antioch and elsewhere. In fact, if you read the 15th chapter, Peter also begins and he talks about his whole experience with Cornelius. You know, the one about this window here, where he had the dream and God makes it very clear to him that there is nothing that is unclean any longer. Right?
And Peter goes to a Gentile, proclaims the truth to the Gentile Cornelius, and he and his whole household are baptized and become a part of the church. A Roman of all people. Now, what was the problem? As I said, one of the problems was, in Antioch, the Jewish Christians were trying to make it law—in fact, they did—rather than trying to say that no Gentile could come into the church and be saved unless he was circumcised.
They also added, stop eating unkosher meat, meaning meat that still had blood in it when it died, like strangled, or meat that was offered to pagan sacrifices. So they had new rules that were never to be rules upon which you could be saved. Now let’s stop for a moment and think about this. Nowhere in the Old Testament did God ever make it a requirement for salvation. For one to eat kosher meat and for one to be circumcised. You will not find it anywhere.
In fact, Abraham is credited as having righteousness because of faith. It was after he was saved by grace through faith that God said, “Be circumcised, Abraham.” But it was not a requirement for Abraham’s salvation to be circumcised. Secondly, you could eat unkosher meat. It just would defile you from going into the temple or participating in temple worship or tabernacle worship. It did not keep you out of heaven.
But what had happened over time? That part of the Jewish culture began to be a part of God’s Word when it never was meant to be. Here is this first major council to discuss this issue. We’ve got two different cultures coming together. And we’ve got to remember who James is. James is a Jew. And James politically has much to win or to lose by how he handles this. Because as a Jew, he is the bishop of a majorly Jewish region filled with mostly Jewish Christians.
How he handles this could determine what happens to the church in and around Jerusalem. Right? What motivates him to do what he does? Well, before we get there, Paul, later on when he writes to the Ephesians, within ten years of this event, Paul writes to Ephesians and comes down very clearly that there is only one faith. He says there’s only one body or one church. There was only one Holy Spirit. There was only one hope of the resurrection. There was only one Lord Jesus Christ.
There was only one faith or truth, not two or multiple truths. There was only one baptism, not multiple baptisms. There is only one God and Father of us all who is over all, through all, and in all. Paul makes that very clear. That’s a guiding principle to unity. But do you know what Paul said right before this? This is important.
What Paul said right before that, right before he lays that foundation of unity, he says this:
“Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace.”
When you were growing up, your father and your mother handled conflict in your house many and various ways. Sometimes your mother and father chose to ignore it and they should have addressed it. And you and I know we got away with stuff we ought not to have gotten away with. Many times they came down with authoritarian, dictatorial-type management, and many times that was far over the top, and they should not have gone so harsh and so mean.
And many times they did it properly, and you respect them for it. And then maybe you were given the gift of children, and you know in your own children, many times you have not dealt with something and addressed it in a manner you should and let it go, and it got worse. Sometimes you have ignored it in wisdom and it got better. Sometimes you came down harshly and it was the right thing to do. And other times you came down harshly and crushed their spirit and they never forgot it.
Just like I haven’t forgotten the time I was crushed, you haven’t either. And though we may grow older, we will remember those things, unfortunately. What is the motivation for resolving conflict? It’s the motivation to determine who’s right and who’s wrong. Because if that’s all it is, that’s not a relationship. There is no relationship in right and wrongness.
Your parent who parented you and your love for them and they for you is what drove you to bring reconciliation. Out of love, which is what Paul said to the Ephesians, which is how James handles this situation in the early church. Love is his motivation. Not out of rightness or wrongness. Love. It’s a risk, isn’t it? It’s a risk to let love be the motivator as to reconciliation and how you handle it.
I can tell you in the military, UCMJ suffers no fools. It’s a harsher form of law than what you will see in this civil court of America. And how the military is run is authoritatively and dictatorial in many ways. It’s a risk. And is there unity of practice and confession? Absolutely. Is it sincere confession? No. Is it sincerity as to why they practice it? No. But is there unity? Yes, of course. Because if not, then there’s the UCMJ to fix it.
That’s one way of creating unity, isn’t it? The other way of creating unity is where the least common denominator becomes what unifies you. You’ve seen that in marriages and in families. It’s not love; it’s habit. It’s not wanting to help the other person grow and that other person helping you grow; it’s cohabitating, making it work. Sometimes that is as good as it gets.
So go back to Paul and Barnabas. When they come before the council and they have the opportunity to slam and break the eighth commandment of slandering the Christians in Antioch, they choose not to, and offense is spared. Then James comes into the scene. And James says this. He gives a recommendation. Look at the text. A recommendation.
He does not mandate a law. He does not make canon law. He does not do anything that says, “Thou shalt” or “thus saith the Lord” in this matter. He gives them recommendations out of love. Read the whole 15th chapter. The first recommendation is to the Jews: stop making circumcision necessary for salvation. And James, in his proclamation in this morning’s lesson, talks about Jews and Gentiles the same.
Jews aren’t hyper-Christians and better than Gentiles. Gentiles aren’t second-rate Christians because they don’t have the Jewish culture. They are both the same. The other recommendation James gives to the Gentiles is this: though God declared all meat to be clean when God spoke to Peter, for the sake of your brothers who are Jews, don’t eat unkosher meat. Love them enough not to eat unkosher meat.
Now, the sexual immorality, that’s pretty obvious, right? Because the culture of the Gentile was hedonistic. A lot like our own culture in which you and I live and with the people with whom you and I interact.
Now here’s the interesting thought. Step back from this a moment. The first major church conflict. In a matter of decades, this conflict becomes a moot point. The Jewish culture and its traditions begin to fade as more and more Gentiles come into the church. The younger Jews who are Christians, or basically who grew up in the church as Christians, begin to realize that the laws of their fathers and grandfathers or traditions need not be continued.
Meat comes up in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, remember? And it’s all about what does benefit your brother and what does not benefit your brother? But then that becomes a moot point as well. Because you and I eat a lot of unkosher meat. So the point being, this is what James gave as wisdom for the sake of bringing unity in practice and confession, not out of rightness and wrongness, not out of legalism and thus saith the Lord, but out of love for their brother.
Now granted, we do not know, but there probably were some Jews who said, “This is not my church, I’m out of here,” and they left. And there were some Gentiles who, having had their feelings hurt or their misunderstanding of this whole Christianity, walked away from the church too.
What’s the motivation for reconciliation? Is it to prove who’s right and who’s wrong? Keeping score doesn’t bless your marriage, does it? Keeping score doesn’t affirm you as your son, as the son or daughter of your parent. And keeping score does not affirm your child in their sonship or their daughtership. Grace and forgiveness does, and you’ve tasted it, and so have I.
And it is a sweet, sweet meat, and it fills our souls. Love is the motivation for James’ decision to be a Christian. And James’ decision was to bring about unity of confession and faith, of practice. This is godly. And this is a beautiful example for us to follow in our life as husband and wife, as son or daughter, and as church member to church member.
In the name of Jesus, Amen.
