Acts 15:1-21 | Discerning God's Will预览

The Issue

Here's the issue at hand. “Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: ‘Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved’” (Acts 15:1). Acts 15 goes on to tell us that this caused so much confusion in Antioch that they decided to send Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem to see the apostles and wrestle through the issue.

The issue is not just about circumcision. It’s about how to be saved. Can there be a more important question?

Let’s recap what sparked it.

The Jewish people were set apart to be God’s treasured possession, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation. As God once told Abraham, it would be his offspring whom God would set apart as his own special people, and through them that God would go about bringing his salvation and blessing to the world. (You can read more about this in Genesis 12 and Exodus 19).

This theme binds the whole Old Testament. You’ll see prophets like Isaiah talk about Israel like this: “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations” (Isa 42:1). And later, “I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles…” (Isa 42:6).

Throughout their history, and certainly by the time of Jesus, Israel proved to be far less interested in being missional and far more interested in preserving their exclusive status, but nevertheless, some Gentiles were still attracted to the Jewish beliefs about God and the Jewish way of life, and came to seek and worship Yahweh. They were called God-fearers. Some would stay on the margins, perhaps attending synagogues or worshiping God in their own homes, but remaining Gentiles. Others would eventually go the whole way, getting circumcised, living by all the purity laws, and becoming Jewish.

Make no mistake. Jesus was clear. He commanded his disciples to go and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19-20). Jewish status alone did not equal salvation. But the Spirit upon God’s people was the sign of their salvation. This is what we see in Acts. God’s Spirit is poured out upon Jews gathered from all nations in Acts 2. It keeps happening again, upon Jewish people.

Up until now, “Christians” were primarily Jewish. Jesus, or course, is the fulfillment of all God’s promises and Jewish hopes. Jesus himself is Jewish. His disciples were Jewish. His ministry was in Israel. Christianity was an extension of the Jewish religion. In fact, even the Jews who rejected Jesus thought of Jesus’s disciples as Jewish, calling them “the Nazarene sect” (Acts 24:5).

But then something happens. Samaritans turn to Christ and receive the Holy Spirit in Acts 8. Okay, fine. But they were part Jewish anyway and kept many aspects of the Mosaic law, including circumcision. Then an Ethiopian eunuch turns to Christ and is baptized. Probably a God-fearer, but certainly a Gentile. Is it okay to baptize someone like that into the covenant people of God? This could have been an issue, but he goes on his way to Ethiopia and isn’t heard from again. Problem solved.

But it keeps escalating. In Acts 10, the Roman centurion and uncircumcised Gentile, Cornelius, along with his family and friends, receive the Holy Spirit as well. At first Peter is thrown by this, but comes to realize that in Jesus, God is accepting people from every nation as his own. Peter is called to the mat for associating with them, but the Gentile issue is still small scale. Then it explodes. Gentiles in Antioch start coming to Christ in droves. And not just there. Throughout Cyprus, Pamphylia, and Galatia too. Gentile country.

It begs the question. If the salvation Christ is bringing extends out from the Jewish religion, does it stand to reason that the salvation someone can experience in Christ also needs to extend out from a Jewish way of life and status? That’s the circumcision question. Since circumcision was the initiation into God’s covenant people, do you have to be circumcised in order to be saved? Put another way, do you have to become Jewish before being a Christian? Do you have to become a Jew in order to be saved?

It would seem that the covenant of circumcision was a binding one, and necessary for becoming part of God’s people. But it was undeniable. God’s Spirit was being poured out on uncircumcised Gentiles who were turning to Christ.

The apostles wrestled. They ultimately answered no. We are saved by faith in Christ. That is enough. That’s what makes us part of God’s people. Jew and Gentile alike.

The answer might seem clear to us. But only because we stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us, those who did the hard work of wrestling it through and discerning God’s will. It was not clear-cut to them. They had to figure it out. They had to wrestle with this new development and go about discerning what was true, what was God’s will.

How do you sort issues like these? It’s always important to know God’s will so that we can be obedient to it, but all the more when people’s salvation is on the line. This is not some trivial, academic debate.

Big questions you haven’t thought of will come your way, especially ones Jesus (or the Bible) doesn’t directly address. We’ll be faced with new circumstances, and nuances to old ones, that will cause us to wonder what God would have us do and what Jesus would say if he were here. It’s what Acts 15 is about, and what the rest of Christian history bears witness to.

The next three days we’ll look at three key ways believers have gone about discerning the will of God through ways the Spirit speaks. Today, familiarize yourself with the narrative of circumcision and salvation. And consider making a short list. Where do you turn for answers in times like these?