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

The Church

We said there are three main ways we go about discerning what the Spirit is teaching and how he’s guiding: the Bible, conscience, and the Church. Today is about how the Spirit guides us through the Church.

First off, when we talk about “the Church,” we’re not talking about a building. Nor are we talking about any single individual. We’re talking about the collective people of God over all space and time. That’s every believer in Christ in the world today, and every believer in Christ who has gone before us. Jesus said, “Where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them” (Matt 18:20) and Paul will write that together, we are God’s temple (1 Cor 3:17).

God speaks through his Church, in the smallest of local congregations, and through the collective wisdom of the people of God for the past two thousand years. That’s a lot of Holy Spirit guidance out there!

This is what we see in Acts 15. When the disciples of Jesus are confronted by an issue Jesus did not clearly address, have uncertainty, and find that different groups of believers are saying different things, they come together. Based on what Jesus had taught, drawing on the Bible message, and listening to their consciences based on what they had been experiencing, they came to a consensus. While Acts 15 doesn’t say it explicitly, we see God guiding his Church into truth and his will, which they then communicate to believers to guide them accordingly.

God still uses his Church in this way.

That’s not to say everyone agreed with the Acts 15 decision. We’ll find through the rest of Acts that certain believers did not agree. Rather than submit to the wisdom of God through the apostles and believers, they insisted that they were right. They insisted on their own thing. And they went on to plague Paul for the rest of his ministry.

It’s easy for a local congregation to seek wisdom only in themselves. It happened in the early church. It still happens today. Religious leaders and congregations go off the rails into all kinds of errors and false conclusions.

It’s also not to say the Church-at-large is perfect. There have been many times in history when many in the Church have silently condoned certain actions, made wrong decisions, gone along with a path of least resistance, prized traditions over truth, been compromised by other factors, made decisions based on bureaucratic influences, and fallen guilty of “groupthink.”

This is why you need three legs in the stool of discerning God’s will. The Bible can be misinterpreted. Our consciences can become blinded or seared. The Church can fail to speak (or speak too quickly), get trapped in cultural trends, or in past traditions that don’t conform to God’s will and way. All three methods of discerning God’s will come together as a check and balance against the ways we as fallen human beings, distort God’s will or focus only on what our itching ears want to hear.

How does this work for us? A number of ways. First, connect with a local church, and enter into relationships with the believers you find there. As you seek to discern God’s will, do it together. God will speak through the wisdom of other believers. And leverage your religious leaders. They can be some of your surest guides. Second, listen to what believers at large have said and are saying. There are many wise Christians who aren’t at your church who have something to say. And don’t restrict yourself to reading or listening to the things written in our day. There are many believers who have gone long before us. Listen to what they had to say. It will keep you from getting trapped into the cultural blindness of our own era and the “groupthink” of one particular church body. Often you’ll find these believers from history have spoken into questions you haven’t even yet thought to ask.

The Bible, conscience, and the Church. Through these the Holy Spirit will guide you. It may seem like a lot to grapple with, but it’s how God rolls. And know that at times you’ll get it wrong. The history of God’s people is often falling forward in him. So make sure to always come back to that place of grace. You’re saved by Christ. That’s what Acts 15 has to say. Not by perfectly discerning his will.

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