Category: Theology

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A Pivotal Council in the Early Church

Acts 15

While Paul and Barnabas were at Antioch of Syria, some men from Judea arrived and began to teach the Christians: “Unless you keep the ancient Jewish custom of circumcision taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.”  2Paul and Barnabas, disagreeing with them, argued forcefully and at length. Finally, Paul and Barnabas were sent to Jerusalem, accompanied by some local believers, to talk to the apostles and elders about this question.  3The church sent the delegates to Jerusalem, and they stopped along the way in Phoenicia and Samaria to visit the believers. They told them—much to everyone’s joy—that the Gentiles, too, were being converted.  4When they arrived in Jerusalem, Paul and Barnabas were welcomed by the whole church, including the apostles and elders. They reported on what God had been doing through their ministry.  5But then some of the men who had been Pharisees before their conversion stood up and declared that all Gentile converts must be circumcised and be required to follow the law of Moses.  6So the apostles and church elders got together to decide this question.  7At the meeting, after a long discussion, Peter stood and addressed them as follows: “Brothers, you all know that God chose me from among you some time ago to preach to the Gentiles so that they could hear the Good News and believe.  8God, who knows people’s hearts, confirmed that he accepts Gentiles by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he gave him to us.  9He made no distinction between us and them, for he also cleansed their hearts through faith.  10Why are you now questioning God’s way by burdening the Gentile believers with a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors were able to bear?  11We believe that we are all saved the same way, by the special favor of the Lord Jesus.” (Acts 15:1-11, NLT)

The Daily DAVEotional

Acts 15 is perhaps the most important chapter in the entire book of Acts because it highlights an important dispute that arose in the early church.

The issue wasn’t just about the rite of circumcision. At issue was what was necessary to be saved. The dispute seemed to be led by some Pharisees who had been converted (see verse 5). These men believed that salvation was for the Jews and therefore, they believed that the only way a Gentile could become saved was to convert to Judaism. This meant adopting Jewish customs, including observance of the law.

Circumcision was really an outward representation that a person had converted to Judaism. So when these men from Judea began teaching that Gentiles needed to be circumcised in order to be saved, what they were really asserting was that Gentiles needed to become culturally Jewish before they could accept the Jewish Messiah.

So the question became: can Jesus save non-Jews, or do Gentiles need to adopt Jewish culture and become Jews before they can be saved by the Messiah?

Paul and Barnabas argued that Gentiles didn’t need to adopt Jewish customs, including circumcision, but only needed to receive Jesus by faith in order to be saved.

Peter also advocated for this position as he recalled his experience with Cornelius, the Roman centurion in Acts 10. Peter noted that Cornelius and his family, all Gentiles, had received the Holy Spirit just as the Jews had, on the basis of faith alone.

All of the church leaders agreed. The issue was settled, and from that point on, it was clear that the Jewish Messiah was not just for Jews but for all the peoples of the world. And more importantly, it was clear that the only requirement to receive the Jewish Messiah was faith. It was not necessary to become culturally Jewish.

There are important implications for us today as we seek to share Jesus with a dying world. The principle here is that when sharing the gospel with others, we want to help them become followers of Jesus, not adopt our culture. Sometimes, it’s easy to conflate the two. People need Jesus. They don’t need my culturalized version of Jesus.

 

Did you enjoy this post? I’d love to hear your thoughts! Feel free to like, leave a comment below, and share it with your friends or on social media if you found it helpful or interesting. Your support keeps the conversation going!

Reflection

In what ways has your culture influenced your view and understanding of Jesus? 

What examples can you think of in which a person’s invitation to come to Jesus might include unnecessary cultural expectations?

How can you ensure that when you share Jesus with others you are not taking a Pharisaical approach – injecting cultural requirements into the gospel message?

 

 

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Dealing With Doubts about God

While scrolling through my Twitter feed recently I saw a post from Sean McDowell with the title “Hawk Nelson’s Lead Singer Shares He Has Lost His Faith in God.”

My heart sank as I thought, “Not again.”

If you’re not familiar with Hawk Nelson, they are a Christian pop/rock band that has produced a number of top songs, including the enormously popular “Drops in the Ocean” and “Diamonds” from their 2015 mega-hit album “Diamonds”.

Jon Steingard, front-man for the Christian pop/rock band Hawk Nelson, recently announced via Instagram that he no longer believes in God.
Photo by Dave Lowe

I clicked on the link and read the article, as well as the 2200 word Instagram post from the lead singer, Jon Steingard, where he declared to his fans and to the world that he no longer believed in God.

What happened?

Steingard grew up as a pastor’s kid in a loving Christian home. Church was a way of life and since everyone he knew was a believer, he naturally became a believer. It was all he knew. He discovered his musical talents early on, participating in church worship and ultimately joining the Christian band, Hawk Nelson.

Steingard described his slow deconstruction of faith like wearing a sweater with a loose thread. As he pulled on the thread of doubt, the sweater of faith slowly began to unravel. Eventually, there was no sweater left.

What are the doubts that caused Jon Steingard’s sweater to unravel? The doubts mostly seem to stem from unanswered questions about the nature and character of God and the veracity of the Bible.

Steingard compared his faith deconstruction like a sweater with loose threads that began to unravel
Photo by rocknwool on Unsplash

For example, Steingard began to question the evil in the world. If God is loving, why wouldn’t he stop it? And what about natural disasters? Why is there so much suffering in the world? Steingard wondered why God seems so angry in the Old Testament and yet so loving in the New Testament.

Steingard also questioned various Biblical contradictions he saw and wondered how these inconsistencies could occur if God was really the author. He finally concluded that the texts were not authored by a perfect God but were the product of fallen, imperfect people like himself. It was at that point that Steingard realized there were no more threads to pull.

It’s a sad reality that more and more young adults like Jon Steingard are abandoning the church and the faith with which they grew up. There are a myriad of reasons for this but doubt and uncertainty about the truthfulness of the Bible and the Christian worldview is a common “thread” (pun intended) in the stories of many prodigals. The truth is, doubts are common. But they don’t have to be an onramp that leads to the deconstruction of your faith.

How should we handle doubts?

First, I think we need to acknowledge doubt and do our best to give space to those who have real questions without making them feel like 2nd-class Christians. Highlighting those who have struggled with doubts and allowing them to share their stories could go a long way to helping de-normalize the phantom-Christian caricature (who never doubts) that many hold.

Doubts and questions, while common among Christians, don’t have to be an onramp to deconstruction of our faith.
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels

Secondly, while we acknowledge that doubt is real and common, we also can affirm that being a Christian does not mean being anti-intellectual. It’s popular in our culture for people to promote the idea that faith is anti-science (whatever that means). The reality is that faith and science aren’t in opposition to one another and Christianity is and always has been based on truth.

Third, we need to help those with doubts to reinforce the loose threads on their sweaters instead of pulling them and unraveling their faith altogether. We do this by helping them to see the truth in the foundations of the Christian faith. This is a primary role of apologetics.

The questions Jon Steingard wrestled with are not new. They are the same questions Christians have been wrestling with for two thousand years. The good news is that there is a lot of scholarship that affirms the Christian position and provides reasonable responses to many long-standing doubts and questions.

How is your sweater of faith? Are there loose threads of doubt? If so, reach out to someone who can help show you appropriate ways to reinforce your faith with a foundation of truth.

Nobody, whether Christian or non-Christian has all the answers. Life is complex and chaotic. But we believe God has revealed himself to us clearly through the Scriptures and through the person of Jesus Christ. This isn’t just some Sunday school fairy tale but is based on solid evidence.

If you’re struggling with doubts, let us know. We don’t have all the answers but we can point you to resources that you may find helpful.

 

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What Makes Good Friday “Good”?

When you think of the full Easter story, it seems the good part is on Sunday, when Jesus is resurrected.

Have you ever wondered why Christians refer to the Friday before Easter as Good Friday? I never quite understood that myself growing up as a kid even though I went to church and heard the Easter story every year.

Think about the Easter story as a movie. The good part is at the end, when Jesus comes out of the tomb, resurrected! It seems to me that Friday is bad, at least if you’re looking at Jesus as a hero figure. On Friday, He’s dead. How is that good?

To answer that, I want to first ask a different question. Why did Jesus have to die? To put it another way, what was the purpose of Jesus’s death?

It’s an honest question, really. If Jesus is God, as he claimed, why couldn’t He just declare sins to be forgiven?

I’ve posed this question to many people over the years as I’ve engaged in conversations about Jesus and some people respond that Jesus’s death is an example to us.

I suppose that could be true, but how exactly is it an example?

Perhaps Jesus’s death was simply a demonstration of his love
Photo by Neal E. Johnson on Unsplash

Well, you might respond by pointing to the verse where Jesus says, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13, NIV)

Yes, it’s true that Jesus’s death does demonstrate the depth of His love for us. But what does that do for us?

Some people have responded to that question (Why did Jesus have to die?) by saying that Jesus’s death was a sacrifice.

Agreed. But what does it mean that His death was a sacrifice? In what way was it a sacrifice?

The simple answer to “Why did Jesus have to die?” is that God’s justice required it.

Romans 6:23 says that “the wages of sin is death.” Since the penalty of sin is death, the only way Jesus could pay for our sin was to die. He couldn’t just declare sin to be paid for because death is required.

I often share this illustration with people when talking about the importance of Jesus’s death on the cross….

In New Testament times people who owed a debt were often thrown into debtors prison until they could pay their debt or until their sentence was complete
Photo by Ashim D’Silva on Unsplash

In New Testament times, when a person committed a crime, the authorities would throw the offender in the dungeon until he made restitution or until his sentence was completed.

On the door of his cell they would list the crimes that he had committed. When he had completed his sentence or paid for his crime, they took the list and wrote ‘tetelestai’ across it, which in greek means “it is finished”, or “paid in full”.

The person would then use this document as a receipt that those specific crimes had been paid for. He could not be accused of those crimes again.

We are separated from God because of the debt that we owe as a result of our sin. The debt we owe for our sin must be paid for.

Now think about the Easter story again. Jesus is arrested, tried and crucified. The last words Jesus uttered before dying were, “it is finished” (tetelestai).

Here’s what Paul said to the Colossians about the importance of Jesus’s death:

He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations,  that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. (Colossians 2:13-14)

Why did Jesus have to die?
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

The picture here is that Jesus had a written list of all of your sins and all of my sins and He nailed that list of all of our iniquities to the cross. Just before He died, He uttered “it is finished”, meaning that sin had been “paid in full”.

It’s as if Jesus, in his last dying breath was taking a big rubber stamp to that list and stamping it “PAID” so that we would know that sin was paid for and therefore forgiveness could be granted.

So when you think of the full Easter story, it doesn’t appear that Friday is good. It seems rather bad, if you are looking from the perspective of Jesus as the hero.

But if you realize what Jesus meant to accomplish – the redemption of mankind, the forgiveness of sins – through that lens, it’s clear that Good Friday is indeed good. Actually, it’s rather GREAT for us! Sin is paid for. We are forgiven!

Good Friday is indeed GOOD! And, that’s not even the end of the story….

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Seeing Work as Meaningful

It was 1991 and I was tasked to spend the summer in Colorado working as part of the Summer Cru conference team. It was NOT my first choice for a summer mission but as luck would have it, I was assigned to work as a Teacher’s Assistant for Dr. John Sailhamer, who was teaching a two-week survey course on the Old Testament.

One of my duties was picking up Dr. Sailhamer in the morning and bringing him to campus so he could eat breakfast in the dining hall before class. This provided me the opportunity to get to know him in a casual environment. I found out he was a baseball fan and surprisingly very down to earth. When he found out that a group of us young, single, Cru staff guys were all going to see the new Terminator 2 movie that had just come out, he joined the group and enjoyed the movie as much as the rest of us.

The Pentateuch as Narrative by John Sailhamer was published in 1995.

At the time, Dr. Sailhamer was working on a book entitled “The Pentateuch as Narrative”. It was more of a scholarly work that wasn’t quite completed but it was fascinating to hear him share his thoughts, particularly his perspective on work. He contended that God had given Adam work to do BEFORE the fall and therefore work was good and meaningful. This challenged my perspective, which had always associated work with labor and toil and more of a penalty that resulted from the Fall.

A few months ago, while I was in the Sacramento area visiting friends and ministry partners, I had lunch with my friend Scott Agee, who has worked as a Civil Engineer for many years. I was interested in learning more about his job and what he does since my twins have shown interest in pursuing engineering as a possible major in college.

Scott Agee owns his own Civil Engineering firm, where he serves his customers, and the Lord by designing industrial laundries. To read Scott’s thoughts and guiding principles on the Theology of Work go to: http://bit.ly/SAgeeWork

As we talked, Scott made a comment that stuck with me. He said, “my job might not seem interesting to a lot of people…I design industrial laundry facilities…but I like to think I’m really providing a service to people…after all, everyone needs clean laundry.”

Scott, to me, is a great example of someone who loves what he does and through his work, finds tangible ways to meet people’s needs, while looking for opportunities to minister to them as God provides.

As we work with Young Professionals, one of our challenges is to help them to see their work as valuable. Sometimes, we can fall into the trap of believing that only those who are in full-time ministry, directly helping to meet other’s spiritual needs, are doing significant work.

Part of our role is what we call Vocational Discipleship – to help others to see that their work is important and meaningful and can be used by God to advance His kingdom purposes just as much, and perhaps even more, than those who are in full-time vocational ministry.

We’re still learning the best ways to impart these values and ideas to Young Professionals so we would greatly appreciate your prayers as we continue to dream and create the kind of environment that would help Young Professionals to thrive spiritually and live with purpose.

Thank you for your prayers and your partnership as we seek to ensure that Christ is exalted among this current generation of Young Professionals!

To see more of Scott’s thoughts on work and guiding business principles, go to:  http://bit.ly/SAgeeWork