Blogging Towards Sunday, June 29, 2025

Acts 15:1-18, Galatians 3:5-6, 25-29

There have been many debates in the history of the church as it has worked to untangle the Word of God from the limitations and distortions of humankind’s understanding of it. The first debate is recorded in our reading of today: Acts 15.

Everyone in the early church was agreed on what the Word of God said: that God had come in Christ to save people, to for-give them, and to give them a new life of love. But a division arose in the church over how that was to take place.

One group (called the Judaizers) said that salvation in Christ must be built upon the foundation of the Law of Moses. Nothing of that could be lost or forgotten. It must all be incorporated and retained. Perhaps they even cited the words of Jesus to support their position: “Don’t suppose for a minute that I have come to demolish the Scriptures – either God’s Law or the Prophets. I’m not here to demolish but to complete” (Matthew 5:17).

The second group (of which Paul was the leader) said that adherence to the Law wasn’t necessary at all for salvation. Christ himself was enough. He himself fulfilled the Law, and to accept him with your whole heart was all that mattered (Galatians 2:15-21).

The early church untangled the confusion by calling a church council to debate the issue. In their decision, Paul’s basic conviction was preserved: that the new life is by faith in Christ alone (Acts 15:10-11). But the traditions of the Jews were also respected: New Christians were to accept as binding certain aspects of the wisdom of the past (Acts 15:20).

The pastoral letter of advice to the churches of Galatia (a Roman region which now is a large part of the nation of Turkey) is one of the theological masterpieces of the Apostle Paul. He writes the letter to remind the members of the Galatian churches he helped plant that they don’t need to change how they focused their lives on Jesus because of the recent teachings of various Judaizer missionaries who had visited and critiqued them. Paul writes to them about the freeing liberation of grace, love and forgiveness in Christ.

Rev. Eugene Peterson defines rule keeping as good behavior or religious behavior that’s performed because some else is looking, or because God is looking. It’s living life by performance, by show, by achievement. And, of course, it imprisons us, because someone is always looking. When someone is looking, we never experience the joy of doing something just for the pleasure it brings to someone or for the sense of rightness it has in our own lives. We must always be calculating what someone else will think of what we do, whether it will fit into what others expect, how God might reward us, or what penal-ties we’ll avoid. There’s no free space in such a lift to be oneself, to develop relationship, to accept others and be accepted just as we are, to speak our minds. The gospel reverses that process: it begins with acceptance; then, with the rush of freedom into the sold that acceptance brings, the spiritual, moral, responsible life develops.

(taken from E. Peterson’s comments in the Message Bible translation)

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION & EXAMEN:

• What engaged, enraged, or surprised you in these texts?
• When have you been involved in an Acts 15-like church debate? What was it about? How did it proceed and get decided? How did you experience God’s spirit in that decision-making process? Or maybe how didn’t you?
• What such debates are we facing as a local church, here at CAPC Oakland? What about as a national church?
• How do you struggle with acceptance? – of yourself?; of others?; of God?
• What is Luke – the author of Acts – trying to tell us as the church today in the East Bay through this text?