Lessons on Grace and Law from the Jerusalem Conference
Acts 15:1-35
Acts Series Part 27
By Dave Redick

In a sense, the law is like a mirror that a dentist sticks into a patient's mouth. With it he can detect any visible cavities. But a mirror can't drill or pull teeth. It can show the decayed area, but it can't fix the problem.

Introduction

According to the New Testament, we are justified today by grace through faith, and not by works of law. The Old Testament Law was nailed to the cross of Christ. It was taken out of the way and became obsolete.

The difference between justification by grace through faith and justification by works of law has never been easily grasped, however. In the Bible, the greater parts of two New Testament books - Romans and Galatians - are devoted to the issue. Other Bible books weigh in as well, with chapters and verses that relate. Beyond the Bible, there is a wealth of material by Bible teachers aimed at explaining this difference.

I have the opportunity to read and study Gods Word quite a bit, along with some of the religious literature written about the Bible. Whenever I find a helpful illustration or explanation that makes understanding a difficult Bible point easier, I save it. Here are a few illustrations dealing with the differences between justification by grace and justification by law that I have saved over the years.
 
On the difficulty of being saved by the law, there is an illustration that goes like this: Suppose you are hanging over a canyon, suspended by a chain of ten links. If someone took a hammer and smashed every link, you would go to the bottom of the canyon. But what if only one link were smashed? Where would you go? You would go to the bottom of the canyon. So it is when our means of justification is by law. Break one point and you're lost just as surely as if you break it all. James 2:10 says, "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all."

On the purpose of the law I have several illustrations. In a sense, the law is like a mirror that a dentist sticks into a patient's mouth. With it he can detect any visible cavities. But a mirror can't drill or pull teeth. It can show the decayed area, but it can't fix the problem. Another illustration compares the law to a flashlight. If suddenly at night the lights go out, you use it to guide you down the darkened basement stairs to the electrical box. When you point it toward the fuses, it helps you find the one that is burned out. But after you've removed the bad fuse you don't try to insert the flashlight in its place. You put in a new fuse. We read in Romans 8:3, "For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh...."
 
As to the extreme standard of the law there is this illustration: The EPA ordered the cleanup of waste water emptying into the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey. To comply with the law, one township built a new water treatment plant. The newer and larger plant, however, now dumps too much water into the 6,000 acre swamp, threatening the balance of nature. Flooding has increased and wildlife is being destroyed. Unless something is done soon the swamp will be ruined. The law was good but it destroyed life rather than saved it. In a like fashion, God's Old Testament law is perfect, but it ends up drowning us in its perfect standard of righteousness. In Galatians 3:21-22 we read, "For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law. But the Scripture has shut up all men under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe." The Old Testament law of God drowned every human being who ever tried to keep it.

Finally, one of my favorite illustrations is on the superiority of God's system of justification by grace. A woman was married to a man she didn't love. She had tried to love him but he was a cruel, selfish, exacting taskmaster who made her life miserable. He made her get up every morning at five o'clock, cook his breakfast, serve it at six sharp, and then wait on him hand and foot. He was so exacting and hard to please that her life was miserable as she tried and failed to satisfy him. Finally, and perhaps justly, he died. When she remarried, her new husband was a wonderful man who was not selfish like her first husband. He truly loved her. Sometime later, while cleaning out some old papers from a desk, she came across a copy of the strict set of rules her former husband had written for her. As she sat there and read them she suddenly came to an amazing realization. She was still doing most of the things for her new husband she had done for the old one. Actually, she was doing even more. But somehow they didn't seem to be a burden at all. 1 John 5:3 says, "For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome."

We are justified by grace through faith and not by works of law. Praise God for that! Paul put it this way in Romans 3:28: "We maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law."

I said originally that this is a difficult concept to grasp. It wasn't easily understood by the first century Christians either. Two decades into the church's history a controversy on the subject of grace verses law erupted that threatened to put an end to the church and divert the stream of Christianity into nothing more than a minor sect of Judaism, which would have been a disaster.

In our ongoing series called Acts of the Apostles, we're moving now into chapter 15 of Acts were we find an account of The Jerusalem Conference.

As we enter chapter 15, the church has been in existence for about 21 years. It has spilled over out of the land of the Jews into the surrounding homelands of the Gentiles. The conversion of the first Gentile household of Cornelius (described in Acts 10) is ten years in the past. Paul and Barnabas have completed the first missionary journey which included the conversion of thousands of Gentiles along with many Jews. The strongest among the new Gentile churches is in the city of Antioch of Syria, about 300 miles north of Jerusalem.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. The Jewish Christians who had grown up under the Law of Moses and were still living by it (if for no other reason than habit) would come into conflict with the Gentile Christians who knew very little of the Law and saw no need to keep it. Like flint striking steel, when the issue was raised, the sparks flew. We begin in Acts 15:1 with:

1. The Controversy

1 And some men came down from Judea and began teaching the brethren, "Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved."

Judea, where these men came from, was the land of the Jews -southern Palestine. They probably came from Jerusalem down to Antioch where Paul and Barnabas were. We learn from verse 24 of this chapter that these men were falsely claiming they were sent from the Jerusalem church with these instructions about salvation.
It wasn't just circumcision these men were concerned about. There is nothing particularly wrong or right with circumcision. What they were teaching was that, in order to be saved, a Gentile convert to Christianity had to keep the Law of Moses of which circumcision was a sign. Drop down to verse 5:

5 But certain ones of the sect of the Pharisees who had believed, stood up, saying, "It is necessary to circumcise them, and to direct them to observe the Law of Moses."

The mindset of the Jews was that they were the unique possession of God - God's chosen people. In a very real sense, prior to the cross, that was true. But over the years it had gone farther than that. The Jews had also begun to believe that God was a unique possession of the Jews. In other words, you couldn't get to God unless you were a Jew. The way you became a Jew if you weren't born that way was by circumcision and keeping the Law of Moses. So the question raised here was this: Must the Gentile, before he becomes a Christian, first become a Jew? Or, could he be accepted just as he was by accepting the Lordship of Christ.

The conflict had even deeper ramifications. The Law of Moses was a merit system. In order to be saved, you had to keep it perfectly. If you missed it at one point, you were a goner. The Jews had somehow lost sight of this, or were conveniently ignoring it. Instead, they had come to believe that it was their nationality and favored position with God that saved them. Thus, according to these false teachers, if you were a Gentile and wanted to be saved, you had to become a Jew - you had to be circumcised.

2 And when Paul and Barnabas had great dissension and debate with them, the brethren determined that Paul and Barnabas and certain others of them should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders concerning this issue.

This was no small matter. Had these false teachers succeeded in getting their doctrine accepted by the Gentiles, Christianity and the work of Christ would have been meaningless. Jewish bigotry would have been endorsed. God would have been shown to be a respecter of persons and therefore, unjust. The system of law that for 1500 years had only condemned men and never saved them would have been reinstated and the grace of God as seen in the good news of the death of Christ for our sins would have been nullified.

Actually, if you want a good, biblical assessment of the effects of this false doctrine, read the book of Galatians. There Paul, battling the same issue which raised its ugly head six or seven years later, told the people who were in danger of accepting this same teaching,

And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision that he is under obligation to keep the whole Law. You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.

Paul, as an inspired apostle, could have settled this issue in Antioch by an apostolic pronouncement. But that wouldn't have settled the issue of the claims of these men that their teaching came from the apostles in Jerusalem. So plans were quickly made to send a delegation to Jerusalem.

3 Therefore, being sent on their way by the church, they were passing through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and were bringing great joy to all the brethren. 4 And when they arrived at Jerusalem, they were received by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all that God had done with them. 5 But certain ones of the sect of the Pharisees who had believed, stood up, saying, "It is necessary to circumcise them, and to direct them to observe the Law of Moses."

I don't know whether these "certain ones of the sect of the Pharisees" were the same teachers who followed them from Antioch, or whether they might be additional teachers of this false doctrine. We do know what is said - that these men were former Pharisees - members of the strictest, proudest, most exclusivist sect of the Jews. These men supercharged the issue. We come now to:

2. The Conference

6 And the apostles and the elders came together to look into this matter. 7 And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them…

We don't know how many of the apostles there were still living in Jerusalem by this time. Peter's presence would be especially significant though because, if you remember from Acts 10, God had used him in the conversion of the first Gentiles to Christianity. So Peter said to them:

7b "Brethren, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe.
He is referring to the events in Acts 10 (the conversion of Cornelius) and also to the promise Jesus made to him in Matthew 16:19, "I will give you the keys to the kingdom..." We saw earlier in this series that Peter used those keys to open the door of the kingdom to the first Jewish converts and the first Gentile converts.

8 "And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also did to us; 9 and He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith. 10 "Now therefore why do you put God to the test by placing upon the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?

Peter calls the Law of Moses a yoke. A yoke is a harness put on the back and shoulders of a beast of burden which forces it to do the bidding of its master. It creates a burden and restricts freedom. As a yoke the Law did just that. It created a burden they couldn't carry (because no one could keep it perfectly) and it took away their freedom to serve God willingly, out of love - like the lady who remarried the man she loved in my earlier illustration. Peter's argument here is, in effect, "do you want to go back under that?"

Under grace, a person serves God willingly, out of love and gratitude. God doesn't have to extract forced obedience. The one under grace is glad to serve God and do His will. In contrast to the grim, heavy, impossible burden of the Law, the burden of the one saved by grace is a joy. That's why Jesus could say in Matthew 11:30, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." No one in his right mind would turn in a light, easy, non-oppressive yoke for one having the characteristics of the Old Testament law! Yet that is exactly what these Jewish false teachers were trying to get the Gentiles to do. Peter's conclusion follows.

11 "But we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they also are."

This has to be the key verse of chapter 15. Incidentally, these are the last words of Peter that are recorded in Acts. Notice how appropriate they are. Notice the results they received.

12 And all the multitude kept silent, and they were listening to Barnabas and Paul as they were relating what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.

So, after Peter finished, Paul and Barnabas were allowed to speak before the church. They told of how God had been working with them through miracles and signs among the uncircumcised Gentiles.

When they had finished, James took the podium. This is not the apostle James. Remember, he was killed by Herod as described back in Acts 12. This is James, the half-brother of Jesus, who was at this time an elder in the Jerusalem church.

13 And after they had stopped speaking, James answered, saying, "Brethren, listen to me. 14 "Simeon has related how God first concerned Himself about taking from among the Gentiles a people for His name.

The name "Simeon" here is the Hebrew form of "Simon." It refers to Simon Peter who spoke earlier.

15 "And with this the words of the Prophets agree, just as it is written,

James now quotes the Old Testament prophet, Amos to prove that it had been Gods intention all along to reach out to the Gentiles. (Notice in passing that Peter, an apostle, spoke of God's dealing with him directly, as proof that he knew what he was talking about. James, an elder and not an apostle, quoted Scripture. Today, elders, like James, also quote Scripture as their standard of authority.) James continues with his quote of Amos:

16 'After these things I will return, and I will rebuild the tabernacle of David which has fallen, and I will rebuild its ruins, And I will restore it, 17 in order that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by My name,'
18 says the Lord, who makes these things known from of old.

That's the end of James' quote of Amos. He now gives his assessment.

19 "Therefore it is my judgment that we do not trouble those who are turning to God from among the Gentiles, 20 but that we write to them that they abstain from things contaminated by idols and from fornication and from what is strangled and from blood.

Let's zoom in on these verses. With the major doctrinal issue resolved, that is, that the Gentiles didn't have to become Jews in order to be saved, James turns to matters of Jew/Gentile fellowship. He was concerned not only that the Jews not trouble the Gentiles but that the Gentiles not trouble the Jews. The danger was that the Gentiles, reveling in their freedom in Christ, would pressure their Jewish brethren to violate their conscience. To help prevent this James prescribed four things: (1) abstain from things contaminated by idols (2) abstain from fornication (3) abstain from things strangled (4) abstain from blood.

Apparently James' assessment was that these four things would be the greatest points of conflict between Jews and Gentiles. He gives the reason for them in verse 21:

21 "For Moses from ancient generations has in every city those who preach him, since he is read in the synagogues every Sabbath."

Paul would later elaborate on the issue of exercise of Christian liberty in 1 Corinthians 8 and Romans 14. Both of these passages should be required reading for growing Christians.

So these four restrictions were enumerated as a temporary concession to the Jews who at that time were in synagogues all over the Roman Empire. Since Jew and Gentile Christians would surely come into contact, each of these considerations, which had its roots in the Law of Moses and the customs of the Jews, would allow them to live together without giving offense. It would also settle the issue of law keeping once and for all because beyond these things there would be no other restrictions put upon the Gentiles.

Each of the four issues mentioned in verse 20 had to do with idol worship among the Gentiles. "Things contaminated by idols" probably refers to the purchase of meat in the markets that had been used in idol worship ceremonies. Fornication in the worship of idols was epidemic among the Gentiles and was looked on as natural and not sinful. In many forms of idol worship the animals used were strangled and not bled first. Then the blood was either eaten or drunk by the worshippers. Such things as these were so abhorrent to the Jews that James, taking a realistic look into the next few years, could see that unless the Gentiles totally avoided any connection with such things, perhaps even the mention of them, there could never be any Jew/Gentile fellowship.

Later, in Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8 Paul would make the issue of eating meat bought in the meat market that might have been sacrificed to an idol the night before a matter of opinion. But for right now, it had to be more than that, for the sake of unity.

By the way, this is the passage appealed to by groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses to forbid blood transfusions. However, blood transfusions were unknown in the days of the apostles and had nothing to do with idol worship. It seems highly unlikely that God would forbid such lifesaving practices today which really have nothing to do with the issues considered in Acts 15.

22 Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to choose men from among them to send to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas - Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, leading men among the brethren, 23 and they sent this letter by them, "The apostles and the brethren who are elders, to the brethren in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia who are from the Gentiles, greetings. 24 "Since we have heard that some of our number to whom we gave no instruction have disturbed you with their words, unsettling your souls, 25 it seemed good to us, having become of one mind, to select men to send to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, 26 men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. 27 "Therefore we have sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will also report the same things by word of mouth. 28 "For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these essentials: 29 that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication; if you keep yourselves free from such things, you will do well. Farewell."

This letter  was carried back to the Gentile churches of Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia. In the remaining verses of our Scripture portion, we see:

3. The Conclusion

30 So, when they were sent away, they went down to Antioch; and having gathered the congregation together, they delivered the letter. 31 And when they had read it, they rejoiced because of its encouragement. 32 And Judas and Silas, also being prophets themselves, encouraged and strengthened the brethren with a lengthy message. 33 And after they had spent time there, they were sent away from the brethren in peace to those who had sent them out. 34 [But it seemed good to Silas to remain there.] 35 But Paul and Barnabas stayed in Antioch, teaching and preaching, with many others also, the word of the Lord.

There is a beautiful rule in the Old Testament law regarding Hebrew slaves that I want you to think about as you leave this morning. Among the ancient Jews, if a person could not pay his debts, he was indentured to his creditors to serve either until his debt was paid or for six years. At the end of that time, at the beginning of the seventh year, he was freed. His master was to furnish him with the basic necessities he needed to carry on his life and send him on his way. Sometimes, however, at the end of the six years, the servant didn't want to be freed. He had seen so many benefits from his master that he wanted to continue serving him because he had come to love him. In cases like this, the master was to take an awl and pierce it through the servant's ear into the wood of the front door of his house. This ceremony signified that the former slave was willingly bonding himself to that master's house forever.
 
In many ways that custom points out the difference between one who is seeking to be justified by grace through faith, that is, one who is a true Christian and one who has slipped into a system of law by which he can never be saved. One saved by grace can be seen by the characteristics of his faith.

What are the characteristics of your faith? How are you seeking to be justified? Your answer will determine where you spend eternity.

Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.

Copyright © 1996-2008 by The Preacher's Study. Permission is granted to subscribers to use this document in total or in sermon preparation in the context of the local congregation only. Publishing it in a book, on the Internet, or anyplace beyond the local congregation is prohibited.

All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.

[Archive]    [Home]   [Comments]   [Search]