Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

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.” This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question. The church sent them on their way, and as they traveled through Phoenicia and Samaria, they told how the Gentiles had been converted. This news made all the believers very glad. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders, to whom they reported everything God had done through them.
Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.”
The apostles and elders met to consider this question.

• Acts 15:1-6

My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

• 1 John 2:1-2

“As Christianity spread, and the Church became more secularized, this realization of the costliness of grace gradually faded. The world was Christianized, and grace became its common property. It was to be had at low cost. Yet the Church of Rome did not altogether lose the earlier vision. It is highly significant that the Church was astute enough to find room for the monastic movement, and to prevent it from lapsing into schism. Here on the outer fringe of the Church was a place where the older vision was kept alive. Here men still remembered that grace costs, that grace means following Christ. Here they left all they had for Christ’s sake, and endeavoured daily to practise his rigorous commands. Thus monasticism became a living protest against the secularization of Christianity and the cheapening of grace. But the Church was wise enough to tolerate this protest, and to prevent it from developing to its logical conclusion. It thus succeeded in relativizing it, even using it in order to justify the secularization of its own life. Monasticism was represented as an individual achievement which the mass of the laity could not be expected to emulate. By thus limiting the application of the commandments of Jesus to a restricted group of specialists, the Church evolved the fatal conception of the double standard—a maximum and a minimum standard of Christian obedience. Whenever the Church was accused of being too secularized, it could always point to monasticism as an opportunity of living a higher life within the fold, and thus justify the other possibility of a lower standard of life for others. And so we get the paradoxical result that monasticism, whose mission was to preserve in the Church of Rome the primitive Christian realization of the costliness of grace, afforded conclusive justification for the secularization of the Church. By and large, the fatal error of monasticism lay not so much in its rigorism (though even here there was a good deal of misunderstanding of the precise content of the will of Jesus) as in the extent to which it departed from genuine Christianity by setting up itself as the individual achievement of a select few, and so claiming a special merit of its own.”

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (Costly Grace)

The Scripture is the second time, at least the second time that is recorded, in trying to require circumcision for salvation.  They called these people Judaizers.  The Judaizers, probably predominantly Pharisees among the believers, basically wanted to keep Christianity a sect among the Jews.  They saw the physical act of circumcision to be absolutely necessary to maintain the purity of the people.  There were places that the circumcised could go that the uncircumcised could not go.  Circumcision created a semblance of unity between the Jewish and Gentile members.

Peter and Paul, especially, argued against this.  But this was the second time.  The first should have ended the argument for good.  And there were probably countless numbers of times since then in that the subject came up.  Paul wrote about this practice and how it should be stopped in seven of his letters.  I wonder if the Judaizers started the riot with the false information that Trophimus, an Ephesian Gentile, had gone into the temple with Paul.  Without Paul’s arguments against circumcision, they might gain what they lost at the next meeting of the Jerusalem Counsel.

But, the Counsel came up with a few rules for the Gentiles to follow, as to not offend their Jewish neighbors.

To the believers, or the believer-want-to-be people among them, if circumcision is not a hard and fast rule, then what about the amount of steps you can walk on any given Sabbath?  Note: God did not give a number, but the Pharisees did.

I use the walking thing as an example.  Look at your life.  Is there a sin that you just do not want to give up?  Some people, all on their own or from peer pressure, have determined that this little verse of the Bible can be ignored.  Another group of people ignore a different verse or two.  Before you know it, people are talking about how repentance is not necessary since God forgives our sins: past, present, and future.  It is like we are playing monopoly with house money and an eternal “Get out of Jail Free” card.  All because we ignore the commands to repent.

Sorry, but John the Baptist said to repent.  Two different verses show Jesus saying to repent, which should end the argument entirely.  Peter said to repent in four of his sermons in the book of Acts, while Paul mentions repentance in three of his sermons in Acts.  Note: This list comes from The MacArthur Bible Commentary.

I have mentioned that repentance is hard to do, completely turning from our sin is impossible without God’s help and we will only be perfectly sanctified when we arrive in heaven.  But the desire to repent is part of that undeniable evidence that God is within us when we accept Him.  The Apostle John may not say the word repent, but his tests of faith in 1 John point to us hating our sin and turning from it.

Yet, it is much easier to sell Christianity if we focus on faith and Grace being free.  Just say a few magical words and you are in the club.

But I remember something C. S. Lewis wrote about the new Christian.  The new Christian will feel a little discomfort at first, but we will feel it necessary.  Jesus is inside us and He wants a clean home, so when Jesus sweeps the floors and dusts the counter tops, we might find that to be a little discomfort.  But then, Jesus starts knocking down walls, and hammering the frame of new rooms being added.  Some of that stuff really hurts, and we find it hard to see what Jesus is up to.  But if we truly believe, we should not mind, no matter the pain involved, for Jesus is making a mansion, just as He promised.

Lord, guide me. You are the perfector of my faith.  I can rely on no one other than You.  When the church starts to equivocate about Costly Grace or Cheap Grace, just to keep the doors of the church open, we cannot simply take it quietly.  We either fight for what the Bible says, or we move on to a church that holds to Your Biblical teachings.  I am saved by faith alone, but You want to build me a mansion, and I must desire nothing but what You wish for me in my life, and sin cannot be a part of what You wish for me.  In Your name I pray.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.