17 When we arrived at Jerusalem, the brothers and sisters received us warmly. 18 The next day Paul and the rest of us went to see James, and all the elders were present. 19 Paul greeted them and reported in detail what God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry.
20 When they heard this, they praised God. Then they said to Paul: “You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law. 21 They have been informed that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to turn away from Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or live according to our customs. 22 What shall we do? They will certainly hear that you have come, 23 so do what we tell you. There are four men with us who have made a vow. 24 Take these men, join in their purification rites and pay their expenses, so that they can have their heads shaved. Then everyone will know there is no truth in these reports about you, but that you yourself are living in obedience to the law. 25 As for the Gentile believers, we have written to them our decision that they should abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.”
26 The next day Paul took the men and purified himself along with them. Then he went to the temple to give notice of the date when the days of purification would end and the offering would be made for each of them.
Dig Deeper
Human beings have an incredible tendency to idealize things when we want to. We can reminisce about things in our past and only remember the good parts without recalling the struggles and difficulties, which can serve a positive purpose in some respects, but can also change the reality of things in our minds. We can even do this with entire time periods of the past. Americans can think of the 1950’s as this ideal time of innocence and fun and edit out that life was just as messy and sinful then as it is now. Or we look back further in history to time periods like the late 1800’s, or the colonial period, or even the time of the first pilgrims in America to find a time of idealism that appeals to us. We can easily turn these times into utopian escapes in our mind as we churn out pictures and images of these ideal times of peace and unity. But those times have every bit as much turmoil and trouble as we have now if we are only honest and realistic about it.
As an illustration of this, I recently heard a preacher that was speaking of the need for biblical unity among believers. After reading a few Scriptures he turned his attention to the apostolic church of the first century. He went on to extol the virtues of the early church as a church that was completely unified. The early church, he said, didn’t have the problems of selfish disuniting behavior that we can struggle with so mightily in the 21st century. He claimed that they were completely united in heart and mind around the power of Jesus and that this is why they changed the world so radically.
Of course there is some truth in that. They did change the world radically and they were unified around the Messiah but let’s not go crazy. The first century church had the same type of people in it that we are today: sinners. They had problems. They had sin in the church. They dealt with false teachings. They had disuniting behavior and prejudices that they had to learn how to deal with. This is actually quite important to understand, lest we begin to think they were churches full of super-humans doing things that we could never replicate. The reality is that those churches had just as many problems and were just as full of messed up sinners as our churches are today. We do need to look at why they were so successful in spreading the gospel around the world and learn from that, but passages like this one in Acts 21 remind us that they had tensions, problems and constant challenges to their unity just as we do.
Imagine if you were in Paul’s shoes here. You had been constantly traveling around the world for about two decades now, preaching the word of God and planting churches all over the world. You had seen many Jews around the world convert the Messiah’s family and give themselves over to the life of the new creation, but you had seen many times over more Gentiles come into the family. You deeply loved these Gentile believers and zealously protected their new faith in Christ as a good shepherd would carefully guard their flock. You wanted them to know, above all, that their status in God’s family rested solely on their faith in Christ that they entered into when they died to themselves and covered themselves in the life of Christ by faithfully entering into the waters of baptism. You had carefully taught them that this obedient faith in the life of Christ alone was what saved them. You helped them to fight off challenges to this by repeatedly teaching them that they did not need to adhere to the Law of Moses in order to be part of God’s family. There was nothing wrong with the Law, you would tell them, but a huge problem develops the minute anyone would tell them that they needed to follow that Law in order to be part of the family of Christ. That was to put their faith in works of the Law which meant that they would be having faith in something other than the life of Christ.
But all the while you would be aware of what a touchy subject this was for the thousands of Jewish Christians, particularly those in Jerusalem, who were still trying to work all of this out in their minds. They had grown up with stories of the martyrs who had died for their faith rather than betray the Law of Moses. As Jews, wte Law of Moses, in their minds, was what marked them out as God’s people. Now they had come to faith in the Messiah and saw themselves as the Messiah’s people but that didn’t mean that they immediately understood what that meant for their view of the Law, especially when Gentiles began rolling into the Kingdom. These Gentiles did not have the same history or regard for the Law as they had and that caused a problem for them that had to be worked through.
So if you are Paul you want to teach these new Gentile believers well about their need for faith in the life of Christ alone but you also recognize and know well how important the Law of Moses is to Jewish Christians. You grew up having that same zeal for the Law and you still respect it, in fact you’re not afraid to engage in your own occasional vow based on Old Covenant Law type practices. But you will never waver in your belief that the Law is good, but is not necessary for anyone in Christ and must never be bound on anyone.
Then you return to Jerusalem to meet with James, the brother of Jesus himself, and the other leaders of the church in Jerusalem. Your relationship with them is sincere and full of the brotherly love of Christ but is also complicated and could even be described as delicate. The main issues had been decided upon years earlier at the Jerusalem Council as far as regarding the expectations of Gentiles within the Messiah’s family. But that did not mean that all of the questions, tensions, and even mistrust between Gentile and Jewish Christians went away. And now as you relayed to them the amazing things that God had done among the Gentiles, they genuinely praised God, but there was an uncomfortable reality that they needed to bring up to you.
Thousands of Jews had become believers in and around Jerusalem (some see this number as hyperbole on the part of James but it is not beyond credibility—despite the fact that Jerusalem itself had around 60,000 people living there at the time—to believe that this number was realistic especially if they were speaking of all of Judea and not just Jerusalem) and they were all zealous for the Law of Moses. These were serious Jews who believed in the life of Christ but they, in their consciences, were not prepared to leave behind a life of adhering to the Law. And now they had been hearing rumors. They had heard rumors (From who? From where?) that you had not just been preaching that Gentiles didn’t need to follow the Law but that you had been encouraging Jews to abandon the Law themselves. The rumor was that you were telling Jews not to circumcise their children or hold to the Law in any other way, and even that the Law was a bad thing. It doesn’t appear that James and the other elders believed these rumors, but they had to be dealt with. The Jewish Christians were nervous and so they have a solution for you.
What they suggest would be a grand symbolic gesture to help appease the minds of the Jews and to demonstrate for them that Paul was not anti-Law. They needed to be assured that there would still be a place for Jews in the family of God as well and that they weren’t going to be crowded out by this flood of Gentile believers. The plan was fairly simple. You would become the benefactor of four Jewish Christians who were coming to the end of (what was probably) a Nazrite vow. They would go and shave their heads at the Temple and offer a sacrifice to end their vow to God. Because you had just come from outside of Judea, you would have to undergo your own cleansing ritual to be able to properly enter the Temple area and be part of this. This gesture would, they assure you, show the Jewish Christians that you were not against the Law or against them. They also assure you that they are not trying to re-ignite issues between the Jewish and Gentile Christians. They have no intention of going beyond the agreement reached years before. Gentiles were part of God’s family based on their faith in Christ alone but they would be expected to abstain from the obviously sinful things and things that would unnecessarily offend their Jewish brothers.
What would you do if you were Paul? Would you refuse such a gesture as unneeded and sentimental empty symbolism and see no need to defend yourself against baseless rumors? Or would you have gone along with rituals that you had no problem with in and of themselves but also saw as unnecessary? Perhaps you can begin to see that things in the early church weren’t as idyllic as we sometimes tell ourselves.
Paul obviously had no problem with taking part in this gesture that would mean so much to the Jewish Christians and assure them that Paul was not against them or the things that they held dear. Paul was only exemplifying the very values he stated in 1 Corinthians 9:20-21, “To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law.” Paul was adamant that faith in Christ alone was all that anyone needed to be saved into God’s family and that nothing else was necessary. But he also left room for things that people preferred in their worship of God as long as it didn’t violate their faith or conscience, and as long as they didn’t begin to confuse it with things that were necessary for salvation. If a Jewish Christian wanted to continue to follow the Law and put it in its proper perspective, then that was fine with Paul. When it came down to it, Paul knew that the important thing was Christ and not living by a certain cultural standard. Thus, when with the Jews he would live like a Jew, and when with the Gentiles, like a Gentile. The growth of the kingdom and the unity of the family of Christ were pre-eminent for Paul.
What we need to remember is just how often Paul urged the early Christians to stay unified (Eph. 4:3), to accept one another (Rom. 15:7), and to keep between God and themselves some of their own preferences (Rom. 14:22). As Paul stated summed it all up in Romans 14:21: “Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.” This is at the heart of what it means to be part of God’s family. It was never easy and it was never idyllic. It was always hard work and once we understand that, we can get down to doing the hard work of being the truly unified people that God wants us to be.
Devotional Thought
Have you ever been tempted in the past or even now to put a matter that was important to you but not a vital matter of sin or salvation ahead of peace and mutual edification within your church family? What is the danger of doing so? What does it demand of you to put love for others ahead of your own “rights” or dearly held beliefs and practices?
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