Salvation By Law or Grace
Notes
Transcript
By Chapter 15 the word of God and Salvation through Christ had started to spread through the world of the Jews and gentiles.
As Paul and Barnabas return to Antioch they are met by teachers from Judea and this is where the friction starts to happen.
The Conflict (vv 1-6)
The Conflict (vv 1-6)
These men had genuinely come to know Christ, and their faith had cost them dearly.
But they were also the product of there upbringing.
They were not bad people at this point.
But given time, their views, tightly held, would pull them so far away from the doctrine of grace that they would become apostate.
We all are influenced by our backgrounds.
Each of us has experienced some doctrinal or practical distortion because of past experience or environment.
The challenge is to identify those points of error or misemphasis before we drift too far away from Christ.
Theologically, the truth of the gospel was at stake in Jerusalem.
And relationally the stakes were just as high.
A wrong decision in Jerusalem and gracious openness would be replaced with jaundiced exclusiveness.
Fortunately, the Jerusalem Council followed Christ, and in doing so they gave us a basis upon which to build grace into our theology and our relationships.
Peters Speech ( vv 7-11)
Peters Speech ( vv 7-11)
Peter gets up to address the council and refers to the Early Days.
This is a reference to when he was chosen to go into the house of a gentile and preach Christ and bring salvation to the first gentiles in the house of Cornelius.
It also said that “God made the choice”.
This was not a choice made by man but by God and God alone.
The reason circumcision was not needed was that God knew the heart of man and knows the faith of a believer inside rather than outside marking.
Peter affirmed his perplexity as to why the Judaizers would saddle anyone with the Law.
They themselves could not bear it, so why heap it upon others?
God had given them the Law as a schoolmaster to lead them to Christ by demonstrating at every turn they were sinners in need of mercy.
Galatians 3:23–25
23 Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.
24 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.
25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian,
19 Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.
20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
With the conclusion of Peter’s speech a turning point came, as evidenced in verse 12 by the multitude’s silence.
We learn when we listen.
During that silence, Barnabas and Paul seized the moment and verified what Peter had said by relating the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles.
The miracles of their first missionary trip were recited, and the Council was awestruck.
James’s Speech (vv 13-21)
James’s Speech (vv 13-21)
After some time Barnabas and Paul finished, and James stood up.
If there had been silence before, there was absolute silence now, for James was the Lord’s earthly half-brother.
After the Resurrection Jesus had visited him personally 1 Corinthians 15:7
7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.
Called “James the Just” because of his piety, he was ascetic and scrupulous.
When he died, his knees were allegedly callused like those of a camel because of his many hours of prayer.
He was a pillar of the church Galatians 2:9
9 and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.
He was also the moderator of the assembly now considering an all-important dispute.
Some call him the first bishop of Jerusalem.
