Holiness and Fellowship in Christ

Introduction

What would you say if someone told you, “You Christians are all just hypocrites! You think you’re holier than everyone else, but you are just as bad as they are!”

Or what about, “You Christians are so judgmental! You think you’ve got it all right, and you think everyone else is wrong!”

Should Christians stop caring so much about holiness?

Should Christians stop drawing lines between right and wrong? True and false? Saved and unsaved? Those in and those out of Christian fellowship?

In our passage today, one might be tempted to think that the point is to obliterate any and all lines of separation… between those who are acceptable before God and those who are not… between the “clean” and the “unclean.”

However, as I hope to demonstrate (and, Lord willing, I will), the New Testament is just as clear as the Old about drawing lines between those who are in and those who are out… those who enjoy God’s blessings and those who remain under His curse.

The difference (one major difference) between the old covenant and the New is that the New Covenant is accessible on the basis of who Jesus Christ is and what He did (and does).

This is not to say that people were “saved” differently in the Old Testament than they are in the New… But it is to say that there were many laws and rules in the covenant God gave to Moses that were never meant to save anyone… rather they were always meant to grab sinners by the shirt-collar and direct their attention toward the one Mediator or Savior which God had planned to provide since before the beginning.

Well, I’m already getting ahead of myself, and I’ve already used some pretty churchy words without explaining them much, so let’s get into our passage for today, which picks up where we left off last Sunday.

In Acts 10, God revealed that His promises of blessing and forgiveness, and even His promise of the Holy Spirit was going out far beyond ethnic descendants of Abraham. God made it clear that the gospel, the message of the kingdom of Christ, was for both Jews and Gentiles… anyone who would repent and believe.

But not everyone was so quick to embrace this monumental revelation… and that’s where we pick it up in our passage today.

Scripture Reading

Acts 11:1–18 (ESV)

1 Now the apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. 2 So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him, saying, 3 “You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.”

4 But Peter began and explained it to them in order: 5 “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision, something like a great sheet descending, being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to me.

6 Looking at it closely, I observed animals and beasts of prey and reptiles and birds of the air. 7 And I heard a voice saying to me, ‘Rise, Peter; kill and eat.’ 8 But I said, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ 9 But the voice answered a second time from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, do not call common.’ 10 This happened three times, and all was drawn up again into heaven.

11 And behold, at that very moment three men arrived at the house in which we were, sent to me from Caesarea. 12 And the Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. 13 And he told us how he had seen the angel stand in his house and say, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon who is called Peter; 14 he will declare to you a message by which you will be saved, you and all your household.’

15 As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. 16 And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’

17 If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?” 18 When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”

Main Point

God makes sinners holy through the person and work of Jesus Christ, and Christians are to both enjoy and fight for fellowship with one another on the basis of shared repentance and faith.

Message Outline

The Criticism

The Explanation

The Rationale

The Conclusion

Three Takeaways

Message

1) The Criticism (1-3)

You broke the ceremonial law!

At least some Christians in Jerusalem, those Luke says were among “the circumcision party” (v2) criticized Peter for breaking some major aspects of the Mosaic covenantal law.

Specifically, their criticism was, “You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them” (v3).

Why did Luke call these Christians in Jerusalem “the circumcision party” (v2)?

This is the first use of the phrase, but the New Testament uses it several times.

Positively, it simply refers to descendants of Abraham, sometimes even to Christians of Jewish descent (Acts 10:45; Col. 4:11; cf. Rom. 4:12).

Negatively, it refers to a group of people among various Christian churches who held the view that the only way to be truly Christians was to believe in Christ and to adhere to the Mosaic covenantal laws (Gal. 2:12; Titus 1:10; cf. Acts 15:1-5).

Why were they so upset that Peter “ate with” (v3) uncircumcised Gentiles?

This was the same accusation Jesus got when He “ate with” sinners (Luke 5:30, 15:2).

The Mosaic covenant included dietary and social laws, especially outlined in Leviticus.

“Flesh [or meat] that touches any unclean thing shall not be eaten” (Lev. 7:19).

“the person who eats… while an uncleanness is on him, that person shall be cut off from his people” (Lev. 7:20).

“if anyone touches an unclean thing, whether [a] human uncleanness or an [b] unclean beast or any unclean detestable creature… [c] that person shall be cut off from his people” (Lev. 7:21).

“unclean” humans were those with some disease, often associated with bleeding (Lev. 12, 13, 15).

“unclean” animals were camels, rabbits, and pigs, among many others (Lev 11:1-7). To eat or even to touch them would result in sharing their “uncleanness” (Lev. 11:8).

Note that the result of uncleanness was being “cut off” from the people of Israel… the only people in the whole world with whom God had made a covenant.

So, for a God-fearing, Mosaic-covenant-obeying descendent of Abraham, their relationship with God and their identity as a member of the people of God in the world was directly tied in to what they ate and who they associated with.

Why was the ceremonial law there in the first place?

Cleanliness… Holiness… Sanctification!

Leviticus picks up where Exodus left off.

God had just filled the tabernacle with His presence (Ex. 40:34), and He then proceeded to give Moses specific commands for their priest-mediated ceremonies, which were all-of-life-encompassing.

Leviticus is all about holiness; how to be holy and why to be holy.

A summary of the whole book of Leviticus is expressed in chapter 10: “You are to distinguish between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean, and you are to teach the people of Israel all the statutes that the LORD has spoken to them by Moses” (Lev. 10:10-11).

And the reason for this distinction between the “unclean and the clean” is stated in chapter 11: “For I am the LORD your God. Consecrate [or separate] yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy… I am the LORD who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy” (Lev. 11:44-45).

These ceremonial laws, including diet and social interaction, were radically different from every other culture in the world… And, the holy God had not given His covenant to anyone else… Therefore, every other people or nation or tribe was by definition “unholy,” “defiled,” and “unclean.”

A parallel in our own day is legalism.

Defining our terms:

Legalism is the idea that obedience of some kind is how you get into and/or maintain right relationship with God.

The legalism of the first-century Jews was unique.

They could at least argue that their demand for obedience-based participation in God’s covenant had some biblical warrant… The Mosaic covenant did have some works-based stipulations (Ex. 19:5)!

Legalism is a natural (fallen, post-Genesis-3) human tendency.

We are quick to create rules, check the boxes, and then judge everyone by those rules.

If your pride takes the shape of optimism, then you probably think you’re following the rules pretty well, and you sometimes judge others, looking down on them for not doing as well as you.

If your pride takes a pessimistic shape, then you probably think you’re doing horribly, and you cynically judge others, especially despising those who appear to be doing better than you.

While most Christians today are not arguing for a return to the holiness code (Leviticus), every generation and every church and every Christian must carefully and vigorously resist legalism.

The Bible certainly does give us commands that we should obey.

But we must never confuse the Bible’s commands with the good news of the gospel.

And we must beware that our own culture and preferences can easily become convictions, which can in turn become universal laws.

We must fight against legalism, and we must fight for true Christian fellowship on the basis of that shared hope we have in God’s grace in/through Jesus Christ.

Legalism of any kind (Old Testament or New, before Christ’s earthly ministry and after) fails to understand the true ground or basis of God’s gracious covenant.

So, what is the true ground or basis of God’s gracious covenant?

2) The Explanation (4-12a)

God said so...

When Peter “began [to] explain” himself (v4) to his Jewish Christian brethren, he told them that God had revealed, in this special way, that He had made “clean” or “καθαριζω” [think a cathartic experience] what once was “common” or “κοινος” [defiled or impure] (v9).

God Himself specifically said that the ceremonial laws (i.e., the holiness code) of the Mosaic covenant no longer set the dividing line between the “clean” and the “unclean.” ...But not because God had changed His mind, or because the Mosaic covenant didn’t matter anymore!

Jesus never broke the Mosaic covenantal law, and He never told anyone else to do so either.

Don’t forget that it was Jesus who said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven...” (Matt. 5:17-19).

The gospel, the New Covenant in Jesus Christ, is not the abolition or neglect of the Mosaic covenantal law (i.e., God’s law); it is the answer to the inevitable question that comes as a result of actually thinking on the holiness of God and the unholiness of man.

This is Paul’s argument in Romans 3, when he says, “Do we… overthrow the law by [preaching the gospel]? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law” Rom. 3:31).

How did/does God cleanse defiled or unclean people?

Oh, friends… this is the question!

Do you feel the weight and shame of your own uncleanness?

Do you know that you are not as you ought to be?

How can God cleanse sinners like us?

The answer is not spelled out in our passage this morning, but it is in the passage Peter is talking about here… the passage we just studied last Sunday… Acts 10.

It’s the message of “good news of peace through Jesus” (v36)… who was “anointed” or set apart or consecrated by God as the Messiah or Christ (v38).

It’s the news that Jesus was “put… to death by hanging… on a tree” (v39). The kind of death that was reserved for sinners who are “cursed by God” (Deut. 21:22) and counted as “defiled” or “unclean” among God’s covenant people (Deut. 21:23).

But that news is joined with the news that God vindicated Jesus as the righteous one, the justifier of sinners, the preeminent redeemer by “raising him on the third day” (v40).

And all of this news gives way to the announcement that “everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” [or on the basis of who Jesus is and what He’s done] (v43).

God makes sinners clean or holy on the basis of the person and work of Jesus Christ… alone!

Friends, hear this good news as the heavenly proclamation it is!

Receive this word as God’s own promise to you!

Cling to this promise and to this Jesus!

Don’t trust in your own efforts or work… and don’t wait until tomorrow… We shall all soon be standing before the holy God who judges all things rightly and shows no partiality.

This is the gospel, and it’s the only hope sinners have to be made clean.

3) The Rationale (12b-17)

God’s sovereign expansion of His covenantal blessings.

God was behind and arranging and working throughout the whole encounter.

It was God who revealed to Peter that He had “made clean” that which was previously declared “unclean” or “common” (v9).

It was God who sent the “angel” to Cornelius and told him to “bring… Peter; [so that] he will declare to you a message by which you will be saved, you and all your household” (v13-14).

And it was God (God the Holy Spirit) who “fell on” or “pressed against” or “happened upon” those Gentiles who heard that message and believed it (v15).

And this is the critical point of Peter’s rationale (or reason) for embracing a new understanding of “clean” and “unclean.”

The critical point:

Jesus said He would “baptize with the Holy Spirit” (v16), and the “Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning” (v15).

John the Baptist (the forerunner of the Messiah) said, “I baptize you with water for repentance [a Jewish baptism of cleansing, not uncommon in the Old Testament (Ps. 51:2; Ezek. 36:25; Zech. 13:1)], but he who is coming after me… He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit...” (Matt. 3:11).

And Jesus Himself promised, “you heard from me, John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit [according to] …the promise of the Father” (Acts 1:4-5).

And Peter was arguing that the Gentiles had received the same “baptism” of/with/by/in the Holy Spirit which the Jewish believers had on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4).

Therefore, Peter argued, God has welcomed Gentiles into His covenantal blessings… and so should we.

“If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?” (v17)

And the implication is that the Jewish believers will themselves “stand in God’s way” if they do not also receive the Gentile brethren.

Tapping into the driving theme of Acts.

So far, we’ve seen three major expansions of the gospel, accompanied by “baptism” with/in/by the Holy Spirit, which are a demonstration of Christ’s kingdom/Church expanding in the world.

Just as Jesus’s commission stated in Acts 1:8...

We first saw the gospel go out and many repent and believe in Jerusalem (Acts 2).

Then we say the gospel spread into Judea and Samaria, and many repented and believed then as well (Acts 8).

And now, even the Gentiles (or those at the “end of the earth” [Acts 1:8]) have heard the gospel and responded with repentance and faith (Acts 10).

And in all of these expansions of Christ’s kingdom, these conversions of sinners, we’ve seen the Holy Spirit play the key role.

In Jerusalem, Peter promised “the forgiveness of sins… [and] the gift of the Holy Spirit” to everyone who repented and believed the gospel (Acts 2:38).

In Samaria, Philip “proclaimed to them the Christ” [i.e., the message that Jesus is/was the Messiah or Christ] (Acts 8:5) and those who “received the word of God” [i.e., believed the word or message was true and from God] (Acts 8:14) also “received the Holy Spirit” (Acts 8:17).

And, of course, Peter preached the “good news of peace through Jesus Christ” (Acts 10:36) to the Gentiles gathered in Cornelius’s house in Caesarea, and Peter promised that “everyone who believed in [Jesus] receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (Acts 10:43). And “while Peter was still [preaching], the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word [i.e., received the word as true]” (Acts 10:44).

Brothers and sisters, this teaches us that all Christians enjoy real fellowship with one another.

All Christians - though their cultures, their geographies, their social standing, their economic status, and their ethnicities may differ - enjoy fellowship on the basis of their shared repentance and faith, sharing the same Spirit who works such things in all Christians.

This is why Paul can say to the congregation in Corinth, “in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body - Jews or Greeks, slaves or free - and all were made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:13). And to the congregation in Ephesus, “through [Christ] we…have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Eph. 2:18).

Friends, this means that our unity is greater with our Christian brothers and sisters in Afghanistan and Russia than it is with our non-Christian neighbors who may vote the way we do, eat the same food we do, enjoy the same sports we do, and share a thousand other similarities.

Incidentally, this is one of the main reasons why we care about and pray for other churches… whether they be local or distant, Baptist or Presbyterian or Bible Church or unaffiliated. All Christians who share the same gospel are indwelt by the same Spirit, and we are all citizens of Christ’s kingdom in the world… eagerly awaiting that day when Christ will return and make His kingdom visible in full.

And, of course, this fellowship is all the more meaningful among a specific congregation… wherein we know and love one another in tangible ways, we encourage ongoing repentance and faith in one another, and we all make our way together along the pilgrim path toward that celestial city.

4) The Conclusion (18)

The Jewish Christians in Jerusalem received the Gentile believers as fellow participants in the New Covenant.

“When they heard [all that Peter explained] they glorified God, saying, ‘Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life’” (v18).

God had indeed made a covenant with Abraham, and God gave him the sign of circumcision to be a signal that Abraham’s seed or offspring were participants in God’s covenant (Gen. 12:1-4; cf. Gen. 17:1-14).

And God had also made a covenant with Israel (the nation Abraham’s children became), and, through Moses, God gave them every law of the holiness code, which set them apart from every other “nation” or “ethnicity” in the world (Ex. 19:1-6, 21:1-24:8; Lev. 1-27).

But, when Jesus Christ came… when He lived and died and rose again, when He ascended to the right hand of the Father and then sent His Spirit to dwell among His people… He inaugurated the New Covenant “by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption… so that those who are called [whether Jew or Gentile] may receive the promised eternal inheritance [by faith] (Heb. 9:11-15).

He “reconciled…to God” all those who would repent and believe, unleashing the message of “peace” and “access” to God on the basis of His sacrifice [i.e., His person and work] (Eph. 2:11-18).

This is what the Jewish Christians were beginning to understand when they heard Peter’s report in Acts 11.

But, as we shall see, this episode isn’t the last time the question about Gentile Christians will arise (Acts 15).

Though we’re told that “they fell silent” when “they heard these things” (v18), at least some of them speak up again in just a few chapters… and no small portion of the content of the rest of the New Testament (after Acts) is written to deal with and/or to explain how “repentance” (v18) and the “forgiveness of sins” (Acts 10:43) comes only by faith or belief in Christ, and not by ethnicity or by works.

5) Three Takeaways for us Today

We, Christians, ought not consider anyone “unclean” or unsaveable.

We have even less reason than 1st century Jews to think that anyone is “unclean” or too dirty to hear and receive the gospel message of hope and holiness.

If you think of yourself as “unclean” or too dirty to be acceptable to God, then remember that it is Christ who makes sinners clean!

We, Christians, must rely on divine revelation for the content of our beliefs and practices.

Throughout this whole passage, there is an underlying assumption: God’s word is the final and chief authority.

Peter’s appeal, when questioned about his strange actions, is “God said...”

God’s word must always shape and reshape (form and reform) all that we believe and all that we do.

Though we don’t have the Mosaic holiness code weaved throughout our lived experience, we do have many culturally and experientially familiar practices that may or may not have anything to do with Christianity.

There is a perennial temptation to add culturally familiar dressing to the gospel imperatives… but we must fight against this temptation.

We, Christians, and especially church members, have a responsibility to humbly and conscientiously admit new Christians into fellowship… on the basis of shared repentance and faith.

Humbly - We should never add some other prerequisite to Christian fellowship than that which God Himself has set as the dividing line.

Culture, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, life-experience, family or social connections… none of this should have any bearing on whether or not we share Christian fellowship with someone… only, “Is this my brother or sister in Christ?” “Is he or she repenting and believing in the same Savior?” If so, then we have true Christian fellowship.

Of course, there are secondary doctrines upon which we must have unity in order to church together… but we should never call into question a person’s salvation unless he or she is willfully denying or neglecting a core teaching of the gospel.

Conscientiously - We should never treat Christian fellowship as a matter of preference or sentimentality.

Are you repenting (i.e., actively turning from sin)? And are you believing the gospel (i.e., actively clinging to Christ alone for your salvation)?

If so, then we have real and meaningful and lasting Christian fellowship.

If not, then we can still be friends, and we should certainly treat each other with respect, but we are fundamentally headed in opposite directions in life.

You might say you’re a Christian, and you might even appear to be so for a while, but before long Christians and non-Christians will be at total and irreconcilable odds with one another.

This means that Christians and non-Christians don’t do each other any favors when they pretend that they are united only to keep the peace.

Brothers and sisters, we ought to be conscientious as a church, welcoming into membership only those people who have a credible profession of faith… those people who appear to be repenting and believing the gospel right along with us.

And, brothers and sisters, we ought to be conscientious of this when we are talking to our friends and loved ones, our co-workers and our classmates.

If someone we love is living and thinking and talking like a worldling, then we must not simply pretend that they are Christian in order to keep the peace or to not offend.

God makes sinners holy through the person and work of Jesus Christ, and Christians are to both enjoy and fight for fellowship with one another on the basis of shared repentance and faith.

May God help us turn from sin and believe in Christ...

May God help us to enjoy real Christian fellowship on the basis of shared repentance and faith...

And may God help us to fight for true Christian fellowship, so that we might glorify God by making Christ’s kingdom visible (to the degree that it can be) in this world… until He comes.

Bibliography

Calvin, John, and Henry Beveridge. Commentary upon the Acts of the Apostles. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010. Print.

Peterson, David G. The Acts of the Apostles. Grand Rapids, MI; Nottingham, England: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009. Print. The Pillar New Testament Commentary.

Polhill, John B. Acts. Vol. 26. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992. Print. The New American Commentary.