Act 15 - A Blog in 28 Acts

I'm getting really tired of hearing about circumcision. Seriously! Somehow, every chapter of Acts I've written on has involved circumcision. In Chapter 7, Stephen calls his accusers,

"You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears!"

In Chapter 11, Paul is criticized for eating with (gasp!) the uncircumcised.

And now in Chapter 15, circumcision comes up again - in the first verse, no less.

It wasn't long before some Jews showed up from Judea insisting that everyone be circumcised: "If you're not circumcised in the Mosaic fashion, you can't be saved."

Read all of Chapter 15 here.

If I were a Gentile thinking about following Christ, I would have serious reservations about this circumcision business (especially if I were of the male persuasion)! So what's the big deal with circumcision?

To the Jews, circumcision was a HUGE deal. It was a sign of the covenant between God and his people. No circumcision, no salvation. But that was before Jesus and the Holy Spirit changed all the rules. Paul has experienced the new rules firsthand, and he reminds his friends who are insisting that the "pagans" be circumcised,

"Friends, you well know that from early on God made it quite plain that he wanted the pagans to hear the Message of this good news and embrace it—and not in any secondhand or roundabout way, but firsthand, straight from my mouth. And God, who can't be fooled by any pretense on our part but always knows a person's thoughts, gave them the Holy Spirit exactly as he gave him to us. He treated the outsiders exactly as he treated us, beginning at the very center of who they were and working from that center outward, cleaning up their lives as they trusted and believed him.

10-11"So why are you now trying to out-god God, loading these new believers down with rules that crushed our ancestors and crushed us, too? Don't we believe that we are saved because the Master Jesus amazingly and out of sheer generosity moved to save us just as he did those from beyond our nation? So what are we arguing about?"

The Jewish leaders knew all the rules, and they had paid their dues. It made sense to them that everyone ought to have to pay their dues to be made right with God. But Jesus changed all that. He paid the dues - for everyone - "out of sheer generosity." He changed the world from outsiders vs. insiders to all-insiders. And he changes the heart of every person who trusts in him -- from the inside out.

The Jews didn't get it. They didn't want to let go of the "rules," and they didn't want to forfeit their claim to status based on following the rules. Things aren't so different today. Christians try to out-god God, too. We create insiders vs. outsiders -- Christian vs. non-Christian, Nazi vs. Jew, Republican vs. Democrat, black vs. white, blue collar vs. white collar, blue eyes vs. brown eyes. What rules do we routinely substitute for circumcision?

Why is it so easy for us to forget that the rules eventually crush everyone? That God, in his sheer generosity, has made all the rules irrelevant? Who is the Paul in your life, who can remind you that, "We are saved because the Master Jesus amazingly and out of sheer generosity moved to save us just as he did those from beyond our nation," and that he does that by "beginning at the very center of who we are and working from that center outward, cleaning up our lives as we trust and believe him."

Who can you remind today that the rules are irrelevant?

Kim

This 28 part blog will post each Tuesday through Friday from April 1 through May 16. We'll post on one chapter of Acts each day. Be sure to join us in reading this entire book. We'll learn about Jesus, about his disciples, and about how we can become more fully devoted followers of Christ.