Day 8 and we are still going strong. I hope you are going strong also as we read together through the New Testament. I must admit that up to this point I haven’t had day one of difficulty in getting up and doing my daily reading. In fact, it has been more than a pleasure as God has spoken to me through this reading challenge. My prayer for you is that you are experiencing the same blessing as we journey together.
Speaking of journey, in today’s reading we see the first movements of outreach beyond the Jerusalem church. Peter validates the truth with Barnabas and Paul before the Jerusalem church and mission goes into high gear.
Here is what I got from the reading today.
The first controversy of the church comes about because some the Jewish Christians were having a hard time with what to do with the Gentile converts, especially concerning the Jewish religious law. Some of these people held that without circumcision one could not be saved! Not only that, they also went to Antioch and preached that without that and the keeping of the law of Moses, these new converts weren’t really converts. This caused quite the stir in the church at Antioch, so they sent Barnabas and Paul to Jerusalem to get it sorted out.
The pair from Antioch presented what God was doing and how He was doing it which gave an opening to those who were more legalistic. Peter shares again his experience with the centurion and his household and how they were saved, baptized by the Holy Spirit and baptized with water in the name of Jesus. All of this in contra position to the “yoke” of legalism that, as Peter states, “Neither we nor or ancestors have been able to bear.” Salvation is by grace with nothing else added.
I wish we would get that. Some days we really know that that we can do nothing to improve our standing before God than to submit to His rule and reign by faith in His grace toward us. Other days, we are dumber than dirt, trying to spruce up our position by doing stuff that has ZERO bearing on our eternal salvation relationship with the Creator. Why do we do this so easily?
I think it is because it is not our experience in the world. If you want something, you have to work for it. If you want to look better, you have to beautify! If you want to speak better, you clean up your language. If you want the better job, you have to fulfill the requirements and maybe even step on a few folks on the way (oh well). The system down here is not the system up there!
We tend to legalism because we cannot handle trusting in what God says. I’ll give you an example. I read today an article entitled “10 Signs Your church Has Been Secularized.” Now I believe it is important to keep our eyes fixed upon the Lord when we do church (and I believe this will guard us from messing up and doing church in a way that blesses God and His people), but people love to read this kind of thing because there is an inherent legalist in every one of us! I actually didn’t have many issues with the article at all, in fact. But why don’t we go to the word for our standard for the church, rather than what someone thinks the standard should look like.
I remember a friend who was going to the mission field whose church here in the USA would not allow drums of any kind. “It’s from the devil,” the church believed. Then my friend went to his assigned mission field in South Africa and the first worship service they were in has ONLY DRUMS as accompaniment to the singing! As Yoda would say, “Dumber than dirt are we.”
Oh and lest you think I have slipped in my own little legalism with the baptism with water thing (not to mention immersion, no less), it is commanded for obedience, but not salvation.
Just my thoughts today.
I hope you will continue with me and my church as we read through the New Testament. I know it will be a blessing.
Until tomorrow!
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