Rules and Regulations

Read Acts 13:1–15:35

23. “This letter is from the apostles and elders, your brothers in Jerusalem. It is written to the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia. Greetings!
24. We understand that some men from here have troubled you and upset you with their teaching, but we did not send them!
25. So we decided, having come to complete agreement, to send you official representatives, along with our beloved Barnabas and Paul,
26. who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
27. We are sending Judas and Silas to confirm what we have decided concerning your question.
28. For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay no greater burden on you than these few requirements:
29. You must abstain from eating food offered to idols, from consuming blood or the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality.” Acts 15:23-29

Laws for the state of Illinois take up thirteen feet of shelf space. Add another twenty-three feet of shelving for federal laws and several more shelves containing court decisions, and you still are not done. You have city, county, and township rules to consider. If you go to school, work for a corporation, or attend church, you have even more rules to follow. It’s a wonder a person doesn’t need permission to take a breath.

The earliest Christians are Jewish, and they still live under the many religious rules that make up their culture. With the addition of numerous Gentile believers to the church, things get complicated. Should the Gentile Christians also follow all these rules? The solution comes straight from the truth about salvation itself.

Paul, Peter, James, and other leaders, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, realized that Christ saves a person by faith alone and not by observing the law (Acts 15:1-29). This conclusion, though, did not mean that the Gentile believers did not have to keep any laws. Rather, they did not have to keep the laws of Moses, including the notable rite of circumcision, in order to be saved.

We often like to add conditions to the simple mandate to believe in Christ, but we must not. The more a Christian looks like us, the better we sometimes feel about their faith. But by looks like us do we mean “looks like Christ,” or just “looks like me”? Resist the temptation to make other Christians act just like you. The commands of Christ are all the religious rules they need, and all that most can bear.