‘How to join the revolution?’ by Owen Lynch, 30 June 2024
What do we expect from people joining a journey of faith? Owen Lynch looks at the disputes which arose in the early church around following the Jewish law, why this was important to many people, and why the opening of God’s kingdom to all was a challenging, counter-intuitive idea to them.
Two key leaders, Peter and Paul, found themselves in dispute, but the story of Acts, and their letters which are also in the New Testament, show how God changed their understanding and revealed Christ as their foundation. How should this set our expectations and maybe change the way we treat others who are looking to follow Jesus?
Transcript
We are working through the book of Acts and I have called this series - “A Community of Hope” because I think that what we are seeing in Acts is the emergence of a community of hope and I think that this is useful as we reflect on what kind of community Severn is.
Through my study of Acts I am making the case that what we call Christianity is derived from a spiritual, political and social revolution amongst the Jews. It is a revolution that started with Jesus of Nazareth, who was killed by the religious authorities for claiming to be the true King of the Jews, but continued with people who were motivated by ten appearances of the resurrected Jesus after his death and empowered by charismatic experiences of the Holy Spirit.
What we are reading in Acts is the story of how a group of Jews created a subgroup of Judaism that they called “Hodos” or “the Way”.
I want to make it clear that this movement started with the twelve disciples of Jesus, but from what we see in Acts, they did not initially imagine that it would spread to the Gentiles.
The twelve disciples were Galileans - born and raised in an area we think of now as Northern Israel and Southern Lebanon. Scholars can identify that seven of the twelve were local fishermen; one worked for the Inland Revenue and one was possibly a politician who was fighting against the Roman occupation. We don’t know what the other three did, but we are fairly sure that they all were local, indigenous Jews who had been raised in Galilee. They were unlikely to have travelled much outside of Judea and Galilee.
The first three chapters of Acts show us that these twelve were at the heart of the revolution that exploded in Jerusalem during the festival of Pentecost. Hundreds of Jews from all over the world who were visiting Jerusalem for the festival, got caught up in the revolution, but when the religious authorities violently suppressed the revolution, these Jews went back to their own countries and took the revolution with them.
In Acts 11:19-21, it says:
19 Now those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, spreading the word only among Jews. 20 Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. 21 The Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.
22 News of this reached the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch.
Antioch was the capital of Syria and was the third largest city in the Roman Empire, after Rome and Alexandria with a population of around 500,000 people, mostly Gentiles with a small population of Jews.
Now the idea that non Jews could be part of this Jewish sect called Hodos raised all sorts of problems for the twelve disciples as we saw in Acts 10 where Peter’s trance is described.
To become a Jew - all the males in the household had to be circumcised, and the household had to observe all of the special dietary and holiness laws relating to worship in the temple or synagogue.
So when news from Antioch of Gentiles becoming Jews without being circumcised and observing the dietary and holiness laws, it stirred a controversy. So the twelve sent Barnabus, who himself was Cypriot Jew to investigate.
This man was so well regarded by the Twelve disciples that they had given him a nickname of Barnabus, which means “Son of encouragement”. His real name was Joseph and he had generously sold land and given the proceeds to the twelve disciples, so he was clearly trusted.
Acts 11:23-24
23 When he arrived and saw what the grace of God had done, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. 24 He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord.
Barnabus was clearly excited by the inclusion of non Jews [gentiles] into this Jewish sect. He saw no reason for the Gentiles to be circumcised or observe the Jewish holiness laws. But this would have caused the same controversy amongst Jews in Antioch as in Jerusalem. So Barnabus heads to Tarsus to get his new friend Saul to help him deal with this tension. Saul (who I will now call Paul) was also like Barnabus, a Jew born and raised outside Judea and Galilee. They both had a deep conviction that anyone could be a Jew because of Jesus and that there was no need for these Jewish converts to be circumcised or observe the Jewish holiness laws.
The local Jews in Antioch would have none of it, so coined a new name for this sect to effectively disown them as Jews and it was meant as a term of ridicule. They called them “Christianos”, which meant followers of Christ. This was not a term that these Jesus Jews would use for themselves, preferring “brothers and sisters” instead.
Remember how a placard was nailed to the cross above Jesus’ head, that said mockingly - “King of the Jews”. That word “king” in Hebrew was “Messiah” and in Greek was “Christ”.
The idea that Jesus called himself the Christ was widely mocked, not just by the Romans, but by Jews, not just in Jerusalem, but across the Roman Empire. So when these Jews and Gentiles insist that Jesus was the Christ, they were mocked and ridiculed by other Jews.
It would be like me saying that I can play football as well as Lionel Messi. If I said that and insisted that I was, I would be widely mocked and rightly so, because I am not able to play football like Messi.
Much like my football friends might mockingly call me Messi on the football pitch, so the Jews of Antioch called these people “Christians”. It wasn’t a sign of respect and acceptance!
These events in Antioch mark the moment in Luke’s account when this sect of Judaism starts to pivot away from Jerusalem and outwards across the Roman Empire. Apart from Acts 15, chapter 12 marks the end of the story of Peter and the start of the story of Paul.
Let’s have a look at how Luke describes this.
Acts 12:1-17
1 It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them. 2 He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword. 3 When he saw that this met with approval among the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also. This happened during the Festival of Unleavened Bread. 4 After arresting him, he put him in prison, handing him over to be guarded by four squads of four soldiers each. Herod intended to bring him out for public trial after the Passover.
So Herod Agrippa tries to build a political alliance with the Jewish priests in Jerusalem by executing James (brother of John not Jesus) and attempting to execute Peter, both of whom were two of the twelve disciples and both considered to be the revolutionary leaders of this Jewish Sect.
This is a major crisis for the sect, the biggest since the execution of Jesus himself. James is executed and Peter is imprisoned awaiting execution. The other Jews would have been devastated and shocked. Besides themselves in fear they pray desperately for Peter to be released, which in the most bizarre way he is.
But what’s interesting is that we see very little of Peter after this moment. Peter escaped from prison to the amazement of his friends and then left to hide in a secure place, until Herod had himself died.
After this, Luke only mentions Peter again in Acts 15 and we are only half way through the book. This really is the shift from Peter to Paul. But it is more than a change of leadership. It is a dramatic break with the past for this fledgling Jewish sect.
Barnabus and Paul travelled across the region (Turkey, Cyprus, Syria) and gathered more and more people to the Jewish revolution, but they were mainly Gentiles, or people without a Jewish heritage. They were from all nationalities, all ethnicities, all genders, all walks of life.
Everywhere they went, there was huge enthusiasm for this Jewish revolution, for example in Pisidian Antioch - Acts 13:42-43
42 As Paul and Barnabas were leaving the synagogue, the people invited them to speak further about these things on the next Sabbath. 43 When the congregation was dismissed, many of the Jews and devout converts to Judaism [Gentiles] followed Paul and Barnabas, who talked with them and urged them to continue in the grace of God.
But everywhere they went they also encountered criticism from other Jews who objected to the Gentiles being integrated into this revolution.
See the integration of Gentiles into this Jewish revolution, led naturally to the question of whether the Gentiles should adopt Jewish customs like circumcision, dietary and holiness laws.
Paul and Barnabus insisted that Gentiles should not be forced to behave as Jews just to be included in the revolution. But their radical opinions stirred up anger and criticism from other Jewish brothers and sisters.
Acts 14:4-5
4 The people of the city were divided; some sided with the Jews, others with the apostles. 5 There was a plot afoot among both Gentiles and Jews, together with their leaders, to mistreat them and stone them.
They escaped, but in the next town, they weren’t so lucky, Acts 14:19
19 Then some Jews came from Antioch and Iconium and won the crowd over. They stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city, thinking he was dead.
Paul wasn’t killed, but this was getting out of hand and needed to be sorted. So Paul and Barnabus the two outsiders, the two Jewish revolutionary leaders who weren’t born and raised in Judea and Galilee went to Jerusalem to meet with those that were.
Acts 15:1-2, 4-11
1 Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: “Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.” 2 This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers [revolutionaries], to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question.
4 When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders, to whom they reported everything God had done through them. 5 Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.”
6 The apostles and elders met to consider this question. 7 After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: “Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. 8 God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. 9 He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. 10 Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? 11 No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.”
In spite of this agreement, we know from Paul’s letters that traditional, conservative Jews who accepted Jesus as the Messiah, still insisted that Gentiles must adopt Jewish customs and holiness laws in order to be included in the revolution.
Paul called these people “Judaisers" and stood up to their strong arm tactics and confronted their fear. Here’s a recollection of Paul about one of his conversations with Peter, perhaps before the events in Acts 15, scholars aren’t sure.
Galatians 2:11-16
11 When Peter [Cephas] came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12 For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. 13 The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.
14 When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter [Cephas] in front of them all, ‘You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?
15 ‘We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles 16 know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified through the faithfulness of Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.
So we see this age old debate between the progressive revolutionaries like Paul and Barnabus and the conservative revolutionaries like Peter and James. Between the Jews who were raised in what we call Cyprus and Turkey and the Jews who were raised in Judea and Galilee.
I wonder how much difference this made to their perspectives? They were all encountering the same Jesus Christ, they were all bought into the same Jesus revolution. But they disagreed about whether the Gentiles who joined the revolution should be made to behave like Jews or not. Acts 15 appears to indicate that Paul, Barnabus got some agreement with Peter and James, that they shouldn’t. But we know from Paul’s letters that the argument continued to rumble onwards nonetheless.
And this got me thinking about whether evangelical Christians behave like Peter and James and expect too much of people who want to join the Jesus revolution. Do evangelical Christians expect people to adopt Christian customs and holiness laws?
What are the evangelical Christian customs and holiness laws? We may all have different ideas about this!
Are evangelical Christians justified by their adherence to evangelical Christian customs and holiness laws, or are they justified by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, to use Paul’s words?
I say evangelical Christians because Severn Vineyard is an evangelical church and it is important to reflect on our own attitude.
Are we like Peter and James, because we live in a evangelical bubble, an echo chamber where we only hear the same opinions and beliefs reflected back to us?
Or are we like Paul and Barnabus, because we are not in a evangelical bubble, we live and work amongst 9/10 of the population whose diverse opinions and beliefs are different from our own?
I think the study of Acts provokes these questions for us to consider. Sometimes some of you complain to me that you just want answers, not more questions. But these questions arise from the text and it is hard to ignore them.
So take these questions home, reflect and pray on them, talk about them with your friends and family, in your community groups. Ask Jesus to speak to you about them.