September 29, 2023

Acts 15: 28, 29 “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.” (NIV)

The Bible rarely advocates one cultural approach over another. God’s heart is that every tribe and tongue come worship him without having to surrender their food, language or other cultural distinctives in the process.*

These verses are an excerpt from a letter in which the apostles and elders addressed a specific audience regarding a specific problem. Some Jewish Christians were insisting that Gentiles couldn’t become Christians without first adhering to Judaism. What we have here is a compromise that the church leaders (led by the Holy Spirit) offered to help ease the cultural clashes that were occurring between the Jews and Gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia, without imposing unnecessary restrictions on the Gentiles or offending the sensibilities of the Jews.

So while these words may not specifically apply to us today, they present a general principle that is applicable to modern Christians. They are rules consistent with holy living in the society of the day, not rules to make it harder to be a Christian. And while it was a cultural compromise, the church leaders were in no way watering down the message of the gospel.

We also live in a world where different cultures are learning to live together - and the church should be leading the way for the rest of society. Our leaders could learn from the example of the Council of Jerusalem - 2,000 years ago - to seek ways to be sensitive and accommodating without compromising the truth. It would seem good to the Holy Spirit if we did.

Centuries before it was popular to be inclusive, Jesus started a church in which everyone has equal standing.*