Scripture Daily

Context No. 466 of 4322 · Acts

Context · Reflection

Acts 15:6-11: in context

6The apostles and the elders were gathered together to see about this matter. 7When there had been much discussion, Peter rose up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that a good while ago God made a choice among you that by my mouth the nations should hear the word of the Good News and believe. 8God, who knows the heart, testified about them, giving them the Holy Spirit, just like he did to us. 9He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith. 10Now therefore why do you tempt God, that you should put a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? 11But we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they are.”

This is the great council at Jerusalem, called to settle a burning question in the early church: did Gentile believers have to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses to be full members of God's people? After a long and heated debate, Peter stands up and cuts to the heart of it. He reminds them that God had given the Holy Spirit to the Gentiles, the outsiders, just as he had to the Jewish believers, and that God, who knows the heart, had cleansed their hearts by faith. And then the line that settles it: he made no distinction between us and them.

But notice the direction Peter runs the argument, because it is the opposite of what you would expect. He does not say, they are saved the same way we are, as though the Jewish believers were the standard and the Gentiles were being admitted on the same terms. He says it the other way around: we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they are. The insiders are saved the same way the outsiders are. Peter, a Jewish apostle steeped in the law, puts himself and all his fellow Jewish believers on identical footing with the newest, least-qualified Gentile converts, all of them equally dependent on grace, none of them earning anything. And he is brutally honest about why the law cannot be the ground of it: why would you put on their necks a yoke that neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? The law was never a ladder anyone actually climbed; it was a weight no one could carry.

That levels something I am always quietly tempted to rebuild: a hierarchy among God's people. I like to imagine tiers, longtime insiders who have earned their standing, and newcomers admitted by grace at a lower rung. Peter demolishes it. There is no distinction; everyone is saved by grace in exactly the same way, the most established insider on precisely the same footing as the newest, least-qualified outsider. Do I secretly picture myself as a more-deserving insider in God's family, when the truth Peter insists on is that I am saved by grace, no differently and no more than the person I would least expect God to accept?

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