Jews And Gentiles – Part 7

Jews and Gentiles

Paul, accompanied by Barnabas, in the synagogue, at Antioch in Pisidia, gives a recital of Israel’s history right down to the time of David. The Jews said “Brothers, if you have a word of exhortation for the people, please speak” (Acts 13:15). So Paul stands up and gives the main outline of their own history that they knew so well, culled from their own Scriptures. And then he leads them on, in the 23rd verse, to the resurrection of Jesus (“Of this man’s seed hath God according to his promise raised unto Israel a Saviour, Jesus”); to the word of salvation, (“Men and brethren, children of the stock of Abraham, and whosoever among you feareth God, to you is the word of this salvation sent” vs 26); to the crucifixion, of which they had been guilty nationally, (“And though they found no cause of death in him, yet desired they Pilate that he should be slain” vs 28); to the resurrection (vs 30-37) and to the forgiveness of sins made possible through this crucified Savior that was foretold. This was always the point of his preaching in the synagogue — the crucified Savior, who had been foretold in their own Scriptures.

However, when we go over to Acts 16 we find Paul and Silas in prison at Philippi presented with an opportunity to preach the gospel to the Gentiles. There the message seems very much simpler. Briefly, this is what happened. There was an earthquake. All prisoners were set free including Paul and Silas and the jailor was afraid that they would escape. Paul said, “Don’t worry they are all here.” The jailor brings them out and he said:

“Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. And they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes; and was baptized, he and all his, straightway” (Acts 16:30-33).

Now that is a remarkable statement. They preached the gospel to him in the middle of the night! We usually take about six months for indoctrination before we have got anybody to be what we call “ready for baptism.” They preached to him in the middle of the night the word of the Lord and he accepted it, he believed it, and himself and all his household were baptized “that same hour of the night.”

The jailor could not possibly learn all the details of our statement of faith at that time of night in the shocked condition in which he found himself. It would be impossible to take him back and to teach him the history of the kings of Israel, and how it was all developed, how the promises to Abraham will be fulfilled in a certain way, and the background of Old Testament times leading up to the Messiahship of Jesus. All this, I submit, could not be taught in the middle of the night, and the man and all his household be made ready for a Christadelphian “examination”; but they were ready for baptism, and the message that he preached to them was: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” And they believed; and I submit that it would be a very elementary doctrine that the Philippian jailor would have received in the middle of the night. The simple basic truths. And he was so impressed by the power of God that had been manifested on behalf of these men that his heart was opened to receive it, and he believed and was baptized.

Different emphasis

If we go from Acts over to the epistles of Paul, there is, inferentially, a slight difference between the gospel that Peter and the other apostles preached to the Jews and the gospel which Paul preached to the Gentiles. It comes out particularly in the letter to the Galatians. I am making this point for a reason that you will see in a moment. Now it was not a different gospel; the basic facts were the same, but the emphasis was different. So we read: “I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ” (Gal 1:6-7).

Who were these that were troubling the Galatian churches? They were the Judaisers, as is clear from the rest of the Epistle. They were those who said, “It is all very well to believe in Jesus as the Messiah, but you have still got to have circumcision and the keeping of the Law.” They wanted to bring the Church back again to the old Mosaic institutions, but Paul would have none of it. He said, this is “another gospel.” This is something that is taking you away from the grace of Christ and bringing you back to the enslavement of the Law. So he says: “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed” (Gal 1:8). He stood by this gospel of grace, and for the Gentiles he would have none of their circumcision, none of their law, “I say unto you,” he said, “If any man be circumcised Christ shall profit you nothing.” He did not mean, of course, that if any man had been circumcised as a child at the whim of his mother or father he was outside the pale of salvation. He meant that if you start trusting again in circumcision then you are lost to Christ.

Salvation by grace was the gospel preached, and this was not the travesty of the gospel that was being introduced by the Judaising element. We read, “And I went up by revelation, and communicated unto them that gospel which I preach among the Gentiles” (Gal 2:2) Notice this: “That gospel which I preach among the Gentiles,” and then later on: “But contrariwise, when they saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me, as the gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter; (For he that wrought e_ffectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the Gentiles:)” (Gal 2:7-8). You will find this idea running through the Letter to the Galatians. They were not preaching two different gospels, it was a different emphasis.

Go back to Acts 15 which we looked at briefly previously. Here the church was saying that they wanted to not offend the Jewish element among them. There were those who had certain genuine problems, because they found it extremely difficult to turn their thinking away from the old Jewish customs and prejudices in which they had been brought up. And Paul is always sympathetic to this. In his epistles he says to the new converts from among the Gentiles who felt that “all things are lawful to me,” and had no inhibitions over legal scruples, “Ah, you may not have scruples, but these brethren of Judea do. They have been brought up on the Jewish faith and you must respect their scruples and difficulties of conscience.” (Though he maintained all the time, of course, that for a Gentile convert, for any convert, these things had no bearing. It did not make a man better if he ate meat offered to idols, or worse if he did not eat, the thing had no relevance to salvation.)

In all his preaching we see how he tried, as he himself said, to the Jew to become a Jew, that he might win the Jews; and to the Gentiles to become a Gentile, that he might win the Gentiles; to them that were under the Law as under the Law etc. He “took and circumcised Timothy” so that it should be seen that the report that he was a law-breaker was quite untrue. For the same reason he associated himself with men who were under a Jewish vow, in order to show the Jews that he had respect for the Law, but not as a means of salvation. In this I see a change of emphasis. To the Jews, an understanding of their difficulties; to the Gentiles preaching of salvation by grace, in which Law played no part whatsoever.

Now I think this is important, because it shows a certain flexibility in the preaching of the gospel. It suggests that truth is not a golden casket, immutable and unchanging, but a living organism adaptable to the needs of each generation, or different men in one generation. Not that the basic facts ever change. The simple doctrinal content of the gospel remains immutable, but there may be a change of emphasis, in order that men may be able to see and understand the central core of revealed truth.

“Examining Brethren”

What the church taught as required faith in the first century, in Acts of the Apostles, was quite simple and dogmatic. There is no evidence here of any interrogation of candidates for baptism, or what we call examination. If we go back to the previous study, when we are thinking of the offices and officers of the New Testament church, we never read of “examining brethren.” They did not have examining brethren; and they did not give a Bible knowledge quiz, going back to an understanding of all the kings of Israel before you could be baptized! A simple affirmation of faith in the gospel, which was a simple gospel, was all that was required. “If thou believest with all thy heart, thou mayest be baptized,” Philip said to the Ethiopian eunuch. “And he said I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and he baptized him” (Acts 8:37).

The point is, that they went out into the Roman world, confronting the paganism of their times, and they preached to them Jesus as a living being — that “Jesus Christ is alive today.” It is a wonderful message, and we ought to preach it more. They preached repentance for real sins, not for some kind of inherited sin, but for personal sins. They repented, and were converted, and their lives were turned inside out and upside down; and they started out to be disciples in the very real sense of the word.

This was the content of apostolic preaching, and it was more important than the preaching of the signs of the times, or political prophecy, which we indulge in so much in our own times. We do not read anything in the preaching of the apostles about the signs of the times, though clearly there were signs. Their times were running out, the judgments of AD 70 were on the doorstep, but we do not read of them preaching these things. They were preaching salvation by Jesus Christ; acceptance of his message and his leadership; and the conversion of men’s lives to the Christian faith. That is not to say, of course, that we should not preach about Israel or the signs of the times or prophecies of the Old Testament. I am not saying that at all. All I am saying is that it clearly is a different type of preaching in many respects from the preaching of the New Testament preachers.

In the 19th century when our forebears came along, reviving the Truth and preaching the Gospel, this preaching of prophecy had a marked effect. Perhaps it was then a legitimate change of emphasis. Perhaps in a world in which men generally accepted the Bible, generally accepted some form of religion, it was very proper and right that they should direct attention to some aspects of the Bible which men had over-looked or forgotten, or disregarded. Interpretations of prophecy and dogma were the religious coinage of the time, and it was in this context that this kind of preaching developed, in which our own community grew up.

A new emphasis today!

All I am suggesting is that it may need a new emphasis today. Perhaps a return to the more basic Christian message is required for the new paganism of these times, because men are not religious any longer, and they do not know the Bible any longer, and they are pretty well as godless, although perhaps not quite so pagan as the nations to which the Apostles went. How they managed to get their message across to men who were worshipping idols, in idols’ temples, I do not know, but they did it. They got their basic Christian faith across to pagans. And they were converted and became Christians, and served the Lord and worshipped him. I suppose to some degree the same kind of thing happens in the mission field, in the Bible Mission of our own community. I have never been abroad on Bible Mission work, but I understand that the message is quite simple, quite positive, constructive, and certain.

Simple dogmatic Christian faith is the message which is taken to simpler souls than our own. I do not suppose many of us today would want to go back to the intensive kind of interviewing of candidates for baptism in detailed Biblical (which usually meant Old Testament) knowledge, that perhaps 50 years ago was the order of the day. Of course we still have “interviews” and discussions — most of us (in the UK) have long since dropped the word “examination.” It is not an examination, but a discussion; and the discussion should concern simple basic Christian faith, especially revolving round the desire to serve God, and to follow Christ Jesus. And it may be, that in view of the increasing paganism of our times, and the increasing lack of knowledge of the Bible and of the things of the Christian faith we should think in terms, not of increasing the multiplicity of clauses in our statement of doctrine, but rather in trying to rediscover the simplicity of the New Testament.