The Living One - Week 23: Grace Alone!

As the church began to grow with believers both Jew and Gentile, a division between the two started, especially as Jews began to be out numbered by gentile believers who brought in their customs.

Many gentile believers were God-fearers who believed in the Old Testament but weren’t circumcised and didn’t eat kosher, yet went to the synagogue to worship God. Other Gentiles were proselytes and were circumcised and ate kosher and followed rituals prescribed by the Hebrew Scriptures.

As a result of the growing number of God-fearers, a division between Jew and Gentile began to grow. One group of Jews wanted to mandate circumcision and kosher eating so they brought the issue to the elders and apostles.

Peter addresses the gathering with the story of how God had given the Holy Spirit to the Gentiles just as He had done for the Jews and that God did not discriminate between Jew and Gentile, because He gave them both faith. Peter then challenged the group to not test God because God had already made it clear that He gave the Holy Spirit and faith to gentiles just as He had for Jews. Peter concludes by saying that it’s no longer Jew and Gentile. It’s that both are now coming to faith in Jesus and are united by God’s grace for both.

We are only saved through Grace Alone! Not by how religious we are or because we’ve obeyed the commandments, or been good.... We are saved by grace and grace alone.

The Cause of our salvation is that Jesus died for us.
The Cause of our salvation is the grace of God in Christ (who reached in when we were God’s enemies).
It’s all about grace through faith in Christ.

The Result is we change - we grow and mature. Salvation is not earned, it’s something we receive and it has a powerful impact in our lives. Growing and maturing are not the Cause of our salvation, they are the Result of it.

When Peter had finished, James, Jesus’ half brother, spoke and he said it was his judgement that they shouldn’t make it difficult for gentiles coming to faith. James ends the gathering with encouragement to both Jew and Gentile to not stand in the
way of what God was doing and not to offend each other by how each lived.

Through the forthright words of Peter supported by James and through the power of the Holy Spirit, the division dissipated.

This story has clear directives for us today with new believers, different cultures and those converted from other faiths.

It teaches us that:
1. We are Saved by grace alone, so we will not make requirements of others that Jesus did not make. We are not to judge.
2. We are Saved by grace alone, so we will gladly restrict our freedom for the sake of others, so as not to offend.

Grace alone motivates us to receive others the way God does, with His love and mercy because all of us have been saved by the grace of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.

Jesus is the key to knowing the Father. Many religions acknowledge God the Father but do not acknowledge God the Son and because they don’t know the Son, they truly don’t/can’t know the Father. It is through Jesus that we come into relationship with the Father. Only knowing about the Father is just that, it's knowing ABOUT Him. When we receive Jesus into our hearts and what He did for us (death on the cross, victory over the grave, returning for us) when we receive Jesus, it takes us from knowing about the Father to KNOWING Him. That’s when we finally step into relationship with the Father because it’s then that we understand the Father’s true character - one of grace and mercy and love. We see who the Father truly is when we know Jesus.

John 14:7 - Jesus said, “If you really know me, you will know my Father as well.”

Scripture for the message: Acts 15:1-21

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