Acts 13-15

God, the Great Category-Buster

 When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them. But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.”
The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”
(Acts 15:3-11 ESV)

The only thing of our very own which we contribute to our salvation is the sin which makes it necessary.
-William Temple

Categories. I've got em. Uptight, formal Christians and strange, don't-care-about-jack Christians. Christians with good theology and Christians with terrible theology. Christians who are really living out God's call in a wild way. Christians who are living a boring life. Christians who are in their bible and Christians who are not. Christians who care about people and those cold, uptight bible scholars.

I don't think I'm alone in this. The truth is we all have categories (even though at Hope CC alot of those categories are flipped around).

The trouble doesn't necessarily come from those categories, but trouble definitely comes as we start to project our own limited human judgements on to God. It's slow. It's imperceptible, but gradually we believe that God doesn't care about/favor/save someone who fits on the wrong side of our categories- including ourselves.

"God doesn't favor them as much because they don't have a regular quiet time" or maybe more likely, "God doesn't favor me as much because I don't have a regular quiet time."

With this in place, we and those around us are constantly bouncing back and forth between in and out- justified and lost. If you are or have been here, you know that this is a tiring, discouraging roller-coaster.

I love this little gospel-application huddle that these guys have (v6). After stewing on it, they are reminded of something that is both very different from the thoughts that we think and at the same time more true than the thoughts that we think. First, he reminds the Pharisees how they were cleansed- by faith (v9). Then, he concludes:

Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”

Wild. Leave it to God, the ultimate category-buster.

If this text is true, then our actions or lack of actions can not win the favor of God. On the flip-side, your actions can not lose you the favor of God. He is never impressed with us and will never be. Any favor that we have was attained in an exchange that happened between two persons and neither of them were you.

This "deal" was about you but it happened behind your back- before you existed, and I'm sorry but you didn't get any say in the matter. It was predestined that you would be adopted as God's son or daughter (Eph. 1:5). If you are in Christ, you can not win God's love and favor with thoughts, actions, evangelism, time in the word, prayer, going to your church or caring for your neigbor. And you can't lose it for not doing these things. He's here for you no matter what.

If you are in Christ He will (yes, I said "He will"- Phil. 1:6) make you in to what he wants you to be. It's as sure as death and taxes. God is in it with you and on your side even if you rebel against him because that's how crazy God's categories or lack thereof are (Rom. 5:8).

Application: Rejoice!!! Give up on trying to impress God! He thinks you're a goofball anyways, but he loves you!