Road Trippin With Rachael

The Church as a whole is fascinating. For all the problems that it has, no one can look at the Church as a whole and say that it is only for one type of person. You can look through history and see how there are local churches all over the world, with services and songs that are all different languages, see people dressed in different fashions, and still hear the Gospel being preached to a lost and dying world. 

In the early years of the Church, this was a radical idea. Not because the Gosepl wasn’t being shared, but because those who first came to Christ came our of Judaism – and they had the Old Testament informating their understanding; this understanding involved the Mosaic law, Torah, and cultural distinctions which if someone hadn’t been exposed to regularly would have been difficult to embrace and become a part of – particularly if they were men who who need to undergo circumcision to become a full member of Judaism. 

Therefore, the early Church was almost exclusively men and women who came out of Judaism – with the exceptions that we have already discussed. However, the people of Samaria, and the Cornelius’ household had come to Christ. This resulted in these outlying occurrences, no longer being outliers. Specifically, the turning point was Cornelius as Peter went to the man’s house to share the Gospel. 

Facing the Conundrum Head-On

As stated, previous the only Gentiles who had come to Christ were those who were known as God-fearers. These were men and women who were Gentiles, but had fully embraced the Mosaic law and practiced it in their everyday life. The event that kept them from being considered Hebrews was the men’s lack of circumcision. Needless to say, there aren’t very many men who choose to go through that as an adult, and there is a reason that little boys have this done when they are newborns. 

Circumcision was a part of the Abrahamic coventant dating back to Genesis 17:10-14. It was meant to be a sign that they were a part of the covenant. Every practicing – and even nonpracticing Hebrew men – would have had this physical distinction.  As the conversation now shifted to non-Hebrews joining the church,  the wift of legalism developed in the early Church: the circumcision party. They held to the belief that to be a Christina, they must first be Jewish. This means that they need to study Torah, the men need to be circumcised, and in other places – we’ll see through Paul’s letters – they need to practice the kosher dietary restrictions found in Exodus 22:31, Leviticus 11, and Leviticus 17:13-15. Paul will later address this same issue in Romans 14:1-4. 

Peter isn’t having it. In fact, as Peter was the one to go into Cornelius’ house and share the Gospel with him and his household, he in no way believed that he had violated any laws – because Christ died for all. In Acts 11:4-17, Peter recounts his experience of having a vision where he is told that all food is clean, and all people are clean – there is no one that they should avoid sharing the Gosepl with.  Peter’s exposition on the matter results in the acceptance of Gentile Christians, and paved the way for missionary journeys that would later take place; many of these journeys would be spearheaded by Paul, Barnabas, and other Apostles who are credited with taking the Gospel to other lands.   

Persecution Breeds Expansion

When I was in college I had a class assignment that required me to go to three churches that were of different denominations from the tradition I had grown up in. Once of the options I chose was to attend a Chinese Gosepl Church here in the St. Louis area. I wish I was adventurous enough to attend the Chinese service, but alas I attended the English service. One of the things discussed in the service was that persecution will always breed expansion. The more the Church is restricted, the more the faith and dedication to the Gospel draws others in. 

In the same way, the early Church was beginning to feel the pressure from the officials of the area – particularly with the death of Stephan. The ripple effect of Stephen being martyred was that more and more people who joining. I think to some degree there was a morbid curiosity of what did this man believe that would cause him to die at the hands of the Jewish leaders, and as they asked those questions, they also came to Christ. 

It wasn’t only the those who were in Jerusalem and the immediate surrounding area that was bringing the Gospel to other area. Stephen’s death caused a ripple effect where the people began to leave Jerusalem and move to other areas – or more accurately, they were returning to their homelands where they lived before coming to Jerusalem where they were from. As a result of this mass exodus, these men and women began to share the Gospel in local synagogues. More and more people began to come to Christ. But then there were a few men who were from Cyprus and Cyrene who began to tell their Greek neighbors about the things they had learned about Jesus and what he had done for humanity on the cross. This resulted in more and more non-Hebrews coming to Christ. 

Similar to what the Jerusalem church experienced with speaking with Peter and with looking over the situation in Samaria, they sent someone to check out the situation that was happening in Antioch. The person they chose to send was Barnabas. Barnabas, living up to his name, arrived seeing the grace of God he was glad and encouraged all of them to remain true to the LORD with devoted hearts (Acts 11:23). Barnabas would later bring the man Saul (later known as Paul) to the Antioch, where he served with him, was discipled, and would later go out on multiple missionary journeys.