Stephen
Terry, Director
Arrest
in Jerusalem
Commentary
for the September 15, 2018 Sabbath School Lesson
“Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who
will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and
I will rescue you.”
Isaiah 46:4, NIV
In a previous week, while studying about the popularly
called First Jerusalem Council,[i] we made mention of how
Paul brought about the first true split within the Christian Church. For many
years, he had been teaching that Gentiles did not need to become Jews in order
to receive the grace of God. The focus of this conflict was over the rite of
circumcision, a requirement given to Abraham and his descendants to seal God’s
covenant with them. This had proven to be a major barrier to Gentiles who may
have otherwise admired and loved the God of the Jews. Many shrunk from that
painful procedure and so never fully united with the Jewish faith. For these “almost
Jews,” one can imagine the relief they must have felt to discover that they
could be welcomed into full fellowship without it. Paul therefore naturally
found an eager audience for his message among these proselytes who wished to
turn from the idol worship they were raised with and worship the true God.
Many of those who were born Jews and had not become
Christians may have resented Paul’s “sheep stealing.” Those who had been the
proselytes’ Jewish mentors and may have spent years trying to bring them along
into full Jewish status saw their prize converts melt away from their control
as they responded to Paul’s message of freedom. This may have created animosity
to Paul’s message and may have incited personal hatred of Paul. It may even have
contributed in no small way to the expulsion from various synagogues of Paul
and those associated with him. As Seventh-day Adventists, we have seen similar
responses when we find people attracted to our message from other Christian
churches. But we are not alone. Catholics try to convert Protestants and vice
versa. But unlike our own message which insists that believers obey the
entirety of the law, Paul’s message was one of liberation from legalistic
bondage. For that reason, it still resonates today, for churches seem to
devolve from the grace of their founding to rigid obedience and centralized control
that discourages independent study and thought. When a church solidifies in
such a stance, it becomes ripe for a split, especially if it has become
stratified with first and second-class members. The Jews of Paul’s day had
become exactly that.
Worship and fellowship was ultimately controlled from the
temple in Jerusalem. The priesthood there was the highest worship class,
dispensing oracles to the masses regarding obedience, financial commitment, and
who might be deemed worthy to participate in that highest class. Below these
were the common Jews, the Am H’Eretz, or
“People of the Land.” These were seen as commonly unclean and ignorant when it
came to matters of the temple and were thought to be people who needed constant
guidance to keep from polluting themselves and the temple. Next were the Jewish
proselytes who were not really Jews yet, but studying. Last were the Gentiles
who were hopelessly unclean and had no rights to even eat with Jews or be in
the same buildings with them. In such stratified systems, the more oppressive
those at the top become, the greater the likelihood that a split will occur.
This calls for prescient leadership that understands the issues and the threat.
But that was not the case in Paul’s day, just as is often not the case today as
evidenced by the plethora of denominations that compete for converts. Whether
he understood the significance of his actions for the early church, Paul
certainly believed that offering an unrestricted hand of fellowship to the
Gentiles in a way that made them equal to the Jews was what God had called him
to on the road to Damascus. But when he convinced the Apostles in Jerusalem to
grant special concessions to the Gentiles, he was bringing about the creation
of two competing factions in the church. The strength of the animosity the Jews
felt toward these Gentile upstarts only grew over time until it swept away many
of the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, as Paul noted when some came from
Jerusalem to where he was preaching and teaching and convinced all the Jewish
Christians, even Peter, to separate themselves from the Gentile believers.[ii] Whatever they may have
thought at that First Jerusalem Council about him, Paul confronted Peter and
the others and made clear that he stood with the Gentiles and not the Jewish
Christians when Jerusalem attempted to assert control over the church in Antioch.
Likely, word swiftly flew back to Jerusalem and the
Jewish Christians there, and to James who sent the delegation that had brought
matters to a head. This was the hornets’ nest Paul was headed into when he later
traveled to Jerusalem. Because we see the nature of men today, we can surmise the
accusations that may have been made against Paul that he doesn’t respect the
authority of the central church in Jerusalem where the holy temple resides, nor
does he respect the authority of those who were Apostles before him, including
James. There may have been repeated demands for James to bring this itinerant apostate
to heel in order to save the church from being split. However the split had
already grown too large. Perhaps James knew that and managed to persuade the
Jewish church that he might be able to bring Paul back into the fold. After
all, Paul was a Pharisee educated under Gamaliel. He had the underpinnings of a
faithful, conservative Jew. Perhaps if he were gently reminded of the temple
and its part in Jewish worship, he might be drawn the rest of the way back.
This may have been behind their urging of Paul to make sacrifices in the
temple. Paul mistakenly went along with them and began the purification process
as they requested.
Perhaps Paul also was concerned about the split in the church.
He frequently professed his love for his fellow Jews.[iii] His conciliatory spirit
may be seen in his willingness to comply with the requirements of the earlier
council and bring offerings to support the believers in Jerusalem. One may wonder
how much persuading he had to do to convince the Gentiles to offer up their
support. In view of the attitude of the Jewish Christians toward the Gentiles,
depending on how much contact they had with those Jews who viewed them as
second-class Christians, it may have been more difficult in some places than
others. Be that as it may, while they may not have been entirely pleased to see
Paul, the collection was appreciated when he presented it to James and the
others. It may even have helped James to convince the others to take a softer,
more conciliatory line toward Paul.
Of course we know the results of Paul acquiescing to
this request regarding the temple, a request that went against everything he
had been teaching the Gentiles. It was a mistake for him to dissemble in this
way and present himself as something he was not. In the end, it made little
difference. He compromised his position to appease the legalistic Jewish
Christians, but even so, he was still attacked, and beaten by the Jews in the
temple, and perhaps more than a few Jewish Christians felt he was finally
getting what he deserved. Rather than Paul’s willingness to comply bringing
about greater unity in the church, it led him straight into a trap, a trap that
God would use to bring him to Rome and eventually set him free.
Over time, after several centuries, the doctrines held
by the Jewish Christians became irrelevant to the mainstream church. In their
zeal for the Law, they went too far and alienated the Gentiles whom God desired
to bring in to His fold. In response, the Gentiles revealed that the Jews had
taught them how to behave poorly also, for this period is the foundation for
much of the anti-Semitism that we see today. Both before and after the Council
of Nicaea in the early 4th century, the church saw the rise to power
of several Gentile bishops, bishops who did all in their power to remove every
possible taint of Jewishness from the believers. Coincidental to, and perhaps because
of this, worship began evolving from the customary Sabbath worship of the Jews
to a new day, Sunday. Today, many believe that this new day was commanded, or
at least implied, from Jesus’ resurrection on Sunday. But there is no such
command in scripture. Instead, it perhaps arose for two distinct reasons. First
Paul introduced the idea of accommodating others for the sake of welcoming them
in to fellowship as we saw in his appeal to the First Jerusalem Council. The
change in the day of worship would allow them to ease the transition to
Christianity for those who were accustomed to worship the Sun god on Sunday.
Second, it allowed the Christian church to escape the stigma of being associated
with the Jews. After the two violent Jewish revolts against Rome in the last
half of the first century and early in the second century, Jews were persecuted
by Roma. Jewish observance of the Sabbath of the 4th Commandment of
the Decalogue[iv]
was so strict that one could easily be accused of being a Jew simply for not
lighting a fire or cooking a meal on Sabbath which would be revealed when there
was no smoke coming from the chimney of your home. Eliminating the Sabbath
removed the possibility of that accusation and trouble with Rome.
Today we have several denominations that have returned
to worshipping on the seventh-day Sabbath. This implies that perhaps we have
gone too far in the attempt to remove everything Jewish from our faith in a
Messiah who was irrefutably Jewish. There is a danger in reform that we might
lose some of the good along with the other ideas we might toss to the side. The
Sabbath may be one of those ideas. Typically, those who worship on Sunday do
not observe the day the same way as Sabbath was observed so that even the
leaders of those denominations lament the loss of something beautiful. Perhaps
this is a lesson for us today when we seek to reform the church in ways that
will embrace the love for mankind in all of its diversity as Christ and Paul
modeled. Maybe in doing that beautiful work, we should be careful not to lose
some of the beauty we already have.
