GRACE BLOGS COLLECTION
The world needed a Savior who could fulfill the law for us and bring us into a better covenant of grace. Perfection would come to us, but not by what we do. Grace isn’t cheap, it cost Jesus everything and it was free for us. But cheap law dominates many man-made church doctrines and leads people away from the gospel.
Following up on last week’s look at Acts Chapter 15, there was great debate among Jewish believers as to whether non-Jewish people (Gentiles) should be required to follow the law of Moses as they were coming to belief in Christ and getting saved. After all, Gentiles had no relationship with that law and now it was presenting a dissension among those who felt the law was still a necessary component with Jesus added to it. James appears to reach a compromise which was accepted between both parties … or was it? We’ll discover the possibility this controversy would continue and the debate between law and grace was just beginning as we look at various passages in the weeks ahead.
The debate was about choosing whether salvation is by grace through faith alone … or whether works of the law needed to be included. In the end, James spoke on behalf of the church board with a surprising change of opinion—or judgment—by saying the Gentiles should not be troubled with keeping the Mosaic law. Although not everyone agreed, the revelation being brought forth was that Gentiles would not be brought into the old way of law, but that Jews were also freed from it. It couldn’t be a grace/law mixture for one group (Jews) and not the other (Gentiles).
