When Plain Words Changed the World

"There is no distinction" from Acts 15

Sometime around Christmas one of the substack guys that I follow, I forget which one, pointed me to Alexander Chapota’s Commentary on Galatians.

Galatians: A Pastoral Commentary

I just want to introduce it to my readers by saying that being ‘the grace guy’ is often a very lonely position. If you’ve been the guy listening to or reading a talk where grace is praised to the moon and then loaded down with enough Law to choke an elephant and you are pretty sure that you are the only person in the congregation thinking ‘but what about evangelical liberty?’ then the way that Alexander clearly distinguishes Law from Gospel and unashamedly proclaims a Gospel which we can neither add to or take away from where our failure is the prerequisite for His victory is probably going to take away a bit of that loneliness and be encouraging to you. Alexander asked me to write something in the way of an interlude while he is studying and preparing for the next bit of his commentary and because I am happy for the opportunity to support and encourage a brother in the Gospel this piece will be published at both Comfort with Truth and The Verdict. To my readers, let this serve as a strong recommendation of Alexander and his substack. For his readers, anyone who enjoys his writing is the sort of friend that I would like to get to know better. Please drop me a line or let me know how I can minister to you.

When Alexander asked me to write something which would fit into a commentary on Galatians I knew very quickly that I wanted to tell you about the confession of Simon Peter which changed the course of human history. No, not that time¹ or that time² but the time he said something really unprecedented and shocking.

And certain men came down from Judea and taught the brethren, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” ² Therefore, when Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and dispute with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas and certain others of them should go up to Jerusalem, to the apostles and elders, about this question. ³ So, being sent on their way by the church, they passed through Phoenicia and Samaria, describing the conversion of the Gentiles; and they caused great joy to all the brethren. Acts 15

This story is commonly presented as Paul and Barnabas going to Jerusalem to have Peter, James, and John judge this disagreement between Paul and the ‘certain men from Judea’ whose identities aren’t thought much about when the story is told that way. These men are almost certainly the ‘false brethren secretly brought in’ of Galatians 2:4 and as verse 24(back in Acts 15) makes clear, they were in fact missionaries commissioned by the Jerusalem church. And despite the attempt in the apostolic letter at the end of this chapter to disavow these men; they and their heretical message were well known and actually well received in the Jerusalem church. Paul didn’t go to the Jerusalem church wanting them to act as an impartial judge. He went to Jerusalem because they were the offending party. I didn’t want to believe that when I first started to see it. It seems like a bridge too far. But look at the following verses.

⁴ And when they(Paul and Barnabas -jc) had come to Jerusalem, they were received by the church and the apostles and the elders; and they reported all things that God had done with them. ⁵ But some of the sect of the Pharisees who believed rose up, saying, “It is necessary to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses.” ⁶ Now the apostles and elders came together to consider this matter. ⁷ And when there had been much dispute,

There was much dispute and disagreement about whether or not Christians must follow the Law, in the bald words that Luke used in verse 1 there was dispute whether uncircumcised men can be saved. This opinion was not current simply in the city or the temple or even the church at large. It was among the ‘apostles and elders’, in the meeting that Galatians 2 describes as ‘private[ly] to those of reputation’.³ When Paul describes this ‘council’ in Galatians 2 he talks about Titus not being compelled to be circumcised and about not yielding which makes it clear how strong the Law faction was in the Jerusalem church elders and apostles. The conclusion is inescapable. Not only the mother church of Christianity but the Apostolic college itself, within twenty years of the Crucifixion, was openly supporting heresy⁴, fully confusing Law and Gospel. Pauline Christianity was within an inch of abortion, being mutilated by the Law. And then Peter said what may be the plainest words on record in human history.

“Men and brethren, you know that a good while ago God chose among us, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. ⁸ So God, who knows the heart, acknowledged them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He did to us, ⁹ and made no distinction between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. ¹⁰ Now therefore, why do you test God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? ¹¹ But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved in the same manner as they.”

¹² Then all the multitude kept silent

I can’t keep the Law and so I won’t tell anybody else that they have to. I, Simon Peter, through whom the Lord calls thousands to Himself, works miracles of all kinds, sends angels to get me out of jail, on whom He is building His church, am a total miserable failure at law keeping. These men are hoping to be judged clean in the sight of God on no ground but because they trust in Jesus Christ and that is the only hope that I have myself. And when Peter told them that, every mouth fell silent before the Lord. The Prince of the Apostles could not keep the Law, had no works or purity or goodness or success to add to the finished work of Christ and his plain confession of that fact changed the world. Peter’s confession deserves a closer look. Let’s start at verse 8.

As you read this verse, I want you to think about all of the awful pictures that the Jewish Christians had been painting of what the Galatian Gentiles would do if they were declared righteous apart from the Law. They’d live like hell that’s what they’d do. These were unreconstructed pagans who had never cracked a Bible. Paul had just loaded up a bus at the cathouse and splashed some water on them telling them that the power of Christ made them free from their pasts and free from their character, which was as bad as yours and worse than mine. He told them that they were free, on the spot, in ways I can’t even imagine. But does being baptised and believing really work that way? It takes years of study and hard work and tithing doesn’t it? Don’t you have to break those old habits and put in the work to build up new habits and change your character? You gotta mortify your pipe, your penis, and your pocketbook right? You already know that Peter doesn’t say that but look what he does say. He says that God knows their hearts. God knows that they haven’t done any of the right stuff. He knows that they went to pagan schools and played pagan games. They fit in the trailer park better than the pew.

I know that this is from the Netflix seasons but perfection is perfection.

They don’t really have any clear sense of what is right and what is wrong and couldn’t do what is right if they did. They have whole lifetimes of bad habits that are gonna wreck anything that they do. He knows that everything that the Pharisee church is saying about them is true. And He doesn’t care. He loves and accepts them anyway, not at some lesser level but with no distinction between them and Simon Peter. God has already acknowledged them. Acknowledged them how? Acknowledged them as sons and heirs because He has given them His own Spirit, His own self. There is not anything else that you can add to that. Having the Holy Spirit is having everything good. He alone is more than everything else. He has already given you more than everything even though He knows who you are and how much you are gonna screw it up. It gets better.

The Holy Spirit is given to these awful unchurched people in exactly the same way that He is given to the top of the class Rock on which the whole church is built. His great confessions don’t set him above them and his great denials don’t divebomb him beneath them. There is no distinction, and that lack of distinction, that full grace to absolutely empty and bankrupt people is the true spirit of the Early Church, the true Pentecostal charism. But that isn’t just a foundation on which something else is built, that is the whole thing. Their hearts were purified by faith and yours is too. Not by learning the right things, and building the right habits, and hanging out with the right people, and supporting the right candidate, and putting the right amount on your checks. But by faith? What faith? Faith that God loves and chooses and works through convicted felons like Jesus. Faith that chooses His word over our lying eyes, that is more sure than death and taxes. He has dared all, risked His whole kingdom on the wild gamble that an antisemitic jewish tax collector would make a good apostle, that His worst enemy would be so captivated by seeing Him once on the Damascus Road that he would tear down all the systems of the world, that in between his denials on Good Friday and in Antioch Peter would make another confession as shocking and divinely inspired as the first, that an antisocial autistic jackass will deliver His message today. He’s betting on some real long shots and He wins every time. You won’t be the one that disappoints Him.

Let’s finish by going back to the very beginning of Peter’s confession in verse 7. The people that Peter is talking about are a people who have one distinguishing characteristic. They ‘hear the word of the gospel and believe’. What is the word of the gospel? Well, let’s just stick with Peter in Acts 2,

This is the word of the Gospel, and there really isn’t anything to add to it. To the question, ‘what shall we do?’ the only answer is ‘stop thinking your old thoughts about God and about yourself and instead think new thoughts. Don’t think that God is far off and way up there but be bound to Him. Tie your sins into Christ’s death and burial and your self into His resurrection as closely as might be, in baptism. And you, and all who follow after you, shall receive God Himself within yourself. You shall receive the kingdom and with it everything else that you might desire will be added unto you.’

The call is simple. Don’t test God by adding to His gift. Don’t test God by confusing the human and divine, our works and His rest. Rather believe that the salvation and the Spirit which He brings to us in the waters of baptism and in His own body and blood is no different than the salvation and Spirit which He brought to Peter and Paul.

1. Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Matthew 16:16

2. ³⁶ “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”

³⁷ Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?”

³⁸ Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ³⁹ For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.” Acts 2 obviously

3. The large number of apostles and elders means that although this council was private it could also be termed a ‘multitude’ in verse 12.

4. I use this word unqualifiedly. There is no surviving Christian tradition which does not condemn the teaching that only circumcised men must be saved and that Christians must be commanded to keep the Law of Moses, at least when the question is presented this plainly.