Tuesday 21 October 2008

Background

One of the biggest problems facing the early Church was thetension between Jewish and Gentile (non-Jewish) converts toChristianity. They came from two very different worlds - for Jewishconverts the Law of Moses which they had grown up with was thebasis for 'godly living', with its rules about diet, circumcisionand Sabbath observance; for Gentile converts there was a verydifferent way of looking at the world, based on their ownexperiences of religion. For a while it looked as though theremight, in fact, be two Christian Churches - one Jewish and oneGentile, because the differences seemed irreconcilable. The realdifficulty was the Jewish Law - if it was a gift from God to Israelthen it must be good and necessary. But if that meant that Gentilesshould keep the Law in order to be Christians, that undermined theidea that faith in Christ was sufficient.

Paul's solution was a very neat one. Those parts of the Law whichdefined 'godly living' in terms of morality and behaviour were tobe kept by Gentile converts, but those parts which marked theboundary between Jews and Gentiles - in particular circumcision,'kosher' diet and Sabbath observance - were not binding onGentiles, even if Jewish converts still wished to observe them. Andthis is precisely what this passage is about. The common ground forthe Church is Christ himself, and what he achieved by his life,death and resurrection. Jesus "came and proclaimed peace to you whowere far off (Gentiles) and peace to those who were near (Jews)" inorder to create a new people of God, uniting the two.

Unfortunately, while this particular tension was, largely, sortedout by Paul, the Church has a sad history of division down thecenturies where one group or another has insisted that they are inthe right, and everyone else is wrong. And this always comes downto the mistaken conviction that faith in Christ is simply notenough. It has to be faith plus whatever this group or that groupinsists is essential to 'godly living'. This may be maledomination, teetotalism or the belief that God created the world insix days - but the effect is the same.

To Ponder

What attitudes to Jews and Judaism have you comeacross in the Church? Has this particular division beenresolved?

How do we decide which parts of the Old Testament'Law' still apply today?

What else, in your experience, is added to faithin Christ as a requirement for being accepted in the Church?