In teaching Biblical Literacy, a major element is not so much what the text of Scripture says, but what it assumes. All along this path we have kept our eyes on the covenants of the Bible. It is not something easily understood in our Western culture, but was the very foundation of the Hebrew culture, not to mention of the entire history of the Middle East up to New Testament times. One of the hardest tasks the Apostles faced was helping Hellenized Gentiles absorb this very different way of seeing the world.
So we see an early Jerusalem faith community who finally understand the full meaning behind all the Covenant of Moses meant, and the utter idiocy of the Talmudic teachings. It was such a joyful discovery to be out from under having to please the Pharisees, Sadducees and Scribes, who always had that ultimate weapon: "God said so." Now they knew God didn't say so, only their leaders did. They were free to recover the true meaning of living their national covenant. Jesus had just given it new life; how could it be dead?
As the disciples began to fulfill the command to take the message to all the world, they naturally began with those having a cultural affinity. More than Hellenized Jews dispersed around the region, this meant Samaritans, who didn't have a Talmud from which to disentangle themselves, but simply had to admit the Messiah was a real Jew. When it came to pious Gentiles who believed but didn't quite adopt the full requirements of the Law, who didn't see a need to fully adopt the national identity, it got sticky. It required miraculous direct intervention from God to make the disciples realize their Old Covenant was no longer the one true path to Him. In the tangle of assumptions and feelings, they struggled against centuries of racism. It seems this was the last item on which they would shift from a worldly to a spiritual understanding.
In the ensuing debate, the Christian leaders in Jerusalem remembered Moses was for their nation alone, but Christ was for all humanity. At the same time, there had to be real world implications for spiritual truth. Most Gentile cultures had their own peculiar barriers to faith, but the broader Hellenist influence carried serious dangers. The solution should not surprise us, if we have kept an eye on the covenants. The Apostles urged the new Gentile believers to embrace the Covenant of Noah. They did not call it that, but we can easily see that's what it was.
Noah had implications we have not yet pursued in our study. It was aimed at taming unrestrained sinful impulses, a gift from God to prevent mankind destroying themselves again. The Flood was entirely just. While the basic character of Noah is a call for civility, it is more than that. It remains consistent with Jesus' characterization of the entire Old Testament: unlimited loyalty to God and loving respect for others. The letter the Apostles composed breaks it down a little differently by making specific applications.
The first and most obvious requirement is withdrawing completely from pagan idolatry. This is translated variously in English texts of the New Testament, but it was more than just food. Paul makes it clear later it's not the physical reality but the perception of the watching world. There is one true God, and our loyalty to Him is undivided. Joining in pagan celebrations would compromise the impact of that witness. There were no details listed, but it was left to the conscience of the individual believers in their communities scattered around the world to prayerfully work out in each context what that required.
The issue of sexual purity went back before Noah. We who have seen the thread of revelation know God has consistently condemned sex outside the provision of lifelong commitment to building a family. This is easily tied to the call for civility and social stability, if not the very fundamental threat of compromise in the soul by the flesh. It's a special case of idolatry deserving special mention. If we have to start arguing about various sexual appetites for something outside the husband-wife pairing, we are already on the wrong ground. God granted only one provision for human sexual appetites, and there is absolutely no fundamental right to sex, much less any particular fallen desires for sex.
Meat with blood is paired with strangling as a single item. This is not a matter of what goes in your mouth, as Jesus noted, but of what comes out of your heart. Blood is a spiritual symbol going back to the Garden of Eden. It symbolizes the gift of life itself, and taking it lightly is the primary symptom of evil. It was the sin of Cain, and of Lamech, and clearly points back to the command we shall love and respect others equally with ourselves. Taking life is very serious business. It is required to keep civilization alive, but remains a heavy burden on government, not a privilege. Those who find it easy to harm others are the greatest danger to all human life. But that's not enough; a casual disregard of lower forms of life is also dangerous. Noah kept kosher long before it was codified in the Law of Moses, but the Lord said humans could eat anything they found edible. Animals were distinctly lesser beings, but God forbade under Noah anyone eating meat without draining away the blood, because it symbolized our acceptance of this still active Covenant of Noah. Nature itself will rebel against us if we do not obey and adopt the strict respect for life.
Acts shows us how God fulfilled His promise to redeem all Creation by redeeming the souls of mankind whom He had first granted stewardship of it all. The character of that stewardship changed through the curse of the Fall, through every step of revelation in covenants, and yet again in the sacrifice of Christ. Redemption today in His Blood is the down payment for the promise things will come full circle back to what Eden was meant to be. It is not possible before that day to intellectually understand it all. We are granted enough understanding to begin moving into that world. A significant element of that understanding includes growing in our minds the mind of Christ. His Spirit empowers this, but the mind must be ruled by the Spirit. A critical element in that rule is for the mind to build the path from darkness to light, and that path includes making the mind accept knowledge on spiritual terms.
For us today, even more Hellenized than those Mediterranean Gentiles, our biggest choke point is the mind's fleshly refusal to go along peacefully. Our culture has built massive barriers against a knowing which cannot be fully buried in concrete, as it were. Those in Palestine who came up out of Talmudic Judaism understood the mistakes of the Hellenizing influence on their grasp of God's revelation. Much of what followed, in the struggles of the early Gentile churches, reflects a parallel escape from their own blinding human traditions. But we have even farther to go, over both time and space, along with the cultural distance. What was true for the Jews and Gentiles in Acts is true for us today. The Cross is the starting point, but we have not yet fully crucified the old self as long as we cannot come out of the rationalist assumptions of fallen man's mind. Having found in our hands the hammer by which we crucified Christ, we now must hang onto it for daily use in conforming ourselves to the Kingdom of Heaven.
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By Ed Hurst
18 May 2009
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