“When they heard this, they quieted down and glorified God, saying, “Well then, God has also granted to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”
This is seldom the reaction to change in religious denominations today. These Jewish Christians faced a massive challenge to their church tradition. But instead of quarrelling, they listened… and upon hearing Peter quote Jesus, and testify to what God had done, they had no further objections and praised God.
This wasn’t just changing the brand of coffee served, or the color of the carpet in the church… This was a major doctrinal clarification regarding who could be a child of God, elevating Gentile Christians to equality with Jewish Christians. In other words, lessoning the exclusivity of the Jewish believers. Even so, the membership listened … and embraced the truth. And then just continued doing what Christians were created to do – Praising God.
In too many churches today, if a group of members is losing status they divide into teams and start assassinating the character of the opposition. Or, in other cases, just take their families and go find a church that won’t challenge the status quo…. But this group, when reminded of Jesus’ words, humbly “quieted down and glorified God”.
What would happen today if we were humble enough to change our long-held opinion and follow accurately applied scripture. What if our knee jerk reaction to being corrected wasn’t to immediately grab our keyboards and start spewing anger… How would the reputation of the church change, if we stopped letting pride mix with self-centered passion and instead of trying to win the argument, started trying to understand God’s perspective.
When it was explained to the early church, that scripture clearly pointed to Christ, and that He died on the Cross for all mankind… they embraced it… They didn’t ignore God’s word to maintain their position. They held tightly to scripture, changing their opinions to fit God, instead of changing God to fit their opinions.
We cannot water down our passion, but the target of that passion must be God’s will, not our rituals. Make sure you pursue The Lord, not your own desires. Be unmovable on scriptural truth but hold loosely to tradition. Too often, we do the opposite.... especially when the change elevates someone other than ourselves.
“They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.”
– Jesus (Matthew 15:9).
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