Acts 10-11 helped the Jewish Christ-followers in the early church pry open the doors of their hearts and lives to include (gasp) Gentiles in their fellowship. Here is Peter’s summary of the lesson he learned:
“And he said to them, ‘You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean… Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.'”
Acts 10:28,34-35 ESV
This was a shocking revelation. Three times Peter refused to eat the “unclean” animals presented to him in the sheet. Three times the voice of God commanded him to “kill and eat.” Finally the message got through to the hard-headed apostle – this isn’t about animals, it’s about GENTILES.
To the Jews of the first century, Gentiles were filthy, godless idolaters. To associate with a non-Jew was to corrupt your purity and risk the holiness of the entire worshiping community. “Purge the evil from the camp,” was the thinking.
And this thinking persists today. Out of fear of worldly influences, personal and corporate corruption we isolate ourselves and our children from non-believers. We are very much like the Jewish believers in the early church. We fear the pollution that comes from association with ungodly people. We worry that their sinfulness might rub off on us. We are uncomfortable with where they go, how they talk, what they do – so we remain isolated in our “Christian bubble.”
The trouble is, we have been commanded to bring the gospel to all people – EVERYONE! The good news of Jesus Christ is not just for the “holy people.” In fact, the “holy and righteous ones” in Jesus’ ministry were the ones who tended to miss out on the gospel altogether. The gospel is good news for sinners – for the unclean, the worldly, the outsider.
A helpful writer on Exclusion and Embrace is Miroslav Volf, who experienced the terrible conflict in the Balkans. This article provides some helpful reflections on this work:
“In Jesus, the outcasts of society have hope. Those long marginalized and kicked to the curb (figuratively and literally) can find him extending a hand, inviting them back into the community of the truly human as objects of dignity and divine affection.”
How to be Inclusive like Jesus,Derek Rishmawy
“It would be a mistake . . . to conclude from Jesus’s compassion toward those who transgressed social boundaries that his mission was merely to demask the mechanisms that created “sinners” by falsely ascribing sinfulness to those who were considered socially unacceptable. He was no prophet of “inclusion” . . . for whom the chief virtue was acceptance and the cardinal vice intolerance. Instead, he was a bringer of “grace,” who not only scandalously included “anyone” in the fellowship of “open commensality,” but made the “intolerant” demand of repentance and the “condescending” offer of forgiveness (Mark 1:15; 2:15–17). The mission of Jesus consisted not simply of renaming the behavior that was falsely labeled “sinful” but also in remaking the people who have actually sinned and suffered distortion. The double strategy of renaming and remaking, rooted in the commitment to both the outcast and the sinner, to the victim and the perpetrator, is the proper background against which an adequate notion of sin as exclusion can emerge.”
Exclusion & Embrace, Miroslav Volf, 72-73
To form our own identities all of us define ourselves against some kind of “others.” We are not “Muslims, universalists, New Age…” pick your label. To have a clear identity as a Christ follower necessitates the drawing of lines related to who we are and who we are not. The trouble with this inevitable process is that we increasingly feel like righteous insiders and those outside of our circles feel like sinful outsiders. And to cross beyond our boundaries to reach out to these “Gentile sinners” becomes increasingly difficult.
And so we become like the Pharisees who became expert at exclusion in the name of holiness. And we need the corrective of Acts 10-11 to remind us of three vital truths:
- God sees everyone the same way. No matter where you were born, what privileges of class or knowledge you were given, no one has a head start toward righteousness. Everyone is equally sinful – our sin simply presents in different ways.
- God saves everyone the same way. No one is righteous enough to earn their way to heaven. No one can boast that God owes them anything. Everyone stands before God in exactly the same desperate condition, entirely dependent on the infinite mercy of Jesus.
- God seals everyone the same way. The mark of salvation is not external righteousness (this can be faked). The mark of salvation is the internal seal of the Holy Spirit.
When we remember that before God we are all tax collectors on our knees crying out for mercy it knocks us off any pedestal of superiority toward any person or group. Instead it gives us compassion for others who share the same struggles, the same sins and the same longings as us. And we reach out to those currently outside of the circle of God’s saving grace to lovingly invite them in!