Welcome back to the podcast! Today's world is full of conflicting thoughts, ideas, and problems. In this episode, we'll be answering the question: should serious Christians ever compromise?
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Q. Should Serious Christians Ever Compromise?
- Might seem like a weird question
- Maybe you know Christians who never compromise
- Draw hard lines everywhere on everything. Totally unbending
- Ex: Halloween
- Ex: Tattoos
- The Fundamental Law of Legalism: Drawing a hard line in gray areas weakens the hard lines we draw in the black and white.
- So we have to be smart about compromise!
- Parents: could win the battle but lose the war
- Our strategy: don’t make a big deal of these gray areas (even though we still drew boundaries) – so our kids would take us seriously when we drew the line on serious issues
- A strange paradox:
- Biblical Christians draw hard lines in some areas
- And then they turn around and compromise in other areas
- Today: We’ll see the first time the church wrestled with this
- It was such a big question, they gathered in Jerusalem
- First church council
- Everybody was there! Peter, Paul, Barnabas, etc.
- To answer: When do we fight vs when do we compromise?
- I want to start at the end: where they landed
- In the words of Paul, later, to the church at Corinth
- It’s a great summary, and it shows you this is a thing
- Compromise, that is, for serious Christians
- Cause Pauls was serious, unbending
- Yet look at where he landed on this ?
1 Corinthians 9:19-21 (NLT) 19 Even though I am a free man with no master, I have become a slave to all people to bring many to Christ. 20 When I was with the Jews, I lived like a Jew to bring the Jews to Christ…. 21 When I am with the Gentiles who do not follow the Jewish law, I too live apart from that law so I can bring them to Christ. But I do not ignore the law of God; I obey the law of Christ.
- Hypocrite? No way!
- Jesus-centered vs. rule-centered
- Just wanted to point people to Jesus
- Therefore willing to compromise
- Heart issue
- Pointed Jews to Jesus by using the law of Moses
- Pointed Gentiles to Jesus without using the law of Moses
- All along obeyed the higher law “of Christ”
- Ie, not free to do whatever we want (antinomianism)
- compromising on the Lordship of Christ
Last week: Acts 14, Paul’s first missionary journey
- Proclaimed the gospel
- Contextualized the gospel for Gentiles
- Made disciples and commissioned them to make disciples
- Returned to home base, Antioch
Now we have a blended church, and with that came questions…
Acts 15:1-2 (NLT) 1 While Paul and...
