Acts 15

This is an interesting chapter in that it's the first time that we've seen a real disagreement in the church. There were some little complaints in previous chapters like widows not being treated fairly and whether or not Peter should have eaten with a Gentile, but up until this point, the early church seemed to really be a bed of roses much like our modern church. NOT!

Of course, anyone that's driven around their town very much knows that disagreement in the church may have started with the question of whether Gentiles needed to be physically circumcised, but it still hasn't ended. Some disagreements have been large enough to start whole new branches or denominations of the church each with their own slightly different interpretation or understanding of some finer point of scripture. Only in some of these cases does the disagreement go beyond personal preference and actually delve into an issue related to the message Gospel and the theology of salvation, so in most cases I think we're able to co-exist peacefully as a church because of the denominations.

The challenge that faced the early church is that the disagreement was centered on the theology of salvation. Do you have to be circumcised to be saved? The apostles answered no, and everyone present agreed with their statement. That doesn't necessarily mean that everyone agreed. There may have been other churches that rejected that teaching and continued to preach circumcision for the Gentiles. I think we'll see more on that in some of the epistles later, and it's a pretty clear cut case of in or out. If you believe that circumcision is required for salvation, then you're not preaching the Gospel. Simple.

I think it's more interesting to see the disagreement between Paul and Barnabas. They are both saved. They are both preaching the same Gospel. They both agree that they need to go back and check on the churches that they've started during their journeys. They disagree on who to take and why. Apparently, they disagree so much that they take separate boats and go separate directions. It's not quite like starting a new denomination, but that's how it happens. I don't really believe that either of them would have been able to stay angry at the other, though. I think they both realized that their disagreement was really nothing compared to their common goal of the Gospel, and that's the lesson for us to learn about ourselves.

It's okay for us to disagree over the trivial matters of Scripture. It's okay to have different denominations. It's even fun and educational sometimes to discuss these things as a group of believers wrestling with the Word. It's only a problem when we start believing that our personal preference and interpretation of the minutiae of the Scripture is more important than the message of salvation. If we get to that point, the church will tear itself apart from the inside.

C.S. Lewis described it as a house with a large central hall. Everyone that's in the house is safe from the weather and the world outside. They're saved. And everyone in the house agrees that the master of the house is going to let anyone that knocks on the door in. When you walk down the hall in the middle of this house, though, you notice that the rooms off to the side have different things going on. One room has some people eating meat. Another room maybe has some people reading. Another one has some music going. On and on. None of the things going on in the rooms make any difference in the matter of whether or not you're in the house, it's just a question of which room do you feel most comfortable in. Everyone is a little different and some of those preferences manifest themselves in the church as denominations.

Just remember that we are all in the same house.