Mind if I Acts a Few Questions?

As the semester comes to an end, I find myself reflecting on the class I took on the book of Acts. I went into the class wanting to understand more about the 1st Century Church, who they were, how they behaved, etc. I don't know if I came out satisfied with the amount of answers I found, but I do stand at the end of the semester absolutely ecstatic about the new questions I have. I always feel closer to the answer when I realize that I have more questions to ask. Surprisingly, however, the biggest questions I came away with are not directly about the people and practices of the 1st Century Church. Rather, they are about covenant identity.

The 1st Century church were a unique and priveleged people. They were the ones who actually experienced the transistion from the Old to the New Covenant. They were the ones who first realized the results of Jesus the Messiah. In looking at the the Old and New Covenants throughout the class, I realized more clearly than ever the strong and undeniable similarities between the two. The object of faith was the same: Messiah. The means of salvation were the same: Faith. The evidences were the same: Obedience. The differences, too, were undeniably clear: Messiah expected versus Messiah realized. Lately, I've really been revisiting what this means, and what it meant to the 1st Century Jews who actually experienced the covenantal transition. One thing is for certain: Jesus did not come to usher in a new religion. Jesus, the Messiah was the promise, the climax of Judaism; he was the object of Old Covenant Jewish faith. His coming would not put an end to that religion, especially as Judaism included covenantal promises that were a result of his coming. Judaism, from the get-go, is a faith that looks both to and beyond the coming of Messiah. That being said, the coming of Jesus the Messiah does not end Judaism, but ushers it into a "new stage", if you will. So, when we discuss the relationship between the Old and New covenants, we need to be careful not to pit them against each other. They can't be in conflict, for "a house divided against itself cannot stand." I don't want to deny, indeed I cannot, that changes take place, major changes in some instances, but they are just that: changes; not new commands foreign to the understanding of the Jews. I've been pondering how the words of Jesus himself elucidate this. In Matthew's gospel, at the sermon on the mount, Christ speaks about the Law being a matter of heart over and above action. Immediately following, he says that he did not come to abolish, but to fulfill the Law. We are quick to affirm this, but I know that I have been guilty of reasoning that Jesus' fulfillment some how included the abolishment. Now that it was satisfied, it was no longer necessary, and therefore no longer enforced: Jesus' fulfilled, and thereby abolished the Law. But this is not what he said. He did not abolish the Law. Indeed Paul seems to agree as he repeatedly makes mention of the Law being real and pertinent to man throughout his epistles. Further, when a Jew heard Jesus say this, they would have understood the word "fulfill" as "obey". Jesus came to obey the Law, and to do it perfectly. What part of this aspect of Christ is pertinent to our being conformed to his image?

Also, I think we need to consider how such an idea, the doing away with of the Law through its fulfillment, bears on the rest of our understanding of Christianity and the person and work of Christ himself. Hebrews 10:12 states that, "but [Jesus Christ], having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God." If Christ is truly our once for all sacrifice, then sin must always be condemnable (which it is), it must always be an offense to God (which it certainly is), and therefore it must always require a sacrifice (which it does). This in turn requires the Law to still be in effect, for sacrifice, God's chosen mode of redemption, is a requirement of the Law. An end to the Law would mean the end of either the offensiveness of sin, or the possibility of redemption. If the Law, and with it the requirement of sacrifice, was made no more by the work of Christ, then there no longer remains a place for the sacrificial work of Christ, and Jesus would no longer be needed; he would have made himself obsolete. Our sin is eternally offensive before an eternal God. It requires an eternal sacrifice, which necessitates the Law. Christ is always our sacrifice. This is not to say that he is continually being offered up again and again. Rather, it means that his sacrifice is so perfect that it is always seen by God as satisfactory. It did not do away with the need for sacrifice, rather always meets that need. This abrogates our practice of sacrifice, but not the requirement of it. If Messiah did away with the Law, then Jesus is only a once-for-then sacrifice, achieving redemption only for those living up to that time. All men after him would be born into a Law-free existence and would have either no sacrificial requirement over them for Christ to fulfill and therefore no hope of salvation, or no guiltiness to be sacrificed for. It impossible for Jesus to have made himself irrelevant. Certainly, no one would dare say this. Yet, if Jesus Christ is not always our propitiatory, perfect sacrifice, then there is no salvation. I wonder if it is not an inevitable conclusion of the proposition. It seems that the Law must not be done away with, not abolished, at all, but rather everlastingly satisfied, continually and only by Jesus Christ the eternal Messiah.

The ramifications of this state of the Law seem to play out through the duration of the Scriptures. In Acts, we see it in a major way in the inclusion of the Gentiles, particularly in Peter's vision and the conversion of Cornelius in chapter 10. If the Law were no longer, God would have no jurisdiction, no right, to make clean those things which He Himself called unclean under the Law. Now, one might say that this event is an example of the gradual playing out of the Law's having been done away with. However, if the clean / unclean distinctions are here being done away with altogether, doesn't that necessitate a kind of universalism? If nothing is unclean, then all men are acceptable to God. Again, we would not be inclined to say this, but if not, then we are forced to say that clean / unclean distinctions still at that time, and still now, exist; and if they still exist, then the Law which defines and assigns those terms must also still exist. So we see that the Law wasn't abolished at all, but rather that the benefits of it were expanded through Christ's obedience to it; uncleanness wasn't done away with, rather, by the grace of God's covenantal faithfulness in the person of Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, legal cleanliness was extended to those things that were once legally called unclean.

This is seen throughout Acts, the epistles, and the gospels. As we look to Luke's gospel to find the description of the ministry of Jesus (which we understand to be continued through the apostles), we find ourselves reading the words of the prophet Isaiah, spoken by Jesus himself. In the original text of Isaiah 61, the entirety of which would have been understood by the Jews in the synagogue as being eluded to by Jesus, the prophet speaks of both Jew and Gentile receiving a double portion (61:7). This in itself is a legal term: the double portion was that part of the inheritance reserved for the firstborn son; there can only be one double portion. That this portion is promised to two parties, and done so under legal, covenantal terms and conditions, within what would later be revealed to be the purpose and ministry of Christ, shows us that as New Covenant believers our being made God's people, our eternity with the Father, our very salvation, depends on the Old Covenant. As Gentiles, we are by the New Covenant and the fulfilling obedience of Jesus Christ, invited into the legal, covenantal benefits defined by and promised in the Old Covenant. If this covenant were to ever be eliminated all together, we would be without hope. If the New Covenant were to ever disagree or be in conflict with the Old, we would be lost.

In exploring this question, and I admit that I am nowhere near the end of that process, we not only learn more about the identity, form, and function of the early Church, but also that of the present Church. The book of Acts is truly said to be both transitional and foundational. Some shy away from forming theology and doctrine from this portion of Scripture on account of the transitional aspect. However, we must not misunderstand the transition that the text is chronicling. It is not merely the transition of form and function, and it is certainly not the transition from one religion to another. Rather, the book of Acts records for us the transition of covenant. From obedience that evidenced a faith in the coming Messiah, to obedience that evidences and is shaped by the realized Messiah. It is the fulfillment, the making better of the Old by the New. This inseparably roots the book of Acts, and therefore the epistles that resulted from the events of that book, in the very history of redemption itself, giving it an unshakable foundational aspect. Who was the early Church? Who are we as the present Church? As the covenants must work together, are the questions we are to ask only about Law versus life, and merit versus grace, or is there something to the questions of life through the Law, and merit by grace? So many questions, and I realize that I've yet to ask even half of them, never mind find definitve answers. One thing, however, is for certain: We are only who the Covenant God YAHWEH, in whom there is no shadow of turning, who is the beginning and the end, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, says we are.