One of the jobs God has given the Church is to guard doctrine. We often hear these days that doctrine is the bad guy, that it is what causes divisions. Yet historically, right doctrine has been what unifies us. It is the glue that holds the Church together in one confession. Our reading from Acts today draws attention to the critical nature of doctrinal purity. Can you be a Christian without being circumcised, without having lived as a Jew? When the debate was brought before the council in Jerusalem, the leaders agreed that God could save Gentiles by grace through faith, just like He saves Jews, and that He could do it without their prior conversion to Judaism. No doubt this was troublesome to the earliest Christians who were uniformly Jews. But we have not been given permission to correct the work of the Holy Spirit.
May the Lord use his people to guard purity of doctrine and to reject false doctrine. May he give us courage to stand for the truth regardless of the challenges we face.
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