CC--Christianese 25a: Christian Liberty (part 1 of ?)

--The idea of Christian liberty is as simple as it is revolutionary in the history of religious thought.
--You see, every religion gives guidelines for human behavior and the expectation that people would live up to them in order to be pleasing to God (or the gods).
--In this sense, there is a code of conduct by which every member of that religious community can look at others to see whether they are living as they should.
--In Judaism, this scorecard is given in the Old Testament and commonly referred to as “The Law” or the commandments of God given to Moses, normally counted as 613 of them regulating everything from food to clothing to sex to money and social justice.
--So when the Jewish Messiah, Jesus, came, died and was resurrected, creating the Christian Church, one of the major areas of conflict for His followers was the question of how many (if any) of these rules still applied to Christians.
--It was obvious to everyone in this discussion that the fundamental rules of love still applied to them all, thus the sexual and financial principles of the Old Testament still governed behavior because they flowed from the very Nature and Character of God. But what about the ceremonial, sacrificial, and dietary restrictions as well as the holy days?
--This was a real crisis for the early Church because Jews were so accustomed to defining their very identity by these markers and Gentiles had no idea of any of them. Moreover, God had clearly accepted the Gentiles in spite of their “unholiness” in these areas.
--So what was the decision?
--At the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15), the leaders of the early Church came up with a simple principle. Jews must not judge Gentiles if they do not care about such things and must not isolate from them over such matters. And Gentiles must not judge Jews if they still hang onto some of them, but should not flaunt their freedom in front of “weak” Jews who find such things too disturbing to endure. In other words, both sides must behave out of love for the other in all things.