Friday, March 28, 2008

Not Eating Pork - Reply To Comment

Acts 15:5-12 and Acts 15:19-29 (the whole chapter really)

A comment was left (for my previous post) that claims pork is not prohibited to Christians.
About eating pork according to Acts 15:
There are two things that are not usually taken into account when this passage is discussed to say the law is only for the Jews and not for Gentiles.
One is that these Pharisees were claiming that FOR SALVATION, the Gentiles must do these things; they claimed they had to do these things to be acceptable to the Father. Acts 15:10-11 says otherwise. It doesn't say they are to never do them, just that these things don't keep them from being accepted.
Two is that in verse 21, they state that Moses is preached in the synagogues every sabbath. Why would this be mentioned at all unless it's to point out that they will learn as they grow in the faith? These Gentiles didn't have a whole lifetime of being brought up in the law; they wouldn't be expected to suddenly be required to keep every bit. It seems to have been made clear that it was not to be required of them immediately, they would be given the chance to learn as every Jewish child had.

Acts 15:19 Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to YHWH:
Acts 15:20 But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.
Acts 15:21 For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath day.

What are we to make of the fact that Christians are considered grafted into natural Israel? If Christians become part of Israel, what part of "Jewish" law doesn't pertain to them? There was to be one law for the Jew and the strangers that live among them. And since the sacrificial death of Messiah, we are now to become one new man, no divisions.

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