Acts 15:12
Then all the multitude kept silence, and gave audience to Barnabas and Paul, declaring what miracles and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by them.
I'm often drawn to the book of Acts of the Apostles, that New Testament book written by Luke, who also authored the Gospel of Luke. These two books are so connected that they're sometimes referred to as Luke-Acts. We could say the Bible itself tells the story of humanity's fallibility and our redemption by God’s grace through Jesus Christ. But the book of Acts is often said to be less about the acts of the apostles and more about the acts of the Holy Spirit, because without the Holy Spirit, there would be no story.
We read about the dramatic arrival of the Holy Spirit in the second chapter of Acts:
And there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting" (Acts 2:2).
A wind and tongues of flame rested on the heads of the disciples, who were so filled with the Holy Spirit that they began to speak in the languages of other nations.
Today, we return to a specific verse, Acts 15:12, where Paul and Barnabas give an account to the elders and disciples of the signs and wonders God had demonstrated through them among the Gentiles. This assembly, at the Jerusalem church in A.D. 49, met to consider a crucial question: should Gentiles be allowed to join the Christian church without converting to Judaism?
We must remember that the Jews, through the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were God’s chosen people, set apart from every other nation. It's no surprise that many Jewish believers in Christ still held onto this belief. We could call it the "doctrine of Jewish exclusivity."
Yet, Jesus himself had established a new covenant in his blood—a new relationship with God. Jesus said,
I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me (John 14:6).
Being a child of Abraham was no longer a guarantee of salvation. After the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the Apostle Peter summed up the demands of this new covenant:
Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost (Acts 2:38).
The Christian message that Paul and Barnabas preached speaks of mankind's helplessness against God’s omnipotence. We are saved by faith in God's grace through Christ, not by works, or by simply following the Mosaic Law. At the meeting in Jerusalem, later known as the Council of Jerusalem, Peter made this very point. He argued that requiring Gentiles to follow Jewish law was an unnecessary burden, one that couldn't save them. Peter declared,
Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? (Acts 15:10).
Even with these theological points established, a mystery remained: the miracles and wonders declared by Barnabas and Paul. As you can imagine, an intense, listening silence fell over that crowded room. The listeners were like a jury in a court of law, required to deliberate on the evidence presented to them. Just because the story of Acts is a mystery, it doesn’t mean it can’t be investigated.
Paul's account of his missionary journey must have been listened to intently and critically. The real question was: Was God truly with Paul and Barnabas? And did God really want the church to admit Gentiles who didn't live under the Mosaic Law and weren't circumcised? To the Pharisaic mind, this seemed inconceivable, even wrong. Yet, Paul claimed that God was with him, just as he later wrote in his Letter to the Romans,
If God be for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31).
We know from our reading of Acts that Paul was chosen by God to be an apostle to the Gentiles. But those listeners in Jerusalem didn't have the benefit of our full biblical narrative. They were left to make up their own minds.
The Jewish and Christian claim is that we don’t worship a distant or disinterested deity. Our God is a living God who is actively concerned with the affairs of this world and the lives of men and women. If this weren't true, he wouldn't have raised up the prophets or sent his only begotten Son into this world of sin.
Let's consider the life of Jesus through the Gospel of John. His first recorded miracle was at the wedding at Cana, where he turned water into wine. It was an act of compassion, helping a young couple avoid embarrassment. But John gives us a more significant meaning to this story when he writes,
This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him (John 2:11).
At this wedding, Jesus manifested his divinity.
The key phrase here is, “And his disciples believed on him.” They must have believed in him before that miracle, but it surely strengthened their faith. Yet, in spite of all the evidence, some of them still struggled. Judas betrayed him, Philip asked Jesus to show them the Father, and Thomas would not at first believe that he was in the presence of the resurrected Christ. We, like them, are human beings who continually struggle, vacillating between doubt and faith. Even after Jesus calmed the Sea of Galilee, saving their lives, his disciples asked,
What manner of man is this! for he commandeth even the winds and water, and they obey him (Luke 8:25).
There are moments of great conviction and times of doubt. Those who sat listening to Paul in Jerusalem truly wanted to know if it was God's will to admit Gentiles into the church. Were the signs and wonders displayed through Paul and Barnabas sufficient evidence that God's hand was at work?
We know from the Bible that the Spirit of God was present at creation, and that judges and prophets were filled with the Holy Spirit. At certain times, God has been more present, more apparent, and felt more than at other times. We can't invoke the Holy Spirit; we can only pray and submit to God. As Jesus said to Nicodemus, God's Spirit is like the wind that blows wherever it wants to. You can hear the wind, but you don't know where it comes from or where it is going.
The most realistic thing we can say is that we are not in control. Often, it seems that in our lives, nothing really happens until God inexplicably turns up. When we talk about the Apostolic Age, we think of an explosive movement that led to the birth of the church, accompanied by signs and wonders.
Paul and Barnabas brought a difficult message to the church in Jerusalem, a message that had never been considered in a doctrinal way before. But life is a movement of constant change and surprise, just as the old hymn says, "God moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform." We hear these stories of signs and wonders and might feel cheated that we've never seen anything so sacred or dramatic.
We are often like the disciples and elders listening to Paul and Barnabas, trying to piece it all together. But just for a moment, imagine you were on your way home from that meeting in Jerusalem, maybe still struggling with all your thoughts and the arguments you heard. I would hope that you might stop and look all around you, or perhaps look at that star-filled sky, and acknowledge the God of creation, the Father of all humanity, and say a prayer of thanks.
