Acts 15 is clearly about the issue of salvation, but this is not what I saw today.  But for review, the Pharisees wanted to require circumcision and obedience to the Mosaic Law as a means of salvation.  Paul and Barnabas strongly disagreed, so they had a big meeting in Jerusalem.

The result of the meeting was that they all agreed, led by the Holy Spirit, that salvation was by grace through faith and not through circumcision and obedience to the Law of Moses.  The Gentiles did not need to bear this yoke to be saved.  So they send a letter explain as much to the Gentile churches.

BUT, they did have four exhortations to the church.  This is what caught my eye.

You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols
from blood
from the meat of strangled animals
from sexual immorality.

– The issue of food sacrificed to idols was a hot button in the church.  The leaders suggested they just abstain.  There was other meet available and no need to eat food dedicated to idols.  It could be a stumbling block.

– “From blood” makes sense.  We read in Leviticus that “life is in the blood.”  We need to honor blood as holy.  Not drink it.  And likely the drinking of it was also associated with idols.

– “The meat of strangled animals.”  The history of this was also likely a practice in idolatry.  But the Bible speaks often of how animals were treated before they were killed for food. It mattered.  Animals matters.  We must treat them with respect.

– And then sexual immorality.  This makes sense to.  Sexual immorality has always been a temptation and a problem.

But perhaps what stood out is that all of these are centered around things that bring defilement to the body, physically and spiritually.  The first three are about food.  The last is about sexual issues.

Our bodies matter.

It’s easy to ignore our bodies.  We eat freely what we want without even hardly thinking about how the animals were treated.

Some cultures even drink blood.  Most don’t.  But is there something to be said about our steaks rare?  That will raise some hackles for sure.  Don’t touch the steaks.

Meat sacrificed to idols?  Not such a common issue.

But sexual immorality.  Wow.  That isn’t even addressed anymore among the body of Christ.  Someone gets pregnant in church that is unmarried?  No big deal.  A couple living together?  It’s economically necessary, isn’t it?  And sex before marriage?  People have needs, you know.  Porn/fantasy?  It’s safe and doesn’t hurt anyone.  Really.  [not really]

Church, we need a sexual revolution of holiness.  Yes, grace.  Not law.  But a hunger for holiness.  And we need to walk together in this.

We need grace and not Law, because too much Law creates problems.

We need grace, just grace, because most everyone has struggled and/or compromised.  Some haven’t.  But the majority have some not so pleasant things in their past.

But we also need forward progress.  Wherever we are today, starting forward together.

Yes.  Together.  Because I think it needs the community of love, accountability and truth for us to walk forward.

But at the end of the day it isn’t all about sexual immorality.  What kind of foods are we eating?  Are we taking care of our bodies?  What types of material are we reading or watching on television or internet?  What is going into our bodies that are defiling us.

Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness.  Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness (Luke 11:34-35).

There are many ways we can defile our bodies.  And there are many ways we can bless our bodies.  But perhaps we need to take our bodies more seriously.  Because our body and our spirits truly do overlap.