Adaptive, not Captive

One could make a case that the most important meeting to shape world history is also one of the most obscure, unlike, say, the Constitutional Convention of 1789, which, as you well know, played an incredibly formative role in American history and beyond.

No one would dispute the importance of 1789.

But a more important meeting occurred centuries before. We are still living with the consequences of it. In fact, pretty much every Christian around the world is. And there are a LOT of Christians.

The meeting occurred in Jerusalem around the year 50.

A little background first. All the first Christians were Jews. They spoke Aramaic and read the Hebrew Bible. They practiced circumcision, ate kosher food, dressed according to their religious scruples, participated in religious feasts and festivals, worshiped in the temple, and studied the Torah in synagogues under the guidance of a rabbi. Their religious tradition was rich in detail and demands. It was CLEAR.

In their minds, Jesus came to fulfill that religion. But not change it much.

Early on, however, the Christian movement began to reach outsiders—diaspora Jews, Samaritans, and Gentiles. Soon leaders of the mission to the Gentile established Antioch, a big and diverse city north of Jerusalem, as the center of operations.

The mission succeeded. But its success set off a huge controvery that led to the first great council of the church.

What set it off? A group of Jewish Christians, belonging to the party of the Pharisees, heard about the success of the mission. No problem there.

The problem was that Barnabas and Paul chose NOT to require converts to practice Judaism, too. A small party traveled to Antioch and demanded Gentile converts to become Jews. Paul and Barnabas opposed them and then requested a meeting with the leaders of the church in Jerusalem to settle the issue. Their request was granted.

All the important leaders attended the council: apostles, Jewish elders, Christian Pharisees, and of course the leaders of the mission to the Gentiles.

The conservative party could make a good case. Jews had held their ground against Rome for centuries without losing their distinctive identity. Rome was a powerful cultural force. It showed an amazing capacity to absorb new religions into itself, making them subservient to the ultimate power of Rome. Would Gentile converts be able to remain faithful without the protection Judaism provided?

But Paul’s party could make a persuasive case, too. They countered that the dominance of Judaism would slow down the mission to the Gentiles, leading to unnecessary strictness and isolation. In short, the Jewish boundary markers were too high or, better put, the wrong ones. It kept the mission from being adaptive.

Conversion to Jesus, they said, was enough.

But this strategy of a single conversion—to Jesus alone, and not to a religious culture—was fraught with peril. The Christian movement, tiny as it was, faced two powerful alternatives that pulled it in one direction or the other. Once breaking into a new culture, it could either accommodate too much to the culture, thus undermining its distinctiveness, or it could isolate from the culture, preserving its identity at the cost of its witness.

The Christian leaders who convened that first council set a different course. They chose to immerse in culture, but always to maintain difference, too—the right kind of difference. As Jim Edwards put it to me, adaptive but not captive.

How so?

The New Testament makes it very clear. Paul, for example, explores the power of the gospel in Romans 1-11. But then he pivots to spell out the implications. “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, on the basis of God’s mercy, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable act of worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

It is immersion with difference. Christians adapt to culture to fulfill the Great Commission. But Christians live differently in the culture to fulfill the Great Commandment. They live as transformed people.

Thus what sets Christians apart from the culture is not practicing circumcision or eating kosher or dressing differently or avoiding all work on the Sabbath.

It is a transformed life.

The church has not gotten this right very often. But the strategy still holds true: adaptive but not captive; “in but not of,” immersive with difference.

One conversion—to Jesus Christ—is enough. But it should lead to a transformed life. This is the Third Way.

And it all started at a council in Jerusalem some 2000 years ago.