(Ver 1.0) This is “Part 3” in one of the most essential to understand subjects found in the Bible. Our subject series is about the “sovereignty” of God. This should be one of the first studies to be taught to every new believer because it reveals one of the major qualities of God being God. Every reader so far should agree with this belief that God is Sovereign to begin our study. This means not one of us had any say in anything that was created, how it works, or why it is here. We are all simply created beings existing for God’s sovereign purpose and will. If you would like to read this series from the beginning, please go to “Part 1“.

This subject should also be important to mature believers because it has often been taught in the past embedded with many traditions of human reason and philosophy. As you should now know our subject is about God’s eternal and omnipotent “Sovereignty”. But how we define the word sovereignty and apply this word to God and His creation makes all the difference to knowing the truth. For example, look at the words of Jesus speaking indirectly about this subject:

Mat 22:29  Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. 

Apparently from this verse we learn that humans can possibly not understand the Words found in the Bible, yes, or no? Next, we can learn that any teacher of the Bible can also be in error, yes, or no? Jesus was speaking with the Jewish leaders that dramatically had two opposing views of this subject of resurrection.  The subject context of this statement of Jesus concerns the resurrection of the dead and what happens to a wife that had multiple husbands.

We know from basic common sense, that the subject of “resurrection” from the dead is a sovereign choice of God. No human chose this to exist, nor can any angel contribute to cause it not to exist. No, this is a prime example of God’s will and purpose to create concepts called “death” first but then also “resurrection” from the dead second. Both were God’s design, and His, alone.

Remember that there were two major doctrines of belief in Matthew 22. One is from the Sadducees that was asking the questions, these believed there was not going to be a resurrection. However, the Pharisee’s believed in the resurrection. Therefore, we learn doctrinal division is a common tactic of Satan, to attempt the divide the beliefs of those that God intended for unity of knowing His truth.

Jesus obviously rebukes these educated trained people saying to them, you neither understand the scriptures nor the power of God. The Greek word G1411 (dunamis) literally means supernatural power and this reference is applied to God the author of the Bible. In fact, it was God in the flesh that was speaking with them. Jesus directly confirms humans are fallible, capable of being in error. This is true of every modern Bible teacher that can be heard, including Agapegeek. This is exactly why we better do a lot of study with the help of the Author to guide us into what He really meant for us to learn. Nevertheless, doctrinal differences on sovereignty exist, and thus the reason for this lesson is to help resolve or at least reduce some of the reasons for divisions. Let us quickly analyze some of these differences.

Sovereignty has been defined by some to mean “God can do anything He likes, whenever He likes, and to whoever He likes”. But that is an extreme definition that potentially violates God’s revealed character which could produce wrong beliefs and deception. This type of belief attributes all evil to be part of God’s all-knowing plan. This brings some to believe Satan does not exist and has never done anything without God’s direction or permission.

However, a truer definition of the word “sovereign” should be viewed as “God has the highest and greatest level of authority and power, and there is none that is above Him”. This definition does not mean He is able to do anything at any time, even if He has the dunamis omnipotent power to do it. We know this because God says in Hebrew 6:18 that it is impossible for Him to lie. This simply means if God said something, it is this way and it will not change. And this teaches us God can never violate His spoken or written Words which have placed certain limitation upon what God is able to legally do and speak by His own sovereign choice.

Therefore, we must not study God’s “sovereignty” in isolation of all other related verses or by simply using only selected obvious or favorite scriptures.  All studies on any subject must balance every verse on the subject, and then combine these with the many other verses that reveal limitations to sovereignty like those that show the true nature and character of God as being, 1) Love, 2) Light, 3) Holy, 4) Righteous, 5) Patient, 6) Merciful, etc. We learned this principle in the first lesson of the series, but for added emphasis to its importance let us quickly review another list of God’s revealed unchanging character traits.

God is Sovereign
&
God is LOVE!

1Jn 4:8  He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

1Jn 4:16  And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.

1 John 4:8 & 16 are very revealing verses, that identifies God to be LOVE! God declares that his truest and highest identifying characteristic is that He not only shows us love but He is LOVE! The Greek word G2076 translated as “is”, means “to be”. It is a very similar word to the Old Testament revelation spoken to Moses when God said, “say I AM sent you” (Exo 3:14). The Hebrew word H1961 translated as “I AM” is most often translated as “be”. In other words, God is declaring to “Be” LOVE, not just to choose to show love occasionally like humans do. Therefore, God is the Highest example of LOVE that exists. Wow! This sound important and this characteristic must be balanced with God’s true identity of being “sovereign”.

Within the 1 John 4 context, God states that if we desire to dwell in God (Love), and desire for God (Love) to dwell in us, then we must not only love God, but we must primarily love our fellow brothers and sisters, and this human choice qualifies us to be one with God. Wow, that is huge! It implies that if we are not walking in love with those that we can see in the flesh, how is it even possible for us to say we love God that we cannot see (1 John 4:20). Yet we see Christians today lying to each other, accusing each other, hating each other, etc. Yet they still claim to be a Christian, but we saw this contradicts God’s Word and this makes them hypocrites that are putting on an act for men but may be very surprised when Jesus returns.

The Greek word that God claims to be as “Love”, is G26 and this is the word “Agape” pronounced ag-ah’-pay meaning this is the type of God’s love. This type of love is not the human type or anywhere close to what humans call love. This is why this Agape love is infinitely higher and a superior type of “love” that dominates His every sovereign thought and action.  Since God has sovereignly chosen to be Love, He must correspondingly also sovereignly choose not to do anything evil, mean, or unfair to anyone. This simply describes another sovereign characteristic called “Self-Control”. This means even though He has the power and ability to kill you immediately when you do evil, He will not do it because it would be unjust and not according to His chosen nature and character.

We could easily debate the definition of love. This is because how we view love is normally very biased and perverted compared to God’s definition of love. Humans say they love their cat or dog. Humans say they love eating types of food or drinking some drinks. Humans say they even love their friends and relatives. Most spouses claim they love their husband or wife, until things get bad and then they suddenly leave them without warning. No human love like these stated above, represents God’s kind of spiritual love. Therefore, it is very fortunate for us that God gives us His definition of His type of love in 1 Corinthians 13. Let’s analyze this and compare what you have heard from other preachers teach you about God’s love and His sovereignty.

1Co 13:4  Love is large and incredibly patient. Love is gentle and consistently kind to all. It refuses to be jealous when blessing comes to someone else. Love does not brag about one’s achievements nor inflate its own importance.

1Co 13:5  Love does not traffic in shame and disrespect, nor selfishly seek its own honor. Love is not easily irritated or quick to take offense.

1Co 13:6  Love joyfully celebrates honesty and finds no delight in what is wrong.

1Co 13:7  Love is a safe place of shelter, for it never stops believing the best for others. Love never takes failure as defeat, for it never gives up.

1Co 13:8  Love never stops loving. (TPT)

These verses are taken out of “The Passion Translation”. But they are comparable with the KJV, NASB, the Amplified Bible or any other literal translation based on the original Greek text. These are extremely challenging statements. But this should be used for a direct comparison to how we love each other. Are you able to do this list of items to everyone that you know no matter how they act or what they do or say to you or about you? Does this list confirm the great job of love we can see in your words and actions despite how they treated you?

How do these described features and qualities of God’s type of LOVE exemplify or balance with your definition of God’s sovereignty? Then imagine how God reacts when humans treat Him unlovingly, or even blasphemously with their words and actions. Do you believe God will react to evil done to Him, the same as you would when evil is done to you. Romans 5:8 says, “God shows His love for us, (proving it) in while we were yet sinners (not loving to him or others) He died for us”. That means God does good things even when no one deserves it. That is the God kind of Sovereignty and Love.

Let us stop and ask, can you see Jesus’ example of love shown to us, in these descriptions? Go back and reread the Gospels and notice how everything that He did was “LOVE” based. Whether he was healing sick people, raising dead people, or dying on a cross, “LOVE” dominated every action and WORD spoken. Then recall Jesus said, “When you have seen me, you have seen the Father”. This speaks volumes, to describe God’s sovereign acts and the motivations behind them. Whatever, God sovereignly chooses to do to you, or for you, He will base His motivations on LOVE designed for our “good” (Jer 29:11).

Do you recall how the risen from the dead Jesus reacted to the evil acts of Saul of Tarsus killing Christians? Jesus took it very personally what Saul was doing to His saved body of believers (Acts 9). These are controversial thoughts to think. God permitted Saul to do evil to His people, but met with him suddenly to do what?

Jesus’ reaction was with LOVE, instead of fierce hatred, or anger. This was clearly not the normal human reaction. What would you do to someone that killed one of your children? Jesus’ heart was not to kill him and send him to hell, but rather to save Saul and change Him to Paul who wrote 2/3 of the New Testament. Wow! That was the real God’s kind of LOVE!

Many will quickly argue and say, “what about when this evil that happened to me, or my wife, or my husband, or my child, or whoever”. Why did they die, why did they get sick, hurt, and need to suffer? But did God really do evil to any of these people? Never forget there is an evil being that is a master at getting people to blame God for what he is doing to them.

Yet, this belief that God does not commit evil, raises a new question. If God did not commit the evils, He certainly permitted it all to happen as we just saw looking at Saul of Tarsus. However, don’t forget that there are too many other reasons why God “must” allow evil to happen based upon what He has said.

The number one reason for evil on the earth came when God sovereignly gave Adam the right to make his own sovereign choice to choose between life and death (Gen 2:17). Adam did this by choosing to know evil instead of rejecting it (Gen 3). It was this single rebellious action of Adam that caused evil (Satan) to enter the world (2 Cor 4:4) and gave him the sovereign right to rule our world. This single act by Adam (Rom 5:12), set everything else negative in motion in our world.

This evil continued to grow until God sovereignly chose to begin to intervene personally to judge sin (Gen 6:7). These works of God began the process of salvation. They continued until they were fully made available at the entrance of God in the flesh in the form of a man named Jesus (Mat 1:21), who came into the world to redeem man and to reverse his curse of death and hell, and to take back their keys (Rev 1:18).

Here is a major clue to knowing God in the truest way. Did you ever see Jesus kill anyone? Did you ever see Jesus make anyone sick or give them cancer? Did you ever see Jesus kill someone’s husband or wife or child? The answer to all these questions is “no”! In fact, we see Jesus doing the opposite of all these evils, healing them, and raising them from the dead. Therefore, God the Father and the Holy Spirit, have never done this either. None of these describe a loving God that is patient and kind. This literally, means God is not pre-selecting some to go to hell either, because this violates the definition of “LOVE”. Get it?

Common Sovereignty Beliefs – Review

We are moving towards balancing two subjects: love and sovereignty. Evey unbalanced Bible study and teaching on these subjects create highly controversial beliefs and they have initiated great theological wars. Brothers and sisters in Christ that should be walking in love towards each other have suddenly become hated enemies.

Each side of the debate claim victory because each believes they have the complete understanding of the subject and all others in disagreement are deceived. That is not a Christ centered resolution based upon His “LOVE” and it is not a right way to deal with any subject disagreements. Hopefully we will find a better way to study the Bible today based upon God’s kind of “Love” (Agape) in this lesson. Let us review a few of the common beliefs on God’s sovereignty next.

There are many that believe God is in ultimate extreme control of every minor detail in the universe and nothing happens without His sovereign involvement and approval. This is an extreme form of the doctrine of “determinism”. This simply states, God determines the outcome of everything, and this is also associated with the doctrine of extreme “pre-determinism” meaning nothing has ever happened without God pre-determining the outcome of every circumstance and situation. This belief clearly implies God has determined all good events as well as planned and implemented every evil event.

It further pushes the belief that there are no other factors of influence that can affect any result or ending, much less begin anything new or even help anything to develop good or evil. In other words, God is like the ultimate puppet master and only He pulls all the strings to cause anything to happen. In other words, you had no say in what time you woke up this morning, or even what you ate today. This means humans have no freewill. However, is this really what the Bible says?

There is also another position of belief for some. This belief is called “pantheism”. “Pantheism” is a belief that the created universe “is God”. Therefore, if everything created is “God”, then whatever is happening in the “God” universe whether good or evil, is also the will of God and the plan of God.

All these positions are extremes that must ignore significant scriptures in the Bible that teach us these beliefs cannot be remotely or entirely true. Therefore, what we must stop, and state plainly is that each belief type of determinism, pre-determinism and pantheism has some individual elements of truth. But none have the complete truth. To make a single or isolated truth, the only truth, is simply the exaltation of a human standing upon “isolationism” based upon the individual choice of extremism, that must ignore all contradictory truths or the attempt to balance them together to resolve conflicts. “Determinism”, “pre-determinism” and “Pantheism” are just a sampling of a “one sided” theological debate containing a position of extremism and error.

However, the other side of human belief is the extreme position that either there is no God, or God is not controlling anything just as if He does not exist. This could be called the beliefs of “non-existence” that preaches the religion of “humanism” and “evolutional creation” of life originating from non-living substances over massive time elements. We commonly call these types of beliefs “atheism” or “agnosticism”.

Then there is the belief that God is like a clock maker that created the universe as a self-winding mechanism, and He has no need to operate it but may just check on it occasionally. These types of believers represent humans that think of a God that exists, but he is not caring enough to be involved in His creation. This is a belief of “non-intervention” in all the affairs of angelic and human beings. These thoughts are called “deism”, a belief in a god but not one that is Love.  It has roots in paganism, idolatry and has transitioned through variations of many gods of Greek mythology, many Roman mythological gods, and Hinduism a belief in millions of gods, etc.

This is where we must agree, only God knows all the scriptures on every subject, what they all mean, and how they are balanced correctly. Therefore, “Agapegeek” would never claim to be the expert on any Bible subject compared to God’s infinite knowledge. Every human is learning and teaching based upon our individual ignorance. This is why we should extend to each other some mercy. You may have seen verses that others have not seen and vice versa.  But “Thank God” for Him living on the inside of us to help us all understand and agree, and He will guide us into all truth as Jesus promised that He would do in John 16:13.

Today we will be exploring God’s Wisdom and human foolishness but within the context of some verses that are not normally applied to the subject of God’s “sovereignty”. We would all be amazed if we search the Bible on this subject to discover that we will find the sovereignty of God being indirectly stated almost everywhere in scripture. This is why we are going to be studying chapter 15 of the book of Acts and a lot of readers will scratch their heads at first trying to figure out why we are here to learn about a “sovereign” God and how He works with humans in salvation.

Acts 15 – The Early Church
Salvation Conflict and Resolution
By God’s Sovereign Design

We are learning a very essential Bible subject that creates great theological conflicts in the body of Christ. Some believe they were “elected” to be a saved Christian by God’s sovereign selection and they personally had nothing to do with their salvation, implying there is nothing they can ever do to lose their salvation. This is a more common belief than you may think. Too many that have this belief are easily offended if there is ever someone that offers a differing thought found in the Bible. 

But guess what? This pattern of disunity happened in the early church, when there were some saved legalistic believers that said every one of the Gentiles needed to get circumcised to be saved. These legalistic Pharisee type of believers had Old Covenant scriptures written by Moses that appeared to support their belief and teachings very strongly. Remember at this time of conflict there was no major compilation of New Testament writings to review or resolve theological debates.

But it is obvious that these men believed they were saved because they were circumcised believers and this position plainly disagrees with the “once saved always saved” beliefs, as well as the sovereignly selected belief. They clearly placed human decisions and fulfillments of Old Testament “law” as their position of stance for being saved. That is very interesting!

However, there was also another group of bold men in the church that included the Apostle Peter, and the Apostle Paul both who were circumcised along with others that stood against the position for the need of circumcision to be saved. We are going to read through some of these verses about this controversy to see how it was resolved.

We will also notice in these verses that there are scriptures that are indirectly describing God’s sovereign will and His works that are being exercised in combination with the cooperative and agreeable sovereign will of humans. Remember what Amos 3:3 says about this relationship saying, “How can two, walk together, except they be agreed”. These types of verses, confirm the sovereign partnership between God and humans.

Let us just read through these verses and learn what God says about His “sovereignty” working with humans not to control us, but rather to allow us to willingly choose to work with His sovereign plan as united partners. We will soon notice that God is not forcing anyone to do anything. He is simply in His infinite characteristic of love, has offered and provided solutions for every problem of human conflict before it ever occurred. These solutions are based upon His “omniscient” foreknowledge. We will be reading from the beginning of chapter 15 of Acts about the Jerusalem Council that took place to resolve a church conflict of how to be saved:

Act 15:1  And certain men which came down from Judaea taught the brethren, and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved.

Notice the problem. The root of the problem occurs when saved individuals from Judaea were teaching the requirement for a “flesh” circumcision to be spiritually saved. This is based upon them following the customs found within the law of Moses, for every male to be circumcised as an 8-day old child.  For these men that argued this for others to be saved, had this done to them a long time before they were a believer in Jesus.

Remember babies that are incapable of making this choice are forced by these Customs of Moses to be circumcised 8 days after being born. Jesus was circumcised this way in Luke 2:21. As you can see the baby has no voice in participating. This is identical to the fact that the child had no say whether to be naturally born into the world or not. Is this the way the new birth occurs in the New Covenant? Hopefully, you will be able to see that the New Covenant circumcision that takes place for Christians is not a forced event as we continue (Rom 2:29).

Some believe salvation is based upon the extreme doctrine of election where only some are selected to be Christians and all others have been pre-chosen to go to hell without any personal involvement in hearing the Gospel, believing the Words of Salvation, or confessing Jesus as Lord. This is a belief based upon “determinism” as stated previously. This belief, as we have seen, violates too many other verses that we cannot ignore. For example, in Acts 2:21 God says, “Whoever calls on the name of the LORD will be saved”. This clearly places human salvation within the court of human responsibility. Also remember in a previous lesson, we learned of the Parable of the Wedding Feast for the King’s Son. There was clearly an invitation given to everyone to determine who wanted to come to the wedding or not.

Act 15:2  When therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question.

Act 15:3  And being brought on their way by the church, they passed through Phenice and Samaria, declaring the conversion of the Gentiles: and they caused great joy unto all the brethren.

As we can read Paul and Barnabas were not supporters of the legalistic doctrine of circumcision to be saved. So far this is a good argument for the belief in “election” only salvation, where humans are saved only if God chooses them. But notice verse 3 places a challenge to those that believe in a sovereign God choice of salvation only.

Why is verse 3 a problem for election theology? It is because Paul went to everyone and everywhere so that he could “preach” the Gospel to them all. This means everyone that heard him preach was given the personal invitation to come to the wedding of Jesus. And, if they believed and turned away from their previous idol worship to come into relationship with the God that created them, they would be saved by their own personal choice.

Furthermore, notice how verse 3 ends. There are a lot of people in the church that are overjoyed to hear about more Gentiles being saved. Uh oh? This means they were previously not saved but became saved by what God who loved them all, was doing through Paul to get them saved. It is totally amazing to see how God sovereignly uses people to get other people saved. This is a great clue that this type of work to preach was God’s sovereign choice for the method to how salvation comes to people. It conforms precisely with the parable analogy of “servants” of the sovereign King being sent out to “invite” people to his son’s wedding. There was never a sovereign King mandate or command that required anyone to attend. Each had to accept the invitation, but many refused and gave excuses.

Act 15:4  And when they were come to Jerusalem, they were received of the church, and of the apostles and elders, and they declared all things that God had done with them.

Notice in verse 4 we must all acknowledge that it was God that was working through Paul and Barnabas to cause these salvations. Yet we still cannot deny they person that heard their Gospel message was still required to belief it to be saved. The same is true for Saul who became Paul. He always had the right to refuse to obey what Jesus told him to do, this too would have been a foolish decision.

Act 15:5  But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying, That it was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses. 

Act 15:6  And the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter.

Acts 15:5-6 is a review of the problem. Again, there were certain men of the sect of Pharisees which were saved that began to teach Gentiles they must keep the law of Moses to be saved. But we now know from reading the books of Romans and Galatians, that no man can be justified by keeping the law. These books were not written at this time of meeting to deal with this matter. The church leadership during this dispute was actually a very good example of how churches today should be acting. The number one perspective to learn from in dealing with doctrinal issues, is to notice these men were attempting to be led by the Holy Spirit and were acting out of love to discuss matters in a civil and orderly manner. However, there were deep discussions with contentious times as we can read in the next verse:

Act 15:7  And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up, and said unto them, Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe. 

This is where we see the will of God and His sovereign plan already in progress. Please read this verse over again slowly and pay attention to every word. First notice, a dispute is taking place. This is no different than today between those that see “election” to mean they were selected, and others were not. This is like those that were fighting for the Gentiles to be circumcised to be saved. These were opposed to those that were present to argue a different view of scriptures, like we are doing today.

 Then notice that after a time of argumentative discourse, Peter rose to speak and what He says is very significant and essential to understanding the truth solution to the dispute. Please do not forget that Peter walked with Jesus personally in the flesh for 3 ½ years. Then recall Peter was a circumcised Jewish male like the Pharisee sect. Therefore, Peter should have been on the side of circumcision like the others for it.

However, God knowing this dispute would arise in the church already spoke to Peter in a vision about clean (Jews in circumcision) and unclean (Gentiles in uncircumcision) beasts. God in this vision told Peter to kill and eat from all the animals explaining to Peter, “do not call unclean any man” (Acts 10:28). What we are seeing is Peter dealing with Old Covenant issues of the law. It was unlawful for him to go into a gentile’s house, yet God has sent him to Cornelius to get his family saved within the New Covenant and this is very significant. It confirms that keeping the law was not necessary for salvation to occur.

Peter continues to preach the Gospel to Cornelius and the Holy Ghost falls upon his house and they all received God’s Spirit the same as occurred on Pentecost to Jewish people. This utterly shocks Peter because God had sent him intentionally to an uncircumcised man’s house using supernatural events including the voice of the Holy Spirit, visions and even angels. In this light there could be no doubt what the God in heaven was teaching Peter and the church. God is very clearly saying what Paul wrote about in Galatians 5:6:

Gal 5:6  For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.

We should be able to see that it was neither keeping the law that saved anyone, nor by not keeping the law that prevented anyone from being saved. This simply meant that people are saved by “faith” alone in Jesus Christ alone. This was exactly the message being taught by God in the church to help them resolve this controversial subject and difference of opinions to what and how people are saved.

All of this applies to our lesson of the sovereignty of God. Because it is God that sovereignly chose the method of salvation through faith so that no human could glory in their flesh to how they were saved. Therefore, to even say “I was saved because God sovereignly chose me”, causes someone to look prideful that our creator God loved them more than someone else that was not chosen, and this would violate God’s law of not showing partiality to anyone. Let us continue to look at what else Peter said, and God inspired to be written:

Act 15:8  And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us; 

Act 15:9  And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. 

Here is another quality of God being described. God is being stated to be “omniscient” meaning He knows everything that can be known. Therefore, He clearly knows the heart of every human down to each thought they think about Him and His freely offered His saving gift of the preached Gospel (Rom 1:16) which brings salvation when it is specifically chosen to be believed by humans. This clearly demonstrates it is the sovereign choice of each human to believe or not to believe to be saved.

It is this quality of “omniscience” that can be synonymously called God’s “foreknowledge” since God exists outside of the limitation of time. It is this quality of being “all knowing” that could easily be misapplied to give the appearance that God has chosen some and rejected others to be saved. After all God did nothing to stop someone from rejecting Him, right? However never forget what God did in Christ to save all of us (Jn 3:16)! God sovereignly worked and planned to save every human, by becoming one of us to personally be nailed on a cross and shed the blood that was necessary to relieve us from our sins.

Therefore, we must see that humans have been sovereignly given the “freewill” right to make their own independent daily choices. These choices must be made in their hearts and minds to walk and live by faith as believing in Jesus or reject the Incarnate Word of God and be damned. Now let us view the next verses which represent another human comparison between two sovereign choices on the way they choose to think, live, and act.

Act 15:10  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? 

Act 15:11  But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they. 

Act 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. 

Act 15:13  And after they had held their peace, James answered, saying, Men and brethren, hearken unto me: 

Act 15:14  Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name. 

Act 15:15  And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written, 

Act 15:16  After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up: 

Act 15:17  That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things. 

Act 15:18  Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world. 

Act 15:19  Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God:

We are not going to go through every verse in this passage for the sake of time.

But remember God’s key subject in this chapter is about the internal church’s fight on doctrinal issues concerning how to be saved. Is human salvation:

1. only God’s sovereign choice, or is it,
2. man’s sovereign choice, or could it be,
3. both choices working and cooperating in agreement together?

From studying the Bible attempting to balance all known verses on this subject equally, it appears searching with the help of the Holy Spirit leads us to the answer of option 3. Never forget the parable of the “Wedding Invitation for the King’s son” (Mat 22:2). All were invited to come but only those that chose to come and were prepared were “selected”. This is the same place Jesus said, “Many are called, but few chosen”. Therefore, the Gentiles choosing to “Turn” to God are exactly like those that came to the King’s feast.

In Acts 15, this is a dispute between two groups of saved Christians about their personal “salvation” as Jews being circumcised and those that were Gentiles not having been circumcised, and if either of these external choices mattered to their salvation. The basic battle came down was salvation by “faith only” or by “faith combined with external humans works to keep the law of Moses” to be saved. So, we are learning about conditional or unconditional “salvation”. Are there conditions placed by God upon humans to receive His invitation to salvation? And worse yet, some believe God has already determined who will be saved by only His sovereign choice, regardless of the human participation, cooperation, or agreement? In other words, some believe in a “forced salvation” for the lucky and for the unlucky others “forced damnation”. Clearly this should be a problematic belief based upon learning what the Bible really says.

The book of Acts chapter 15 answers the early church’s dispute about whether to circumcise or not to circumcise. And it is a key clue to resolving our modern fight on “election”.  We should see this same battle pattern is taking place between those that believe in “divine sovereign election” without any human participation of belief or faith, opposing another view that believes in a “salvation” offered by God’s sovereign Grace to everyone, but salvation is only completed through the “human freewill choosing to believe and have faith in Jesus” to become saved. Both the Acts 15 debate and the modern “election” debate are very similar subjects having practically identical answers. Let us look at some of the verses that we just saw.

We can see in verse 14 of Acts 15, that Simon Peter helped them in the church to resolve their salvation conflict by reminding the elders how the sovereign work of God had sent him to Cornelius’ house a Gentile. Don’t forget that Peter was sent there to preach the Gospel so that they could hear, believe, and be saved. Also remember that Peter broke the law of Moses by entering Cornelius’ house as God had instructed him to do. Wow, God tells Peter to break the Mosaic Law to save Cornelius? Is this the right God? Or is there some Christians that are just confused?

What if Cornelius had chosen to not believe the message of Peter? The answer is plain, he would not have been saved and the Holy Spirit would not have fallen upon this Gentile house. However, God supernaturally gave the Jewish man Peter a vision to help him offer the invitation to Gentiles. But before this God had previously sent an angel to Cornelius, instructing him to send for Peter. This certainly was God extending great Grace and mercy to get the process initiated for Gentiles to take the invitation.

After God did all of this by His design, God had already simultaneously answered the questions that Gentiles were not required to get circumcised to be saved, neither was keeping all the law of Moses necessary for saved Jewish men to preach the Gospel invitation. Both acts only required obedience in “faith”.

It is highly recommended that you read the books of Romans and Galatians to see how Paul compares the Old and New Covenants. He goes into detail about Christians that are required to walk and live by Faith. He counters this New Covenant lifestyle, comparing them with people that are still trying to live by the Law. He at one point calls these people to be foolish.

Conclusion

1Co 13:13  And now belief, expectation, and love remain – these three. But the greatest of these is love. 

We will end this lesson with the conclusion that LOVE plays a huge role in the salvation of everyone. God is LOVE and God is sovereign, and both must be balanced together. It is very clearly stated in John 3:16, that because God loved everyone in the world, He sent Jesus Christ to die so that if anyone believed, they would not perish. It is very obvious that the most popular verse known from the Bible reveals God’s Love and human choices to accept His invitation. I don’t know about you personally, but I am now and will always be eternally grateful to God for saving me. Thank you, Jesus!

Hope and pray that every reader has already made that personal choice to believe in Jesus and ask Him to be your LORD! But if not, please click the link below to go to a page that will help you choose to believe. God bless you all during this time of our celebration of the birth of Christ into the world. If it was not for what God’s Love sovereignly chose to do, we would all be going to hell.

Are You Saved? Do you Know Jesus? Life is Short! Jesus wants to Know You! Please come and get to Know Him!