Peter got up and addressed them: “Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.” (Acts 15:7–11, NIV 1984).
My Musings – Let’s not place on the unbelieving world a yoke of morality that we as Christians were unable to bear before coming to Christ and still stumble under from time-to-time since coming to faith. The complaints that we would level on the ungodly, “that is what [all] of [us] were. [the only difference is that we] were washed, [we] were sanctified, [we] were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” (1 Corinthians 6:11, NIV 1984). How did this come about? Just like Abraham, “[we] believed the Lord, and He credited it to [us] as righteousness.” (Genesis 15:6, NIV 1984).
My Advice – That “yoke” was borne by Jesus. It wasn’t the weight of the cross that caused Him to stumble on the Via Delarosa. It wasn’t His sin that caused Him to cry out in anguish, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34, NIV 1984). The weight, the anguish was all ours and He took them upon Himself. It was His stripes that healed us, not our own acts of penance. Let’s show our thankfulness of not having to bear that “yoke” by not demanding that others bear it. It is an unrealistic demand.
The Brew Is A Musing 