The Church will always be under attack by false teachings and it is the responsibility of the church to fend off such attacks by confronting those teachings head on and seeking clarification in the Scriptures with the body. When false teachings are left unchecked, people are troubled, and unsettled in their minds. Once clarification is reached, people are encouraged and able to rejoice once again in the joy of the Lord. As pointed out before, the Church sought to Reason their Experience in the light of Scripture guided by the Holy Spirit and came to a conclusion that seemed right to the Spirit as well as to the leaders.
After much debate and discussion, the Jerusalem Church came to a conclusion: Gentile believers should not be burdened with more requirements than these: "that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality." From Paul's discussion in 1Cor. 8, we know that eating food sacrificed to idols is not a sin. Paul refers to the mere act of eating, not to the participation in the ritual which is wrong. The prohibition has the purpose to avoid offending Jews who have a problem with it due to the dietetic restrictions of the Law that they have observed for most of their lives. It is not a sin, but if you eat and offend a brother you have sinned against him. So abstain! I believe alcohol today falls under this category. Is it sin? No! Can it harm someone else? Yes! So abstain before you offend.
The second item on the list is to abstain from blood. The prohibition of blood is not a result of the Law. It has been prohibited since God gave the animals for food (Genesis 9). The reasoning behind the prohibition is that it represents life and we are to respect life. Blood was to be drained out of the animal before consumption. Blood has never been a food group in the Scriptures and therefore cannot be counted among foods at all. We cannot include blood in the foods that were pronounced clean in the vision given to Peter (Acts 10) because blood has never been a food! Moreover, we preach that the blood of Jesus Christ is the one that cleanses us from all unrighteousness. It is for this reason that God wanted to instill in us a respect for blood. We are redeemed by the blood of Christ and it behooves us to respect blood. It is my conviction that this prohibition is not a mere dietetic law that we can dismiss casually, but a principle of respect for life that still stands today.
The third prohibition has to do with strangled animals and I would include it in the discussion of blood as well because it is referring to food that has been cooked with blood in it. We know that food comes in and goes out of the body and it does not pollute us. What comes out of the heart is what pollutes us. But remember that the prohibition of blood is out of respect for life and we should not consume it. I would not become legalistic about it, but I would not be careless about it either.
The final prohibition is from sexual immorality. Those who argue that the Jerusalem Council was all about food miss the fact that sexual immorality is also prohibited. It is for this reason that we can't dismiss this Council so readily, and we should not dismiss the prohibition of blood either. You can't sweep it all under the category of "old dietetic restrictions." The Scripture is clear about sexual immorality. We are to flee from it! In a society that is constantly flaunting its sexuality, it is a message that is hard to hear. It is the truth nonetheless. Pornography, prostitution, Gentlemen's clubs, etc. are all proliferating day by day, but we are called to abstain. How can we answer such a call? By the power of the Holy Spirit we can live lives of purity before our God.
There are a few practical things we can do to beat sexual immorality. First, we need to cut off all access we have to pornography. If we feed the mind with it, we can't expect to have power to say no to sexual immorality. Second, we need to be accountable to someone for it. If we know we struggle with it, we have to have someone in our face asking the hard questions as often as possible. Also, I recommend the use of software that monitors our use of the internet. The major proliferation of pornography has been online. People may fear to enter a gentlemen's club, but may feel very comfortable hitting a key on their computer to gain access to it.
Father, help me to be mindful of my brothers and sisters and their weaknesses. May I not become a stumbling block to them. Give me insight and conviction concerning the issue of blood. Fill me with the power of your Spirit to fight against sexual immorality. Amen.
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