Colliding With Culture (Collision part 2 of 4)

After those days we packed and went up to Jerusalem... When we had come to Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly. On the following day Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present... And they said to him, "You see, brother, how many myriads of Jews there are who have believed, and they are all zealous for the law. But they have been informed about you that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses..." Then Paul took the men and the next day, having been purified with them, entered the temple... Now when the seven days were almost ended, the Jews from Asia, seeing him in the temple, stirred up the whole crowd and laid hands on him... and all the city was disturbed... and they seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple, and immediately the doors were shut.

You don't have to leave everything in your native culture to follow Christ—but the gospel will transform you, and through you, transform others.

Sometimes a Collision Is Unavoidable

About three days before Christmas, nearly ten years ago, I was visiting friends in Louisiana on my way home from teaching at a Bible college in Germany. Driving a rented Nissan Titan in the worst downpour I had ever experienced, I accelerated onto a freeway and felt the lightweight back end of the truck lift off the ground. The truck began to spin completely out of control.

It all happened very fast, yet in my mind it was slow motion—high-definition clarity. I slid across two lanes and the median, and I can still see the wide eyes of an older gentleman in a dark red Thunderbird as I slammed into his side at about fifty miles an hour. Just before impact I prayed, "Lord, please don't let this hurt." Graciously, it didn't, and I walked away.

The next day I set the rental keys on the counter. The agent asked, "Where's the vehicle?" I said, "You'll have to talk to the police about that." For some reason—I believe the providence of God—I had bought the collision insurance, something I normally never do.

That is point one: sometimes a collision is unavoidable. Some of you have lived that—a moment when you know impact is inevitable and you feel you have no control. In Acts 21 we sit as bystanders, watching in slow motion as Paul heads back to Jerusalem toward a collision he knows is coming.

Paul's Determined Journey Toward Reconciliation

For nearly two months Paul had been traveling from Corinth up through Macedonia and around through Asia Minor down to Judea. Everywhere he stopped—as we saw in Acts 20:23—the same message came: chains and tribulations await you in Jerusalem. Yet he went, saying he was "bound by the Spirit" to return. The Lord was compelling him.

He was carrying an offering from the Gentile churches of Galatia, Macedonia, Greece, and Asia Minor for the impoverished Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. With him were at least eight traveling companions, listed at the start of Acts 20—seven Gentiles and Timothy, who was half Jewish. In Corinth, twelve hundred miles from Jerusalem, people conspired to kill him. From Philippi to Troas to Caesarea, everywhere believers warned him not to go.

Even in the face of danger, Paul maintained an unwavering devotion to his task. I believe there was a deeper reason: Paul was seeking to deal with an internal division undermining the early church—a cultural and racial divide between Jews and Gentiles. External opposition tends to strengthen the church, but internal division can break it apart.

A Church Divided Between Jew and Gentile

We sometimes read Acts as though only great things happened in the first-century church. In reality there was severe turmoil because of the racial divide between Jews and Gentiles. The gospel came to the Jew first; Jesus was a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and his early disciples were first sent to the lost sheep of Israel. But after the resurrection he commanded them to go to Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth. The gospel is for all people, of all cultures, at all times.

The Jewish people, because of their theology and their identity as God's chosen, often looked down on the rest of the world. Into this divide stepped Paul—a former Pharisee, schooled in Jerusalem under Gamaliel—who became a follower of Jesus in Acts 9. Three days after his conversion, God called him to do something out of the ordinary: to be an apostle to the Gentiles, sent with the message to people outside his own cultural comfort zone.

So Paul spent the bulk of his ministry not in Judea but in Syria, modern-day Turkey, Greece, and Macedonia—predominantly Gentile regions. Why? Because "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son." Paul was the first apostle sent to people outside his native culture.

The Divide Boils Over

This divide grew to a crescendo during Paul's third missionary journey in Ephesus, from A.D. 54 to 58. It boiled over and followed him into Corinth, where Jews from Asia Minor brought in Jews from Judea, conspiring to kill him. Now it would meet him in Jerusalem—the epicenter, the capital of Judaism where the temple stood.

You can trace this division throughout Christian history and throughout the New Testament. First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Ephesians, Romans—all of them, read through this lens, reveal the problem. Paul's last journey as a free man, leaving Corinth in the spring of A.D. 58, was not only to bring a financial offering but to pursue reconciliation—to deal with a racial divide and bring about racial reconciliation.

In Second Corinthians, written during this period, Paul said God "has given us the word of reconciliation" and "made us ministers of reconciliation." Later, in Ephesians, he wrote that Jesus tore down the middle wall of separation between Jew and Gentile, making them one—"one hope, one baptism, one faith, one Lord." Paul contended for unity when a severe divide threatened to tear the church apart.

Was Paul a Hypocrite?

Paul's own people had come to see him as a defector—one who had rejected the core tenets of Judaism, which was not just a faith but an entire way of life, worldview, and culture. As a former Pharisee, blameless according to the law and ardent for the customs of his people, the rumor that he now taught others to abandon those things stuck easily. But it was not true. The early church had already agreed in Acts 15 not to lay the law of Moses on Gentile converts; Paul was simply carrying out that consensus.

The events of Acts 21:15-25 only make sense through this lens. If you ignore the cultural divide Paul was addressing, the only conclusion is that Paul was inconsistent at best and a compromising hypocrite at worst. Some commentators say exactly that—that Paul flip-flopped like a modern politician. I don't believe that for a moment. Read through the lens of the Jew-Gentile divide, Paul is neither inconsistent nor compromised.

That brings us to point two: Paul understood that culture matters. It mattered to him and it matters to God. What we see in Acts 21 is not political correctness but what we might call cultural correctness.

The Gospel Is Supracultural

Why would Paul consent to what the Jerusalem leaders asked? An answer comes in 1 Corinthians 9, written during this same third journey, when people were already calling him a flip-flopper:

For though I am free of all men, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win the more. And to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews... to those who are without law, as without law (not being without law toward God, but under law toward Christ), that I might win those who are without law... I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.

About six times Paul says "that I might win"—and he defines winning as "that I might save some." His desire was salvation, because he knew the gospel is supracultural—above culture. It does not exist in only one cultural greenhouse. Unlike Judaism, which lives in Hebrew, or Islam, which lives in Arabic, the gospel exists among all people, in all places, in all languages. This truth had to be built into the church at its earliest stages so it would not become a regional, national entity you could only reach if you spoke Hebrew and understood the lineage of Abraham.

Culturally Sensitive Without Compromise

Point three: Paul sought to be culturally sensitive. This requires so understanding the gospel and the nature of God—that is, theology—that you know the non-negotiables and where you can be flexible. In Corinth you could eat meat sacrificed to idols and it was no big deal; among the Jews in Jerusalem it was unthinkable, so you would gladly give it up, because it has no bearing on salvation.

The gospel is also a cultural influencer. Wherever it goes, it changes culture, removing what is against the nature of God. Consider slavery in the West: it was the gospel and the dignity Scripture ascribes to all humanity that transformed our culture to recognize we must not buy and sell human beings. The gospel gives rights to women and dignity to all people—black, white, brown, whatever color—because God ascribes equal dignity to every person.

So Paul could be flexible in some areas and firm in others—"not as being without law toward God," he says, but "under law toward Christ." Many Christians struggle with this because we live in a culture with a Christian foundation, and as culture shifts we assume every change is against the gospel simply because it is against our comfort. We must be discerning enough to know where the non-negotiables lie and where we can be flexible.

Reject, Receive, or Redeem

When the gospel enters a culture, some things must be rejected. In Israel you could no longer offer a sin offering at the temple, because Hebrews 10:26 tells us there remains no more sacrifice for sins—Jesus is the final, once-for-all sacrifice. That is largely why the book of Hebrews was written.

But some things in a culture are benign and can simply be received. And some things can actually be redeemed and used to bring glory to God—what our friend Don Richardson calls "cultural compasses," residual reflections of God's glory already oriented toward truth. A Christian can take those and say, "That points to God; that's how we'll use it as a witness."

A Glad Welcome in Jerusalem

When Paul arrived with his eight companions, the disciples from Caesarea, and Mnason of Cyprus, Luke records, "the brethren received us gladly." Paul was not worried about connecting with the leaders; James and the elders had spent time with him nine years before. Even though Paul and his Gentile companions had different cultural tendencies, they were welcomed with open arms.

This is instructive. We ought to receive believers who name the name of Christ even when they worship differently, take communion differently, or speak a different language. If they believe on him, we should embrace them joyfully.

The next day Paul went in to James and all the elders and told them in detail what God had done among the Gentiles. This James is the brother of Jesus, author of the earliest Christian document we know (written about A.D. 46-49) and chief among the elders in Jerusalem. The phrase "in detail" means each and every detail, one by one—an awesome missions testimony, with eight living epistles standing beside Paul as representatives of the churches he had planted. It makes you wonder whether Luke was taking notes that would later become the book of Acts.

"Zealous for the Law"

When they heard it, they glorified the Lord. Then they said, "You see, brother"—they never questioned his faith—"how many myriads of Jews there are who have believed, and they are all zealous for the law." Interestingly, James and the elders did not speak negatively of these believers' zeal for the law of Moses. They simply accepted it as part of the culture: these men had become Christians and remained zealous for the law.

The problem was the rumor: that Paul was teaching Jews living among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, not to circumcise their children, and to abandon the customs. This was not true, and the Jerusalem leaders knew it. We know it too, because Paul had circumcised Timothy in Lystra precisely because his mother was Jewish. Paul observed Passover in Philippi and came to Jerusalem for Pentecost—not because he had to, but because he was culturally Jewish.

I understand this perfectly. When I lived in Germany around 2004, the Americans at the Bible school wanted a Thanksgiving feast at the end of November. The Germans thought we were crazy—they don't celebrate Thanksgiving. But culturally we were Americans, and wherever you are in the world, you'll likely gather on the last Thursday in November even if everyone around you is puzzled. That is exactly what Paul was doing with the Jewish customs.

The Christian Faith Does Not Destroy Culture

Point four: the Christian faith does not destroy culture. You can be a Christian and keep much of your native culture. Some things must be rejected—the Jews could no longer offer a sin offering, the Ephesians could no longer engage in temple immorality at the shrine of Diana—because those things are against the character of God. But you don't have to start calling Jesus Yeshua or God Yahweh or keep Passover to be a Christian. You can still be an American, still celebrate Thanksgiving, still celebrate Christmas and even redeem it as a witness to Jesus, though it has been commercialized.

The new Jewish converts in Jerusalem had been told for nine years that Paul was a turncoat who fled the customs of his people and taught others to do the same. In reality, Passover and Pentecost were cultural compasses Paul used to point to Jesus.

The Plan—and Paul's Consent

So James and the elders proposed a plan:

...for we have four men who have taken a vow. Take them and be purified with them, and pay their expenses so that they may shave their heads, that all may know that those things of which they were informed concerning you are nothing, but that you yourself also walk orderly and keep the law.

These four were Christians of Jewish heritage engaged in a vow of consecration, most likely the Nazarite vow of Numbers 6. There was no problem with this—Paul himself observed such a vow in Acts 18. Under the vow you consecrated yourself wholly to the Lord, abstained from any fruit of the vine, let your hair grow, avoided every unclean thing, and at the end shaved your head and offered a praise offering at the temple. They asked Paul to join the four, sponsor them, pay for their offerings, and go to the temple so everyone would see that Paul was still culturally Jewish.

Part of us wants to cry, "No, Paul, don't acquiesce!" Yet notice verse 25: the Gentile believers were not required to do any such thing—they were only to keep what Acts 15 had decided: abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality. Three of those four were matters of cultural sensitivity toward Jews; only sexual immorality is against the very character of God. Paul taught Gentiles that meat sacrificed to idols was fine, yet around Jews he would not stumble a weaker brother (Romans 15:1-2).

So Paul took the four men, purified himself with them at the temple pools, shaved his head, and entered the temple to offer a praise offering. Wait—isn't he a Christian, free from these things? Apparently none of them conflicted with Christ. Jesus himself went to the temple, prayed there, and observed the feasts of Dedication and Passover. None of these culturally Jewish practices were against the faith.

When It Doesn't Seem to Work

Now when the seven days were almost ended, the Jews from Asia, seeing him in the temple, stirred up the whole crowd... crying out, "Men of Israel, help! This is the man who teaches all men everywhere against the people, the law, and this place; and furthermore he also brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place"—for they had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian with him in the city, whom they supposed Paul had brought into the temple.

The whole city was disturbed; they seized Paul, dragged him out, and shut the doors. In the moment, the plan did not appear successful—it didn't win that crowd. But in the long run it leaves an important instruction, and it leaves us with three closing questions.

Three Questions for Us

First, am I colliding with culture? There are ways the gospel will collide with the consumerism and immorality of our culture.

Second, am I engaging with culture? If I am not colliding at all, perhaps I'm not even engaging the culture with the gospel of Christ.

Third, am I influencing culture? The workplace, the campus, the office, the construction site—are you influencing those places for the glory of God, or do you simply look like the rest of the world?

These are challenging things to consider. Yes, there are non-negotiables in the faith, and there are areas where we can be flexible. God help us to engage and influence the culture—even if it means we collide with it.

Closing Prayer

Father, thank you for your word. Let it be written on our hearts. Transform the way that we live. Help us to honor and glorify you in the world in which we live, that the world may know you have brought salvation not just to one small subset of people but to all people. Lord, help us to have a passion and a zeal for your name and for your glory in this world. In Jesus' name, amen.