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EarlyActs
Guest
I welcome any comment you have to keep this concise, but I think it is a very necessary summary of what was going on, and in what light we are to see what we read:
The Judaizers of the apostle's time hassled them as seen in Acts 11:1,2. 'You can't be saved if you are not circumcised according to the Law.' Please understand they believed themselves to be Christians, yet this rule was imposed on all those around them. The situation might have been indifferent if they merely said you cannot gain entrance to heaven without it. But the cost was more direct and current: you were dis-fellowshipped (from synagogue, where the apostles hoped to have a productive response). Thus when Christians talked about love, when the backdrop audience was the pressurized Pharisaic Christians, it was a radically new power driven by a Gospel that had no extra baggage dividing people.
Judaizers followed Paul's ministry everywhere, so far as we can tell. Most New Testament letters are about this issue. Paul's groups often progressed as follows, starting from
1, original paganism
2, Christian faith
3, invasion by Judaizers
4, response to #3 by Paul in letter or person.
The most concise expression of these stages by Paul is found in Gal 4:8-11.
The Corinthians, for ex., are seen in the 1st letter as recently pagan, with only a few issues due to Judaism. But in the 2nd, they have been invaded by an insidious group of old covenant 'super-apostles' favoring the Law. That group did not accept that "the old covenant things had passed away," 5:17.
The Judaizers also had a very different expectation about the immediate future which compelled them to follow the Law so close.
If we read 2nd Corinthians (and many other letters) without this in mind, we can come up with some very odd meanings that we should disregard. For ex., 'we urge you not to receive the grace of God in vain' (by having their lives dominated by a sabbath or dietary or circumcision rule). They were Christians; but to accept the Judaizer's message meant a loss of grace and fellowship, as Paul had also mourned in Galatians 4.
We can safely say that most NT letters are about detangling the believers from their misguided efforts.
About 10 years ago, I had an unexpected rejection by a Messianic Jew along these same lines. While the setting of it doesn't pertain, it demonstrates exactly what this can be like.
We should master these concepts as they can attract the world to the Gospel when they see that it was originally hassled by an overbearing religion, but was not that way itself. In 2 Corinthians and elsewhere we see that the 'impostor apostles' were never harrased, but instead received (wrongly).
The Judaizers of the apostle's time hassled them as seen in Acts 11:1,2. 'You can't be saved if you are not circumcised according to the Law.' Please understand they believed themselves to be Christians, yet this rule was imposed on all those around them. The situation might have been indifferent if they merely said you cannot gain entrance to heaven without it. But the cost was more direct and current: you were dis-fellowshipped (from synagogue, where the apostles hoped to have a productive response). Thus when Christians talked about love, when the backdrop audience was the pressurized Pharisaic Christians, it was a radically new power driven by a Gospel that had no extra baggage dividing people.
Judaizers followed Paul's ministry everywhere, so far as we can tell. Most New Testament letters are about this issue. Paul's groups often progressed as follows, starting from
1, original paganism
2, Christian faith
3, invasion by Judaizers
4, response to #3 by Paul in letter or person.
The most concise expression of these stages by Paul is found in Gal 4:8-11.
The Corinthians, for ex., are seen in the 1st letter as recently pagan, with only a few issues due to Judaism. But in the 2nd, they have been invaded by an insidious group of old covenant 'super-apostles' favoring the Law. That group did not accept that "the old covenant things had passed away," 5:17.
The Judaizers also had a very different expectation about the immediate future which compelled them to follow the Law so close.
If we read 2nd Corinthians (and many other letters) without this in mind, we can come up with some very odd meanings that we should disregard. For ex., 'we urge you not to receive the grace of God in vain' (by having their lives dominated by a sabbath or dietary or circumcision rule). They were Christians; but to accept the Judaizer's message meant a loss of grace and fellowship, as Paul had also mourned in Galatians 4.
We can safely say that most NT letters are about detangling the believers from their misguided efforts.
About 10 years ago, I had an unexpected rejection by a Messianic Jew along these same lines. While the setting of it doesn't pertain, it demonstrates exactly what this can be like.
We should master these concepts as they can attract the world to the Gospel when they see that it was originally hassled by an overbearing religion, but was not that way itself. In 2 Corinthians and elsewhere we see that the 'impostor apostles' were never harrased, but instead received (wrongly).