Christmastide
January 5, 2023
Scripture Reading: Acts 10:34-43
Then Peter began to speak to them: ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.’
We who call ourselves Christian do not own God; we are called to follow God and do so through the guidance of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. The first sentence in the above scripture delivers that message well. Anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God. What is right is also not defined by us. Justice is not what feels good to us. The Greek word translated justice is dikaiosýnē and means(“divine approval”) is the regular NT term used for righteousness (“God’s judicial approval”). 1343 /dikaiosýnē (“the approval of God”) refers to what is deemed right by the Lord (after His examination), i.e. what is approved in His eyes*.
The challenge is to discern what God’s divine approval is when we live in varying cultures that have established what is right in their judgment and passed it on to descendants who accept it as having divine approval. We must have the courage to hold our culturally driven values up to the test of God’s righteousness and reform our behaviors if we come to understand that our culture, at some point, missed the mark and still holds on to the systems that resulted. Slavery is an excellent example of that. The first mention of slaves in the Bible is in Genesis 9:25. The fact that it existed in the culture of our ancestors in faith does not mean it had divine approval. Slavery was deemed a wise way to develop wealth. Thus, it was rendered acceptable by religious groups, and we still pay the price for being wrong in that discernment.
As we study the Bible in our quest to discover God’s divine approval, we must also become vigilant at identifying cultural realities of Biblical times that are reported in the scriptures but do not necessarily have divine approval.
Prayer: Lord, help us grow in understanding of your divine approval. Amen.
* https://biblehub.com/greek/1343.htm
All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.