Welcome back to the podcast! Today's world is full of conflicting thoughts, ideas, and problems. In this episode, we'll be answering the question: should serious Christians ever compromise?

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Q. Should Serious Christians Ever Compromise?

• Might seem like a weird question
• Maybe you know Christians who never compromise
• Draw hard lines everywhere on everything. Totally unbending
• Ex: Halloween
• Ex: Tattoos
• The Fundamental Law of Legalism: Drawing a hard line in gray areas weakens the hard lines we draw in the black and white.
• So we have to be smart about compromise!
• Parents: could win the battle but lose the war
• Our strategy: don’t make a big deal of these gray areas (even though we still drew boundaries) – so our kids would take us seriously when we drew the line on serious issues
• A strange paradox:
• Biblical Christians draw hard lines in some areas
• And then they turn around and compromise in other areas
• Today: We’ll see the first time the church wrestled with this
• It was such a big question, they gathered in Jerusalem
• First church council
• Everybody was there! Peter, Paul, Barnabas, etc.
• To answer: When do we fight vs when do we compromise?
• I want to start at the end: where they landed
• In the words of Paul, later, to the church at Corinth
• It’s a great summary, and it shows you this is a thing
• Compromise, that is, for serious Christians
• Cause Pauls was serious, unbending
• Yet look at where he landed on this ?

1 Corinthians 9:19-21 (NLT) 19 Even though I am a free man with no master, I have become a slave to all people to bring many to Christ. 20 When I was with the Jews, I lived like a Jew to bring the Jews to Christ…. 21 When I am with the Gentiles who do not follow the Jewish law, I too live apart from that law so I can bring them to Christ. But I do not ignore the law of God; I obey the law of Christ.

• Hypocrite? No way!
• Jesus-centered vs. rule-centered
• Just wanted to point people to Jesus
• Therefore willing to compromise
• Heart issue
• Pointed Jews to Jesus by using the law of Moses
• Pointed Gentiles to Jesus without using the law of Moses
• All along obeyed the higher law “of Christ”
• Ie, not free to do whatever we want (antinomianism)
• compromising on the Lordship of Christ

Last week: Acts 14, Paul’s first missionary journey

• Proclaimed the gospel
• Contextualized the gospel for Gentiles
• Made disciples and commissioned them to make disciples
• Returned to home base, Antioch

Now we have a blended church, and with that came questions…

Acts 15:1-2 (NLT) 1 While Paul and...