The Ins and Outs of the Gospel

Acts 2:36-47
By grace, God has formed a new community of faith in Jesus Christ. This reality is central to Peter’s message on Pentecost as recorded in the book of Acts. Indeed, it is because of this divine initiative that Peter can point to an ever widening circle of fellowship beginning in Jerusalem. “Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him’” (Acts 2:38-39).

There’s a song by musician Peter Gabriel that speaks to the natural human tendency to seek out distinctions between people and to shape society along those sometimes artificial barriers. He says:

There's safety in numbers
When you learn to divide.
How can we be in
If there is no outside?

Speaking in terms of the gospel, the apostle Peter refuses to make any such distinctions, recognizing instead that all authority rests with God and God alone. He and the others who had followed Jesus from the beginning sought shelter in the days immediately following the ascension, but now the Holy Spirit had sent them out into the streets to share the good news to all people. There had been relative safety for them in the isolation of the upper room, in the ability to control those who came and went from their midst. But that safety would now be lost to the hubbub of the marketplaces and the roadsides. There no longer would be an “inside” established by the community of faith because whatever “outside” there might be would exist only at God’s will.

The contemporary church serves God best when it embraces this reality, that God’s promise is for whoever God determines. There is safety to be found in small rooms and in closed communities, but as the crucifixion makes so vibrantly clear, the gospel has never been about safety. It is a message infused with risk which sometimes leads to discomfort and even death, but which also leads to the gift of eternal life. By God’s grace the question becomes: can anyone be “out” if there is no “inside?”

Prayer: Almighty God, help us to open our hearts to your message of grace and peace and our lives to the work you would have us do. In Jesus’ name. Amen.