Preserving Preferences or Saving Sinners

Shift Your Focus… It happens in every era: People elevate their religious traditions to the level of Divine law. They attach holiness to their spiritual preferences and then fiercely worship what they prefer.

The Jews battled Jesus because he broke with their long-held faith-practices to introduce a strange new approach to spirituality. Now the very Jewish believers who had been liberated by faith in Christ to a new and living way have turned around and are reluctant to accept Gentile believers into their Christian faith. They have put Peter on the hot seat here in Acts 11 and are demanding answers to why he, a good Jewish boy, went into the home of a Gentile and preached this Good News that was meant for the Jews.

Fortunately, when they heard Peter’s side of things and saw evidence that the Holy Spirit had worked among the Gentiles too, “they became silent; and they glorified God, saying, ‘Then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life.’” (Acts 11:18)

If it could happen to the Jews to whom God gave the Law of Moses, and if it could happen to the first century Jewish Christians to whom God gave living faith in Jesus Christ, it can happen to you and me as well. In fact, it probably already has, but we just don’t recognize it.

Attaching holiness to a preference and then worshipping the preference is hard to spot—very hard. It is so subtle. And attaching certain values to spiritual preferences is just naturally justifiable. We like our preferences, so it follows that they must be right, they must be best for us and everybody else, and they must be holy unto the Lord.

The problem is, our preferences can get in the way of what God wants to do to reach unreached people with the Good News of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. God had to root out Jewish religious practices, preferences and rituals in the very first church because they were unnecessary to faith and worse, they were a barrier to Gentiles unfamiliar with Jewish law. Likewise, God has to do that in every era of the church.

Examine your own preferred way of worship and ask yourself if what you value is truly necessary to authentic faith. More importantly, ask yourself if your spiritual preferences are perhaps a barrier to the unreached, unchurched people in your community coming to know the awesome Savior you follow.

Let me give you a hint as to some things that you must be open to changing for the sake of the Gospel: the style of music in your services; the religious language you use (which may very well describe your faith experience to you and fellow believers but actually confuse if not scare off seekers), i.e., “saved,” “washed in the blood,” “pay your tithe,” “let’s have fellowship,” etc.; unexplained orders of worship; service times; what you wear; even the look of your house of worship. Now that I’ve got you thinking about this, you could probably add a few more things to the list.

These things aren’t necessarily bad, but just keep in mind, neither are they inherently holy. They are simply what you prefer. So resist allowing your spiritual preferences to become what you worship, and worse, become a barrier to someone else finding faith in Jesus Christ.

“Jesus came to save sinners, not preserve traditions.”

Prayer… Dear God, lost people matter to you.  Help me to keep that first in my mind.  And give me the discernment to see when what I prefer stands in the way of what you prefer—lost people coming to faith in your Son.