It Is Not What You Know but Who You Know: Acts 15:1-12

I am a great believer in letters of introduction. When I arrived in London in 1964 on my way to Durham University to study theology I found that my reservation at the YMCA had not been received. I was planning to spend a week in London before term began but I had nowhere to stay. However I had a letter of introduction to G.W. Kirby, the General Secretary of the Evangelical Alliance. When I called he referred me to the Evangelical Alliance Club in Bedford Place, where I managed to find a room and a warm welcome. I also had a letter of introduction to John Stott, who invited me to stay with him for a few days. Three years later because of that relationship he offered me a job as his assistant. I wasn't the brightest bulb in my class but because of who I knew I landed one of the best opportunities to begin my ministry.
It is not just what you know that is most important, but who you know.
This is the essence of Christianity. At the beginning of the Christian missionary enterprise the Church had to decide what was most important for converts to be accepted as Christians. Some believers belonged to the party of the Pharisees. They felt that all new believers should be circumcised and required to follow the law of Moses. They were not just referring to the moral law of the Ten Commandments but the whole Torah including the ceremonial and dietary laws that set the people of Israel apart from the others nations. These were required before Christ to maintain the people of Israel as a holy people so that they would not be assimilated by the surrounding culture and their distinctive identity lost. They could not intermarry or eat with other tribes. These believers were contending that the people converted to Christ through the missionary work of Barnabas and Paul should submit to these rules and regulations in order to be accepted as part of the Christian Church.
There are always people like this in the Christian Church. They are legalists who want people to conform to their way of thinking. Denominational hierarchies are prone to this sort of behavior. They have their dogmas about what hoops they require for people to jump through in order to be accepted. Many refuse to accept others unless they have prayed a certain prayer, or have been baptized a certain way, or whether they have certain spiritual gifts, or whether they have been ordained in a prescribed manner, or whether they have the requisite theological training and qualifications. It is what they know that is important to these institutional gatekeepers.
But that is not what the apostles determined. Peter shared his own experience of communicating the message of the Gospel with those who believed. "God who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? No, we believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are." (Acts 15:8-11)
This is the Apostles' Creed: "We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved." It is not what you know that counts. It is who you know.
Becoming a Christian does not depend upon your intellectual knowledge but upon your relationship with Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Christianity is about a personal God who has reached out to us from the beginning of time, to establish a covenant relationship of love with us. He wants us to know him, not as an abstract idea, a general principle, or through universal laws, but in a particular, concrete, personal and historical relationship. This relationship is characterized by grace -- a free gift that is initiated by God -- and is fully revealed in in the person of Jesus Christ. Christianity is about a love relationship that God has with us and that we are meant to have with one another. The two great commandments, Jesus said, are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
We get into trouble when we think that knowing God is about what we know rather than who we know. Christianity is about personal knowledge, personal relationships.
Antoine Rutaysire, dean of the Anglican Cathedral in Kigali, Rwanda, asked, "How is it that a country whose population was cited as 90 percent Christian could collapse into genocide?" He said that it was because the missionaries presented the gospel as a set of propositional truths. The Rwandans were given Christian information but not the message or the tools for personal transformation. They were given what to believe but not a deep personal relationship with God and their neighbors. As a result, when it came to facing tribal battles, the Rwandans resorted to their traditional tribal way of thinking and handling conflict. (Carrie Boren Headington, Evangelism in a Pluralistic Society, in The Gospel and Pluralism Today, ed. Sunquist and Yong, p.180)
The same could be said about Germany under Hitler. Here was a Christian country steeped in intellectual knowledge about Christianity. But they exalted rational thinking about Christianity at the expense of a personal relationship with the God of love. Those who assent to mere propositional truths of a general nature become followers of an intellectual ideology that does not permeate the whole of life. You can be correct in your theology but obnoxious in your relationships.
Now this does not mean that you do not need to know who Jesus is and what he has done. The apostles went to great lengths communicating to their hearers the story of God's grace through history and in Jesus. They gave them the historical facts about God's loving pursuit of humanity through the prophets and finally culminating in Jesus. But they did not give them a course in the need for rational thinking and intellectual theological and philosophical exploration. Christianity is not about how much you know but who you know. God knows the heart of any uneducated people and shows that he accepts them by giving the Holy Spirit to them. He purifies their hearts by faith.
"God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son". God did not love the world by giving reasons and arguments to believe timeless truths. Our reason is limited. We are often self-deceived. Christian truth is personal knowledge of the grace of our Lord Jesus. It is given to us freely by the Holy Spirit which we grasp by faith. It is all about Jesus as Savior and Lord. If you want to be a Christian all you need to do is become a disciple of Jesus and follow him. Read the Gospels. They are all about him. "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you (not the yoke of the law) and learn from me (not from so-called pundits and the cultural elite), for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." (Matthew 11:28-30)
"For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men." (Titus 2:11) It has appeared in Jesus. He is the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega. It is who you know that counts. "Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent" (John 17:3).