Closing a door

The unthinkable impossibility happened in 70 AD when the Romans, tired of the Jews’ revolt, annihilated Jerusalem. Their impatience showed. They burned the city and utterly destroyed the temple. You can read more about that horrible siege at this link.

If we remember that this was the temple restored by Herod to grandeur, the fury of the Romans is even more startling. But they’d had it. The Jews had been rumbling ever since the Romans settled in Palestine. This was using a cannon to swat a fly, but the Romans angrily settled the uprising once and for all.

What did this mean for the early Christian church?

The early Christians wrestled with a question: could the new church go on without the temple? Now the temple was gone. There was no returning to it for Jewish festivals or sacrifices. Were they a Jewish sect or a new religion?

Jesus had explained to his followers some 40 years earlier that the destruction of the temple would usher in the age of the Gentile (Luke 21:24). The first Christians had struggled with the question of whether the non-Jew had first to become a Jew and then become a Christian.

Peter’s powerful words at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) underlined the message of Christianity: we are saved by grace, not by Jewish traditions.

The temple was the center of those Jewish traditions. You offered the Passover sacrifice at the temple. In fact, all the offerings came to the temple and now it was gone.

For Christians, 70 AD was a door closing. They finally understood they were not Jewish but something new: followers of Jesus. They had been taking the gospel out to non-Jews before 70 AD, but now there was no question. One didn’t have to meet certain criteria before coming to Jesus. One did not need to embrace Jewish traditions before following Jesus.

That’s good news today because we do not need to embrace any churchy traditions before following Jesus. We come freely and directly.

The temple is gone but the grace continues.

No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved

Acts 15:11