Click here to see the sermon discussion questions or see them listed below. We highly encourage you to listen, think, and talk about the sermon. These are questions you can reflect on by yourself, with your family, or with your small group.

Sermon Discussion Questions:

1. Our passage this week continues the critical debate between some Jews who wanted the gentile believers to follow the Mosaic law, and the disciples who argued that God saves only on the basis of grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.  Why is it difficult for some to accept that salvation is based solely on God’s grace and not upon anything a person can do to earn it?  How would you counsel such “works-based” believers?

2. It was difficult for some Jewish believers to accept gentiles into the church.  Centuries of animosity separated the two groups.  How do cultural, political, and socio-economic differences between people negatively impact the church today?  If you saw this happening in our church, how would you personally address this? 

3. When Peter, Paul and Barnabas proclaimed God’s miraculous work in saving the gentiles, why do you think the arguing stopped and everyone was silent?  Who is ultimately responsible for salvation?

4. Why would it be hard to hear that God loves your enemies just as much as He loves you?  Why should we be thankful that God loves our enemies just as much as He loves you?  How does this kind of thankfulness to the Lord lead to humility and unity within the church?

5. In v.13-18 James points his listeners back to the prophets who foretold that God would one day restore all of mankind, including the gentiles. God’s plan was always to save the entire world through the Gospel.  What encouragement and hope comes from knowing that God’s plan of salvation began long before you were born, long before you ever did anything good or bad?

6. Although the disciples taught that gentiles did not need to live like a Jew to be saved, they also taught that believers needed to turn away from their old way of living. As Christians we can no longer “worship” the same things we once did as unbelievers.  James lists idols, sexual immorality, that which is strangled, and from blood.  What are some modern day “objects of worship” that believers today must turn away from?

7. Are you still chasing after the things of the world?  Or are you different from your old pre-Christian self?  Why is it sometimes hard to make a definitive break from our past life?  Does God’s grace, patience and mercy make it easier or harder to turn away from our sin?  Explain.  Why is the love of Christ so much greater than anything the world has to offer?