The People’s Revival

Opening – Recognition: The Misread That Became a Weapon

For centuries, the church has swung a verse like a hammer at the LGBTQ+ community — a text stripped from its time, its tongue, and its tenderness.

But context is covenant. What was written to liberate the exploited has been twisted to enslave the free. Acts 15 was not a purity code for controlling love; it was a liberation decree for people long trapped in systems that turned bodies into property.

The apostles weren’t warning against love — they were warning against empire. That distinction changes everything.

When the Jerusalem Council wrote to Gentile believers in Acts 15, they were dealing with an unprecedented situation — people coming to faith in the Jewish Messiah without converting to Judaism.

The question was: what moral expectations applied to someone outside the Torah covenant?

The letter listed four prohibitions:

“abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality.” (Acts 15:20)

Those were not random. They mirrored the ancient Noahide laws — the minimal moral code expected of non-Jews living among Israel. So the Council wasn’t laying down Levitical law on Gentiles; they were saying: “Start here — these are the basic boundaries of decency and worship under the God of Israel.”

Stand-Out Truth: “Sexual immorality” Meant Pagan Exploitation, Not Modern Victorianism

A Gentile in the first century would have understood “sexual immorality” (porneia) through the lens of the pagan temple culture they lived in — not Jewish ceremonial law.

“Porneia” in that world referred to:

• Temple prostitution and fertility rites;
• Exploitative relationships tied to idolatry, slavery, and class power;
• Incestuous or coercive unions common in Roman society;
• Sexual commerce as part of economic and religious control.

It wasn’t primarily about private consensual acts between equals. It was about participating in the system of exploitation and desecration of the body — the human image of God.

So when the apostles said, “abstain from sexual immorality,” a Gentile convert heard:

“Stop participating in the cults. Stop using sex as currency. Stop treating bodies — yours or anyone else’s — as property.”

This was an economic and spiritual rebellion as much as a moral one.

Revelation: Holiness Meant Dignity and Liberation

To the first-century Gentile, holiness wasn’t prudishness; it was resistance to empire’s corruption of the body.

It meant refusing to let Caesar’s economy dictate intimacy, refusing to exploit the weak, and refusing to mix the worship of God with systems of control and abuse.

In short:

“Sexual immorality” was shorthand for participation in a world that profits off desecration.

Response: The Moral Voice Restored

The call of Acts 15 wasn’t “follow Jewish purity codes.”

It was: recover the sacredness of the human being.

Faith meant exiting the empire’s temples — of lust, of greed, of domination — and forming communities where love wasn’t transactional and dignity wasn’t for sale.

That’s how a first-century Gentile would have heard it:

You don’t belong to the Empire any longer.

Your body is not for idols, nor for sale.

You are now the temple.

Closing – Response: The Restoration of Holy Love

To reclaim this text is to reclaim the truth that God’s holiness was never about policing desire — it was about protecting dignity. The call to “abstain from sexual immorality” was a call to end exploitation, not to shame affection.

For the LGBTQ+ believer, this matters profoundly: your love is not the corruption the apostles condemned. The empire’s coercion was. Christ’s covenant sanctifies what empire profaned — mutuality, fidelity, compassion, the sacredness of touch.

The early church’s letter to the Gentiles was the first act of inclusion. Ours must be the next.