Acts 15:1-35
Jerusalem Council
I. We
Must Defend the Gospel (Acts 15:1-5)
This was upsetting, to say the least. “This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them” (v. 2a). There was passionate argument, perhaps even some shouting. No doubt the Judaizers claimed front-office support from Jerusalem, and Paul and Barnabas said those men had no such thing. The result was division among the brethren. This was tragic. It seemed that the only solution was to send Paul and Barnabas up to Jerusalem to meet with the leaders (v. 2). So the dynamic duo set out for the Holy City. En route they spread great joy to other believers as they shared what God had been doing among the Gentiles (v. 3). However, when they got to Jerusalem, they found that the Judaizers were well entrenched.
Some of the Pharisees who had been converted to Christ were insisting on their version of Christianity. To become a Christian, according to them, one must go through a procedure very much like becoming a Jewish proselyte. The apostles were faced with a huge problem, a problem compounded by the fact that these Pharisaic Christians were not intrinsically evil.
Think of the stability of the Pharisee’s training and Hebraism, his immersion in Mosaic Law and tradition, his pride in being part of the chosen people of God. Live in his shoes as we relive the steps of his rigorous education and joyous participation in Israel’s customs. Feel the loving arms of parents and family as he is circumcised on the eighth day; catch the awe and wonder he felt sitting at the feet of the elder Pharisees studying the Scripture; identify with the pride he felt when he became a son of the Law at his bar mitzvah. Become one with him as he grew to full manhood and earned the revered status of a Pharisee, and consider how he must have burst with satisfaction as he put on the dignified robes of a leader of Israel
They were not bad people at this point. But given time, their views, tightly held, would pull them so far away from the doctrine of grace that they would become apostate
Nevertheless, the future of the church of Christ and the doctrine of the way of salvation were at stake. History and experience have proven that anything made a co-requirement with faith soon shoves faith aside and becomes the means of salvation
Circumcision is necessary for salvation; negatively, without circumcision no salvation. But this teaching was not stated merely as doctrine, in a general form, but practically, personally, applying the doctrine: “You cannot be saved unless you shall be circumcised after the custom of Moses.” All the uncircumcised Gentile Christians in Antioch were thus pronounced unsaved. Faith in Jesus Christ was not enough to save, circumcision must be added. The issue was centered on circumcision alone with a kind of inconsistency, for if circumcision was essential as required by the usus of Moses, then what about all else that Moses had required? Consistency would soon have introduced the entire legal system
Theologically, the truth of the gospel was at stake in Jerusalem. And relationally the stakes were just as high. A wrong decision in Jerusalem and gracious openness would be replaced with jaundiced exclusiveness.
Fortunately, the Jerusalem Council followed Christ, and in doing so they gave us a basis upon which to build grace into our theology and our relationships.
This must have been a grand gathering. Of the elders who were present we know only James (v. 18). In
At this meeting Paul and Barnabas say nothing about the Judaizers that had appeared in Antioch and had caused a disturbance there regarding circumcision for Gentile believers. They leave this to the Judaizers themselves. That was a wise procedure. They do not mar the effect of their great narrative by thrusting into it this dispute that had arisen much later, after their missionary work had been completed. By proceeding as they did, Paul and Barnabas really ask on behalf of themselves and on behalf of the church at Antioch which was so deeply involved in their work whether there was anything wrong with “the great things God did in company with them.”
II. We
Must Utilize Faithful Believers (Acts 15:6-22)
Judaizers later charged Paul with emasculating the gospel in order to gain the applause of the Gentiles and win easy victories. Without warrant they claimed Peter as the head of their party.
The Judaizers feared that Gentile Christianity was like “the boar out of the wood” (
An early heretical sect that maintained an ascetic lifestyle and observed the Mosaic law, according to the viewpoints articulated later on by the early church fathers. Ebionites argued that God adopted Jesus at His baptism
By verses 6 and 7 the Council has convened, and there has been much debate. No doubt some of the hotter heads had said some things for which they were already sorry. Perhaps there were even times of chaos before Peter rose to speak. Knowing Peter, he probably could not sit still any longer. First, he recalled his experience with the Gentiles
“Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. 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.” (vv. 7–9)
He was referring to his ministry years earlier in seeing the Gentile Cornelius and his entire house receive Christ and the Holy Spirit through faith. The conclusion? “[God] made no distinction between us and them.” Then came Peter’s stunning pronouncement:
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.” (vv. 10–11)
Peter affirmed his perplexity as to why the Judaizers would saddle anyone with the Law. They themselves could not bear it, so why heap it upon others? God had given them the Law as a schoolmaster to lead them to Christ by demonstrating at every turn they were sinners in need of mercy (see
III. We
Must Define the Gospel Clearly (Acts 15:7-22)
turns to the Judaizers themselves. He appeals to what they on their part know and what happened so long ago.
God did that. The work of Paul and of Barnabas was not an innovation and did not present a new question. Far back in those days God “made choice for himself,” elected of his own accord (middle voice), “for the Gentiles to hear (effectively, aorist) through my mouth the Word of the gospel and to believe
And now Peter brings out the pertinent point in that act of God’s. As “the heart-knower” he made no mistake (the same term occurs in 1:24) when “he bore testimony to them” (to those Gentiles in Caesarea) that they were truly his children by faith alone. He bore this testimony “by giving them the Holy Spirit even as also to us,” so that those Gentiles spoke with tongues exactly as the 120 had at the time of Pentecost (see 10:46).
Peter intensifies this most decisive point: “in no respect did he discriminate (differentiate, judge one way and then another) between both us and them.” The Greek always names the first person first, the others last. God made no difference whatever between Jew and Gentile, circumcised and uncircumcised, Levitically clean and unclean. As to this last, the matter of cleanness in God’s eyes, “he cleansed their hearts—where alone all true spiritual cleansing occurs—by the faith.” Τῇ πίστει with the article is “the faith” in the sense of the Word of the gospel received by faith; and “heart” is to be taken in the Biblical sense, the center of the personality. These unclean Gentiles God cleansed in this true fashion. That is what made Jew and Gentile alike in his sight.
The conclusion of all this? Grace alone! “We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.” Every person—the Ph.D. and the least-taught child—comes into God’s family the same way—solely by the undeserved kindness of a forgiving God!
Christ’s removal of the yoke of the law made circumcision and kosher eating, etc., no longer obligatory in any sense apart even from the matter of gaining salvation; yet neither were these Jewish practices and modes of living forbidden by Christ
They became adiaphora, matters of liberty and choice, that should not be forced upon others or become a cause of pride and marks of special holiness as compared with Gentile Christians. Peter could continue kosher eating, for instance, but not as though that elevated him above those who did not eat kosher and made him stand higher in God’s sight.
The one divine means of salvation is “the grace of the Lord Jesus” and not our observance of the law. Even in the old covenant the saving means was the Old Testament gospel and promise of the Messiah and not the law. “Grace” is the favor of the Lord Jesus and the redemption it wrought for the sinner and now applies to him. “Grace” connotes sin, guilt, liability to damnation; “grace” brings remission of sin, guilt, and damnation, and thus salvation.
12) And all the multitude kept silence and went on hearing Barnabas and Paul recounting what great signs and wonders God did among the Gentiles through them.
They had already made a full report in regard to their success among the Gentiles (v. 4); now they recount “the signs and wonders” (see 2:19; 14:3) God wrought among the Gentiles through them. They thereby clinch the decisive point of Peter’s address, namely that God bestowed the same miraculous manifestations on Cornelius and on his house that he had bestowed on the 120 Jewish believers at the time of Pentecost. God did those signs and wonders among the Gentiles, for no apostle ever worked a miracle by his own volition. The apostles were only his instruments as the significant διά once more states. Peter’s experience was already sufficient, but that experience was multiplied in the case of Barnabas and of Paul. God had thus set his seal of approval on the work of receiving Gentiles into the church by faith alone without circumcision and other Levitical observances
Called “James the Just” because of his piety, he was ascetic and scrupulous. When he died, his knees were allegedly callused like those of a camel because of his many hours of prayer. He was a pillar of the church (
The hopes of the Pharisaic sect rocketed as James stood to speak. Surely he would set Peter and Paul and Barnabas right. They were undoubtedly surprised at the apostle’s response, for James first showed how the conversion of Gentiles was in accord with the Old Testament Scriptures.
Through this combination of passages taken largely from
Then came James’s pronouncement, the heart of the whole scene:
“Therefore it is my judgment that we do not trouble those who are turning to God from among the Gentiles, but that we write to them that they abstain from things contaminated by idols and from fornication and from what is strangled and from blood.” (vv. 19–20)
James had some advice for both groups. To the pharisaical Jewish believers he said, “Lay off these new Gentile Christians—do not trouble them.”
To the Gentile believers, he gave three restrictions:
1. Stay away from anything that has to do with idols.
2. Avoid fornication.
3. Do not partake of meat that has been strangled or has blood in it.
The early Gentile converts were in constant danger of being drawn into fornication in one form or the other by their relatives and their friends. Hence Paul’s, “Flee fornication!”
There was to be no idolatry because there is only one true God, and only he is to be worshiped. Fornication was forbidden in all cases because fornication was at that time rampant among the Gentiles. Why the third restriction? “For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath” (v. 21). In other words, Jewish communities existed in nearly every city, and the Gentile converts were not to do anything that would offend the Jews’ religious scruples.
James gives us two complementary principles for grace-filled living.
One of the reasons (though not the only one) we are not to do this is because of what it does to us. Winston Churchill told of a British family that went out for a picnic by a lake. In the course of the afternoon the five-year-old son fell into the water. Unfortunately, none of the adults could swim. As the child was bobbing up and down and everyone on the shore was in panic, a passerby saw the situation. At great risk to himself, he dove in fully clothed and managed to reach the child just before he went under for the third time. He was able to pull him out of the water and present him safe and sound to his mother. Instead of thanking the stranger for his heroic efforts, however, the mother snapped peevishly at the rescuer, “Where’s Johnny’s cap?” Somehow in all of the commotion the boy’s cap had gotten lost. Instead of rejoicing in her son’s deliverance, the woman found something about which to be critical!
The second is: because we are under grace, we gladly restrict our freedom for the sake of others. There was not anything intrinsically wrong with eating a rare steak, but James said to boil it or eat it well-done for the sake of fellowship with the Jews.
Paul states the same principle in
IV. We
Must Proclaim the Gospel Lovingly (Acts 15:19-35)
The were
encouraging (22-25)
The apostles and elders drafted a letter and sent it along with Paul and Barnabas and their friends, Silas and Judas Barsabbas, to take back to Antioch. The letter’s conclusion was almost word for word as suggested by James:
It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell. (vv. 28–29)
First, we must preach grace alone.
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. (
