Acts 15:1-21--The Jerusalem Council

Acts 15:1-21
English Standard Version

The Jerusalem Council
15 But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” 2 And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question. 3 So, being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers. 4 When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them. 5 But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.”

6 The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. 7 And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. 8 And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, 9 and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. 10 Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? 11 But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”

12 And all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles. 13 After they finished speaking, James replied, “Brothers, listen to me. 14 Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take from them a people for his name. 15 And with this the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written,

16 “‘After this I will return,
and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen;
I will rebuild its ruins,
     and I will restore it,
17 that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord,
    and all the Gentiles who are called by my name,
     says the Lord, who makes these things 18 known from of old.’

​19 Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, 20 but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood. 21 For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues.”

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Paul, Barnabas and Luke have been back home for some time now (14:28 from yesterday's passage).  However, the Judaizers (that is what Paul will come to call them later in his epistles) or "the circumcision party" as they are referred to here and in other places in the book of Acts, though today's text also makes clear that this is just the party of the Pharisees, continued to debate the issue of if Gentiles could be saved and was grace alone enough to save someone or must they also add to that the "works" of being circumcised (and all that comes with that through the Law of Moses) to be found acceptable in God's sight?  Was salvation something we earned by our own merit or was it something we could never earn that was a free gift that we had to accept by faith?  While it doesn't seem like it, that is the question that is at the heart of this debate and while the issue has been settled more than once by God, especially in Acts 10 and 11, the Judaizers felt like maybe they could play politics and claim there was some schism between the Church of Antioch with the teachings of Paul and Barnabas and the Church of Jerusalem and the teachings of Peter, John, and James the half-brother of Jesus (at least, that's what they have been telling people in far away places hoping they wouldn't get caught in their lie).

The debate reaches a level where Paul and Barnabas and other representatives from Antioch where appointed and sent to Jerusalem so they could hold  council together and put this issue to rest once and for all and show that there was unity in their doctrine because their authority and doctrine were not derived from the opinions of the apostles, but from God's revelation through His Word and from the leading of the Holy Spirit who makes us one (see the book of Ephesians).  Where we are not of one accord like the Early Church was, it is almost certainly because we have substituted the opinions and preferences of men for the clear teachings of the Word of God or we have tried to make more of something that is not a major issue or make less of something that we don't want to admit is a major issue.  The Word of God contains all we need for life and godliness and contains the whole council of God.  That is not to say that God does not continue to work through the Holy Spirit in our lives, but we should not expect God to have to reveal truth to us like it has never been revealed before when that truth is already available in His Word for us to read and obey.

The Jews were confused over the meaning and purpose of the Law.  They assumed that the Law as there for them to obey to try to make themselves holy (that is set apart and different--which was partially true) and that by doing so, that would make them acceptable to the LORD--which was not true.  They missed everything in the Law about how there was no atonement apart from the shedding of blood and that there was no sacrifice for intentional sins for which every man is responsible--even from a young age.  So the Jews wanted to add burdens to the Gentiles that they as Jews could never keep and were never effective for providing salvation.  No, only the blood of Jesus can save us, and both Jews and Gentiles have free access to that apart from the Law.  Now the Law is a reflection of God's goodness, righteousness, and holiness, and as we are made in His image, we should desire to do these things that are consistent with His nature, but there are some issues then about which portions of the Law were only meant for ethnic Israel and which were meant to be obeyed by all the people of God.  This is a central question, but remember that at the heart of this question really is a question about the means of salvation--is it a work of God that is a free gift to us, or is it something that we have to work for and earn and could possibly lose?

Peter was the first to stand up and speak to the charges brought by the Pharisees to remind them of what happened with Cornelius and his household--the Holy Spirit made no distinction between Jew and Gentile in that they who were uncircumcised received the same Holy Spirit that the circumcised Jews received at Pentecost.  Just because the gospel came to the Jews first doesn't mean they have exclusive rights to Him.  Peter then made many of the same arguments I included above about the Jews not being able to obey the Law, so why ask the Gentiles to do something they themselves could not do?

After Peter spoke and the crowds realized that Peter and Paul were on the same page, they were willing to let Paul and Barnabas speak.  They told the Jews about the signs and wonders that the Holy Spirit had performed among the Gentiles on their recent missionary journey.  James then stood up and validated that this was in accordance with Scripture and the fulfillment of it because God has been about building a "temple" that is made of people from every tribe, tongue and nation--we see this in Revelation where the New Jerusalem is not just a place, but a people who are a holy priesthood in service to the Lord and the city (that is the people of God) are the Temple and the Father and Son will sit enthroned among the people of God.

As for the rest of this passage where James lays out some rules for the Gentiles to live by, it is important to note that every single one of these has something to do with the big picture of the gospel.  We don't normally think about issues like how the animals that we eat for food were killed as a gospel issue, but in a pagan world full of temples to false gods where most of the meat in the marketplace was advertised by what god or goddess it was sacrificed to and the proceeds of those sales went to support those temples to those pagan deities (which Paul will identify as worship of demons in his epistles)--that's a pretty big deal.  Paul will talk about the issues of sexual immorality and meat sacrificed to idols more in depth in his epistles, and since we've covered most of those passages already, I won't say much here about them other than it doesn't matter so much what you know to be true (the fact that the idols are fake) if it causes someone from the world confusion to if Jesus is just another god you added into the Pantheon or if you make it appear to them that nothing changed in your life and you still worship the same gods and goddesses that you used to and that everyone else does.  There was a real chance here for this idol worship to be necessary in that culture to be able to get a job or have any kind of ability to trade and so on.  Were people willing to sacrifice all that for the sake of Jesus and the gospel to make the point that there is but one God and that there is salvation in other name but Jesus?  Would they be willing to live a life of sexual purity in contrast to the world that told them that their body was made for their pleasure and enjoyment and that if it felt good to them, they should do it?  (That sounds like the message of the world today too).  Do you own yourself or are you owned by God?  If you are owned by God than doesn't God have a right to tell you what you can and can't do with the body that He owns?  We have talked from the book of Ephesians and the book of 1 Corinthians about how sexual intimacy gives us a glimpse of the covenant of grace and how our marriages live out the gospel in front of the world.  I think that's a huge part of what's at stake here.

The one issue that I do want to briefly mention here because it seems strange to us is that while the Church didn't seem to care if the Gentiles ate "clean" or "unclean" animals at this point (or maybe that was just a non-issue because they were already eating only clean animals), there was an issue with the method of sacrifice because strangulation left the blood in the animal and they were eating and drinking the lifeblood of the animal, which was forbidden in the Noahic covenant, which was a covenant passed down to all nations, in Genesis 9.  It was okay after that point to eat meat--before this God had told them to only eat of seed-bearing plants, but they were exsanguinate the animal in sacrifice and that sacrifice was to be to God for the purposes of sacrifices that were established in the Old Testament or in celebration of particular feasts and festivals.  In all these cases, the sacrifices pointed forwards (now backwards) to the cross and how Jesus shed every drop of blood for us on the cross.  By all accounts of the gospels it seems that He was exsanguinated on our behalf.  Eating and drinking the blood of a sacrificed animal did not give a proper gospel picture of the sacrifice that Jesus made on our behalf and stands in direct opposition to the commandment of God in the book of Genesis.

Yes, the purpose of these boundaries are for the sake of unity among the brethren, but also to preserve and protect the gospel message.  We still face issues with some of the core issues with the means of salvation (by grace alone or by works) and the question of if Christians need to become Jewish or now if Jews need to abandon their Jewishness to become Christians.  The answer seems to be that Christians who understand that they have more liberty by grace need to be willing to sacrifice those liberties for the sake of not causing a brother to stumble or violate his conscience and that we do this for the sake of unity and the gospel message that we proclaim by our words and our deeds.  What God has brought together (the family of God) let none of us try to tear asunder by telling those that God has saved that they don't belong in His family.  We already talked about that a bit in Romans 9-11 where we talked about God's sovereign choice to save the Gentiles and graft them into the one Vine that is Christ.  No branch, be it a "natural" branch that is a Jew or a "grafted" branch that is a Gentile is to have any pride or tell any other branch that they don't belong, for look again at the words of Peter in verse 11 here, in Acts 15, "​But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”


Ephesians 4:4-6
English Standard Version
​4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call-- 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.