Articles
Jerusalem Decision - Acts 15
Acts 15
There is one faith - gospel - message. Yet within the church there has been a struggle to stick to what it is. Peter said: "But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction" (2 Peter 2:1). The first major issue confronting the church was how Christians were to relate to the Old Covenant.
That covenant demanded circumcision of all the males and the following of its teachings in order to be in fellowship with God. Thus "… 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'" (Acts 15:1). This created what Luke calls "no small dissension and debate" among them. How would they solve this? They looked for an authoritative answer from the apostles of Jesus.
Even with the apostles in the discussion, some were willing to debate the issue (Acts 15:5, 7). These were not outsiders, but 'believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees'. Peter reminded them of the matter with Cornelius: he believed, repented, and was baptized into Christ apart from the law and circumcision (Acts 15:7-11). Paul and Barnabas then recounted how God put His 'stamp of approval' on converting gentiles without circumcision as they preached among the gentiles on their first journey of Acts 13-14 (Acts 15:12). James reminded them that the Old Covenant SAID that God was going to call upon the name of the LORD and be saved. His conclusion was that the gentiles should not be troubled with the matter of circumcision and keeping the Law. However, to avoid the social discord they were to strictly be instructed to avoid things that were strongly objectionable to the Jewish teaching.
In coming to the understanding of God's will for them in this matter they turned to the statements that God had made (James), the example of God accepting gentiles without circumcision and the law (Peter, Paul, Barnabas), and they inferred from this that God working miracles while they were teaching these things was evidence of His approval of this teaching. They then wrote down and sent forth this teaching as the word of God. This letter bears the same apostolic authority as the rest of the letters in the New Testament.
While we cannot gather with living apostles and have them write an authoritative word concerning our questions, we can follow their lead in how to go about discerning God's will in such matters. What did God SAY? Are there examples of how inspired men dealt with this? Are there things in the thinking on this that demands us to draw a particular conclusion concerning it?
Even after the apostles considered such things in this manner and then wrote an inspired document on how to deal with it, there were those who argued and debated against such. There will always be such teachers among us said Peter. Hugh DeLong
