
Acts 15.12-21 KWL - 12 All the crowd was silent.
- They’d heard Barnabas and Paul explain all the miracles God did,
- and wonders among the gentiles because of them.
- 13 After their silence James answered, saying,
- “Men, fellow Christians, hear me.
- 14 Simon Peter explained just how God first chose
- to take a people for his name out of the gentiles.
- 15 The prophets’ words harmonize with this,
- just as it’s written:
- 16 ‘After this, I will return and rebuild David’s fallen tent.
- I will rebuild its ruins. I will lift it up.
- 17 Thus whenever the remnant of the Lord’s people might earnestly search,
- and all the gentiles who had been called by my name…
- says the Lord who does these things,’
Am 9.11-12 - 18 well-known in that age.
- 19 So I judge to not further trouble
- those of the gentiles who repent to God.
- 20 Instead we’re to write them about abstaining
- from the contamination of idolatry—
- porn, strangled idolatrous sacrifices, and blood.
- 21 From the earliest generations, the Law of Moses
- has been read in synagogue every Sabbath
- in the cities which proclaim him.”
To recap: Certain Christians from Jerusalem had gone to Syria, to Barnabas and Paul’s church in Antioch, and were teaching
Barnabas and Paul objected: Messiah is king of Israel and king of the world. Becoming Jews isn’t necessary. And in fact, requiring it has the side effect of telling people
Simon Peter pointed out God himself confirmed this by
As I said before,
James’s ruling.
There are some Christians who are really bugged by the idea of James making this ruling. Not just Catholics, who wanna do some interpretive jiggery-pokery and claim James was just following Peter’s lead ’cause Peter was really in charge. And not just Christians who know nothing of the historical background of the church, and wanna know why James got the last word. What, was he taking authority just because he was Jesus’s sibling? Brother goes to heaven, so that leaves him in charge?
Christian tradition makes it pretty clear James merited his job. This is after all the guy who wrote James. Although I don’t know that Christian leaders always got their jobs on merit back then; I’m quite sure the Holy Spirit had a say in it, and he doesn’t always pick the leaders we’d expect. Note Gideon, David, Amos, or even Peter.
Still, American Christians prefer to imagine
And yeah, as an American who’s used to democracy, I admit it bugs me too. But it’s consistent with how governments ran back then. The ancient Greek and Roman experiments with democracy were long gone by that time. The Roman senate was an oligarchy; you couldn’t be a senator unless you were from the senatorial caste. It was presided by an emperor from that caste, who usually terrorized the senate into doing his will.
So James and the church just mimicked the leadership style they saw in the world. Kinda like we do, when we let church members vote on stuff. God’s kingdom isn’t a democracy!—Jesus is king, and you don’t vote for kings. But when Jesus doesn’t make any ruling, and leaves us to sort things out for ourselves… well, we humans tend to default to whatever method we’re used to. In democracies, we vote. In empires, the bishop makes a decree.
In other words he’d rule the same as every king before him, and the same as every president after him.
And James’s judgment is considered the conclusion of the Council of Jerusalem. Not Peter’s speech, although it gets a lot of attention ’cause it’s Peter. Not Paul’s interpretation of the council, which we read plenty about in Galatians. James was the one who established
In summary it’s this: “I judge to not further trouble those of the gentiles who repent to God.”
There are some folks who think his idea of reminding gentiles to shun
Yeah,
Quoting Amos.
James’s
Amos 9.11-12 KJV - 11 In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old: 12 That they may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen, which are called by my name, saith the L
ORD that doeth this.
Israel had been sinning against the L
That prophecy about Edom? Happened under King John Hyrcanus around 125
So… is the same thing gonna happen to us Christians? Well we’ve been incorporated into God’s kingdom, but not forcibly like John decreed: We choose to follow Jesus, and if he’s truly our king we’re gonna act like his subjects. And if he’s not, we won’t. And ultimately, our “nation”—our ethnic background—makes no difference. Anybody of any nation can become Christian, same as any other Christian; same as even Jewish Christians like James, Peter, Paul, and Barnabas. There’s no difference between Jew and gentile anymore: Christ Jesus eliminated that distinction in his body. Racists may try to pull us apart again, and even create their own twisted racist churches. But in so doing they’re clearly not following Jesus.
Racists among the Jews had developed an unhealthy belief that only they were God’s people, and gentiles weren’t. Only they were holy, but gentiles were ordinary; or as the
Acts 10.9-16 KJV - 9 On the morrow, as [the Romans] went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour: 10 and he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance, 11 and saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending unto him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth: 12 wherein were all manner of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air. 13 And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat. 14 But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean. 15 And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common. 16 This was done thrice: and the vessel was received up again into heaven.
God had never declared humans, as a species, to be ritually unclean. And though God had chosen Israel
So yep, there’s Old Testament precedent for the New Testament idea. There’s Old Testament precedent for all the New Testament’s ideas; those Christians who insist
