- 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.”
Previously:
“The Council of Jerusalem.” Ac 15.1-12
To recap: Certain Christians from Jerusalem had gone to Syria, to Barnabas and Paul’s church in Antioch, and were teaching gentile Christians they needed to first become Jews before they could be saved. This was after all what Jews believed and taught: Messiah is king of Israel, king of the Jews—not the world. So if any non-Jews wanna be included in his kingdom, they needed Jewish citizenship. They had to become Jews. Starting with ritual circumcision. Whip it out; we’re gonna cut you!
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 our works save us; not God’s grace. We’re not saved by jumping through hoops. We’re saved only by turning to Jesus.
Simon Peter pointed out God himself confirmed this by granting the Holy Spirit to Cornelius and the first gentiles he ever preached the gospel to. If God didn’t require ritual circumcision before gentiles could become Christian, why should Christians? What business do we have in adding any prerequisites to salvation?
As I said before, Roman Catholics like to imagine Peter led the church back then, as its first pope; later as the first bishop of Rome (notwithstanding the leaders of any other churches in the city of Rome before Peter eventually moved there). But by this point he had stepped back from leading the Jerusalem church, to concentrate on other ministry. So Jesus’s brother James had stepped up, and in his capacity as the Jerusalem church’s supervisor (Greek ἐπίσκοπος/epískopos, “bishop”) presided over this council. As president, same as the president of a synagogue, his job was to moderate: Recognize the speakers, stop discussion when it turned into bickering, and make the final ruling. It’s exactly like being a judge.
