arnabas, together with some responsible men
of Antioch, to Jerusalem, to lay the matter before the apostles and elders.
There they were to meet delegates from the different churches, and those
who had come to attend the approaching annual festivals. Meanwhile all
controversy was to cease, until a final decision should be made by the
responsible men of the church. This decision was then to be universally
accepted by the various churches throughout the country.
Upon arriving at Jerusalem the delegates from Antioch related before
the assembly of the churches the success that had attended the ministry
with them, and the confusion that had resulted from the fact that
certain converted Pharisees declared that the Gentile converts must be
circumcised and keep the law of Moses in order to be saved.
The Jews had prided themselves upon their divinely appointed
services; and they concluded that as God once specified the Hebrew
manner of worship, it was impossible that He should ever authorize a
change in any of its specifications. They decided that Christianity must
connect itself with the Jewish laws and ceremonies. They were slow to
discern to the end of that which had been abolished by the death of
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Christ, and to perceive that all their sacrificial offerings had but prefigured
the death of the Son of God, in which type had met its antitype, rendering
valueless the divinely appointed ceremonies and sacrifices of the Jewish
religion.
Paul had prided himself upon his Pharisaical strictness; but after the
revelation of Christ to him on the road to Damascus the mission of the
Saviour and his own work in the conversion of the Gentiles were plain
to his mind, and he fully comprehended the difference between a living
faith and a dead formalism. Paul still claimed to be one of the children
of Abraham, and kept the Ten Commandments in letter and in spirit as
faithfully as he had ever done before his conversion to Christianity. But
he knew that the typical ceremonies must soon altogether cease, since
that which they had shadowed forth had come to pass, and the light of
the gospel was shedding its glory upon the Jewish religion, giving a new
significance to its ancient rites.
Evidence of Cornelius’ Experience
The question thus brought under the consideration of the council
seemed to present insurmountable difficulties, viewed in whatever light.
But the Holy Ghost had, in reality, already settled this problem, upon the
decision of which depended the prosperity, and even the existence, of the
Christian church. Grace, wisdom, and sanctified judgment were given to
the apostles to decide the vexed question.
Peter reasoned that the Holy Ghost had decided the matter by
descending with equal power upon the uncircumcised Gentiles and the
circumcised Jews. He recounted his vision, in which God had presented
before him a sheet filled with all manner of four-footed
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beasts, and had bidden him kill and eat; that when he had refused,
affirming that he had never eaten that which was common or unclean,
God had said, “What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.”
He said, “God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving
them the Holy Ghost, even as He did unto us; and put no difference
between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. Now therefore why
tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither
our fathers nor we were able to bear?”
This yoke was not the law of the Ten Commandments, as those who
oppose the binding claim of the law assert; but Peter referred to the law of
ceremonies, which was made null and void by the crucifixion of Christ.
This address of Peter brought the assembly to a point where they could
listen with reason to Paul and Barnabas, who related their experience in
working among the Gentiles.
The Decision
James bore his testimony with decision—that God designed to bring
in the Gentiles to enjoy all the privileges of the Jews. The Holy Ghost
saw good not to impose the ceremonial law on the Gentile converts; and
the apostles and elders, after careful investigation of the subject, saw
the matter in the same light, and their mind was as the mind of the
Spirit of God. James presided at the council, and his final decision was,
“Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among
the Gentiles are turned to God.”
It was his sentence that the ceremonial law, and especially the
ordinance of circumcision, be not in any wise urged upon the Gentiles,
or even recommended to
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them. James sought to impress the fact upon his brethren that the Gentiles,
in turning to God from idolatry, made a great change in their faith; and that
much caution should be used not to trouble their minds with perplexing
and doubtful questions, lest they be discouraged in following Christ.
The Gentiles, however, were to take no course which should materially
conflict with the views of their Jewish brethren, or which would create
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prejudice in their minds against them. The apostles and elders therefore
agreed to instruct the Gentiles by letter to abstain from meats offered to
idols, from fornication, from things strangled, and from blood. They were
required to keep the commandments and to lead holy lives. The Gentiles
were assured that the men who had urged circumcision upon them were
not authorized to do so by the apostles.
Paul and Barnabas were recommended to them as men who had
hazarded their lives for the Lord. Judas and Silas were sent with these
apostles to declare to the Gentiles, by word of mouth, the decision of the
council. The four servants of God were sent to Anti
