Acts 15:1Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

The Church of Jerusalem, in all probability, consisted only of converted Jews. In turning to Christ, they still continued, as Jews, to show reverence for their Jewish law. They observed it not only in civil matters, but also in ecclesial life, since the two were closely joined.

Thus the believing Jews continued, as before, to keep the feasts and other rites of the Jewish religion. In this they acted as the Savior Himself had acted during His earthly life, when He submitted to the law, Acts 21:20-21.

They showed greater zeal in this than did the Jews converted from the Diaspora, or Hellenistic Jews.

Even before this, Jews living outside Jerusalem were not so closely attached to the temple and sacrifices. They visited Jerusalem for the feasts only from time to time. Or they were content to send money for the support of the temple and for sacrifices.

Meanwhile they gathered in synagogues for the reading of the sacred books. They also observed the Jewish laws about food and purifications. Now, when they were converted to Christianity, they either abandoned the law entirely or were at least still less attached to it.

It was not difficult for them to enter into communion with converted Gentiles, from whom observance of the Jewish law was not required. At first, perhaps, they did not leave their synagogues.

Yet with time, they found in them no such edification for themselves as in Christian assemblies. They also saw no hope of favorably influencing their own people on behalf of Christianity. Therefore they left these lifeless schools.

Drawing near to converted Gentiles in ecclesial and domestic life, they ate with them. Thus the Jewish rules about food and purifications gradually fell into oblivion.

After several years, about ten years, we shall see that some Jews converted to Christianity outside Palestine had ceased even to circumcise their children. This was the final decisive sign that they had entirely renounced Judaism.

So it was among converted Jews outside Palestine. But it was not so in Jerusalem. Although the Christians of Jerusalem had their own assemblies for the celebration of the mysteries of their faith and for mutual edification, they did not cease to visit the temple. Nor did they cease to fulfill the other duties of a faithful Jew.

It is self-evident that the apostles and other men enlightened by God did not assign any special holiness to this. Therefore they agreed to recognize Cornelius, a converted Gentile, as their brother in Christ, although he was not among the circumcised.

For this reason they did not require that, in the future, Gentiles converting to Christianity be bound to the observance of the Jewish law. But not everyone reasoned in this way.

Many zealots for the law, Acts 21:20, thought that the law was necessary even for Gentiles, for justification and for inheritance of the Kingdom of God, Acts 15:1. Therefore they would not admit them into the Church before circumcision had been performed on them, as on proselytes.

Thus it is not surprising that they disliked the arrangements made by Paul and his fellow-workers.

With the coming of Christ, this Law was no longer necessary for salvation. Gentiles could be received into the Church of Christ without what he considered salvific circumcision, and without the obligation to keep the other prescriptions of the Law.

Therefore the conversion of the house of Cornelius already called forth reproaches against the Apostle Peter among the Christians in Jerusalem. They reproached him because he went to uncircumcised men and ate with them (Acts 11:3).

The Apostle Peter’s detailed account of all the extraordinary circumstances by which the conversion of the Gentiles to Christ in Caesarea began, was accompanied, and was completed, forced those scandalized by this event to be silent.

Nevertheless, not all Christians from the Jews were capable at once of renouncing the concepts with which they had become so firmly united. The misunderstandings produced by the conversion of the Gentiles without the mediation of Judaism, though not stated openly, continued to grow and intensify.

They grew as the evangelical preaching resounded more and more throughout pagan lands. And so, by the time Paul and Barnabas returned from their first preaching journey to Antioch, these misunderstandings had grown and taken root to such an extent that they formed an entire party among Christians from the Jews.

This party decided to oppose the apostles directly, because they received Gentiles into the Church of Christ without circumcision.

The teaching of the Judaizers consisted in this proposition: for Gentiles converting to the faith of Christ, circumcision was necessary for salvation, as was the observance of the other commandments of the Law of Moses.

This teaching first took shape among certain Christians in Judea, where the majority of Christians were Hebrews, and some of them had formerly belonged to the Pharisaic sect (v. 5). With this false teaching, the senseless zealots of the Mosaic Law came, among other places, to Antioch.

These zealots were evidently among those converts who had entered the Church from the powerful Pharisaic party. Saturated with the leaven of Pharisaism, they wished to maintain their views even in the Church of Christ.

Such a demand threatened great danger. It would have introduced a false understanding of the relation of the Law to the Gospel, and of Moses to Christ. It suggested that the redemptive merit of Christ was insufficient in itself, and needed to be supplemented by the works of the Mosaic Law.

At the same time, equality among Christians was violated. A superiority was ascribed to the Jews which Christians from the Gentiles did not possess. In order to obtain it, they had to take upon themselves the heavy burden of circumcision and other ordinances of a law alien to them.

Nor could all be convinced of the uselessness of this Law in Christianity, since it had been fulfilled and therefore abolished by the teaching of Christ. With the further reception of Gentiles into the Church of Christ, the question of whether the Law of Moses was obligatory in Christianity necessarily had to be posed more clearly and definitely, and had to provoke disagreement.

So it happened. The reception of Cornelius into the Church of Christ raised this question. The reception of Gentiles in Antioch (Acts 11:20 and following) gave it new food. Finally, the journey of Paul and Barnabas through Asia Minor occasioned the open presentation of this question.

At this point, Christians from the Jews in Jerusalem and Judea posed it in all its sharpness and definiteness. From then on this question became the burning issue of the time.

It produced the first Christian false teachers, the so-called Judaizers. The Apostle Paul needed all his tireless and energetic activity to the end of his life to overcome these Judaizing false teachers.

They stubbornly defended the teaching that the Law of Moses was obligatory in Christianity, and spread this teaching widely in almost all Christian communities. This is especially clear from the epistles of the Apostle Paul, particularly to the Galatians, Corinthians, Romans, and others.

For the first time, this question was openly and sharply, though cautiously, posed by the Judaizers in Syrian Antioch, the mother of the churches from the Gentiles. Some who had come from Judea, perhaps from Jerusalem (v. 5), posed it there.

In Jerusalem, those who believed in Christ were almost exclusively Jews, brought up on the Law and temple worship. They hardly came to Antioch by chance. From the whole course of events one may infer that they came as missionaries.

They were preachers of an already formulated teaching (they taught, and so forth) about the obligation of circumcision according to the Law of Moses for Christians from the Gentiles.

The Church of Jerusalem addressed a letter on this occasion not only to Antioch, but also to Syria and Cilicia (v. 23). From this it is clear that such teachers were not only in Antioch, but also in the countries mentioned. They spread their teaching in more than one place.

The newcomers arrived with a definite teaching, formulated as a general proposition, and with a conviction they demanded the brethren accept by faith. These were not perplexities, conjectures, or doubts, but a clearly conscious and formulated teaching.

The fundamental proposition of this teaching was that Christians from the Gentiles could not attain salvation in Christ unless they were circumcised according to the rite of Moses. They do not yet speak of observing the whole Law of Moses in Christianity.

Yet in this demand for circumcision there undoubtedly lies the demand to fulfill the whole Law as well (cf. v. 5).

First of all, everything just accomplished by the apostles Paul and Barnabas among the Gentiles was declared insignificant, having no essential meaning. The Gentiles had not been circumcised and therefore, in the false teachers’ opinion, could not be saved.

Yet the apostles had promised eternal life (see Acts 13:48) and the Kingdom of God (Acts 14:22) to those who believed from among the Gentiles. Understandably, such teaching by the adherents of Judaism greatly stirred Paul and Barnabas, and all the believers in general.