Acts 15:10Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

What does “you tempt God” mean? He says, “Do you not believe God? Why do you tempt Him, as though He cannot save by faith?” Therefore, to hold to the law is a sign of unbelief. Then he shows that they themselves gain no benefit from it. Yet he places everything on the law, not on them, and in this way softens the rebuke. First he explained the subject of the discourse, and then he shows that the law is not evil, but that they themselves are weak. See how he inspires fear at the end of the speech.

What do the words “you tempt God” mean? They mean: as though God were not able to save a man by faith. Or: why do you not believe God? To introduce the law is a sign of unbelief. Everyone knows that the law was burdensome for the Israelites. The disciples also acknowledged this. The Savior Himself indicated this to us, saying, “Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Mt 11:28). By those who labor and are heavy laden He means those who were under the law. He called Himself meek, a quality the law did not possess.

But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus we shall be saved, even as they are. For they too were saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus.

Through the law of Moses there was given not healing, but the knowledge of sin, as the apostle teaches when he says: Through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it (Rom. 3:20-21).

Therefore, if it has now been manifested, this means that it existed then also, but was hidden. This hiddenness was signified by the veil of the temple, which was torn at the death of Christ (see Mt 27:51), signifying revelation.

At last the Apostle Peter came forward with his proposal, which he based on his own experience. You know, he said to those assembled, that long before this God chose me myself to proclaim the Gospel to the Gentiles for the first time.

And when God, who looks upon the heart, imparted to them His Holy Spirit just as to believers from the Jews, He thereby testified that the Gentiles no longer had any uncleanness in His eyes.

Having purified their hearts by faith in the Redeemer, they had become as pure as the believing Jews.

How, then, can one be so bold as to doubt the almighty power and goodness of God? How can one assert that God cannot admit the Gentiles to participation in the blessings of the Kingdom of Heaven without the law?

At the general Church assembly that then opened, agreement was not reached for a long time. Unreasonable zealots of the law of Moses disputed much with the defenders of Christian freedom from the legal yoke.

At last the chief Apostle Peter rose and offered his judgment on the matter. First he reminded those assembled of the event known to them all: the conversion of the Gentiles to Christ in Caesarea, in the house of Cornelius.

At the same time, he disclosed to them the inward meaning of this event. He showed that in this whole event, which began the conversion of the Gentiles, it was not he, Peter, who acted, but God Himself.

God Himself chose him, Peter, from among the other apostles, so that he would be the first to bring the word of the Gospel to the Gentiles.

Peter, enlightened in the mystery of the salvation of the Gentiles by the revelation that had visited him, was the first to propose that the Gentiles should not be burdened with that yoke, the ceremonial law, which the Jews themselves could not bear.

If this is so, why do you now tempt God, and so forth? The apostle calls the desire to lay the yoke of the law of Moses on Christians from the Gentiles a temptation.

It is as though it were an attempt to turn God away from the manner of receiving the Gentiles into the Kingdom of Christ which He had accepted and clearly attested by granting them the Holy Spirit; cf. Mt 4:1.

Why do you tempt God? Why, he says, do you not believe God? Why do you tempt Him, as though He were not able to save by faith? Thus Chrysostom speaks.

By the yoke which the Judaizers wished to place upon the necks of the disciples, one should understand not circumcision by itself, but the whole law of Moses with all its rules and prescriptions.

The Apostle Peter's attitude toward the false teaching is not very calm. He calls the whole matter a tempting of the Lord, that is, a vain uprising against God's evident determination that the believing Gentiles should be saved.

By this, of course, he gave the representatives of the false teaching an open reproach and rebuke. He calls the demand that the Gentiles observe the law of Moses an unbearable yoke.

In doing so, he says, as if in passing, a terrible thing. Neither the fathers of the zealots for the law's fulfillment, nor they themselves, fulfilled the law of Moses.

Yet they wish all the Gentiles converting to Christianity also to struggle in this nonfulfillment of the law. Scholars call this turn of speech a reduction of the opponents' opinion to absurdity.

The yoke of the Mosaic law is precisely what the Apostle Peter calls a yoke. In explaining this name, he says, “which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear” (Acts 15:10). Moreover, in the last days of Judaism, its heaviness had been doubled and tripled by the teachings and commandments of men from the scribes and Pharisees.