Acts 15:1-21

¹ But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” ² And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question. ³ So, being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers. ⁴ When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them. ⁵ But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.” ⁶ The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. ⁷ And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. ⁸ And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, ⁹ and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. ¹⁰ Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? ¹¹ But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.” ¹² And all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles. ¹³ After they finished speaking, James replied, “Brothers, listen to me. ¹⁴ Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take from them a people for his name. ¹⁵ And with this the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written, ¹⁶ “‘After this I will return,
and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen;
I will rebuild its ruins,
and I will restore it, ¹⁷ that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord,
and all the Gentiles who are called by my name,
says the Lord, who makes these things ¹⁸ known from of old.’ ¹⁹ Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, ²⁰ but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood. ²¹ For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues.”

 

R. Kent Hughes recounts a story told by Winston Churchill that is worthy of our consideration.

Winston Churchill told of a British family that went out for a picnic by a lake.  In the course of the afternoon the five-year-old son fell into the water.  Unfortunately, none of the adults could swim.  As the child was bobbing up and down and everyone on the shore was in a panic, a passerby saw the situation.  At great risk to himself, he dove in fully clothed and managed to reach the child just before he went under for the third time.  He was able to pull him out of the water and present him safe and sound to his mother.  Instead of thanking the stranger for his heroic efforts, however, the mother snapped peevishly at the rescuer, “Where’s Johnny’s cap?”[1]

That’s a jarring little story that makes a crucial point:  it is a travesty to be unable to celebrate great things because of a fixation on lesser things.  I offer this story to you because I think it might help us understand what is happening in this amazing fifteenth chapter of Acts.  If we were to use the story as an allegory for Acts 15, we might interpret it along these lines:  the little boy drowning in the lake represents the Gentile world which was lost and drowning in sin, death, and judgment.  The man who dove in and pulled the boy to shore would represent Paul, Barnabas, Peter and, indeed, all those within the early Church who felt that they should take the gospel to the nations and call all people to salvation in Christ Jesus.  The mother on the shore missing the greater good news because of a fixation on the boy’s cap would represent those Jewish converts within the Church upset that the Gentiles who were being saved had not embraced the external rite of circumcision.

The events of Acts 15 are crucial because the very future of the Church hung in the balance.  At the heart of this debate and this council was this question:  do non-Jewish converts to Christianity have to embrace circumcision in addition to accepting Christ?  In other words, was Christianity a reform movement within first century Judaism or was it something more, a truly global message for all people with worldwide ramifications?  Or, to put it yet another way:  is Jesus enough?  Is his death on the cross and His rising from the dead and his grace sufficient to save, or must we add the Jewish rites to the faith of the believer for him or her to be saved?

James Montgomery Boice has written, “The hardest of all ideas for human beings to grasp is the doctrine of salvation by grace alone.  This is because we all always want to add something to it.”[2]  I believe he is right.  We do indeed want to add something to the doctrine of salvation by grace alone.  We deep down seem to have trouble believing and accepting the amazing good news that Jesus is enough.  That struggle has always been with the Church and it is reflected in Acts 15.

The early Church wrestled with a crucial question:  Is Jesus enough?

Acts 15 is the record of the first Church council.  It is occasioned by a controversy that arose around Gentiles coming to Christ through the ministry of Paul and Barnabas.

¹ But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.”

On this side of the cross, and as Gentiles ourselves, we may scoff at such a question.  But to do so is to betray an ignorance of just how difficult it was for Jewish converts to understand fully the uncomfortable implications of the person and work of Christ on everything they thought they understood about holiness and salvation.  Bluntly stated, circumcision was a big deal.  It was important.  Had you grown up a Jew you would have heard and known the words of God to the great patriarch Abraham in Genesis 17.

⁹ And God said to Abraham, “As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. ¹⁰ This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. ¹¹ You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. ¹² He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, ¹³ both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. ¹⁴ Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”

This seems clear enough.  Circumcision was the sign of covenant faithfulness and belonging.  It was a crucial outward act of obedience demonstrating, ideally, that a person’s heart was turned towards God.  As a result, circumcision was considered essential for Jews and possibly for Gentiles as well.

Craig Keener explains that some Jews felt Gentiles could be saved without circumcision so long as they kept the commandments given to Noah.  Others, however, argued that they had to convert to Judaism and receive the mark of circumcision.  Keener points out, “Josephus reported that some of his colleagues demanded the circumcision of Gentiles who had come to them for refuge, but Josephus himself forbade this requirement.”[3]

Even so, it is perhaps difficult for us to appreciate just how important the sign of circumcision was to the Jews and how difficult it was for some Jewish converts to be able to say that Gentile believers did not need to receive the sign.  Consider, for instance, these words from the Jewish book of Jubilees that was written around 180-170 B.C.

Anyone who is born whose own flesh is not circumcised on the eighth day is not from the sons of the covenant which the Lord made for Abraham since he is from the children of destruction.  And there is therefore no sign upon him so that he might belong to the Lord because he is destined to be destroyed and annihilated from the earth because he has broken the covenant of the Lord our God.[4]

Fast forward to the days of the early Church and these Jewish believers in Christ had to come to terms with just what it meant for the mark of circumcision that Christ had laid down his life.  Did the Gentiles have to be circumcised?  Was faith enough?  Were they truly clean if they did not follow the Law?

Difficult questions indeed for this first generation of believers, and it gave rise to no small controversy.

² And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question. ³ So, being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers. ⁴ When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them. ⁵ But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.”

Here we see the sides in the debate.  On the one hand we see Jewish Christians who said, “It is good that these Gentiles have accepted Christ.  But that is just the first step.  They now need the sign of the covenant in their flesh.”  On the other were Jewish Christians like Paul and Barnabas who said, “Not so.  It is enough that they have received the grace of God through faith.  The blood of Christ has rendered them clean.  Their hearts have been circumcised by grace through faith.  Jesus is enough.”

At this point let us simply acknowledge that the Church has struggled throughout her history with the question of whether or not Jesus is truly enough.  There is a kind of allure to the making of external rules and the establishment of a checklist by which we can “prove” that a person is or is not a good Christian.  We call this kind of thing legalism:  the legislation of external rules that ostensibly give evidence of one’s salvation.  This is very dangerous, all the more so because this kind of thinking inevitably devolves from, “Keep these rules as evidence that you are saved,” into, “Keep these rules and you will be saved.”  Thus, the rules became salvation.

Legalism has plagued the Church for ages.  William Manchester has offered a list of behaviors that were forbidden in John Calvin’s Geneva:

feasting, dancing, singing, pictures, statues, relics, church bells, organs, altar candles; “indecent or irreligious” songs, staging or attending theatrical plays; wearing rouge, jewelry, lace, or “immodest” dress; speaking disrespectfully of your betters; extravagant entertainment, swearing, gambling, playing cards, hunting, drunkenness, naming children after anyone but figures in the Old Testament; reading “immoral or irreligious books.

Some of those may make a kind of sense to us.  Others are outright strange.  But that is how legalism works!  Philip Yancey continued with this observation about Calvin’s Geneva:

A father who christened his son Claude, a name not found in the Old Testament, spent four days in jail, as did a woman whose hairdo reached an “immoral” height.  The Consistory beheaded a Child who struck his parents.  They drowned any single woman found pregnant.  In separate incidents, Calvin’s stepson and daughter-in-law were executed when found in bed with their lovers.[5]

Legalism has a tendency to turn dark and violent indeed!  Sometimes it is just silly.  Richard John Neuhaus has commented on a strange dustjacket to a C.S. Lewis book that he once saw.

Many years ago an evangelical publisher brought out a book by C. S. Lewis with his picture on the back of the dustjacket. He was holding his hand in an odd way, as though there was something in it, but there was nothing there. Around his head was a large cloud. It was, of course, a cloud of pipe smoke, but the publisher, in order not to offend, had brushed out the pipe, with the result that Lewis’ head was surrounded by this numinous nimbus. My classmates and I referred to him as See Shekinah Lewis.[6]

Some years back, while pastoring in South Georgia, I drove to Atlanta to pick up a Hispanic pastor of a Hispanic church in New York.  He was flying into town for a mission’s conference our church was hosting.  As we drove back south, we began to talk about legalism.  I mentioned to him that in most Southern Baptist churches of the South, smoking is permissible but drinking alcohol is not.  He chuckled and informed me that in the Hispanic churches of the North, they do not care if you have a glass of wine but they say that you are probably not going to Heaven if you smoke!

These are all interesting and sometimes amusing conversations, but at the heart of them is a deadly serious question:  is Jesus enough to save us?  Is the cross enough?  Is the empty tomb enough?  Should we add external and oftentimes arbitrary rules that are not revealed in God’s Word into the mix?

Peter, Paul, and Barnabas argued that Jesus was enough and that we are saved by grace through faith in Christ.

To resolve the question, the apostles and the elders all gather together to talk it through.  As I mentioned earlier, much was at stake in the Jerusalem council.

⁶ The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. ⁷ And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. ⁸ And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, ⁹ and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. ¹⁰ Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? ¹¹ But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.” ¹² And all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.

The council began with an open debate on the question.  One side said that Gentile converts had to be circumcised in addition to accepting Christ.  The other said rejected this and argued that Christ was enough.  Then Peter stands to speak.  In his amazing presentation he makes a couple of absolutely key points, especially in verses 8 and 9.

⁸ And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, ⁹ and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith.

Peter notes first that the Gentiles received the Holy Spirit just like they did.  In saying this he was stressing the equality of these groups before God as evidenced by God’s equal distribution of the Spirit to all who trusted in Christ.  Then, more bluntly, he works out the implications of this fact by concluding that God “made no distinction between us and them.”  This is the crux of the matter.  Do we all stand on level ground before the cross of Christ or not?  We do!  We share in an equality of sin and lostness, to begin with, and then, by grace through faith, we share in the equality of salvation.  He saves all who come to Him!

After going on to question the very premise behind the arguments of the pro-circumcision party by pointing out that not even they had really kept the Law, Peter offers his definitive conclusion:

¹¹ But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.

There it is!  We are all saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus!  Jew and Gentile alike!  There is one way to the Father, and it is not the physical mark of circumcision:  it is Christ!  Thus, we dare not add to the cross.

Paul and Barnabas confirm Peter’s words by offering anecdotal evidence from their first missionary journey:  the Gentiles were being saved and receiving the Holy Spirit!  God was at work among those previously considered to be outside.  They therefore agreed, we dare not add to Jesus!  He is enough!

Tullian Tchividjian, in his book Jesus + Nothing + Everything, has written movingly of the human desire to add works to the cross.

Christianity and . . . For many of us, it may be Jesus and our achievements, Jesus and our strengths, Jesus and our reputation, Jesus and our relationships, Jesus and our family’s prosperity, Jesus and our ambitions and goals and dreams, Jesus and our personal preferences and tastes and style, Jesus and our spiritual growth, Jesus and our hobbies and recreational pursuits and entertainment habits—and, especially, Jesus and our personal set of life rules.

Jesus plus X. The formula looks so innocent and harmless, even commendable (we’re helping Jesus out!). But no such equation can ever lead anywhere good. Ultimately there can be only one equation—Jesus plus nothing.[7]

“Jesus plus nothing.”

Here is the very heart of salvation.  We may thank God that the Jerusalem council repudiated legalism and exalted the work of Christ as sufficient to save us!

James agreed that salvation is a work of grace in the human heart, but showed that holy living and righteousness should be expected of those who have been saved.

Next, James the brother of Jesus stands to speak.  His presentation is powerful and needed because it reveals that while Jesus truly is enough, that does not mean that the life of the believer should not on that basis demonstrate holiness.  In other words, just because we need add nothing to Christ to be saved, that does not mean that those who have been saved by Christ should do nothing as a result.  On the contrary, coming to the Christ who saves by His grace alone means embracing His life, a life of holiness.

¹³ After they finished speaking, James replied, “Brothers, listen to me. ¹⁴ Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take from them a people for his name. ¹⁵ And with this the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written, ¹⁶ “‘After this I will return, and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it, ¹⁷ that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord, who makes these things ¹⁸ known from of old.’ ¹⁹ Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God,

It is occasionally alleged that James and Paul were at odds over this question, but let us notice that they actually stand in absolute agreement:  Gentiles do not need to be circumcised to be saved.  Salvation is by grace received through faith alone.  This is how we are saved.  But, helpfully, James moves on to talk about what this means for the believer’s life.

²⁰ but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood. ²¹ For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues.”

Ah!  So the point is not that we should not call for holiness and right living.  The point is that we do not earn our salvation through external actions added to the work of Christ.  There is indeed a place – a very important place! – for good works in the Christian life.  But they arise out of a heart redeemed by grace through faith and are not earners of the unmerited favor of God.

There was therefore no contradiction in calling upon the believers to not eat food sacrificed to idols (thereby creating confusion in the minds of their pagan neighbors who would interpret such an act as idol worship) and to flee sexual immorality.

But here is the great difference:  the Christian flees sexual immorality not in an effort to warrant his salvation, but rather in an effort to live in trust and peace with the God who has so mercifully saved him.  The Christian does not want to do wickedness.  He flees it not with an eye toward earning a place in Heaven but with an eye toward thanking and honoring the God who made him or her and who saved him or her and who called him or her to a new way of life.  The believer now wants to cast off the cloak of sin, death, and hell and all the wickedness that goes with it.  We now want to honor our great King who laid down everything for us!

Brothers!  Sisters!  We have been saved by the grace of God!  Jesus is enough!  Jesus is enough!  Now, let us live for Him!

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