Commentaries:
People's Commentary (NT)
Acts 15:1
The Question of Circumcision
SUMMARY OF ACTS 15: The Judaizing Teachers at Antioch. Opposed by Paul
and Barnabas. The Question Referred to Jerusalem. Paul and Barnabas
Report to the Apostles and Elders Their Work. Among the Gentiles.
Pharisees Insist That These Gentiles Must Be Circumcised. Paul and
Barnabas Show How God Was with Them. The Judgment of James the
Lord's Brother. His Views Accepted by All. The Apostolic Letter to
the Gentile Christians. The Joy at Antioch When the Letter Is Read.
Judas and Silas. Contention Between Paul and Barnabas. Paul and
Silas.
Certain men which came down from Judaea. This chapter records the
first intimation of the great controversy that agitated the apostolic
church, and of which we find traces in many of Paul's letters, the
question whether Christianity was merely a development and a sort of
culmination of Judaism, or was a New Dispensation that had supplanted
the Old and taken its place. At first the Christians of Jerusalem and
Judea remained strict Jews, still keeping the ordinances of Moses. The
Samaritans converted by Philip were a circumcised people. The idea of
the apostles, at first, seems to have been that Gentiles might become
Christians, but must first be circumcised. It was a matter of
astonishment to Peter and the brethren that he was required to baptize
the Gentile Cornelius and his friends without circumcision. Then came
the formation of the Gentile church at Antioch and the successful
labors of Paul and Barnabas in western Asia. The influx of the Gentiles
to the church, and their acceptance on the same terms as the old
covenanted people of Jehovah, stirred those Jewish brethren of the more
bigoted type to bitter opposition, and they began to send their
teachers abroad with the declaration.
Except ye be circumcised. . . . ye cannot be saved. Thus they came
to Antioch; thus, at a later period, they disturbed the churches of
Galatia and called out the Galatian letter. In order to destroy their
influence, it was needful at once to settle whether they spoke the
sentiment of the apostles and elders at Jerusalem, and hence Paul and
Barnabas were sent to lay this question before the great mother church.
This caused the conference described in this chapter, spoken of in
church history as "The Council of Jerusalem". The reader should form
some idea of the importance of this question. It was none other than
whether Christendom should be Jewish Christian, or delivered from the
bondage of the Jewish law into the liberty of the children of God. Paul
calls these "certain men" "false brethren" (Galatians 2:4).
Other commentary entries containing this verse:
Acts 15:1
2 Corinthians 4:3
Galatians 2:1
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