And when they heard these things, they held their peace, and glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also has God granted repentance unto life.” '
Those who heard his words could, given the circumstances, find nothing to say against what Peter had done. Thus they acknowledged that they had nothing against it. Rather they glorified God in that He had clearly also granted to these Gentiles ‘repentance unto life'. They acknowledged that these uncircumcised Christian Gentiles had in this case clearly been placed by God in the same bracket as the Christian Jews without a requirement for circumcision, and if God could accept them in this way how could they deny them?
They would realise that their decision opened up new horizons. Indeed the result was that for some of them a whole new world unexpectedly opened up, and Christ's commission suddenly took on a new meaning. Now it became clear to them that the Gentiles also had to be reached for Christ without their being required to become Jewish proselytes, for no such requirement had been made concerning Cornelius and his companions. ‘To the uttermost part of the earth' now took on a new meaning. It would take some thinking through but they recognised that the result could only be inevitable, for God had spoken.
This fact was probably not, however, accepted by all who were present, and even less by many who were not present. Many Jerusalem Christians were still devout Pharisees, or had been connected with other deeply religious sects such as the Essenes or the Qumran community, and they were thus very much involved in Jewish traditions. That is why it would turn out in the future that many of them were not willing to accept the Apostolic authority on these matters. They would come to the final conclusion that the Apostles were wrong, and that, as Galileans (who were notoriously slack on such matters), the Apostles were going too far. They were still far too attached to the regulations and ordinances of Judaism to relinquish them because of Peter's experience, and they would later come to be called the Judaisers. This was because they would continue to demand that all who became Christian should be circumcised and become genuine proselytes, observing all their strict regulations. They would even later travel throughout the Roman empire and beyond, visiting churches that others had evangelised and seeking to bring them to their way of thinking, causing Paul a great deal of trouble.
Fortunately James, the Lord's brother, who was highly regarded in the Jerusalem church by both sections (and by Jews in Jerusalem as well), and was one of its leading elders (bishops), on the whole agreed with the Apostles about the acceptance of Gentiles without circumcision, although still holding to the need for Jewish Christians to hold firmly to the Law, and still backing the offering of sacrifices in the Temple. Such a view could survive as long as Jewish and Gentile churches were kept apart. But it could not go on surviving continual contact. It mainly, however, ceased to be an issue after the destruction of the Temple, although even after that a small group of strongly Jewish Christians did continue to exist within the fellowship of the whole church. Their influential position, however, as the mother church, no longer then existed.
It was because of this emphasis that the influential Jerusalem church, once the Apostles had left there for good in order to carry out their commission, later became a kind of backwater, although always being highly regarded at a distance because of its antecedents. For it remained firmly entrenched in its incompatible position of being fully Jewish and yet Christian. Indeed had it not done so it would probably have found itself under constant persecution, for the Jews would not have tolerated in their holy city an openly Christian church of former Jews who had forsaken Judaism in order to belong to what became seen as a mainly Gentile religion. The Hellenistic Christians had already discovered this, and that without actually abandoning Judaism.
The unanimity found here would partly be due to the realisation of the fact, on the part of the more Jewish of them, that after all these Gentiles were God-fearers, and that the home Peter had entered and the meal he had partaken of could therefore with some confidence be seen as having satisfactorily conformed with the laws of cleanliness (or that as the one who had summoned them had been a Roman official he might have had little choice). While some would be unhappy that these Gentiles had not been required to be circumcised, they would have acknowledged that even Jews did accept God-fearers into their synagogues, and that therefore it was not unreasonable that Christian groups should accept them in the same way. And they no doubt hoped that anyway they would always remain a small minority. This is probably why at this stage they were prepared to make a slight concession. Once it later turned out not to be the case they would change their minds and become strident in their opposition.
Meanwhile, however, the Apostles themselves, and many of their supporters, had gained a new understanding and were moving towards the position of total acceptance of uncircumcised Gentiles as full and welcome members of the body of Christ without the necessity for circumcision. They were genuinely rejoicing in this new wonderful work of God, and would be ready for the next step when the news came through of what was happening in Syrian Antioch. What God had cleansed they must not call common.
Some who read this may ask, ‘this is all very well, but of what relevance is all this to us?' The answer is simple. It brings to the forefront how much each of us has our own prejudices, prejudices which can work to make the truth conform to our own ideas. Each of us needs to ask ourselves constantly, how much are my beliefs the result of prejudice? Are my prejudices preventing me from a full understanding of the truth and a full appreciation of the views of others? Do my prejudices shape the meaning of the word of God for me, or am I letting the word of God remove my prejudices?