A Major Crisis - Consultation at Jerusalem
When we came to the end of chapter 14 it described the end of an abundantly successful mission and we had the impression that all was well. The word was advancing. All hindrances had been swept aside. But there was one thing missing. And that is that in Acts Luke always follows up successful activity with a description of Satan's riposte. Pentecost was followed by persecution from the Temple authorities, the renewal of blessing in Acts 4:23-31 was followed by the failure of Ananias and Sapphira, the success of Stephen was followed by his martyrdom and the persecution of the church, Paul's conversion and ministry was followed by persecution, Philip's success among the Samaritans was followed by the behaviour of Simon the sorcerer, the ministry of Peter was followed by his being called to account, followed by the martyrdom of James and his own imprisonment, and the ministries of Barnabas and Saul were followed by various tribulations. For Luke was aware that whenever God moves forward, Satan always seeks to hinder the work. And this was to be no exception as we will now discover.
Consider the situation. The Good News has been taken out to Cyprus and throughout large parts of Asia Minor. Not only have Jews and God-fearers responded but also out-and-out Gentiles, and the latter even in areas where there appears to have been no synagogue. There has been regular persecution, but each time the word has prevailed.
But now return visits have been made and local gatherings have been set up, and they have returned to Antioch and continued their ministry there, and all is going smoothly. It appears as though Satan has given up, and as though opposition has died down, so that the teaching and growth of the churches can go on apace. Luke therefore now immediately reminds us that this is not true. The teaching is being established, but it is to be countered by false teaching. Where the truth is being established, there will always appear those who come to sow lies. For suddenly on the horizon appear so-called Christians who come with a controversial message, which will dog Paul for years to come. The question being raised now was as to how these Gentile converts were to be related to the Old Testament religion from which Jesus sprang and from which the Apostles also came, and it was to be raised by a counterattack of Satan.
Looked at from the point of view of that time the issue involved was no easy question. In fact it was so serious that humanly speaking the success of the spread of the Good News and of the word depended on it.
In those early days when most converts to Christianity were Jews, their continuation in Jewish practises was not even questioned. It was just assumed. All had been circumcised on the eighth day. All followed Jewish religious practises. The difference between Christian Jews and their fellow-Jews was not in the customs that they observed, but in the recognition that they gave to the fact that Jesus, crucified and risen, was to them both Lord and Messiah, and that they saw salvation as having come through Him, bringing them under the Kingly Rule of God and having provided them with full forgiveness for all their sins. Now because they were His they sought to live according to the Law, especially as interpreted by His teaching, sharing all things in common with their fellow-believers, but faithful to their Jewish customs. By that means they hoped to win their fellow-countrymen.
Yet even among the Christian Jews there would be differences (as among the Jews themselves). There were Judaean Jewish Christians, who interpreted their customs more strictly, and were under the close eye of the Rabbis, there were Galilean Jewish Christians whose interpretations of Jewish customs were somewhat less rigid, there were Hellenistic Jewish Christians who interpreted the Scriptures more allegorically, and whose more direct contact with the Gentile world resulted in relaxations of certain customs. Many of the converted Pharisees, for example, would regularly continue to follow through their Pharisaic ideas as Christians, and would be more strict in their religious practises than those who had been converted from among the ‘common folk', the ‘sinners', although now, because they were Christians, each would have more regard to the other. But all would still participate in Temple ritual and follow Jewish customs in one way or another, and see themselves still as ‘Jews'.
Then there would be those who had been converted as ‘God-fearers' and were uncircumcised. They were welcomed wholeheartedly into the fellowship of believers, while of course only on the outskirts of synagogue worship, unless the synagogue was wholly Christian. But these God-fearers would be expected to take account of Jewish practises, especially when they ate with Jews, and would be expected to become acquainted with Jewish Law. And just as the Jews bore with God-fearers but felt that they should become full proselytes, so would many Christian Jews feel the same about Christian God-fearers. Many of the Christian Jews would look on their fellow-Christians who were not circumcised as not yet completely ‘Christianised'.
Of course when Cornelius and his fellow believers were converted in the unusual way in which they were, this had caused a problem. Many Jewish Christians had come to recognise with Peter that God was not calling on all converts themselves to become a full part of Judaism. They were even recognising that for converted Gentiles there were to be different demands. Unlike Judaism they were being called on to accept Christian God-fearers on equal terms. And this had been agreed by the Enquiry Group of chapter 11.
But there were still many Jewish Christians who did not think like that. None had felt able to argue openly in that case that God had made a mistake, but there was almost certainly an uneasy feeling among a number of Jewish Christians that all was not quite right in the matter of Cornelius, and a hope that it would not happen too often. It could be coped with because it was not in Jerusalem and they could after all be treated as God-fearers. And none would doubt that they now worshipped with fellow-believers in Caesarea (where Philip was ministering) and were thus in contact with Jewish Christian customs and worship. The hope of these Jewish Christians was that they would therefore gradually submit to Jewish ways themselves, and gradually become absorbed into Judaism. Yet they did have to swallow the fact that Cornelius and his fellow-Christian-Gentiles had not been required by the Jerusalem church to be circumcised, on the grounds that God had cleansed them and made them holy without circumcision. They could not argue with the decision. They could only feel that it was not right, and put their confidence in the fact that God would sort it out.
Once news had reached Jerusalem of the activities among Gentiles in Syrian Antioch (in Acts 11:19-26) official action had been immediately taken in despatching Barnabas to oversee the situation, and there too they would be satisfied that there was a good nucleus of Jewish Christians in Antioch, so that once again the converts could be seen as God-fearers attached to a Christian synagogue with the hope that they would eventually become full proselytes. Furthermore Jewish Christian prophets had also gone to minister to them.
And indeed it was partly the hope of ensuring this Judaising of the Gentile Christians that would be responsible for some of their own number from the circumcision party going to Antioch declaring the need for these believers to be circumcised (Acts 15:1; compare Galatians 2:4; Galatians 2:12). So the most fervent Judaisers among the Christians in Jerusalem and Judaea still saw Christianity as a reformed Judaism, and looked eventually for all Christians eventually to be circumcised and to conform to the ritual Law.
The mission of Paul and Barnabas to Cyprus and Asia Minor would not initially have caused a problem. Had they continued using synagogues as their base of operations and sought to bring their Gentile converts within the synagogue, initially as God-fearers, (with the hope of their eventually becoming full proselytes) this would simply have extended the pattern. But once the news came through from some of those synagogues of Paul's blatant large-scale activity among Gentiles who were not attaching themselves to the synagogue, (the synagogues would not point out that it was partly due to their own obstructionism), that stirred up Christian Judaists in Judaea to feel that it was time that they did something about it. They must put a stop to these aberrations and ensure that all were on the path to Judaism. They themselves must go and teach them what was required of them.
As Luke depicts it, working in the other direction was God. And in this regard we have already had three incidents which have illuminated God's mind on the matter.
1) The Ethiopian High Official (Acts 8:26-39). Strictly speaking we are not certain that this man had not been circumcised, although the impression that most gain from the narrative is that he had not and that he was a God-fearer. But certainly it was God Who sent Philip to him, and it was in accordance with what God showed Philip that he was baptised without the question apparently ever being asked as to whether he was circumcised. However, that conversion might well not have been widely known about, and besides he had disappeared into Ethiopia.
2) Cornelius and His Friends and Family (Acts 10:1 to Acts 11:18). Here we can say that Cornelius was unquestionably no more than at the most a God-fearer, otherwise the question of ‘cleanness', which was so important in this case, would not have arisen. Had he been a full proselyte Peter's vision would have been redundant, for a full proselyte was religiously the equivalent of a trueborn Jew. But the whole point of Peter's vision was that God was telling Peter that however unclean something might appear to be ritually, once God had cleansed it, it had become holy. Even though before God cleansed it, it had been unclean, His act of cleansing made it holy. No man therefore had any right to turn round and make common or unclean what God had cleansed, what God had ‘made holy'. And this included people.
It was on the basis of this that Peter had entered Cornelius' house and had proclaimed to him the Good News. And it was then that he had seen the Holy Spirit come on all those Gentiles gathered there in the same way as on Christian Jews earlier, along with clear outward signs that made it unquestionable that He had done so And he had recognised that if God's ‘HOLY' Spirit had entered a man and had indwelt him then that man must be holy, and therefore, following the lesson of his vision, could not be treated as ‘common'. That being so he felt that he could not refuse baptism to what God had made holy. It was not a question as to whether such a person was circumcised or not. It was a question as to whether God had made that person holy. And in that case He clearly had. (Note that baptism is not therefore the same as circumcision. Baptism is an acceptance of the fact that a person has been made holy. Circumcision was, prior to this, seen as a necessity in order that a man might become holy.
Furthermore the basic assumption of the whole process of proselysation was that the unholy needed to be made holy. That was what the proselyte bath indicated. They were being washed from all past ritual uncleanness. They were having the taint of the Gentile world removed. So to give a proselyte bath to someone whom God had already indwelt by His Holy Spirit and who was therefore already holy would, in the light of Peter's vision, have been to declare as common or unclean what God had made holy. It would be contradictory. It would be almost blasphemous. Thus the only conclusion could be that for such people the procedures for becoming a full proselyte were not required. God had received them without that and made them holy. Furthermore the purpose of the rite of circumcision was in order to set apart a person as one of God's holy people, it was to render him holy. But these new converts had already been made holy. How then could circumcision be required from someone who had already been indwelt by God's Holy Spirit and was therefore already holy? They were already accepted by God and holy with no condition of circumcision having been attached. To do any more would be to cast doubt on what God had done. (This again emphasises that baptism was not seen as cleansing or making holy, otherwise on the same terms it could not have applied to those who had been already made holy).
3) The Gentiles Whom God Had Brought To Hear The Word of God But Whom the Synagogue Would Have None Of (Acts 13:44-49). Paul had recognised a similar situation when huge crowds of Gentiles had come together to hear the word of God and the synagogue had wanted to turn them away. He had been faced with the choice of going into the synagogue and turning his back on them, or of speaking to them of Christ at a time when the synagogue, and therefore Judaism, was refusing them, and would not accept them into the synagogue. Indeed matters had been made worse. The truth was that while these Gentiles had come desirous to respond to Christ, it was the Jews in the synagogue who were blaspheming against Him (Acts 13:45). It was the Jews who were attacking Christ. It had thus become clear that if Christ was to be accepted by anyone it would be by these Gentiles who were being excluded from the synagogue, not by these blaspheming Jews. The synagogue may not want these Gentiles but God's activity among them appeared to indicate that He did, especially as He had approved it with signs and wonders following. Thus it was clear that these Gentiles must be baptised outside the synagogue and its requirements.
Combined with what God had previously demonstrated to Peter in regard to Cornelius, which Paul would know about, this necessarily followed, for it had been made openly apparent that these men also were all ‘filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit' (Acts 13:52). Their acceptance by God without circumcision was therefore not in doubt. And Paul had from then on accepted and baptised Gentile converts without circumcision, even in places where there was no synagogue for them to attach themselves to, once he was satisfied that they had received the Holy Spirit. Indeed he had set them up in their own ‘synagogue' groups with their own elders led by the Spirit of God.
But now inevitably came Satan's expected counterattack. It would, however, as with all Satan's counterattacks (how exasperated he must have been), turn out to be for the good of the advance of the word, for it would mean the church deciding as a whole exactly how it should in future look at the ministry among the Gentiles, and it would finally take away any doubt among Gentile converts of their acceptability in Christ without their having to become Jews.