Acts 15:1-6 meaning

Acts 15:1-6 introduces a debate about Gentiles and the Law of Moses. After their first missionary journey, Paul and Barnabas are spending time in their home church in Syrian Antioch, ministering to the believers there. Chapter 14 ends by telling the reader that Paul and Barnabas described their travels and their ministry in Galatia to the Antiochians, “And [Paul and Barnabas] spent a long time with the disciples” (Acts 14:28). It could be that the “fourteen years” Paul refers to in Galatians 2:1 is the same as the “long time” that Paul spent in Syrian Antioch before he embarked on the second missionary journey with Silas (Acts 15:40). 

After many troubling circumstances on their missionary journey, Paul and Barnabas were doubtlessly enjoying some peace and stability in Antioch. But another trial was headed their way. A false teaching which claimed that it was necessary to be circumcised in order to be declared righteous in God’s sight would soon spread to Antioch. It would create a controversy so great that the apostles and elders would hold a council in Jerusalem to answer the matter. 

Even there, the debate would not end. Throughout Paul’s letters to various churches, we can see that this false teaching persisted. Much of Paul’s energy was spent combatting the false teaching with the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Luke, the author of Acts, introduces the false teaching and its origins:

Some men came down from Judea and began teaching the brethren, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved” (v. 1).

The source of this false teaching are Some men who came down from Judea. The Bible usually phrases any journey from Judea or Jerusalem as coming down, because Judea has a hilly topography. The elevation of Jerusalem, which is in Judea, is over 2500 feet above sea level. Jerusalem and Judea was the center of Jewish religious practice. 

Circumcision was the ceremony that provided a demarcation between Jew and Gentile, as God had initiated with Abraham, to be a sign of His covenant with Abraham (Genesis 17:10-14). The claim that the people must be circumcised according to the custom of Moses was tantamount to a requirement to convert to Judaism and its full obligation of religious practice in order to be saved. 

Syrian Antioch was roughly 300 miles north of Jerusalem, and would take at least a couple of weeks of travel by land to go from one city to the other (See Map).

We see further on, at the outset of the debate at the Jerusalem Council later in this chapter that it is some of the sect of the Pharisees who had believed (v. 5) who claim that Gentiles must adopt Judaism. It is possible that these men who came down from Judea to Antioch were part of the same sect, maybe emissaries. It is something like a counter-evangelism occurring, or a post-evangelism, where Pharisee evangelists have been sent out to teach believers to do something in addition to having faith in Jesus so that they will be saved. 

The bottom line of this message is that these Gentile believers are not fully saved simply by believing. When we see the word “saved” in scripture we know it is speaking of “something being delivered from something,” and context determines what is being saved from what. We can infer from context in this passage that the salvation at issue is the salvation of being delivered from sin and being justified in God’s presence. We can observe that it is this kind of salvation in view from later on in the chapter when Peter says:

“But we [Jews] believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they [Gentiles] also are”
(Acts 15:11). 

Thus, the point of these contra-evangelists who came down from Judea is arguably that “faith is not enough to be justified in God’s sight—it also requires being circumcised.” It is possible that the contra-evangelists are saying that faith plus circumcision is required to be justified in God’s sight. It is more likely that by saying “be circumcised,” they are also including the full practice of Jewish ritual in order to be justified in God’s sight. We can infer this from various passages where Paul describes this false teaching as following the Law (Romans 3:21, 28). 

Furthermore, Peter, in his rebuttal to this false teaching, describes it as an attempt to put on the Gentile believers “a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear” (Acts 15:10). This implies an obligation beyond the one-time procedure of circumcision, since the religious Jews in the first century and prior were at the least consistent in practicing circumcision. A “yoke” which they had not “been able to bear” would mean the perfect keeping of the full Mosaic Law (which is a total of 613 laws), something few Jews could claim to have done.

Throughout Paul’s teachings, he will be adamant that imposing circumcision and Jewish law-keeping on Gentiles is incorrect—adding anything to faith in order to be saved is saying that Jesus’s death was insufficient. Paul asserts that nothing can be added to the death of Christ to save us from being separated from Him by sin. That applies to one thing (such as circumcision) or many things (such as living according to Jewish religious laws). 

These false teachers began teaching the brethren in the Antiochian church. They were welcomed in at first, having come from Judea (presumably from Jerusalem itself), and were probably believed to be ministers sent by the apostles and elders to exhort the Antiochian believers. Judea was the place of religious authority. Accordingly, they would bring with them an implied authority. 

The church of Antioch was founded by Jewish-Christian refugees who had escaped the persecution in Jerusalem (Acts 9:1). They established the church in Antioch. It was a mixed congregation, attracting both Jewish and Gentile believers in Jesus. The church of Jerusalem (the capital of Judea) and the church of Antioch in Syria had enjoyed a positive, beneficial relationship. 

Barnabas himself had been sent by the Jerusalem elders to teach at the church of Antioch in its early days (Acts 11:19-23). The believers in Antioch had reciprocated the care they received from Judea and sent money to help the believers in Jerusalem in preparation for a famine (Acts 11:29).

But the teaching which these men from Judea brought was something the Antiochians had never heard before, as far as we know. This was their claim, 

“Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.”

These men from Judea wanted the Gentile believers to become proselyte Jews and follow Jewish religious practice. They claimed that unless they did this they could not be saved. The initiation for becoming a proselyte was to first become circumcised. Circumcision was a visible symbol of belonging to God's covenant with Abraham (Genesis 17:13). It was a physical distinction between the Israelites, God's people, in contrast to the surrounding nations, the Gentiles. These false teachers wanted the Gentile believers to stop being Gentiles, which they argued was preventing them from being truly saved.

The Antiochian church, while founded by Jews and led in part by Jews, was mostly composed of Greek believers (Acts 11:20-21). These Greek-Gentiles were formerly pagans who believed in multiple gods, and would have likely been unfamiliar with the teachings of Judaism or the prophecies about a messiah prior to their conversion. 

And while in modern times we think of Christianity as a faith that pervades culture (which ought to be the case—Galatians 3:28), at the start of the church age it would not have been so. For these believing Greeks, their coming to faith in Jesus was more akin to them joining a Jewish religion, which it was. This is because Jesus was the Jewish messiah first and foremost. His apostles who founded the church were Jewish, and Jesus said of His ministry that He came to fulfill the Law given by Moses (Matthew 5:17). 

In having other Jewish men come from Jerusalem teaching something about Judaism, the Greek believers would have taken their word seriously. The church of Antioch had existed for years without anyone telling the Gentiles to be circumcised. So the sudden claim that Gentiles must become Jewish proselytes would be confusing, but difficult to dismiss out of hand. 

From the perspective of a Gentile in Syrian Antioch, you have received the Holy Spirit, you have sent out missionaries, you have seen all these wonderful things happen, and now these other Jewish teachers arrive and say, “Actually, you are not really saved yet. If you really want to be saved, then you also have to do what we tell you to do.” You had believed the previous authorities from Jerusalem, and now there are conflicting authorities. Who do you believe?

These Gentile believers in Antioch first came to faith in the Jewish Messiah through the teachings of one group of Jewish teachers, and are now faced with other Jews urging them to become fully Jewish. It would have been puzzling, but potentially compelling. When an authority from Judea tells you something that has eternal consequences, you would not take it lightly. 

However, Paul and Barnabas were present in Antioch when these teachers came. They had returned from their first missionary journey. This new teaching was completely invented. Jesus never taught that Gentiles should convert to Judaism, nor did any of His apostles who learned from Him, ministered with Him, and saw His resurrection and ascension. 

We do not know for sure, but is possible that Barnabas knew Jesus during His lifetime, or that Barnabas was one of the Jews who believed during Pentecost soon after Jesus returned to Heaven. In any case, Barnabas had been a part of the church since the beginning (Acts 4:36). The apostles themselves had given him his nickname, “Barnabas,” which means “Son of Encouragement.” He was well acquainted with them and well respected, and was very familiar with the true teachings of Jesus and the apostles. 

Paul had seen and spoken with Jesus through multiple visions (Acts 9:3-6, 22:17-21, 2 Corinthians 12:1-4). He had been appointed by Jesus to be an apostle to the Gentiles, and take the good news of the gospel to them (Romans 11:13, 2 Timothy 1:8-11). 

Together, Paul and Barnabas knew that what the teachers from Judea were saying did not originate from the Messiah. They were speaking from the agenda of man, not God. So Paul and Barnabas spoke out strongly against the idea that Gentiles must become circumcised and become Jewish:

And when Paul and Barnabas had great dissension and debate with them, the brethren determined that Paul and Barnabas and some others of them should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders concerning this issue (v. 2).

Luke describes their response as being a great dissension, meaning a massive disagreement, which resulted in debate with them. The pronoun them here refers to the teachers from Judea. This was not a situation where, “Everyone has their own opinion.” This was fundamental to who Jesus Christ was, what He had accomplished, and the plan of redemption God had for mankind. 

This great dissension possibly happened when the teachers first made their claim before the brethren, and Paul and Barnabas stood up in the assembly of believers and rebuked the teaching. It is noteworthy that both Paul and Barnabas actively disputed with these competing authorities. These men of peace went into combat mode when it came to defending the truth. Their countering this false teaching with truth led to this debate.

The teachers from Judea did not yield or reevaluate their claims. The debate did not end with one side being convinced of the other. So the church of Antioch, desiring to know the truth of the matter, decided they ought to go to the source of this new teaching, the source of Jewish authority: Jerusalem. 

The brethren (the believers in Antioch) put together a team to represent their church: they determined that Paul and Barnabas and some others of them, who Luke does not name, should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders concerning this issue (v. 2). 

Paul and Barnabas were probably eager to go, not just to put the matter to rest, but to ensure that they were on the same page as the apostles and elders concerning this issue. Paul and Barnabas knew the apostles (Peter, John, Matthew, and the rest) and the elders (James, the half-brother of Jesus, being the chief elder among others) (Galatians 1:18-19, 2:9, Acts 4:36, 9:27, 11:30), and wanted to clarify that they were all teaching the same message about Jesus. The phrase this issue refers to the claim the teachers from Judea had made that the Gentile believers had to be circumcised in order to be saved.  

This company of Antiochian believers, led by Paul and Barnabas, opted to travel by land up to Jerusalem, rather than sail along a trade route in the Mediterranean Sea. Paul and Barnabas took advantage of this journey by spreading the good news about their successful missionary trip to Cyprus and Galatia (a part of modern-day Turkey). This had been their first missionary journey, so the churches in the Middle East did not yet know that there were new churches of Jews and Gentiles appearing all across the Roman Empire now (Acts 13:43, 48-49, 14:21-23). 

Luke writes, 

Therefore, being sent on their way by the church, they were passing through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and were bringing great joy to all the brethren (v. 3).

Luke first mentioned the gospel spreading to Phoenicia in Acts 11:19, but that spread of the gospel was “to Jews alone.” Luke mentioned the gospel spreading to the Samaritans in Acts 8:5. Just as with the church of Antioch’s origins, it was Jewish refugees who taught about Christ and the good news of the gospel in Phoenicia and Samaria, because they were fleeing the persecution against believers in Jerusalem. 

Paul had led this persecution against believers back when he hated followers of Christ and did not yet believe (Acts 8:1). He inadvertently helped start these churches in Phoenicia and Samaria by driving believers out of Jerusalem into these regions. Now, as a believer and minister of the gospel of Christ, he was a visitor to these churches, informing them of new churches he had planted (on purpose) in Cyprus and Galatia. 

The amazing news Paul and Barnabas spread was that of the conversion of the Gentiles. This was unexpected by the Jews. The Samaritans and Jews disputed over which of their avenues of worship was superior (John 4:20). Both would have been astonished that the gospel had spread to the Gentiles. To their credit, the news was bringing great joy to all the brethren. The believers were happy that the gospel was spreading to those whom they had likely been taught to despise. 

Phoenicia is modern-day Lebanon, where the ancient cities of Tyre and Sidon are located and still exist to this day. Samaria was the province north of Jerusalem and Judea where half-Jewish populations existed. These were people descended from remnants of the northern kingdom of Israel who inter-married with Sumerian, Persian, and Syrian settlers after Assyria conquered Israel (1 Kings 12:16-19, 2 Kings 17:24-41).

All during this journey down the coastline of Phoenicia and through Samaria, Paul and Barnabas tell every faith community they meet about their missionary journey. They were describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles (v. 3). 

The focus of their retellings was that everywhere they went, from Cyprus to Pisidian Antioch to Lystra and Derbe, Greek Gentiles believed in the Messiah. The conversion of the Gentiles meant that the Gentiles trusted in Jesus Christ to save them from their sins, reconcile them with God, and give them eternal life (John 3:14-15). Their conversion was a change from paganism and ignorance to believing in the Son of God. That was it, there was no conversion beyond being born again into the body of Christ. There was no conversion into Judaism either being made or needed. 

This was continually astounding and wonderful news to those who heard it in Phoenicia and Samaria, many of whom were of Jewish or part-Jewish heritage. Luke describes that the news that Gentiles believed in Jesus was bringing great joy to all the brethren. 

It is interesting that while on a journey to Jerusalem to debate with leading Pharisees about the salvation of the Gentiles, everyone on the way who hears that the Gentiles have faith in Jesus simply respond with great joy. They do not ask, “But have they been circumcised?” These brethren were apparently filled with great joy because their faith was in Jesus Christ to save them, nothing else. 

As soon as Paul, Barnabas, and their companions reach their destination, the church of Jerusalem gathers for a great council that will have enormous impact through the ages:

When they arrived at Jerusalem, Paul and Barnabas were received by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all that God had done with them (v. 4).

The first order of business is to hear Paul and Barnabas’s account of their missionary journey, all that God had done with them. They told of every event from Acts 13-14. Every place they went, opposition they encountered, every miracle worked through them—all was told to the church of Jerusalem and the apostles and elders there. 

That we are speaking of the church means we are speaking of believers in Jerusalem, because “church” simply refers to believers who assembled together. The leading figures of the Jerusalem church are the apostles and the elders. The elders refer to the leaders of the church, the head of which was James the half-brother of Jesus. The apostles refer to the men Jesus chose to be His primary disciples. This gathering of church leaders might be referred to as the Jerusalem Council. 

Paul and Barnabas proclaimed the joyous news that Gentiles all over the island of Cyprus and the region of Galatia (part of modern-day Turkey) now believed in Jesus Christ. And these Gentiles had formed church communities with elders governing them (Acts 14:21-23). 

The operative question that had sparked the Council in the first place was whether these Gentiles were required to be circumcised in order to be saved (Acts 15:1-2). In response to the news that many Gentiles had believed in the Messiah, some leaders present at the Council sided with the Jews who had traveled to the church at Antioch. They stood up and said that these Greek believers needed to become Jews:

But some of the sect of the Pharisees who had believed stood up, saying, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to direct them to observe the Law of Moses” (v. 5).

These men who are from the sect of the Pharisees are described as having believed in Jesus too. 

During Jesus’s ministry, there were a couple of Pharisees who believed in Jesus, or at least secretly admired Him (Mark 15:42-45, John 3:1-2, 19:39). Now, after His resurrection, it appears that some of the sect of the Pharisees truly believed that Jesus was the Christ. These were men who trusted in Jesus as the Messiah who was promised to Israel, and therefore had received the Holy Spirit. They had doubtlessly been baptized too. They also may have lost some standing in the eyes of the ruling council (the Sanhedrin) and the Jews who did not believe in Jesus. 

But the believing Pharisees were flawed in their understanding of the salvation of being justified as righteous in God’s sight and the role of the Holy Spirit to make believers a new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). They apparently viewed faith in Jesus Christ as the first step of many toward gaining right standing in the sight of God. 

It seems that they agreed that it was good that these unclean, formerly-polytheistic Greek Gentiles believed that Jesus was the Son of God who died for their sins and resurrected. They too believed Jesus was the Messiah, and it was good that the Gentiles should believe in Him also. But these Gentiles were still Gentiles. 

These Pharisees who believed in Jesus now asserted it was necessary that the Gentiles be circumcised in order to be saved. They further taught that after the Gentiles were circumcised they needed to be taught to observe the Law of Moses. They are, therefore, saying that Gentiles must believe in Jesus and convert to Judaism and engage in Jewish religious practice in order to be justified in God’s sight.

The Pharisees were falling back on the old model of bringing Gentiles into Jewish society (Exodus 12:48). They were trying to follow the old process of making non-Jews into proselytes. But Jesus did not die and resurrect to try to convince Gentiles to become Jewish proselytes. He did not bear God’s wrath for our sins so that Greeks would consider getting circumcised. He did not conquer death so that Gentiles could keep kosher. 

There were already Gentile proselytes all over the Roman world, such as those in the Galatian synagogues where Paul evangelized (Acts 13:16, 43, 14:1). There had been Gentiles converting to Judaism since the Law was given to Moses (Ruth 1:16). Jesus’s death and resurrection has no connection with Gentiles becoming Jewish. Jesus’s death and resurrection saves all humans from their sins and gives all who believe the promise of eternal life (John 3:14-15). 

Much of Paul’s ministry will be concerned with combatting this false teaching that requires anything be added to simple trust in Jesus in order to be justified before God, to be declared righteous in God’s sight. Paul’s letters to the Galatians and the Romans are largely about this issue (Galatians 3:2, Romans 3:29-30). Paul consistently asserted that no one is justified in God’s sight through the Law. Even Abraham, the patriarch of Israel, was justified by faith (Romans 4:1-3). 

Despite how firmly Paul and the other church leaders will counter this false teaching at this Jerusalem Council, the false teaching that Gentiles should become circumcised and keep the Law of Moses will persist. In a modern sense, the idea that keeping religious rules is a necessary add-on to gain righteousness in God’s sight is a version of this same idea. It seems that we as humans do not like the idea that we offer nothing of value to God, and must simply receive His grace in order to be born anew into His family. 

From a human perspective, it makes some sense to focus on controlling outward behavior, as that is what justifies us in the sight of other humans (James 2:21). We are used to judging the actions of others based on their behavior. That is really all we can do, since we cannot see into the heart of others. But God can, and He judges based on the heart (Hebrews 4:12). When Abraham believed, it was credited to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6, Romans 4:3). No one but God could know at that point that Abraham believed God’s promise. Later, when Abraham offered Isaac, then people could tell he believed (James 2:21). 

We are prone to seek to advance our own agendas through judging or condemning. But this practice leads to an endless cycle of people comparing themselves to others and justifying themselves by that comparison. It produces division rather than unity. Paul and Barnabas stood up for the truth but did not do so in order to advance their own importance. They did so in order to serve God faithfully and seek the best interest of others. 

Paul will imply in his letter to the Galatians that these Circumcisers are just as misguided as pagans; they teach God as transactional, someone to be coerced, manipulated, appeased. Their desire to turn Gentiles into Jewish proselytes is only really motivated by their desire to control, to impress others, to brag about converts (Matthew 23:15, Galatians 6:12-13, 2:4). It is possible that the “false brethren” who taught the Galatian believers that they needed to be circumcised were responding to Paul and Barnabas’s report of their first missionary journey, seeking out the Gentiles Paul and Barnabas had led to Christ in order to convert them to Judaism. 

This idea that this system of Jewish religious rituals earns righteousness is attractive to us humans because it gives us the illusion that we control our own acceptance. We as humans have a deep need for acceptance, and we like the notion that we can control being accepted. Accordingly, we are attracted to the idea that God is transactional and can be coerced. 

But God is not transactional in that sense. God needs nothing from us, and we have nothing to offer that He does not already have. He desires our actual obedience, not treating Him like an idol that can be manipulated (Psalm 51:16-17, Psalm 40:6-8, 1 Samuel 15:22, Amos 5:21-22, Isaiah 44:14-18). 

After this sect of the Pharisees who had believed made their claim that the Gentiles did need to be circumcised in order to be saved, the apostles and the elders came together to look into this matter (v. 6).

The apostles here are presumably in reference to the original 10 disciples (plus Matthias who had replaced Judas Iscariot) who followed Jesus throughout His ministry, learning from Him, performing miracles and preaching about the kingdom of God alongside Him. They were also witnesses to His resurrection. 

The living apostles at this council were Peter, John, Matthew, Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Simon, James the son of Alphaeus, Thomas, Thaddeus, and Matthias (who replaced Judas Iscariot the traitor—Acts 1:26). James, the son of Zebedee and brother of John, was beheaded by Herod Agrippa years earlier (Acts 12:2). 

The elders were the leading men in the church of Jerusalem. Of them, only one is named in the New Testament writings: James, the “brother of our Lord” as Paul describes him. James is inferred to be the leader among the elders (Galatians 1:19). This James shared a mother, Mary, with Jesus, but not the same father (Matthew 13:55). James was the son of Joseph, while Jesus was the Son of God. This means James was Jesus’s half-brother, given that Jesus was conceived of the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35). 

During Jesus’s life and ministry, His brothers did not believe in Him (John 7:5). But it seems that after Jesus resurrected, His brothers then came to faith and made themselves bond-servants to Jesus (James 1:1). James became a prominent “pillar” or leader among the Jerusalem elders and the apostles (Galatians 2:9), and wrote the Book of James (James 1:1), while Jude (or Judas) another of Jesus’s half-brothers, wrote the Book of Jude (Jude 1:1).

From the apostles, Peter will give a negative response to the claim that It is necessary to circumcise the Gentile believers and to direct them to observe the Law of Moses. From the elders, James will likewise respond that such a requirement is unnecessary.