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Today we’re sitting in the midst of a garden in Jerusalem, and we’re talking for a moment about the council of Jerusalem, which takes place in Acts 15. If we as Christians don’t understand what happened in Acts 15, then we’ll never make space for Jew and Gentile identity within the church, which is God’s heart for the Ecclesia of the church and the church to be unified. So what happened in Acts 15 at the Center for Israel, we talk a lot about Jew and Gentile identity. We often juxtapose it with male and female identity because they’re both God-given distinctions, not manmade, and they last all throughout scripture. From Genesis one to Revelation, you see male and female. And from Genesis 12 to Revelation, you see Jew and Gentile Israel and the nations, and people often advocate that, but in Christ, when we give our lives to the Lord, there is no longer Jew Gentile.
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That’s what Galatians three says. But Galatians three also says there’s no longer male or female. So are we doing away with gender identity because we found Yeshua, Jesus? Well, most Christians would advocate absolutely not. Gender identity is so important. Well, so is the identity of Jew and Gentile. Maybe in Galatians 3, Paul’s not talking about breaking down a distinction. He’s talking about breaking down a barrier. There’s no longer any barrier. As Peter says in Acts 10, he shows no difference between both of us anymore. There’s no longer any partiality. So what happens in Acts 15 and why is this so crucial? I’ll never forget when I was doing a Bible study with some students and we were going through the Book of Acts, and one of these students was in a Bible university, a Bible college, very well known, and he said, we just did a Bible study in Acts.
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And I said, oh, that’s awesome. What did you do for Acts 15? I was just curious because it’s so important to understanding this distinction. And he went through his notes and they skipped Acts 15, and I was shocked. Why would you skip Acts 15? It’s so important. But then I realized for most churches it’s not important. In fact, we don’t know what to do with Acts 15. So let’s talk about Acts 15 and read the scripture together. The only context we need is that in Acts 10, Peter, who’s a Jewish believer in Jesus, is sitting on this rooftop, and we probably all know the story where this vision of a curtain comes down from heaven, and there’s all these animals, many of them are unclean animals that a Jewish person wouldn’t eat because of a kosher diet. And God is telling Peter that he’s basically allowing the Gentiles to come in.
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He says, don’t call unclean what I have called clean. And then this leads to a visitation from some Gentiles who say, we want to introduce you to a man named Cornelius. So Peter kind of reluctantly goes, because there’s many rituals about Jews not going into Gentiles home. It can make them unpure, but he’s listening to God and he goes in to basically share the gospel with Cornelius. Now, we have to understand Peter’s understanding at this time is not to share the gospel with the Gentiles. Now, there’s many reasons for this because partially God had this vision that through the seed of Abraham, then all nations would be blessed. And so there was an understanding that God’s going to do this revival in Israel, and then of course the Gentiles will come in. But no one was expecting the Gentiles to start receiving Yeshua and then coming into this very Jewish religion, this very Jewish understanding.
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And then you partner that with the fact that for thousands of years, if anyone was going to come into the family of God, they had to essentially become Jewish. Now, you could be a God fearer from the outside, but if you wanted to be in the family of God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Israel, then you’d have to be circumcised. You’d have to obey Torah, you’d have to convert into Judaism, which many Greeks and Gentiles were not willing to do, understandably. So Peter goes into Cornelius’s house and he is sharing the gospel. What’s so interesting about Acts 10 is it says that before Peter was even done speaking almost as if God didn’t want him to finish, because Peter might’ve given what we would call an altar call for him to decide if he was going to convert into Judaism, to be part of the family or if he was going to just remain a God fearer.
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But before he’s even done speaking, it says the Holy Spirit falls and Cornelius’s entire household begins speaking in tongues, praising in tongues, which is evidence of the Holy Spirit that the Jewish people received in Acts two. And Peter’s blown away because now these Gentiles are receiving, and by the way, we think of praying in tongues and speaking in tongues as a charismatic thing. But at this point in time, this was a Jewish thing and these gentiles are doing it, and so Peter’s mind is blown. His entire plan of what God is doing in Israel is kind of just torn to shreds, and he’s trying to piece all this together. Well, meanwhile, Paul is experiencing the same thing, and this is where we pick up in Acts 15 where Paul and Barnabas are on the mission field. They’re talking about Yeshua to all these Gentiles, and they’re seeing real revival happen, these Gentiles receiving this message, but remaining Gentiles, well, this is a big problem because for thousands of years you couldn’t remain Gentile and just be part of the family of Israel.
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You had to convert. So let’s pick up in Acts 15. It says, some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers. Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved. This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas, they’re preaching Yeshua to all of these Gentiles. These gentiles are getting saved. Meanwhile, there are some Jewish followers in Jesus Yeshua, but they were part of the circumcision party, former Pharisees who now follow Jesus and they’re holding tightly to their traditions. If you want to be in the family, you have to obey the commands of Moses. You have to be circumcised. And Paul and Barnabas hear and they’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa. This starts a huge dispute. It says, so Paul and Barnabas were appointed along with some other believers to go to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question.
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So what was the whole point of Acts 15 and this council that’s about to take place? It was to answer this question, what do we do with these Gentiles? Are, the circumcision party, are they right? Do they need to be circumcised and obey Torah or is Paul and Barnabas right where they can remain Gentiles and get brought into this family? As he would say later in Romans 11 grafted into this family tree. So they go to Jerusalem. Verse 4, when they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders to whom they reported everything God had done through them. Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisee stood up and said, the Gentiles must be circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses. Now, some people can look at this and say, well, this was an old frame of mind.
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They didn’t get it, but let’s sympathize with them for a second. We have to remember that these gentiles, these were pagans, okay? These were people that were far off from God as how Paul describes them. You were once far off. These are people who very well could have been doing a blood drinking ceremony a couple of weeks ago in a house of worship with multiple gods doing heinous things, of course, especially from the Jewish perspective. So how do we bring in these former pagans into this Jewish family? Well, the easiest thing to do would be give them the Torah, give them the law of Moses, give them circumcision, and then they can fall in line with us. That’s the cleaner way to do it. Obviously, God had other plans, but we had to sympathize with that would’ve been maybe an easier way to do things.
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But then Paul begins to share, it says in verse 60, the apostles and the elders met to consider this question. After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them. Brothers, you know that some time ago, God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe He’s talking about Acts 10. This just happened with Cornelius. God who knows the heart showed that he accepted them by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, for he has purified their hearts by faith. Peter’s saying, God showed no partiality. There was no favoritism for the longest time, God was the God of Israel, and if you were going to be in that family, you had to be from the clan of Israel, but no longer any partiality.
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Yes, there’s still a distinction like male and female, but there’s no tier system anymore. This is what Peter’s talking about. So he says, now then why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? No, he says, it is through the grace of our Lord, Yeshua that we are saved just as they are. We are not saved by the Torah of Moses, and they are not saved by becoming Jewish. We are all saved by putting our faith in Yeshua. Verse 13, when they finished, James spoke up. Now, James was the half brother of Jesus. His real name is Jacob, and we don’t have time to get into how that was changed to James, but Jacob or James, the leader of the Jerusalem church, because God does things with singular headship just like Moses over Israel.
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He is the one to kind of finalize this decision. So he says, brothers, listen to me. Simon or Peter has described to us how God at first showed his concern by taking from the Gentiles, a people for himself, and then he quotes the Tanakh, the Old Testament in verse 19. It says, it is my judgment, therefore that we should not make it difficult. For the Gentiles who are turning to God, stop making it difficult for them. They don’t need to be circumcised in obey Torah. God is accepting them as Gentiles. That’s why the Holy Spirit fell on them as gentiles. They’re understanding maybe this is God’s plan. Maybe this is Genesis 12, that through the seed of Abraham, all mishpachah family of the earth would be blessed. And then it says, write this to the Gentiles, to the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia.
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It’s so interesting. He says, write this to the Gentiles. Many people say they’re not Gentiles anymore. Gentile just means pagan, but it doesn’t mean pagan. It means non-Jew, someone from the nations. It’s not a bad word. I am a Gentile. I’m a happy Gentile. I’m proud to be a Gentile just like we want our Jewish friends to be happy to be Jews because God made them Jews and we want males to be happy to be males, and we want females happy to be females. That’s what God made you. So then he says in verse 28, it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements. And then they give the Gentiles four abstentions, which we’ve talked in depth in other videos, but basically the reason these four abstentions, the only four things that they’re telling the Gentiles not to do, it’s abstaining from food sacrifices to idols, from blood, from meat that’s been strangled in sexual immorality is because these things would keep them from having table fellowship.
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How do we bring the Gentiles into this very Jewish family? Well, we need to meet with them. We need to talk with them. We don’t have FaceTime. We need to come to the table and don’t do these four things that are going to keep you from coming to the table with Jews because the Gentiles need to learn about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Then it says in verse 31, the people read it and were glad for its encouraging message. We have to remember, there’s many Gentiles right now that feel like I’m a second class citizen. I wish I was Jewish. It’d be so cool to be Jewish. Those are the chosen people, and I’m just a gentile. I’m a second class citizen. But that’s not true at all. The Gentiles rejoiced when they got this message because God made them gentile and God made them Jewish and God’s heart for Jew and Gentile to come together in unity.
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Now we have to ask one more question. Why did they meet? Why did they meet together at Acts 15 because the fully Jewish council, everyone in that room in Acts 15 is Jewish. They were meeting to ask, what do we do with the Gentiles? Now, what’s the obvious implication of that? Do the Gentiles have to obey Torah and be circumcised like we do? That’s the whole reason they’re meeting. Some people say in Acts 15, they got rid of circumcision in obeying Torah for the Gentiles. There was never a question that the Jews had to be circumcised and obey Torah. That was the whole purpose of the meeting. If the idea was no one needs to be circumcised or obey Torah, why are we meeting at all? That makes no sense. It’s the most pointless meeting in all of scripture. They’re meeting because there’s still a Jewish calling, a calling of Israel to obey Torah, to be circumcised, to live a Jewish life.
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We’re asking about the Gentiles and the Gentiles are not called to do so. Another way of looking at this is basically they’re saying, can the Gentiles receive Yeshua and stay gentile? Can they receive this Jewish Messiah and be grafted into a Jewish family and stay Gentile? And the answer was yes. They can stay gentile and be grafted into a Jewish family. What’s so interesting is in 325 AD– this meeting happened probably in the 40s or 50s AD– In 325 AD there was a different council. And when you juxtapose the council of Jerusalem to the Council of Nicaea, which met in 325 AD, they are nearly the exact opposite because in Acts 15 at the Council of Jerusalem, it was a room full of Jewish followers of Jesus asking about the Gentiles in 325 AD. It was a room full of Gentiles asking about the Jews.
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And in 325 AD they asked the opposite question. Remember Acts 15, they were saying, can Gentiles stay Gentiles and follow Yeshua? And their answer was, yes, they can stay Gentile. In 325, in Nicaea, they basically asked this question, can a Jew follow Jesus and stay Jewish? And their answer was no. A Jew that follows Jesus becomes a Christian destroying the distinction that God made. And the saddest part is the church has lived with that understanding for almost 1700 years, this understanding that if a Jewish person believes in Jesus, they become this new thing called a Christian. That’s like saying male or female. When you receive Jesus, you become a third gender. No, you don’t. We have to define the word Christian. Now, what is Christian follower of Jesus? There are male and female followers of Jesus. There are Jew and Gentile followers of Jesus. We’ve misunderstood what Christian is.
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And the other thing that we have to really understand is what a Gentile is. We don’t even use this term anymore. How often do you go to the church and hear someone say, oh, I’m a Gentile? No, we just say, Christian, but I’m a gentile Christian. I’m a gentile follower of Jesus because if I don’t make space for my Gentile identity, I’ll never make space for a Jewish identity. And we have to because just like God created male and female and wanted them to become one flesh under a new covenant marriage, God wanted Jew and Gentile to come together under a new covenant that Jesus came to bring with his blood and wanted to make one new man. When male and female become one, no one argues that they’re no longer male female. But when Jew and Gentile become one, everyone argues, they’re just this third thing called Christian.
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It’s not true. They are now both believers in Jesus, but maintain their God-given identity, and we have to get that back as the church. We have to understand Acts 15 and then welcome our Jewish brothers and sisters into the faith of Yeshua, but maintaining Jewish identity, it’s so crucial. For thousands of years, we’ve given the Jewish people a message they can’t accept because we’re saying, you have to completely throw away your Jewish identity. That’s not biblical. And yet, throughout history, the church has forcibly converted Jews and said, if you want to follow Jesus, which many people, many Jews wanted to follow Jesus, but we told them, then you’re no longer Jewish anymore and you have to eat pork, and you have to prove that you’re no longer Jewish. That is demonic. And that is not God’s heart. God’s heart is for the Jews to maintain Jewish identity, to live as Jews, and they can do so and follow Yeshua, and for Gentiles to maintain Gentile identity and to be proud of Gentile identity, not as second class citizens, but coming to the feet of Jesus Yeshua and being united together with our Jewish brothers and sisters.
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If we get that back as the church, I believe we’ll find a unity that we’ve been praying for. The unity of the Ecclesia, the church.
