12 The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. 13 When they finished, James spoke up. “Brothers,” he said, “listen to me. 14 Simon[a] has described to us how God first intervened to choose a people for his name from the Gentiles. 15 The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written:
16 “‘After this I will return
and rebuild David’s fallen tent.
Its ruins I will rebuild,
and I will restore it,
17 that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord,
even all the Gentiles who bear my name,
says the Lord, who does these things’[b]—
18 things known from long ago.[c]
19 “It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. 20 Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. 21 For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.”
Dig Deeper
One of the great sports movies of all time is “Hoosiers,” the classic film about high school basketball in a small town in Indiana. The sleepy town of Hickory loved nothing more than basketball and the entire community became deeply concerned when the school’s principal hired an old pal who had previously been a big city college basketball coach. They were wary of this outsider from the outset but became even more concerned when his ways were proven to be very different than what they expected and what they wanted. To add to that, the town’s best player had decided to focus on his studies before the coach ever came to town and had declined to play that season. Suddenly a town that expected a certain level of play and a certain number of wins wasn’t seeing either one. Midway through the season the whole town held a meeting to air their concerns with the ultimate purpose of kicking this new coach out of his job before his strange ways changed everything that they cherished. Several people stood up and spoke on behalf of the coach and tried to answer his accusers and their thoughts carried some weight but none of those that spoke carried enough weight on that topic to sway people. The vote was taken and the coach was voted out of his job. But then a young man in the back stepped forward to speak. He was the star player that had refused to play up to that point. He suddenly and simply said that he thought it was time for him to start playing again. He interrupted the enthusiastic cheers of the crowd to add one more detail. He would only play if the coach stayed. Everyone was shocked but his was the voice that mattered in this instance. They quickly took another vote and it was determined that the coach would stay. The loudest voice in the room had spoken and it had changed everything.
Paul and Barnabas had addressed the entire assembly as witnesses of all that they had seen God doing among the Gentiles but they probably carried little sway with the group that they addressed in Jerusalem. They were more presenting their testimony than they were convincing anyone. Before that the Apostle Peter stood and verified that he believed that it was part of God’s plan all along that the Gentiles did not need to follow the law to show themselves to be part of God’s true family. They did not, in other words, need to become Jews in order to become part of the promised family. That was never the intended purpose of the law and there was no sense in demanding that that become its purpose now.
Peter’s voice was no doubt influential and important within the community of Jewish believers and the leadership of the church but it appears that by this point Peter was more of a traveling apostle and was not the official leader of the Jerusalem church. As important as his voice might have been, he did not carry the most influential opinion on this topic and in this situation.
That distinction belonged to James, the brother of Jesus. He had been a skeptic of Jesus during his lifetime (Jn. 7:4-5) but evidently an encounter with the resurrected Jesus Christ had made a deep impact on James (1 Cor. 15:7). James had, at some point, become the recognized leader of the Jerusalem church and a looming figure in the early Christian community. He was well known for his piety and fairness even among his Jewish opponents in Jerusalem. He would eventually be stoned to death at the Temple, an act that was grieved over by Christians and many Jews alike. In short, he was well respected by nearly all, and certainly by most within the Jerusalem church. Beyond that, he had apparently been somewhat concerned fairly recently about the issue of just blatantly accepting Gentiles into the table fellowship of the family (see Gal. 2:12; although James seems to infer here that that group may have come from Jerusalem as Paul stated but they went beyond any actual authority given to them by James at the time).
When James rose to speak, his voice carried a great deal of weight. He was an established conservative on this issue, he was well trusted, and was well respected. He would, evidently, have the final word on this matter as he called the assembly to listen to his thoughts. Peter had appealed to logic and history to help the case. Paul and Barnabas had spoken of the great signs and wonders to which they had been witness. James would appeal to Scripture and the identity of God’s people.
As James began his important comments, he made a fascinating but easily missed point about Simon Peter’s words. In the Old Testament there were two primary groups of persons. There were the “nations” (“ethne” in the Greek) or the “Gentiles” and then there were the “people” (“laos” in the Greek) The people were God’s chosen group, that is to say, Israel. This is the thought behind a passage like Deuteronomy 26:19, which says, “He has declared that he will set you in praise, fame and honor high above all the nations he has made and that you will be a people holy to the LORD your God, as he promised.”
But James turned that on its head by declaring that Simon Peter has described God intervening to choose and create a people from within the Gentiles. The “people” of God were now comprised partly of the nations rather than standing in opposition to them. In making that statement, James had already tipped his hand as to where he was heading.
But that wasn’t just Peter’s opinion. The prophets said the very same thing. That was a big deal because in the Old Testament the prophets were God’s mouthpieces. So if it could be shown that they pointed to such a thing as the nations being brought into God’s family as they were without first needing to become Jewish or follow the law then that would be very important. His words in verses 16 and 17 come from Amos 9:11-12. Amos 9 is part of a harsh prophecy in which God declared that Israel would be judged for her unfaithfulness to God and his covenant, and be brought low. But, Amos promises, once the house of David has been humbled it would be rebuilt and that time of restoration would include all of the nations (ethne) or, in other words, the Gentiles. It wasn’t that James could only muster up one obscure passage to make his point but what Luke has recorded was one representative point from the larger argument that James was making. The crux of his statements were that God’s promise of a blessed family always included the people of the nations and the prophets had confirmed that. The rebuilding of the house of David was being fulfilled through the Messiah which meant that the time for the Gentiles to be included in that promise had come.
If God had promised the inclusion of the Gentiles into the one family of all nations then why would they try to bind something on the Gentiles that wasn’t necessary. Entrance into God’s family would come through Christ alone and the evidence or uniform of that entrance would be that they followed Jesus and lived by faith in his life alone. There was nothing inherently wrong with the law but it was not the entry point into God’s family, nor was it the uniform of his people any longer. God’s temporary law-shaped family had, through Jesus Christ, become his permanent Messiah-shaped family.
But if all of that was true, then why would James go on to suggest that there were four specific things that the Gentile believers should avoid? Was James contradicting himself by saying that they didn’t need to follow the law from one side of his mouth and then giving them portions of the law to observe out of the other side of his mouth? It appears that the four suggested prohibitions were those that were most obviously and overtly connected with pagan worship and Gentile immorality in the eyes of the Jews. They should avoid, James was suggesting, meat that was sacrificed to idols; sexual immorality that was common among pagans (this went beyond just obvious things like fornication but would likely have included aberrant marriage practices such as bigamy and issues brought up in 1 Corinthians 5 that were abhorrent to the Jews), including perhaps the cultic sexual practices that had become common at the shrines and temples of the gods; meat from animals that had been killed by strangling; and the blood of animals which was a common element in temple worship settings.
The reality was that as the gospel moved further away from Jerusalem, the Gentile believers would still be living next to Jewish communities and worshipping with Jewish believers. If they were going to be a light to the Jews and live in harmony and full table fellowship with their fellow Jewish Christians then they had to truly become a people that put the interests of others ahead of their own. James had removed a major stumbling block for Gentile believers in being full members of the family in the eyes of others but he was also suggesting that the Gentile believers remove the major stumbling blocks for their Jewish brothers and sisters to fully accept them. This was pure compromise.
This passage stands as an important testament to the fact that the unity of the early church was hard fought. They didn’t have to agree on everything to be unified. True unity means that the community of believers are devoted to putting the interests of the entire group ahead of their personal desires or freedoms. What was “right” and “wrong” was important if it infringed on one’s true status in Christ but beyond that, what was far more important was living at peace with one another. The Jewish believers would not try to add regulations to the Gentile believers identity in Christ, and the Gentiles would would show patience and respect in limiting themselves in areas that were clearly sin (things like the sexual practices, some of which they should have been avoiding anyway) and things that weren’t (such as avoiding blood). As Paul would make clear in passages like 1 Corinthians 6-10 and Romans 14-15, their love for one another and their commitment to being a unified family should always trump their own preferences and opinions.
There is a dual reminder in this passage for the modern church to both embrace one another in unified love with no needless offense as well as a pointed poke in the ribs to remind us of the potential danger of thinking so highly of our opinions or preferred practices that we can actually harm the unity of the fellowship of the community.
Devotional Thought
Which do you value more: Your rights and freedoms in Christ, or the unity of the body of believers and the interests of others? What can you do today to add to the unity of your family in Christ?
