The Jerusalem Council: Should Christians Follow the Dietary Laws? [Part 2]

 Acts 15 and the Jerusalem Council

Let’s now examine some of the passages that Christians use to say ‘No, Christians do not have to avoid certain foods any longer.’ There are several such passages, the most popular of which are, in Biblical order:

• Mark 7
• Acts 10
• Acts 15
• Romans 14
• Colossians 2
• 1 Timothy 4

Firstly, let’s jump to Acts 15 and the Jerusalem Council, because that is where the leaders of the early church spelled out what Gentile converts needed to believe and do or not do, initially. Many use this passage (vv1-21) to say that there are only four laws for Christians to follow and therefore all the rest (with perhaps the exception of the Ten Commandments) have been abolished, including the food laws.

Peter and Barnabas had been having great success in preaching the gospel among the Gentiles, many of whom had come to faith in the Jewish Messiah (let’s not forget here that Jesus was a Jew, not a European). They had been in Antioch and some believing Jews had come from Judea teaching the new converts,

“Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.” (Acts 15v1)

In Acts 15, they were reporting back to the Elders at Jerusalem, having been sent there from Antioch. The issue had become contentious and they wanted the advice and wisdom from James and the other Elders. Even there, some believers (who were Pharisees) stated:

“The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.” (15v5)

They were saying that in order for Gentiles to be included in the number of believers, they needed to be circumcised; in other words they needed to convert formally to Judaism, otherwise they could not have access to the benefits that some deemed were exclusive to Jews (even among the believing Jews). Thus circumcision was used as a shorthand way to express conversion. When God said He was going to make a New Covenant, He said it would be a covenant with ‘the house of Israel and the house of Judah’ – Jeremiah 31v31:

“The days are coming, declares the Lord,

when I will make a new covenant

with the people of Israel

and with the people of Judah.”

 

From this, they believed that if you were a Gentile, you could not be part of any of the covenants, without first becoming a Jew – and that meant being circumcised, because that was the sign God gave to Abraham representing the covenant God had made with him. It logically followed, therefore, that you could not become a Christian (ie a partaker of the New Covenant) unless you first became a Jew. The progression of a Gentile coming to faith was said to be:

·        Believe in the Messiah

·        Learn the law of Moses (including the oral laws) and begin to obey them

·        Become circumcised, as only then could you be called a ‘son of Abraham’

·        Then you get to be a part of Israel and therefore a partaker of the covenants God made with Israel, including the new Covenant

 

So the question being addressed was ‘Do Gentiles have to become Jews before they can be saved, or was God accepting them just as they were – Gentiles who had come to believe in Christ?’ Peter responds by saying,

“Why do you want to place a yoke on the neck of these disciples which neither we nor our fathers have the strength to bear?” (15v10)

This echoes the words of Jesus in Matthew 23v4. Talking of the unbelieving Pharisees, he says,

“They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear and lay them on people’s shoulders”

What were those ‘heavy burdens hard to bear’? Many Christians today say it refers to the laws God gave through Moses in the first five books of the Bible (the Torah). But is that what it means? There are only some 613 separate laws given in the Torah. Of these around half were for the priests and Levites as they ministered in the Temple. Of the rest, some were for men only, some for farmers, some for women only, etc. So we see clearly that the laws that actually apply to the individual are not even as many as the 613 – we obey more rules than that when we drive a car on the roads. It might surprise you to realise that not even Jesus kept every one of them – He wasn’t a woman, He wasn’t an Aaronic priest, He wasn’t a Levite and He wasn’t a farmer; consequently, those rules did not apply to Him.

Furthermore, God states in Deuteronomy 30v11:

“Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach’.

Does that then fit the description ‘heavy burdens hard to bear’? Was Peter contradicting God? Or is the heavy burden referring to something else entirely? In Matthew 23v4, Jesus was criticising the hypocritical Pharisees, who made so many rules and regulations but failed to keep them themselves. So we can see clearly that the heavy burden that was placed upon the shoulders of men referred to the additional laws added by the Pharisees and religious leaders, known as the ‘oral torah’ or ‘oral law’. These laws were given the same status as the Laws God gave at Sinai; indeed, they believed that God had also given Moses these rules when he was on the mountain, they just hadn’t been inscribed by the finger of God. Thus they refers to the Pharisees and the heavy burdens refers to the additional laws of the oral torah. Therefore, it was not the Law of Moses that was in view here (God had already said those laws were not too hard). The issue was, if Gentiles had to be circumcised (ie convert) they would have to follow not only the written torah, but also the oral torah. That was indeed a burden too hard to bear. God had accepted the Gentiles on the basis of their faith – they had received the Holy Spirit, without converting to Judaism. Why then should they be required to convert now? Peter pointed this out to the Council:

“It is through the love and kindness of the Lord Jesus that we have faith and are saved – and it is the same with them.” (15v11)

Finally, to claim that God’s laws were an unnecessary burden and too heavy a yoke to bear, is to say that God took the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, only to enslave them again with a ‘yoke of bondage’ in the form of His own laws. Does this even make sense?

What does this have to do with whether or not Christians should follow the dietary laws? Well, instead of asking all Gentile believers to convert to Judaism, the Council came up with just four laws:

• Abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols
• Abstain from Blood
• Abstain from things strangled
• Abstain from fornication/sexual immorality

Three of these rules do indeed pertain to food, but all four of them pertain to the pagan practices from which these Gentile believers had been drawn. History attests to the fact that pagan worship involved all four of these prohibitions. What does this then tell us? Certainly it does not mean that Gentile believers only have to obey four rules/commandments. Most Christians would at least also add nine of the ten commandments, even though this passage makes no reference to them. Rather it is a list of rules that would separate the Gentiles from their pagan backgrounds, so that they could attend the synagogue on Sabbath and there learn the Torah. How do we know this?

Many Christians stop reading Acts 15 at verse 20, or if they continue to verse 21, they do not understand why it is there:

“For from earliest times, Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, with his words being read in the synagogues every Sabbath” (15v21)

The logical progression for the Gentile then was:

•  They heard the gospel and believed in the Messiah    
• They did not have to convert to Judaism – but....
• They needed to be clearly separated from their pagan and idolatrous backgrounds, so they could...
• Have fellowship with Jewish believers....
• By attending the synagogue each week on Sabbath, where....
•  They would learn the actual laws that God gave His people through Moses

And this is the true work of the Holy Spirit. Why would Gentile believers need to learn the laws of Moses? Was it merely because they were living and fellowshipping with Jewish believers in first century Israel? Or was there more to it? God had promised that He would pour out His Spirit on all flesh. Was this simply so they could dream dreams and see visions (Joel 2v28 and Acts 2v17) No, along with His Spirit, God promised He would write His laws on the hearts of believers. If the law is irrelevant, then why would God want it written on hearts? The purpose was so that they (the believers who received the Spirit) would do them (the laws):

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes and to carefully observe My ordinances.” (Ezekiel 36:26-27)

In conclusion then, Acts 15 was the response to a specific issue that had occurred in the congregations among the Gentiles who were being saved. The contention was over whether Gentiles first needed to become Jews, since the Jews believed the promises of God to belong exclusively to them. If a Gentile claimed faith in the Jewish Messiah, then he ought to convert formally to Judaism. This involved circumcision, obeying all the written laws of God in the torah and also obeying all the oral torah too. It was determined at the Council that to make the Gentiles accept all that, was going to be too much; God had clearly accepted them as they were (Gentiles) and so the Council decided they did not need to convert. However, to ensure they had withdrawn completely from their former pagan practices, they were to follow four specific rules connected with pagan worship and then they were expected to attend the synagogues each Sabbath in order to learn about the written torah which was read every Sabbath in those synagogues.

Therefore, there is no connection between this chapter and the notion that the food laws have been abolished.