The Council at Jerusalem. Acts 15:1-35; Gal. 2:1-10.

"Dispensationally the most important passage in the New Testament." — Scofield.

IN the previous chapters, we have seen that the prophets taught nothing and Jesus taught little concerning an interval between the two advents of Messiah, that Jesus Himself lived and taught in strict conformity to the religious practices of His day, that the apostles instead of founding a new religious order, proceeded to preach Jesus within the old religious order because they had neither reason nor authority for abandoning the form of worship handed down from the fathers, that the Pentecostal church, instead of being the model of our present Christian churches, was a model of Jewish orthodoxy. We are still dealing with the thought that our present religious faith and practice where Jew, Gentile, bondman, freeman come boldly to the throne of grace without any reference to the sacrifices and ritual of Moses was unheard of five years after Calvary, not officially sanctioned for twenty years, and never universally practiced in apostolic days.

In the rise of the church at Antioch, we have seen the rise of our present faith and practice. For about fifteen years it flourished undisturbed and then a crisis was precipitated by certain men who came down from Judea and emphatically denied that such a religious practice had a right to exist (Acts 15:1). Paul, Barnabas, Titus, and others were sent to Jerusalem immediately to ascertain if the views of these men represented the attitude of the whole church at Jerusalem.

They first go into the regular assembly of the saints and boldly declare the things that God has done with them (Acts 15:4). "But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees who believed, saying. It is needful to circumcise them and to charge them to keep the law of Moses." The question was now squarely before the church, they must either sanction or condemn the religious practice of the church at Antioch, a church perhaps larger in numbers, more vigorous in spiritual life and missionary zeal, and having a wider sphere of influence than the mother church at Jerusalem.

"And the apostles and elders were gathered together to consider of this matter." This council was a gathering of godly men, filled with the Holy Spirit. They who contended for circumcision were neither enemies of the cross nor false teachers, but the reputed pillars of the church. Men were there who had walked and talked with Jesus; John and Cephas who formed part of the inner circle during His earthly ministry are mentioned by name. In this day. Gentile preachers calmly appropriate the gospel and scornfully reject the Jew, claiming that he was an impediment to the message of Jesus rather than the object of it. But twenty years after Calvary the men who had heard more words fall from the lips of Jesus in a single day than are recorded in the four gospels and who had eaten the loaves and fishes, were solemnly legislating for the church of God upon the question: Shall a Gentile convert, sins forgiven, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, be commanded to observe the ordinance of circumcision, the feasts, new moons, sabbaths, and sacrifices of the Mosaic ritual in order to be saved?

In the council, Peter rises and recommends that the two inseparables — circumcision and the law — be not laid upon the disciples. The keynote of the message is God's sole responsibility for the work among the Gentiles. God had led the way to them, God had borne witness to their acceptableness by giving to them the Holy Spirit, God had made no distinction between them and the Jews in cleansing their heart by faith, and that God saves a Jew, not by adherence to the law, but by the grace of the Lord Jesus in like manner as He saves them. The inference of the message is that "we" had better not interfere with a work which God was doing, nor lay on Gentiles a strange law which was a farce and a mockery as kept by the Jews themselves.

The carping and questioning ceased with Peter's declaration, critics were silenced but not convinced. That God could deal with Gentiles apart from the Jews and under some other system than the law of Moses, was perfectly reasonable but was nevertheless a divine innovation and these men wanted Scripture for it. For centuries God had dealt exclusively with the Jews, theirs were the covenants and the promises; to become beneficiaries, Gentiles must become Jews. "Salvation is of the Jews" (John 4:22). And before these men would admit that Gentile heirs to the kingdom had a right to ignore the forms of the Jewish religion in their worship of God; authority from God for such a radical change in His dealings with man must be produced.

Then James arises with a messages from the prophets — a Mosaic composed of several portions of prophecy pieced together. Think of the widely scattered sources from which the quotation is gathered, the authority with which James utters and applies it, the unquestioning attitude of the hearers, and you have a practical illustration of a man using the gift of prophecy in the early church. The council received it as an utterance of the Holy Spirit.

For the purpose of this study, the teachings of the quotations may be gathered under three heads:

1. Recognition of the period.

"Symeon hath rehearsed how first God visited the Gentiles to take out of them a people for His name, and to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written, After these things I will return."

The important words are "After these things," referring to God taking out of the Gentiles a people for His name. Perhaps its meaning would be more clear if we were to read it in this way: After God visits the Gentiles to take out of them a people for His name, I will return.

The idea that the Lord tarried, pending God's dealing with the Gentiles, was contrary to all commonly accepted viewpoints of the time. It had been assumed without question that Israel was to remain peculiarly the people of God until Jesus returned, and that the kingdom was withheld pending God's dealing with the Jews. The conversion of the Gentiles was remarkable, but to them not laden with dire prophetic significance to Israel. Not yet had it dawned upon them that the natural branches were to be broken off and the wild olive, the Gentiles, be grafted in (Romans 11:17). But here in this council, at Jerusalem the glorious city of Jewish history and hopes, before the elders of a Jewish church, from the lips of a Jew, in a day when the church at large was overwhelmingly Jewish, the Holy Spirit solemnly christened the gospel period by what we now see to be its characteristic features — "these things" Gentiles being separated unto God. In those two words, "these things," James places the council and its decisions in a new dispensation, the interval is recognized as distinct from the age of Moses and the law, which was emphatically not an age of God's dealing with the Gentiles.

2. Recognition of Israel's Position during the period,

"I will return and I will build again the tabernacle of David which is fallen; and I will build again the ruins thereof."

The gist of the whole "pre" and "post" millennial controversy could be stated in this way: Is Jesus coming to accomplish a great work, or coming after. everything great has been accomplished? At the beginning of a glorious era, or at the end of the world when eras great and small have passed into history? And this passage would seem to settle conclusively that Jesus is coming to do something,- namely, to restore the glories of David. Gabriel had said, "The Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David, and He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever." But before He sits on the throne of David, it must first be restored, and the age that follows Christ's return is aptly described by Peter as "the times of restoration." "Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things whereof God spake by the mouth of His holy prophets" (Acts 3:21). These same prophets have declared such stupendous plans of restoration that with our little faith we have been inclined to say, "It cannot be literally true." James brings a message like this to the council, — Brethren, this is not a day when we are striving to restore the tabernacle and glories of David; that is emphatically the work of Jesus when He returns; and instead of finding it restored, He will find it in ruins. The period when God visits the Gentiles to take out of them a people for His name is the period when David's tabernacle is a fallen ruin. All hopes for Israel's restoration must wait for the Lord's return.

3. Israel's priesthood and supremacy among the nations are future, and belong to the time of restoration, following Christ's return.

"And I will set it up (the tabernacle of David) that the residue of men may seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord who maketh these things known from of old."

The Lord made known from of old that rich blessings were in store for Gentiles, but that day was to be peculiarly the day of Israel's supremacy among the nations. "The law and the word of Jehovah shall go forth from Jerusalem" (Isa. 2:3). "They shall call them, The holy people. The redeemed of Jehovah" (Isa. 62 112). "The priests of Jehovah, men shall call you the ministers of our God: ye shall eat the wealth of the nations, and in their glory shall ye boast yourselves" (Isa. 61:6). James lays this thought on their hearts — that the blessing then falling on the Gentiles was not the blessing of which the prophets spoke, nor was their day the day in which Israel should teach the law to the whole world. Before that time, Jesus must return and restore the tabernacle of David and the glory of Israel, and not till then shall "many peoples say, Come, ye, and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, for out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of God from Jerusalem."

James is seeking to declare officially what the Holy Spirit had already declared in undeniable manifestations, that in this mystery period God is not dealing with the Gentiles through the Jews, but apart from the Jews. He gets his authority by showing from the prophets that in this period Jewish authority is doomed to ruin, with no hope of restoration until Christ returns, and that until that day the Jew cannot be God's appointed channel of blessing to the Gentiles, and that in this day the Jew, as such, can claim no spiritual authority.

James concludes "that we trouble not them that from among the Gentiles turn to God," and his conclusion is accepted as the decision of the council.

We are impressed with two characteristics of the message to the church at Antioch: Its weakness and its greatness. Paul points out its weakness when he says, "They imparted nothing to me" (Gal. 2:6). Nothing concerning the relation of Gentiles to Jews, nothing concerning the promises of God, nothing concerning liberty in the gospel; but that ye abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication, from which if ye keep yourselves it will be well with you. Fare ye well." Absolutely negative, no constructive policy inaugurated, they laid neither grace nor law upon the Gentiles! They simply withdrew as gracefully as possible from an untenable position and left Paul and his Gentile converts to work'"' out their own salvation. "When they saw that I had been intrusted with the gospel of the uncircumcision, and the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship" (Gal. 2:7-9).

But weak as it may have been as spiritual food for Gentile churches, it is the Magna Charta of our present Christian faith and practice; great, not in what it inaugurated or reformed, but in what it recognized. It recognized the right of the gospel of the uncircumcision to exist unhampered by the legalism and legalizers; and, freed from Jewish interference, it needed no assistance but flourished like a tree in its native soil, while the - exotic gospel of the circumcision gradually withered away.

But above all things it must be born in mind that this decision applied only to Gentiles. Apparently it never entered their minds to relieve themselves of the law. The practice of the church at Jerusalem was not disturbed in the least by this decision. These men went out of this council and continued to practice the ceremonial law as strictly as did the Pentecostal church, as did Jesus and as did Ezra.